Sieve panning

[Phillip Susi]

Let the sieve do what panning does, only without the need to be standing in water.  Bonus points: let you place it in world and connect it to mechanical power like a quern.

Edited September 2 by Phillip Susi

[Hanril]

The whole point of water is to dissolve dirt and sink heavier elements. Also panning is for bootstrapping your copper production with a chance of some goodies, not for passive income.

[Phillip Susi]

The whole point of water is to separate the smaller bits from the larger ones, which is also what a sieve does ( dirt doesn't dissolve in water; it just gets blown around by it and settles back out ).  And what else are you going to do with all that gravel?  May as well sift it.  I spent a long time playing the GregTech mod in minecraft, which added hundreds of real world ores that often had to be refined using machines like crushers, sifters, sluices, centrifuges, acid baths, magnetic separators, and electrolyzers.  Lots of gravel like things could be sifted on a sifting table that took steel wire to make the mesh, and later could be automated with a mechanical sifter powered with either a steam or electric engine.  It even had the very real ( and quite complex ) process to refine bauxite and similar ores into aluminum.  It made it very understandable why aluminum was not a metal people used for ages, and until industrial electricity came along, was more valuable than gold.  Napoleon was said to have had a set of aluminum dishware to show off his wealth.

[Kulze]

Panning is significantly underused, that I have to agree with.
The classic panning should stay as it is, a early-game method to get copper going and some more rare goodies along the way. But I'm also for a mechanical improvement for late-game to not let this quite fun - but unrewarding ultimately - mechanic be left behind.

Thus a method to use mechanical power and non-rapid streams of water to pan for materials with a expanded loot-table would be quite enjoyable. Not only does it increase the usecases for gravel and sand (primarily gravel) which you plainly spoken will nigh never use in the sheer amount you get it but also act as a sideways expansion in general which mandates a progression.

Still needing manual oversight, this is important to not make it a automated resource production method, but having to put in and take out materials at the spot while dealing for example with material not moving properly or having to push it back up when something goes wrong... hence ultimately leading to a similarly immersive mechanic as forging, clayshaping, knapping and so on are.

Currently the common way it goes for panning is that it's entirely ignored after the initial usage outside of early-game candles from bone-soil. But beyond that? It's made redundant entirely as it provides nothing in a reasonable manner which has functionality and isn't dozens of times less efficient then any other method.
Mechanical panning hence can especially lead to the acquisition of gold for brighter lanterns, also it would be a prime positioning to put it in place after the acquisition of bronze.
This setup specifically could be made out of bronze as a water resistant alloy, which then leads to Tier 2.5, hence black bronze more naturally, which also is the time when brewing becomes naturally a reasonable investment, allowing to not only rummage through hundreds of quartz blocks but also to acquire them in this separate way, optimally with a similar time-investment which is a reduced amount for the term of processing (which would be the mining) but instead a larger investment in terms of bronze to achieve the intial setup.

Furthermore while we currently have gotten a use-case for electrum in the future content going along I could very well imagine that more advanced trading functionality with society could be a thing, hence electrum being a currency as would be historically accurate for a earlier currency-based society. Since society in lore degraded because of the constant danger still existing it would make for a very good addition in that regard which would keep mechanical panning a ongoing process that has a reward which isn't easily ending.

[MobiusvanMars]

What if the sieve-as-a-pan still has to be used manually in water, but it's faster (2x) and for sand/gravel more effective. It needs boards and a reasonable amount of flax, so it can be crafted in late copper to early bronze age. So let's make it useful for that point of the game. 

 

To keep it reasonable and not get too many "exotic" iterms the improved drops are going to be metal nuggets.

Slightly improved drops of copper and spalerite, much improved drops of cassiterite, add bismuthinite and galena nuggets with a chance in between sphalerite and cassiterite. Slightly improved chance of gold nuggets, add silver nuggets at the same rate. Throw in some gems as a rare drop, including the better qualities.

