Thorfinn

If the changes you laid out are the only changes, I agree. It's a bit too much of a nerf for Stone Age. When I tested it a month or so ago, I was thinking something closer to 4. At 4, a brown bear is still pretty easy, at 3, there's not a lot of room for mistakes. And if there's no flint and you have to make do with granite? Better git gud.

Personally, I don't have copper weapons. I wouldn't swear I've ever made a copper weapon. Yeah, rusties are not a threat after 5 hours, but neither are they a threat before 5 hours. Re: Deed Stake, sure, why not? I doubt I would use one unless they were free, and maybe not even then, because rusties aren't a threat, and I spend almost no time at home anyway. Drop off stuff, harvest what is ready, grab more food, and hit the road. The only urgency in Planet Crafter is running out of space food before you get your food growers going. At the highest difficulty, yeah, it can be a close thing. On normal, maybe you have problems your first time or two before you figure out what you are supposed to do, but after that, it's very similar to VS. If you want to starve, you really have to try. As I've said at least a few times in discussions with you, I mostly don't care about spawns in my base because I'm rarely there. Frankly, I don't even care all that much about a base. Nothing there I can't recreate wherever I am. I have little homesteads with farms all over the place. Much more efficient than hauling everything to a central location. Temporal storms? I increase the frequency to every 3-5 days, so that there is at least a decent chance of being able to make at least one Jonas device per playthrough.

No, some of the new mushrooms are psychedelics. Tyron even called the gif psychedelic something or other.

I like the dinosaur mods because they are instant death. They outrun you, they outfight you. You find cover or you die. Then you figure out a way to defeat them or you hole up and die of starvation. You figure out how to create a homestead and explore without ever being more than a stone's throw from cover. Even a small stand of trees can let you get away. Until you hear the snarl of the way-too-close cat. Yeah, it's a completely different game than vanilla, but I like it all the same.

Not sure what settings you are playing on, but on Wilderness Survival the rusties don't stop spawning after 5 hours. Planet Crafter is going for a different theme entirely, but heck, yes, I would love to have some Alien type beasties running around on the darkened wrecks and the Uranium Caves and whatnot, particularly early game when air is a big, big deal. Maybe not a lot of them, but something to change up the memorized and optimized looting paths, sign me up. But I'll bite. Why is it I prefer VS to PC?

Simple enough. Use your favorite text editor to open .\assets\survival\blocktypes\plant\reedpapyrus.json scroll down to the section on drops (easiest way is just search for "drops") dropsByType: { "*coopersreed-*-normal-*": [ { type: "item", code: "cattailtops" } ], "*coopersreed-*-harvested-*": [ { type: "item", code: "cattailroot" } ], "*papyrus-*-normal-*": [ { type: "item", code: "papyrustops" } ], "*papyrus-*-harvested-*": [ { type: "item", code: "papyrusroot" } ], "tallplant-tule-land-normal-*": [ { type: "item", code: "thatch" } ], "tallplant-tule-land-harvested-*": [ { type: "item", code: "tuleroot" } ], "tallplant-brownsedge-land-normal-*": [ { type: "item", code: "drygrass" } ], "tallplant-brownsedge-land-harvested-*": [ { type: "block", code: "tallplant-brownsedge-land-harvested-free" } ] select the appropriate lines (in this case, the codes all end with "root") and add a quantity. For example, "*coopersreed-*-harvested-*": [ { type: "item", code: "cattailroot" } ], could become "*coopersreed-*-harvested-*": [ { type: "item", code: "cattailroot", quantity: { avg: 2.4 } } ], which means 2 roots with a 40% chance of a 3rd. There are a lot of ways of expressing that, but so far as I can tell, that's the one they are trying to encourage. [EDIT] I wouldn't hold my breath on that becoming added to base game. As simple as that is, if that were the intent, they would have done so ages ago. But who knows? Put it on ModDB, and if it becomes the most popular mod on the site, they may. Oh, BTW, that was current as of 1.21. It might be different now. I'm downloading the pre-release now. [/EDIT]

Gotcha. As I said to the good lady, I think the game loses something if it does not have any of the latter. Wandering monsters in AD&D are intended to distract you from focusing on the mission, and the difference between a good adventuring group and a bad and often dead adventuring group is how they deal with those interruptions.

I've always had a fondness for how 1e AD&D did the wilderness encounters. "You encounter... (rolls dice) two elderly halflings gathering elderberries." or "You encounter... (rolls dice) eight furious adult black dragons. Roll a breath weapon save." You cannot possibly prepare for the extreme outliers, because they are not survivable if you don't run or otherwise get away. Tying back into the original thread, the game loses something if those encounters can only happen in certain designated parts of the world. That's more of a cage match game than a wilderness survival game.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I've always thought placing windmills in different directions feeding the same top large gear was silly, so I've just made the tower a dozen blocks taller and put one rotor at a different elevation. Now maybe that's not going to work, or maybe the spacing needs to be more? Can you get more than 1 rotor between 170 and worldheight without interference? Dunno. I'll find out, I guess. If they need more spacing than can be done that way, it just argues you should build your mills atop a mountain.

