Drifters and looting them

[MICHAEL CAMPBELL]

I have to admit Im not a big fan of the change made to looting drifters. I much prefer the old way they droped any loot when you killed them rather than skinning them with a knife.

Is there a way for me to change it back to the older format? I get it for hunted annimals but when your down in a big dark cave running for your life it can be a little time consuming and dangerouse to stand around for 2 or three seconds trying to skin a kill while others are still present or even spawning around you.

I miss being able to use a dead drop with hoppers at the bottom to collect driffter loot as well since all items disapear when a drifter corpse decays now dead drops onto hoppers are pointless.

I think that part of the alure on games like this are in finding ways to automate things. It  is part of the fun. while this new mechanic is novel and well new I much prefer the way it ws before.

[redram]

9 hours ago, MICHAEL CAMPBELL said:

I miss being able to use a dead drop with hoppers at the bottom to collect drifter loot

Just FYI, this is the exact reasons drifter loot was changed to the way it is.  

[MICHAEL CAMPBELL]

 

Well thats a bummer particularly if the comunity and development team are so dead set against automating things or finding ways to use game mechanics to do new and interesting things.

I supose youl want to change how chickens lay eggs and how they interact with hoppers if I find that building a hen house on top of hoppers auto collects them and moves them to a celler automaticly? just for clarity I'd like to point out that many different people including my self do not just play games like this because it mirrors real life. I think that a lot of us including me play it for its whimsy and in my case trying to figure out how to do things from a engineering perspective that my be concidered odd or even just plain wierd. I would like to be able to use flowing water to move items and look forward to many mods or even game development that add all kinds of new and interesting ways to interact with environment entities and Items. If the game becomes one where there is nothing but grind micro managment and becomes somthing that mirros real life so closely it may no longer be fun. People play games to escape reality as well.

[junawood]

Well, IRL more and more things are done by machines. Even what you said about automatically collecting eggs is already done. Sooooo.... Not sure what is closer to reality nowadays or a better way to escape reality: having them collected by machines or collecting them yourself.

But, just to make that clear, I'm not against being able to automate things in the game. Being able to doesn't mean you have to and in every world that you start, and I think it's nice to be able to play a game in different ways.

Edited July 18, 2020 by junawood

[MICHAEL CAMPBELL]

Me too:) I do think that making this game like ether minecraft or TFC is not the answer but maybe a bit of both. not so real that it only caters to the Real life crowd but not so wild and crazy that things get stupid.

Edited July 19, 2020 by MICHAEL CAMPBELL

[Erik]

On 7/18/2020 at 2:34 AM, MICHAEL CAMPBELL said:

Well thats a bummer particularly if the comunity and development team are so dead set against automating things or finding ways to use game mechanics to do new and interesting things.

The dev team is not against automation to my knowledge, but wants automation to be hard to archive and make automatic systems like chicken farms not as simple as some water and a hopper. I'm sure there will be more complex automation further down the line, but currently the development priorities are on getting feature parity with TFC and installing general gameplay systems, like seasons or crafting systems.

[MICHAEL CAMPBELL]

That is welcome news I do think it should be difficult but I think its crucial to get some end game automation in because it becomes the pivot phase where the player then really feels rewarded and can then focus on asthetics and building exploring really making the world there own. there needs to be a natural progression and some escape from grind allowing the player to focus on large long term projects at that point.

[redram]

Realize that the state of automation in the game is in the *extremely* early stages.   There's a lot more to come.   However, this isn't Minecraft, and where certain things are non-sensical, the gameplay mechanics tend to get adapted to reflect RL better.  As another example, when it was realized that people were using water streams to move quern products, it was made so that flour and other powders simply dissolve in water.   Because it's quite non-sensical to use water to move such things.   Moving floaty wooden products by water?  Fine.  That's logical.    Although I would point out that eventually you probably won't be able to move water source blocks at all (piping them is another matter though). 