Some suggested values: 

Copper: 1 in 5

Sphalerite: 1 in 30

Bismuthinite and galena: 1 in 60

Cassiterite: 1 in 100

Gold/silver: 1 in 200

Lapis: 1 in 500 as in vanilla

Low potential gems: 1 in 1000

Medium potential gems: 1 in 2000

High potential gems: 1 in 5000

(the rest of the vanilla drop table remains the same)

Edited September 4 by MobiusvanMars

[SnapJelly]

I hardly ever interact with the panning mechanic cuz I think it's slow and boring but if you're suggesting the sieve works by itself without much player input I'd be against it.

Though I wouldn't really mind a slightly faster alternative to panning, still doubt I'd use it much but I'd be alright with a little upgrade

[Kulze]

9 hours ago, MobiusvanMars said:

What if the sieve-as-a-pan still has to be used manually in water,

Yes, that's a good copper-level stage solution, agreed.
 

2 hours ago, SnapJelly said:

I hardly ever interact with the panning mechanic cuz I think it's slow and boring

Yes exactly, that's the general notion. This is why it's not utilized despite providing potential resources one can use.


Overall after the extra posts I think a 3-step panning system would be a relatively nice one overall.

- First we start of with normal panning, the usual way it's currently done.
- The second stage would be copper-age, with the sieve. It being a option to expand on the usage of the sieve generally because in a SP world it's useless, so why not give it a use-case? My idea here is to further craft it into a 'sieve stand'. Take a sieve, add 4 planks (legs) and hence make it a 1x2 block. Then have flowing water coming from above in the following setup (top to bottom): Water --> Sand/Gravel --> Sieve --> Pan. This then does nothing besides increasing the work-speed of the pan by 2x or 3x. Still manual, no change in the loot-table.
- The third stage is the suggestion I have with a mechanical panning setup out of bronze. Expanding the loot table actively, also manual but based on mechanical power. It's fast, it allows more material to be processed at the same time and gives increased rewards.

This way it would provide a progression-based mechanic into it, speed it up (which is the current core issue but necessary early-game) and allows it to have a fitting place without creating overabundance.

Also this would be a prime reason to actually settle close to a gravel-desert of any kind. Those biomes offer no resources, don't look enticing and are generally avoided by players if they can do so. In this situation it would allow a use-case and settlement there for the resource opportunity.

[williams_482]

I am a little surprised to see anyone describing panning as "quite fun." I find it quite dull. You stand in water with a pan, clicking twice on a sand/grave/bony soil block every couple seconds. I will do it for bony soil once I have a lot of it because I find the rewards to be worth it, but I don't particularly like the idea of making this very passive activity even more lucrative. 

Players should be incentivized to gain resources by exploring the surface, diving into caves, prospecting, hunting monsters and animals, etc. Those are proactive tasks which get the character moving around, seeing different things and doing at least a little planning and strategizing for best results. I worry that making panning better would create an optimization trap, where players looking for the "most efficient" way to get certain resources will decide on (or be talked into) panning for them instead of something most people will find more engaging. 

What about panning do you enjoy? Do you view it as a quiet, contemplative activity, and find fun in that aspect? Or is there another angle I'm not seeing?

[SnapJelly]

13 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

Players should be incentivized to gain resources by exploring the surface, diving into caves, prospecting, hunting monsters and animals, etc

Yeah actually, I agree with this

Panning should be more something you could do in an emergency or something if you can't find enough copper, or just just have something to do while you wait for other things. It shouldn't really be turned into a very valid way of getting materials and items.

[Kulze]

59 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

I am a little surprised to see anyone describing panning as "quite fun."

It's not the action that's 'fun', it's the dopamine release attached to a mechanic which provides a random outcome.
This is the same psychological function as gambling of any kind provides, just in a non-detrimental way as there are no stakes applied to it which cause negative outcomes to the user.
 

