SingABrightSong

Definitely interesting mechanical considerations, but my experience with the discussion on classes is that players overwhelmingly stick with Commoner, despite the unique bonuses of other classes, to avoid the explicit maluses in other areas. That being said, however, giving Commoner a selection of global bonuses e.g.to work-speed or yield, could allow for the other classes to be defined by specialization bonuses rather than reliance on maluses for balance.

Oh, definitely, it's quite difficult to make it an engaging mechanic, let alone a rewarding one, so any implementation would have to be incredible to make it an improvement over not implementing it.

One of the major problems with designing a thirst or hydration system is making it something more than just Blue Hunger. The gameplay obstacles involves in addressing thirst must be different than those involved in hunger, and water being something that needs to be ingested more often than food to maintain verisimilitude, should be correspondingly easier to attain, to keep a good supply while at a base and to obtain without hassle from most environments. A simple system to boil or otherwise make freshwater in the wild safer to drink, and to obtain water in-situ even in deserts by tapping cactuses or whatnot, would be my own proposals.

The difference between the typical "ideas guy" and Nootman is that while the "ideas guy" expects everyone else do do all the actual work, Noot already went ahead and did the game design and concept art.

Given that Vintage Story is not, in fact, under any obligation to replicate Lovecraft's fiction(It's advertised as having Lovecraft-derived *themes*, specifically), and given that the game *already includes* reference to alchemy(The Prima Materia), while you may or may not be correct about it not being included, I don't think it would be for those reasons. I do, that said, absolutely agree that the presence of bees should have a benefit for farming. I'd implement it as a bonus for crop yield for plants within range of a skep.

One of the major features of Vintage Story is its climate system, where different sorts of biomes are arranged according to latitude, which both improves verisimilitude and allows players seeking to obtain new biological resources to be able to predict where to travel to find them. Unfortunately, the same verisimilitude does not appear to exist for geological resources, at least not to the same degree, and likewise a major roadblock for many players is being able to locate new ores or types of stone. Additionally, many roadmap features are blocked by the lack of a realistic hydrological model, such as waterwheels, which depend on flowing rivers, and sailing ships, which depend on oceans; moreover the simplistic hydrology again detracts from verisimilitude and limits the ability of players to locate resources dependent on rainfall. I propose that an elegant solution to all of these issues would be thus. In the same manner as players travelling north or south will move from polar to boreal to temperate to equatorial climates, I propose that players travelling east or east will move from oceanic to coastal to inland to mountainous landforms, with players typically starting inland. I will not attempt to exhaustively map out the design, as I'm sure the VS team is more than capable of doing that themselves, but as a rough sketch, I would posit a design where a prevailing wind is determined by an area's latitude, and terrain height as determined by longitude produces dry or wet areas according to the rain shadow for that latitude. Stone types, and thus the possible ores, would be generated according to the geological type of the area, combined with erosion patterns derived from the patterns of wind and rain. The existence of this sort of slope from mountain to coast allows for the implementation of flowing rivers, though I am not prepared to offer a technical solution in that regard. The new system, then, of realistic geology and hydrology, could be crossed into biome generation for additional verisimilitude, and the existence of oceans would allow for both age-of-sail gameplay and game elements specifically tied to exploring or even crossing the ocean e.g. ores or loot needed for the final progression to the Steam Age that are found only undersea.

Reading up on medieval armour, seems a lot of the armour set in the game were often worn together IRL, with scale, brigandine, or plate armour being worn over mail, which itself was worn over a gambeson or buff coat. This is represented in-game to an extent, with chain armour being used to craft plate and scale armour, but this effectively "eats" the chain armour and prevents it from being used by itself or with other armours. I would propose a system where armour can be worn in three layers of slots, with the inner slots being required to be filled before the outer slots. This would reduce the significant opportunity cost involved with metal armours, allowing the player to craft earlier armours without worrying as much about "wasting" the material or effort, as different tiers could now be mixed and matched, e.g. bronze chain worn with iron brigandine. Started this as a "quick suggestion" on the Discord but after taking an hour to finish it I realized it's probably detailed enough to be on the forums.