Transportation

[Stroam]

Before the age of trains to handle long-distance transport there were pack and draft animals, and boats. Boats were the biggest and best, but oceans, rivers, and lakes won't be around for awhile I hope because I'd like to see the land nailed down first. Just look how long it took Minecraft to get rowboats right and even still there's a lot to be desired like chests in rowboats.

This leads to pack and draft animals. The difference between a pack animal and a draft animal is a pack animal carries the weight on their back. This limits how much they can carry. Draft animals pull a cart of some sort which the weight is on which allows them to move a lot more weight. I'd like to see different creatures able to carry and pull different loads/setups. I'd also like to see these creatures restricted by biome/temperature. [Such as having a chance to get a sickness debuff every couple of minutes. The debuff would make them slower, consume more, and produce less.](Credit: Redram) This increases diversity and gives reasons to explore. Also, pack animals should be able to go up 1 high blocks without jumping. Draft animals should not be able to jump or go up 1 high blocks. This encourages players to build roads and again increases diversity as pack animals while carrying less weight can go off-road.

For getting around town and short distances there should be a cart.  

At some point, there will most likely be a barrel by popular demand. which will be great for transferring fluids and stuff. In the same vein, there will probably be crates. All containers should increase in weight and have restrictions from putting improper items in the container. Like liquids in crates unless first in a pot or large items in small containers.

Pulleys would be awesome at some point but I haven't seen those since Better Than Wolves.

In the far future

 

Tracks

First off if metal tracks are ever a thing they should be expensive. Until the Industrial Revolution logs laid down end to end known as "sleepers" were used in conjunction with carts "hunde". They were mainly used in mining operations because they could carry 4 times the weight compared to a draft animal. Before hunde and sleepers were wagons traveling down grooves cut into the stone.

 

Water transportation

Should be broken down into small boats and large boats. Small boats only need 1 block of water to move around on while large boats require 3 or more. Small boats would be canoes and ferries. A canoe would be like the boat in Minecraft with room for 1 person and a container or another player. Ferries would be bigger allowing you to carry more stuff but needs a wider waterway than a canoe. Large boats would be ships fit for very deep rivers and the ocean, able to carry much more than small boats.

[heptagonrus]

Personally I don't like that bit that animals outside of "their" biome should take damage. This may

1. Make them hard to find, since some animals would roam outside they home biome and die
2. Make travelling complicated. You will need to plan very carefully how to go from one point to another. For this you will need a way to see biomes very clearly on some global map.
   And travelling for exploring new lands - even harder.
   There may be various fixes for that, e.g. clothes for one animals, or more frequent feeding and giving them water. Or they would slow down in unfavorite biome.
   But still that might make them unusable in general, people might prefer to travel on foot.

In general, a reasonably expensive way to move lot of stuff over land and sea would be awesome. E.g. I may load one pack animal with all I need to prospect for ore and mark the good chunk (signs, tools, fences,gates,lights,firewood,food) and another draft animal for building a nice typical mine on a good place.

A cart for moving stuff short distances, like building a barn near the house, also desired. Maybe some kind of forklift, to pick up and move already existing chests. Why bother manually moving all the things from a chest to a cart when you can use a chest as a cart?

[redram]

Animal biome sensitivity could also show up in that animals won't *reproduce* outside their native biome.  This allows the player to still have one as a pack animal, or even in a zoo, but not breed them.  They could also produce less of their product (and/or produce it more slowly), if they have a product.  Less wool, less milk, less eggs, etc.  In a more hardcore mode, or perhaps for more rare animals, I could see them possibly getting sick, and they produce nothing and move very slowly until healed.  Similar consequences if a feed system for animals is implemented.  But they should not die just of neglect.  At least, not on a multiplayer server.  And I agree with heptagon that straight up damage for wrong climate is probably not great.

I would also love to see climate sensitivity for crops, btw.

As for conveyances, I think a big driver for (mine)cart useage could be prestige item commerce.  I think that many blocks in the game should either slow or immobilize the character.   Barrels and crates full of stuff, certain process blocks, but also I would love for merchants to sell large and heavy decoration/prestige items.  Thrones, statuary, fountains, etc.  These will require conveyance to move about.   If they are sold by static merchants in a town (as opposed to wandering merchants that visit the player's base) that will be incentive for the player to either base in the town, or build a transport network to the town.  Thrones might be moveable by cart, while statuary requires a minecart.  That sort of thing.

[tony Liberatto]

As far as animal Biome sensitivity: I think it is very cool and all, but it is something to be added much later in the game development. It would be just a way to create Variety. 

What I mean is that human societies have used different animals to do the same job in different climates and terrain. For example, Lhamas do exactly the same job as Donkeys did for the Europeans. 

So it is an interesting concept, but before we can think of adding 5 different animals that basically perform the same job in terms of game mechanic, we should add one animal for each feature that needs to be added to the game.  

 

[Stroam]

@tony Liberatto I completely agree with taking baby steps, taken with the future in mind.

@redram I like the idea of animals being unable to breed outside of their natural biome and producing fewer resources as well as constantly getting a sickness debuff that makes them slower and consume more. What I don't want to see is everyone using elephants because they can carry so much for example. 

Climate-sensitive crops would also be nice once we have more crops. The sense I get Tyron is that the food in the game is only the food available in medieval Europe. With a heavy focus on historical accuracy, the pitch on climate-sensitive crops sounds like it'd have to be a research paper for it to take root. (see what I did there?)

@heptagonrus The damage I was referring to would be like 8 times slower than when you starve. Basically enough to kill the animal in two in-game days if you didn't heal the animal. As for making traveling more difficult, all you would have to do is feed the animal more food that restores HP. That isn't that much more difficult. However, I like RedRam's idea of having a chance every couple minutes to get a sickness debuff better that makes them slower and consume more. Add in your idea of keeping them well fed, well watered, and potentially clothed to lower the chance for them to get sick. Makes me think of a donkey with a blanket over it.

 

[DMKW]

Lots of great ideas.  I'm on board with anything that encourages travel and exploration.  Its easier to make that jump with certain plants not growing in certain climates but I'm not sure about animals not being able to breed.  I think Tyron still shoots for as much realism as possible within reason.  Maybe they breed and produce the same amount of resources but significantly less often.  Or maybe baby animals die quickly after being born in certain climates?  Still not realistic but less of a jump maybe.

I'm big on roads speeding up players.  Horses making travel faster still and beasts of burden for transporting more goods.  Railroads making travel faster still but being very very resource intensive but allowing much more resources to be transported.  As much as I loved the idea of nether travel and elytra travel, it did kill off the use of horses and railways which is so unfortunate.

[redram]

1 hour ago, DMKW said:

As much as I loved the idea of nether travel and elytra travel, it did kill off the use of horses and railways which is so unfortunate.

And see that's because of minecrafts shallowness.   For instance, in VS you could have a glider perhaps someday, but it only works if the player has no containers on them, and no metal armor.  You place conditions on things, make them better in some ways, worse in others, and you let the player choose the most appropriate conveyance for the task.  But the game needs depth for that to work, of course.  Which is VS's advantage.

[DMKW]

Absolutely!