1 hour ago, williams_482 said:

Players should be incentivized to gain resources by exploring the surface, diving into caves, prospecting, hunting monsters and animals, etc.

And this simply doesn't uphold, and I'll explain in more detail. But I understand the notion.

There is always a effort/reward aspect. Otherwise we wouldn't get mechanics like livestock management since that would remove the 'going out to gather' portion.
Any such mechanic which allows you to not explore but instead settle is directly countering the need for exploration, but it's also the goal to achieve, which demands proper balancing 'simply' (it's the hardest part).

Vintage story ultimately starts out as a harsh wilderness survival game and allows the player to progress into a comfortable homesteading environment over time. The need to go out and seek a forest vanishes as you start making your own tree farms. The need to seek food vanishes as you build up farms, livestock and orchards. The need to find light sources (well... torch holders and bony soil for candles) in easily accessible ruins vanishes as you start to do beekeeping and metalworking.
The game actively makes it so you reduce the need for exploration further and further after the acquisition of the respective materials and finding the biomes which provide you those materials. You won't run out of limestone after finding it, or bauxite, or olivine... and even iron after 2-3 nodes since they're commonly quite huge.

Exploration is ultimately for the storyline, for the initial acquisition of resources until you have enough for a long time as well as for the acquisition of more unique decorative elements and items generally from ruins.
To keep exploration existing long-term there needs to come something which further demands it along the way.

As for panning directly... the core reason why people do it are for 3 different materials, and potentially 5 if expanded upon.
- The common one... copper.
- Avoiding the need to mine hundreds or even thousands of quartz blocks for silver and gold (fulfilling the initial 3)
- Potentially expanding into the acquisition of gears and temporal gears, which are rare drops after all. This allows to play into the upkeep of stationary Jonas tools like the Rift Ward... which is simply a tool basically nobody ever uses as upkeep is unsustainable.

Copper becomes a non-topic, you acquire it in absolutely massive amounts, so panning becomes ignorable for that.
It never becomes ignorable for gold and silver, even at the current pace it partially keeps up with the pace of acquisition otherwise, but it's - as has been mentioned - extremely boring ultimately as you only stand there and hope for those things to drop.
Gears and temporal gears are directly reliant on combat. And since a Rift Ward denies combat you cannot provide the upkeep without countering directly what the task of the Rift Ward is. And here specifically is the biggest potential for expanding on the panning process existing, besides the action itself being made more enjoyable and hence used more prevalently.

If the sieve can be used to speed up the panning process for example we can already counteract the need for gold/silver acquisition, which is the most known realistic implementation of why panning would be used, to acquire hardly available rare materials after all.
And if we go further ahead with it then a progression into it would allow the homesteading aspect to flourish further, allowing people to do a repeated mechanic - the panning - to acquire gears and temporal gears in a amount which keeps up with the usage of those from a Rift Ward for example, achieving that the danger of the rust world is counteracted to a degree, as the Rift Ward promises after all and fails at entirely in the current implementation.

Further along the expansion of the loot table can lead us to the acquisition of more rare materials. This allows the expansion in more pronounced and complex systems building onto current end-game demands on one hand... or simply the acquisition of very rare materials like cinnabar, lapis lazuli or gemstones that actually further on allows the introduction of mechanics related to this (gemcutting is a well asked-for topic here).
As for another prime reasoning there is the option to expand into the topic of 'early currency' usage, hence electrum as coinage, which could be a very solid and decent choice for 'town specific' trades as we've already been introduced to society still existing from the storyline. Either for special high-value trades as an option without reliance on gears... or simply a completely different loot-pool of further introductions as the game progresses in content.

