Tweaking bees of 1.5.2.6

[heptagonrus]

So the bee system is live for some time, got one tweak. Looks awesome and interesting. You didn't forget to make a beenade? Awesome visuals! And a bit creepy

Personally I still feel it is too costly, too repetative, grindy. Two main issues are     bowls vs. inventory   and   cattail farming.

Maybe we could discuss and find some way to tweak it cheaply without/before reworking into the next tier? Or maybe it is designed to be so, to push people in future to upgrade to the next tier, like apiaries?

Please express your current experience in the poll and share your pros and cons.

 

Bowls.

Currently one honey bowl heals 4 points. One bowl stack (8) heals 32 points. One berry stack heals 32 points. One veggie stack heals 64 points.

But berries and veggies leave an empty inv slot when consumed. Also no problem throwing them away if need an extra slot. Honey bowls - no, will have to make bowls again, not throwing away.

Honey bowls are good to quickly heal in combat. But for long enough exploration/caving runs - take too much space.

Also constant grind for wax forces me to do repetative claywork to make more and more bowls. Well, I should just eat all the honey right away.

 

Cattails.

I have 2 cattail fields atm, 72 plants in sum. This makes 4 skeps per harvest. So 4 candles per harvest. So 4 lanterns per irl day max. Also harvest atm is slow, scythe doesnt work in area with cattails.

Also cattails grow randomly centered, a bit annoying targeting them with a knife.

I could and will make more cattail fields, but this means more repetative slow knife cutting everyday.

Also as the result - lantern cost is quite high now. Before - 3 ingots. Now - 2 ingots, plate, cattails, skep population waiting, wax squeezing. Kinda high, e.g. for lighting a road.

So basically I can't even start making bare candles in big quantities and use them for decorations - lanterns eat all the wax.

 

Suggestions:

• Scythe or shears work 3x3 area, affecting only cattail tops. It is believeable that you can't dig out a root with a scythe.
• Honey still needs something to be done differently imho.
  Maybe purely mathematical buff: make one stack of honey heal twice as much as stack of veggies. Please by not nerfing veggies. Increase stack size?
  Idk.
• Some vessel for big honey storage? Reuse crucible? Change texture to a nice honey-stained when some honey inside ...

Edited April 2, 2018 by heptagonrus

[redram]

Nice job of covering all the current liabilities of the system @heptagonrus!  I'm not voting in the poll because I basically don't think the honey system is at all fleshed out right now.  I think we just got the basic mechanics.   My suggestions:

CONTAINERS -  I definitely agree the bowls right now are very cumbersome.  I don't get hurt near enough to actually need all the honey so I mostly harvest and immediately eat it regardless of whether or not I'm damaged.  I'm after the wax.     There should be a larger holding container for honey (and other liquids/materials).   This could be a crock, or the standard barrel.  A barrel could hold perhaps scores of bowls of honey.  Just a simple right click of a bowl on the barrel either fills or empties the bowl.  Such a concentration possibly attracts wild animals though, so keep it secure. 

CATTAILS - Agreed that cattails are a bit cumbersome to harvest, in large part because of their annoying offset, but I think that's only really an issue if they're in large masses, rather than rows.  It does seem like it'd make sense for a scythe to work on them, but that would make them a lot easier to harvest, and they're easy to move and don't even require water or fertilizer.  I kind of wonder if - if a scythe is allowed to harvest them - players should only be able to re-plant them in water.   Another fun fact: cattails don't require light.  Visit my hacienda to see my subterranean cattail farm.   Probably should be changed to require light, like crops.

HONEY USE - My impression was that the current mechanic is a stopgap.  I think honey should be an ingredient in a healing poultice, which can be made with reeds or linen, and perhaps a couple other ingredients.  Consumed on use, so none of the bowl issues as far as the portable healing useage.  Presumably honey will also eventually have use in baking and other foodstuffs.  Might also be interesting to have an option to distill the honey into sugar.  This would give maybe three sugar options - honey, sugar beets, sugarcane.  The rarer ones could give better yield.  I think it's very good for the game to have things that have multiple sources, but some are better than others.  it helps avoid the feast/famine problem (TFC flux or salt), but still gives a thrill if you find the better/easier to extract/rarer source.

LANTERNS - I remain of the personal opinion that good permanent lights should not be cheap.  Drifters on your roads; so what?  They're easy to dodge if you're just passing by.   I'm sure there'll be other light sources to come, so you'll have other options.  For SMP play, I'd leave it up to the server admins if they want to make lanterns super-cheap for road purposes.  There's a lot of ways to skin that cat.

Edited April 2, 2018 by redram

[Stroam]

I agree with @redram. Better things are to come.

 

[MICHAEL CAMPBELL]

I think that somthing that would go a long way twards solving some inventory problems with bowels is to stop using them for anything other than basicaly a placed or used object that a player can eat from once.

The player should be able to eat directly from crocks. and crocks should be able to store up to 6 servings the same amount as produced by a fully loaded cook pot and when empty they should be able to be stacked.

Empty bowels should be able to be stacked.

bowels stack limit 6 to 8

crocks 2 to 4

Honey should be able to be stored in barrels and treated like a porper liquid with reguard to the bucket. Honey should by a food resource that never decays.

[Jeremy McArthur]

So I wouldn’t mind the cattail issue if there were a “higher tier” solution like once you get the saw you can make a wood bee hive that can be reused. Even if it has a limited life like tools.