VaelophisNyx

Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building) This would be neat imo, and would let us store food for much longer in hot climates! I'd say it'd also give us a primary use for Glacier Ice as well, requiring the walls to be lined with it (and probably the floor too?)

Personally I think the current water mechanics are fine, and that finite water would just make anything that demands water usage a chore if you can't settle near water. It'd be detrimental to the gameplay experience. There are ways to balance the conceptual waterwheel, and I do not think hard limiting all water in the game is it that said we DO have other water types, why not simply add a "River water" type that can't be collected and moves much faster than standard water, allowing for waterwheels also something I'd thought about last night, water wheels are subject to tremendous forces compared to a windmill, so you'd need extremely sturdy construction for them to be viable. The upside to that does however mean they could generate much more torque with ease, realistically speaking

could make it a Paddle instead of linen, made of some planks, resin, nails, and fat?

and ultimately I think part of this comes down to how ID Software's twitter put it "You control the buttons you press" People will just choose wind sometimes, people will just choose water if it were added; there's not much point in gating it too hard compared to wind as such, otherwise it becomes so long-winded to make that no one will bother

Borax can be mixed with starch glues to make them have much better weather resistance though, something being explored IRL right now to replace petrol adhesives potentially

could always make it require rare woods, or even Aged Wood to build

Protein is the pain point if you can't find soybeans (peanuts are bugged). Mushrooms also count as a vegetable when they REALLY should be protein, though that exits the scope of this topic

Potatoes have one thing that could make them rise above flax Starch. Potato starch could be extracted via soaking the potatoes to get a potato "milk", then heating it until it forms a thick mass usable in place of Resin. Potato Glue: https://www.potatopro.com/news/2011/potato-starch-excellent-adhesive Additionally potatoes grow in bulk and require VERY little maintenance and have wildly low soil quality requirements IRL (though thrive in higher quality soils). They are at risk of being dug up and ate by wildlife however, if left exposed to them. To make matters better you just replant potatoes that are small to make more potato plants. Potatoes could also be used to make alcohol, with no extra steps over other plants in game already. Potatoes are also cold-hardy down to 30°F, at which point the ground temperature can damage the potatoes themselves, they also are heat-tolerant up to 100°F though they start to suffer before then, and wither at and above that point. An interesting note however is that potatoes do not fixate any major nutrient into the soil on their own, and as previously mentioned in this thread, they do consume more K than other nutrients. That said, the volume of food per harvest that you could get would make it worth it in the end, even if just to compost most of it.

Just a quick suggestion that Animals should be able to be fed up to Excellent weight, providing more meat/fat than Good. Just to make investing in animal husbandry a little more rewarding than it currently is* *not to say it's not rewarding! just that wild animals can be found at Decent and even Good weight, and winter keeps it quite hard to keep your livestock at anything above Low, thus making animal husbandry a little hard to justify the effort for with small player counts

pies should be a bit less strict on what can go into them Currently multiple foods can but only of the same group I'd like to see pies capable of having three different food group possible in them. Does this make them a bit better than soups, and stews? I'm honestly unsure, because while it does enable you to hit four food groups at once that way, it also doesn't keep as well as a sealed crock, and only has 4 servings, and requires much more setup to even start using. Another consideration is that multi-type pies such as this would hit less of each satiety group at a time, slightly balancing it back out. Name formatting would be a simple matter of listing what went into it, I think. "{Ingredient 1}, {ingredient 2}, and {ingredient 3} Pie/Quiche" would work fine, if a smidge long. Would be neat if we could use soybeans, peanuts, and mushrooms as well. Theoretically with enough work and one or two extra food items you could play the game entirely vegetarian or even vegan if you ignore the dairy nutrient group. Also egg should be able to be added to a pie to make a Quiche (Could just remain "Pie" however).

+1 for adding Taps, I'd recommend at least requiring Black Bronze, but probably also have a better version that uses Iron or Steel, which can get resin (or other products) from other tree types? As far as beer goes, I'm not sure if it's needed at all to tap a barrel, though bulk aging alcohol in large casks that need a tap would be neat.

it doesn't help that the priority for rock tossing is also quite high, leading to any quantity of drifters above three becoming a firing squad

the 1 ingot:1 tool design mindset is clashing quite hard with the game that people expect.

I'd much prefer if random instability locations were: less common visually indicated currently it's not uncommon to find a great view or good resource spot or some other reason to settle a spot, only to find it's extremely unstable thus souring the experience in general, especially after finding said location post-6h-search.

Do consider that sometimes you can't get a good flowing water source to use a water wheel, thus making wind better Waterwheels also stop working in winter. Wind doesn't stop blowing due to a season change Pair that with: you can just make it resource hungry to craft and space hungry to set up

I'd counter that it's unrealistic in that we have no indicators for the most part of where ore or valuable rocks could be that you would IRL Plants grow in different soil compositions IRL, that reflect the local rock composition greatly areas with things like Hematite or Magnetite have TONS of tiny speckles of it in every little pebble native to the area IRL there's not enough pointers that don't require obtuse, opaque use of an immersion breaking tool to warrant it being how it is.