So there is a lot of potential available, the question is only which to take, and if none... why panning itself should stay a chore system to counteract bad spawns instead of becoming a enjoyable thing which actually allows rewards for effort and time invested (you need to gather the materials and stand there doing it after all)

[MKMoose]

15 hours ago, Kulze said:

As for panning directly... the core reason why people do it are for 3 different materials, and potentially 5 if expanded upon.
- The common one... copper.
- Avoiding the need to mine hundreds or even thousands of quartz blocks for silver and gold (fulfilling the initial 3)
- Potentially expanding into the acquisition of gears and temporal gears, which are rare drops after all. This allows to play into the upkeep of stationary Jonas tools like the Rift Ward... which is simply a tool basically nobody ever uses as upkeep is unsustainable.

• Copper drops at a rate of 1.2 per 1 sand or gravel block on average.
  • It isn't even all that useful at the start of the game, esecially given that exploring for nuggets also allows to find food and other resources whereas panning consumes satiety and doesn't tend to produce resources valuable for immediate survival.
• Gold drops at a rate of 1 per 31.25 sand or gravel blocks on average, or 1 per 12.5 bony soil. Silver is also 1 per 12.5 bony soil, but can't be obtained from sand and gravel.
  • If you're lucky enough to obtain a couple dozen bony soil early into the game, it can allow you to get a bit of black bronze, but you need a whole bronze anvil for iron anyways, so I don't think that a little bit of bronze is particularly worthwhile in the long run.
• Rusty gears drop at a rate of 1 per ~20.83 sand or gravel blocks on average, or 1 per 5 bony soil.
  • Some gears can also be obtained by selling other panned items, most notably gemstones from bony soil.
  • It can be a useful way to get some gears.
• Temporal gears drop at a rate of 1 per 250 sand or gravel blocks on average, or 1 per 125 bony soil.
  • It is very nearly worthless, if you ask me - you'll usually be better off getting your temporal gears from surface drifters.

There are two other notable items that can be potentially useful, especially in the early game:

• Blue clay at a rate of 1 per ~ 4.17 sand or gravel.
  • Could be used in the early game to get a cooking pot (4 clay) and a bowl (1 clay) if struggling to otherwise find clay, though it's not especially efficient and it's not viable as a primary source of clay.
• Candles at a rate of 1 per ~8.33 bony soil.
  • Can be used to make a couple lanterns prior to finding bees or obtaining wax in other ways. You can also get clear quartz at a rate of 1 per 5 sand and gravel for this purpose.

And there's naturally a bunch of other miscellaneous items that can be obtained from panning. I find that the most value comes out of it in the early game, where the large variety of normally unimportant stuff can still hold fairly significant value. But its practical value drops off a cliff in the late game.

 

16 hours ago, Kulze said:

Further along the expansion of the loot table can lead us to the acquisition of more rare materials. This allows the expansion in more pronounced and complex systems building onto current end-game demands on one hand... or simply the acquisition of very rare materials like cinnabar, lapis lazuli or gemstones that actually further on allows the introduction of mechanics related to this (gemcutting is a well asked-for topic here).

I'm not confident that this would work as well as you're suggesting. It would certainly be convenient, but it could also end up really quite boring, because it would largely just be a passive resource income or a conversion from bulk resources into a large variety of items. If it's cheap, it's a no-brainer, while if it's expensive, it may easily end up tedious.

Copper, clay, quartz, clear quartz, sphalerite, gold, lapis lazuli, rusty gears, temporal gears, metal parts, metal scraps and a couple other things from sand and gravel. Flax, rusty gears, temporal gears, candles, gemstones, gold, silver, miscellaneous copper items and a couple other things from bony soil. Add a couple other items to the mix, and you could skip huge parts of the game by just auto-panning mountains of gravel.

I've actually seen suggestions that a mechanical panning machine should have a reduced drop table, so that automatic panning can be used to get some resources but not to automate away the acquisition of an excessively large variety of items. This can become an important optional technology, likely designed to be most suitable for obtaining a narrow selection of resources, but without risk of circumventing other progression or reducing gameplay variety to an excessive degree.

