An inversion in monster distribution philosphy

[CastIronFabric]

3 hours ago, DarkGold said:

I was thinking about this. I have a couple of thoughts.

First thought... when I was at a traders and a bear climbed over the stakes to attack me, I found that quite distressing. It felt immersion breaking and like the stakes were not behaving as expected. So regarding their need to be functional, I would like more functionality than currently exists.

However, I do see the ability for players to abuse stakes if they did damage, for example. Make kill boxes, etc. What I expect from stakes is basically how I use fences right now; shivers can't climb them, you can't just jump over them. This is the functionality I would like to see implemented.

Second thought... I would like to see the option for palisades and stakes in the game, but I think they would mostly be an alternative aesthetic choice to fences, because wattle fences are just so cheap. We assume a palisade would be made of logs, not sticks, and is therefore going to be more resource intensive than wattle fences, so less immediately useful for the player to build when they are trying to set up a defensive perimeter in the early game. They are also just less functional; being able to see through a fence is very useful, a palisade blocks your vision. So while I like the cosmetic option for players who want to build a thematic defensive encampment, I don't see the game actually encouraging the choice of palisades over fences for any other reason.

My final impression is that monsters appear very unintelligent and incredibly hostile. Drifters will run at your door, but they can't figure out how to open it. They really want to kill you, but they just can't figure out how to get at you. They also seem to disperse when it's bright enough outside. Their priority goes from desperately trying and failing to murder you, to seeking less bright places to lurk? But if you happen to be somewhere they can attack you when it's bright outside, their bloodlust outweighs their discomfort and killing you becomes their number 1 priority again. So having a fence instead of a palisade seems less secure, but it's enough to deal with the low intelligence of your opponents. Palisades look sturdier, but we don't need to be stronger than the enemy, just smarter.

Edit: If the game made monsters make choices based on line of sight and made them able to climb fences (only if they saw you were on the other side), then palisades could become more useful, as blocking line of sight would be a meaningful advantage they had that wooden fences didn't (stone fences block line of sight too). But then palisades wouldn't be much better than a 2 high wall of dirt blocks either. I guess nothing could spawn on top of them? There could be something done with enemy logic here I feel, but it seems unlikely the game will go that route. It seems like that road leads to stakes on top of fences/walls, like the equivalent of modern razor wire.

I read the first sentence and I instantly remembered, for some reason, a real life time I saw a real black bear in the wild, or more specifically in a campground. A dog chased the bear up a tree, so, hostile? well black bears not so much. anyway, back to regular programing, that was just a side note.

Edited yesterday at 12:10 PM by CastIronFabric

[DarkGold]

37 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

A dog chased the bear up a tree, so, hostile? well black bears not so much.

I have heard the saying "If it's black, fight back; if it's brown, lie down". I've never seen either in real life, but my understanding is that an actual brown bear could be a real force to be reckoned with. A simple fence would do little to protect your bee hives from a hungry bear! So it's nice the game is a little more generous with how effective your fences are, rather than letting supernatural monsters or even hungry bears ignore them.

Edited yesterday at 12:47 PM by DarkGold
Correcting typos

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, DarkGold said:

Second thought... I would like to see the option for palisades and stakes in the game, but I think they would mostly be an alternative aesthetic choice to fences, because wattle fences are just so cheap. We assume a palisade would be made of logs, not sticks, and is therefore going to be more resource intensive than wattle fences, so less immediately useful for the player to build when they are trying to set up a defensive perimeter in the early game. They are also just less functional; being able to see through a fence is very useful, a palisade blocks your vision. So while I like the cosmetic option for players who want to build a thematic defensive encampment, I don't see the game actually encouraging the choice of palisades over fences for any other reason.

I think in this case, an easy enough fix is to just...let monsters(the ones that can climb) climb over fences, no matter how high, but not palisades. Fences can continue to keep out wildlife. In this fashion, fences are still useful for protecting farms and general aesthetics, but if the player actually intends to protect an area from serious threats then they'll need to invest in actual fortifications to keep the bad stuff out.

[ifoz]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I think in this case, an easy enough fix is to just...let monsters(the ones that can climb) climb over fences, no matter how high, but not palisades. Fences can continue to keep out wildlife. In this fashion, fences are still useful for protecting farms and general aesthetics, but if the player actually intends to protect an area from serious threats then they'll need to invest in actual fortifications to keep the bad stuff out.

I like this idea, and to add onto it wonder if it'd be interesting if palisades couldn't be placed on top of stone. Maybe not things like stone bricks since that might limit player freedom to build, but specifically raw and cracked rock.
I say this because that way the classic cheese of placing fences in caves to wall off monsters would require a bit more time to pull off, since suitable blocks would have to be placed first and then palisades.

[DarkGold]

5 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

let monsters(the ones that can climb) climb over fences, no matter how high, but not palisades.

I generally like this solution, as long as stakes also stop monsters climbing, so players have a few options. They can choose between stakes + fences/walls or palisades. The addition of some metal spikes (that behave like stakes, stop climbing) that can sit on top of fences/walls later in the game would be nice too, so you could do something like build a glass wall around your base (with all that quartz you have lying around) and just top it with spikes.

Edited 14 hours ago by DarkGold
Added clarification on how metal spikes would behave.

[pippo_]

I disabled rifts on the surface and temporal storms because surface enemies are super duper easy to fight and are more annoying then challenging or engaging. Maybe this will change with the combat overhaul but outside of caves, monsters are only going to be a threat in huge numbers (high or apocalyptic rift activity), and in that case I can just run into my house as there's not really an incentive to fight them outside of the occasional flax drop or even rarer temporal gear. Same deal for temporal storms, it was spooky the first time but is not engaging and unrewarding, so it turns into "sit in your house" similar to high rift activity. Side note, its kinda funny how the horrifying monsters are physiologically terrifying but a pushover to fight, while animals like elk, boar, wolves, and bears are far more mundane but much more threatening to fight (and much more rewarding).