block & tackle to move very heavy items

[redram]

So this proposal stems from me wishing that large and hefty items of importance (not building materials) be more heavy to move, making their construction and placing a more considered and planned event.  This idea applies to things like quern bases and loaded barrels.   Querns were basically trash items in TFC as they were so cheap to make and easy to move.

The proposal is that these heavy items, once created and in inventory, fully immobilize the character regardless of what they might be carrying.  Once they are placed, they cannot be broken.   After that they must be moved with a device such as a block and tackle.  A block and tackle would be a single item carried by the player, and would have durability.  The durability is used up each time a heavy item is moved.  It would be used by right-clicking the block on an appropriate item, which would then attach a 'lead' to it, which follows the player like a lead in minecraft (buy maybe has multiple lines to represent the B&T-ness?).  The player then right clicks where they want to move the item, with some maximum range (2-3 blocks?).  Even better, would be if they have to hold the right click or otherwise spend some time at it.  This would make heavy items difficult but not impossible to move.   The faster way will be to right click on the item and then right click on a conveyance such as a cart, which will then allow the player to move the item in the cart.  This makes conveyance more useful.

Some item types might have special rules for block and tackle.  So a quern for instance, the base by itself is moved as described above.  The top stone, when in place, can only be removed by right clicking on it, and then right clicking an empty space adjacent to the quern, which places the top there.

When not in use the B&T can be hung from the ceiling in a decorative fashion.  Definitely not a critical thing, but I think it would

[Balduranne]

Nyooom. Just showing off how these could look like.

[Stroam]

One issue with making things too heavy to carry have an item form is being able to pick up and throw the item as a means of transportation.

I don't like the idea of having block and tackle on a player to move stuff. I feel as though it should be mounted above and then can be lowered onto a block and then attached, then raised, moved around within reason. If you have ever played factorio something like belts and robotic arms except instead using carts and cranes and 3D. Cranes can pick things up the height of the crane and rotate 90 degrees. There can be sliding cranes that pickup and move down a straight track implemented first because that's all you need. The 90 degree one I would make take less resources and pick up heavier loads.

There's carts on and off tracks. Ones on tracks being faster and support more weight. There are bin carts for carrying ore, dirt, etc. There are flat bed carts for very heavy pieces and logs. The carts are pushed by players or pulled by animals. Barrels are designed to roll so don't need special equipment to roll flat or down. Barrels are great for liquids and crates for solids. Small crates should be carryable while larger crates need mechanisms. 

[redram]

11 hours ago, Stroam said:

Barrels are designed to roll so don't need special equipment to roll flat or down.

Ah, now therein lies an interesting game-philosophy question.  Are the barrels in game - which are shown as cubes - actually cubes?  Or is that just an abstraction?  Are the physics of the world such that cubes can 'roll'?   It'll be an interesting question when wheels are in the game.  

I think getting too literal with pulleys and cranes could get to be a bit tedious.  I think a vertical lift is fine for when you're going a long way up (basically for an elevator), but unnecessary for short moves, or putting loads into carts.  The mechanic I described is meant to be an abstraction that incorporates a special tool without requiring a bunch of supporting animations and such, not a literal representation of how block and tackles work. 

As for throwing as transport, make it so very heavy items don't actually get thrown.  They're just dropped in the space the player is in.  Or, throwing such items saps a lot of hunger.  It can be discouraged.

[tony Liberatto]

I think this idea is the first step in my mining system.
The one where ores would not go into inventory and only on a crate or barrel that the player carries on his back. Once there is any piece of ore in the crate it is considered too heavy to lift. So the player can only move horizontally or down, never Up.
Using the Tackle the player will be able to pull the crate/barrel to the surface, where he can load into a cart or burden animal to transport to his base.

Of course, the whole idea can only be implemented after we have some kind of transportation added to the game.

I would like also to add that if the idea is to prevent the trashing of the world with querns, the manufacturing of those need to be expensive, otherwise the player will just make a new one, instead of moving the old one. When I say expensive, I do not mean in materials, I mean in time-consuming to make it. For example, if the player has to use a chisel to patiently work a stone block in the right shape.
The same could hold true for other ideas, like the sharpening wheel, that it makes no sense for the player to always have one in his inventory.

I choose to believe that the game happens in a cube dimension, so, no actual rolling. But is a personal choice I know and not widely shared. I like to imagine that I as the player got somehow transported into this mysterious dimension, where the laws of physic are strange and everything has this cube shape.

 

[redram]

1 hour ago, tony Liberatto said:

I would like also to add that if the idea is to prevent the trashing of the world with querns, the manufacturing of those need to be expensive, otherwise the player will just make a new one, instead of moving the old one. When I say expensive, I do not mean in materials, I mean in time-consuming to make it. For example, if the player has to use a chisel to patiently work a stone block in the right shape.

Wasn't necessarily what I was going for, but on that subject I do indeed wish querns were not as easy to make as in TFC.  At a minimum, I'd like the player to have to chisel the grind pattern into the block, as part of making it.  That would soak up a good bit of time.