[Kulze]

For the more complex systems aspect... you bring up some good points there @MKMoose . Especially in the terms that it'll easily cause one to skip parts of the progression by sidestepping it with the panning. Though I would argue manually doing that should always be the case, even with a mechanical method, having to still interact actively which counteracts it.

Which brings us to the tedious portion then, which is a risk, you're right.

So, let me adjust an idea I think could work out by working with the reductionist method.
The materials which are the most tedious to acquire currently in the game are gold and silver, which panning inherently seems like an option to counteract, but it is also a sought-after material, so I'll work related to the premise of reducing 'large' results in favor of providing a more precise outcome.

My idea there would be the following:
For it I think the sieve can still play a significant role. In panning we commonly get a classification of material, The 'material' we use is made up of 3 parts. 'Coarse material', 'Classified Material or Paydirt' and 'concentrates'.

I think a process of this kind could work hence:
- We use a sieve to make a 'standing sieve'
- With the 'standing sieve' we extract the 'coarse material' to create 'paydirt', the 'coarse material' vanishes for us, immersion-wise it means we forego all stones, clay, gears and so on in favor of a higher yield for others + introduction of new materials potentially.
- The 'paydirt' is collected as a form of 'sludge' in a bucket underneath the sieve, at a much lower quantity.

Now we can work with that further along the line.
Either directly panning for increased results of silver/gold/copper and so on, maybe small gems as well, would be a prime way to introduce access to gems, based on initial material.
And we can also introduce mechanical screening/sieving processes there. We use this 'Paydirt' in a machine that can be expanded with progression to extract materials from it, primarily foregoing the former loot tables in favor of more precise ones. This can be tied to story progression as well.

The one thing I'm specifically thinking about is to gather 'prima materia' from it, which then allows us to infuse rusty gears making them into temporal ones, which is the biggest bottleneck for end-game machinery after all, and it could be the core source for this.
Also introducing maybe a bit more focus on the alchemical lore background of the game. Basically re-introducing what Falx did in smaller degrees, using the leftover remnants in the world to get into the more fantastical 'science' of the world.

This way we can reduce the loot pool and it can be designed to avoid the premature access of materials without it becoming tedious. Using large amounts of gathered materials to create small specialized outcomes and those also unlocking further technological progressions or allowing upkeep of things you cannot properly upkeep currently, like the Rift Ward.

[MKMoose]

24 minutes ago, Kulze said:

The one thing I'm specifically thinking about is to gather 'prima materia' from it, which then allows us to infuse rusty gears making them into temporal ones, which is the biggest bottleneck for end-game machinery after all, and it could be the core source for this.
Also introducing maybe a bit more focus on the alchemical lore background of the game. Basically re-introducing what Falx did in smaller degrees, using the leftover remnants in the world to get into the more fantastical 'science' of the world.

While I am all for more alchemy, I don't feel like collecting prima materia from panning does it any justice. I'm pretty sure that Tobias doesn't even know how Jonas found it, based on the text for one of the tapestries.

Not to mention, when panning already provides temporal gears, if at a very low rate, it seems somewhat redundant to for it to also provide prima materia to allow to make more temporal gears.

 

22 hours ago, Kulze said:

And since a Rift Ward denies combat you cannot provide the upkeep without countering directly what the task of the Rift Ward is.

Regarding the rift ward, I don't personally find it a significant issue that its effect reduces incidental sources of its fuel, as that in itself could be seen as a neat loop in a sense - you can keep your place safe, provided that you do still engage in combat elsewhere to fuel it. It could tie in nicely into homesteading and creating a sense of security and ownership.

The real crime of the rift ward, I would say, is that it does literally nothing which can't be achieved with a couple lanterns, while also requiring upkeep and having a 2.5% chance to let a rift slip through. Unless it's given some new, unique function, no buffs will make it actually unique and interesting - it will always just be better or worse than lights.