It's not that the devs have anything against automation.  But we're not trying to re-create minecraft here.  We're going for a more involved, more 'real', but also more fun set of mechanics.  But also that need to be earned with more than some planks and string.  It's a slow process, unfortunately.  But it's really only getting started.  There'll be an entire other tier of machinery above wood, and it is there that some of the more 'heavy' tech will occur.  Not to mention certain...other things...It's not out of the question that you won't ever be able to make an automatically harvesting deadfall trap ever.   But if so, you'll have to earn it with more than a couple ingots of copper. 

[junawood]

7 hours ago, redram said:

won't be able to move water source blocks at all (piping them is another matter though)

What do you mean by that? Will it still be possible to use a bucket to add a water block somewhere, at least to get rid of currents where they really made no sense at all? Right now I find it a tiny bit annoying that you absolutely need a bucket for some things, while IRL you could even fill a pond just using your cupped hands.

[redram]

Water mechanics will get a re-work at some point, and will (hopefully) become more 'self-healing' at that point.

[MICHAEL CAMPBELL]

I am fine with RL as long as there are options no matter how difficult that allow for the player to eventually refine automate and make more mundane tasks more efficient, After all in our own lives we definatly have continues to refine manufacturing and production to the point that if I want a pick axe I can have one deliverd to my doorstep within 48 hours.

I also appreciate the trying to keep it REAL. HowEver if there gets to be a slight issue when trying to figure out how to get to some of thease proccesses that help introduce tech you have to do a few things that arnt quite true to life I think your kinda going to have to make some sacrafices because lets face it is EVERYONE really going to want to play a game where every process is true to a real life processes and literaly takes as much time as well in game? There is already quite a few people Ive noticed talking about maybe a more casual game play that also includes some of the survival and exploration aspects of the game.

Latly Ive been thinking that somthing that might really make the game explode and bring it to a much wider player base is to really work on a game mode with edited recipies and reduce crafting smithing requirments . an example might be to remove the voxel smithing and go back to the ingots directly from bloomeries. making recipies to create limewater or quick lime more one for one so that not as many resources are needed to produce more refined products. Including a easier way to make the brick stone types for building maybe include a chissle mode to convert regular stone directly into polished stone that can then be mined, things like that.

Right now we have creative but survival and exploration are definatly requiring many hours if not days of game play before the player can really start to be able to see success and gain access to end game recipies and building.

Might be nice to see a lite game mode where a player can achieve alot more in only a few hours of game play and transition more rapidly into a game where they can then focus on being creative with all of the blocks and items available. A casual mode if you will.

[junawood]

On 7/21/2020 at 4:36 PM, redram said:

Water mechanics will get a re-work at some point, and will (hopefully) become more 'self-healing' at that point.

That sounds great. But it would be really sad if you couldn't create your own ponds/wells/bathtubs/whatever anymore.

[Erik]

23 minutes ago, junawood said:

That sounds great. But it would be really sad if you couldn't create your own ponds/wells/bathtubs/whatever anymore.

I'm sure team is aware of this and the system will still allow things like that. There will probably be different types of water:

Flowing river water that will be location locked to rivers only, but allow operating water wheels and probably irrigate crops. Maybe you could also pump it with mechanically powered pumps and aqueducts to irrigate fields further away from the river and allow it to act for limited transport of for example logs.

Ocean/salt water might be added probably acting a lot like Minecraft classic water, filling up any air spot lower than ocean level. So you could build channels for ships and harbors with ease, the water filling itself in by itself. Maybe on the ocean there could also be water currents, which would make for pretty interesting boat gameplay when wind simulation would also be a thing.

Lake water may actually have volume simulation, as it would be available in much smaller quantities than ocean or river water. So any water you pick up in a bucket (maybe except for salt water) would default to lake water when placed. Lake water would distribute its volume equally over the available terrain, making it easy to work with for building you own ponds, baths, etc. It would probably be much less useful for irrigation than river water, maybe farm land would even consume it over time.

These are just some ideas I could come up with and not things that are definitively planned, aside from river water for waterwheels, which actually is planned.