Providing limited protection during temporal storms (either by blocking monster spawns, or by literally providing protection of some sort) is a fairly common suggestion.

 

45 minutes ago, Kulze said:

For it I think the sieve can still play a significant role. In panning we commonly get a classification of material, The 'material' we use is made up of 3 parts. 'Coarse material', 'Classified Material or Paydirt' and 'concentrates'.

I think a process of this kind could work hence:
- We use a sieve to make a 'standing sieve'
- With the 'standing sieve' we extract the 'coarse material' to create 'paydirt', the 'coarse material' vanishes for us, immersion-wise it means we forego all stones, clay, gears and so on in favor of a higher yield for others + introduction of new materials potentially.
- The 'paydirt' is collected as a form of 'sludge' in a bucket underneath the sieve, at a much lower quantity.

I do like the design of this quite a lot more.

As a side note, if the intent is to extract gold alongside potentially silver, copper and maybe other metals, then I would strongly consider looking into sluices, which might be considered more historically accurate or prominent.

[Kulze]

Well, given that the rust world is 'leaking' into the player-world it would make sense for it to be available to a degree. Or not if that's what caused the rot in the first place, we got no clue for that as players, that's only in the devs minds available. So could be a complete bust... or a viable option.
But it was primarily for the acquisition of temporal gears for end-game as a thought anyway.

And yes, the Rift Ward is underperforming, actually... all Jonas devices are. They're showcased as 'revolutionary' and everyone would want one... but then they're just... sad plainly spoken.
The 2,5% chance to let a rift through ruins the functionality, and the lack of ability to acquire new gears since you remove the only source of potential gears is the other. Plainly spoken it should be a perfect solution in the current situation and there needs to be a source available... or either the timeframe or radius needs to be expanded, and quite substantially. I would say 90 days in the current situation which makes it feasable to leave and acquire a new gear along the way as using it is for homesteading without being bothered. Or the size being 150 or 200 blocks radius rather then 50.
Or as you mentioned... temporal storm protection, which would make acquisition and usage of them actually reasonable... and to even have temporal storms activated as most just turn it off since it becomes nothing else then a tedium over time sadly. Nice base idea... not properly fleshed out yet.

The other being the night vision goggles, which come at a significant downside of having no helmet hence, which is a danger, for the upside of being able to carry a shield and have vision.
Sure, it is substantially better to see far at night outside as well... but by the time you got that you don't care about bears anymore, which are the most dangerous thing you could walk into at that time. They miiight be decent in caves with the shield, which is highly dependant on personal skill to use it properly, because if you get hit you'll loose a significant amount of health comparably.
Their use-rate of temporal gears actually is fine, but they should be either able to be worn with a helmet... or be a repairable defensive equipment at at least bronze level to make up for the downside. Hence being an actual upgrade.
 

47 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

then I would strongly consider looking into sluices, which might be considered more historically accurate or prominent.

Yes, which would be the mechanical stage in this example, which is a powered sluice.
Could be that the sieve removes coarse material and you can only use the reduced one in sluices... or foregoing the whole sieve aspect entirely and it just has a different loot table entirely.

All the proposals are basically that:
- Keep mechanics longer-term viable
- Provide sources for materials which are hard to acquire but wouldn't cause major gameplay issues.
- Provide a source for new formerly not acquireable materials for other mechanics building upon it.

The question is only for the mix&match there anyway. Some nice directions overall here.

[Mac Mcleod]

I did a little research and historically powered mining had *large* groups of humans working.   Not a one man operation to build or operate.

Sluice mining was more possible for a single person.

Water wheels were used for Stamp Mining which pre-crushed the ore.

I do think if they were to implement powered mining, it should require multiple people to operate at anything above minimal efficiency.   Constantly loading raw material, durability on the parts that has to be repaired, unloading of the finished products, disposing of the less valuable waste material, etc.

I also see the potential for more efficient mining or smelting equipment powered by temporal gears.