Aha! I knew there would be a workaround. Now you just have to get your elk to build the greenhouse.

Oh, I've been kind of ignoring the references to the RA because it's scripted. You are suggesting that all that needs be done to keep things from being same-same is to, what, randomly pop higher level rusties into the place? Vary the combat stats of the immobilized eidolon, maybe even get rid of the "immobilized" part on a rare roll? Dunno. The interruptions don't make much of a difference, but what you suggest seems like an autopilot mode. It's already dangerously close to that, but at least you still have to push the keys and run the mouse. You have at least a couple trivial decisions to make, like whether to set up base near a cave or not. How close to the forest. How you plant your woodlot so it can be used for cover. Etc. [EDIT] If I'm understanding your thesis, it is that the game would be better if the only randomness were in special locations? [/EDIT]

Could you give an example of what this might mean? The game randomly selects a plant to use in the place of reeds? Eagle ferns, or blueberry bushes or whatever? You have to go through the world harvesting random stuff to figure out how to make a basket? Yes, the worldgen gives a superficial type of randomness. Superficial because you soon learn that, for example, setting up base in bauxite is inferior to just running into another, any other rock. Superficial because once you know how to navigate hilly terrain, all hilly terrain is the same. Superficial because once you understand the patterns of berry and crop spawning, it's just a matter of spending time traversing the higher-probability landforms. What kind of randomness are you talking about that truly makes one playthrough distinct from the previous one?

Flint spears were a bit OP in the old version, IMO. My fiddling around with rebalancing them came up with +4 as fine, +3 as a little weak, using brown bears as the target. Not that I expect many to agree. //content.invisioncic.com/r268468/emoticons/wink.png

If everything in the update list is as billed, I'm not sure I see anything that is not an improvement. I take it for granted that they didn't nerf low-level spears so much that they are useless in early game, and just compressed the existing metal spears, but have not yet downloaded it. This evening, probably.

I kinda like this. Before, it was way too easy to get greenhouses going, and in quantity. Now, well, you have to make glass. I think. Maybe there's a workaround, but at least it isn't, "Make one trip to the mountains and you are good for your entire playthrough." What? Who that uses spears goes anywhere without 4, 5 or more, plus a stack of spearheads all ready to put on sticks?

A lot depends on your hardware and temperament. Linux distros tend to be a little slow to add new hardware support, so if you are on newer equipment, you may be better off on Windows. Especially if you are running Windows Enterprise, where you don't have to beta test their sloppy updates. If your hardware is a couple years old, Mint should be fine, though often the Flatpak release is delayed. If you are OK with not playing the absolute latest release, probably fine. And if you are interested in a modded version, that's probably how it works out anyway, waiting for the modders to update.

Incidentally, the randomness in TPC is next to negligible. It's the same few minerals dotting the landscape, the major deposits are always in the exact same place, all the wrecks are identical playthrough to playthrough, animal life spawns in the exact same locations, etc. The Golden Crates are essentially identical. A 600% flower, a model, and a few things that vary depending on what stage of development you open it. So are the Blue ones. Early game run around picking up aluminum from meteorites. Later game run around petting animals in hopes of getting a DNA strand to make a meaningless change to your animals. Open portals and do procedurally-generated wrecks until you have all your trees at least 1200%, several lockers full of various colors of quartz, and more Terra Tokens than Sentinel Corp. Or until you get bored, whichever comes first.

It doesn't have to be interruption. It's just the easiest way to implement some amount of randomness. Something to distinguish this playthrough from the last one. Very rarely. Even though I think most (all?) Jonas tech is worthless, I still like to see what the RNG allows me to build. Depends on what you mean by that. Do I run away from them? Sure. What would be the point of a tiny chance of a TG, and a 20% (or whatever) of a flax fiber? I've got better things to do. What those spawns do, though, is change what I do instead of what I intended to do. They converge on where I was digging clay? If I don't have another clay deposit nearby, maybe I have to get peat or chop trees or mow the lawn. Get rid of the wolves I've been ignoring. Harvest honey. Cast a few ingots. Something other than what I had intended to do that night. Without that, it becomes completely formulaic. I'd never have to adapt to the world as it is.

Is it? Used to be you could just toss the appropriate food on the ground, and they ate it. Granted, if they don't eat it within 10 minutes you need to run through and pick it up before it despawns. There is such a thing. It's called "ladders". In my playstyle, cooking is more important than storage, but both are after crucible and molds. Usually, though, the one pit has 2 crucibles, 1 bowl, 1 cooking pot. 'Course, now that you can groundstore ore in much bigger piles than 4, using the crucible for storage is a lot less important, but it's a hard habit to break. Chicago?

Yes, you can take a selfie. Just go into 3rd person and move the camera around. It's kind of limited in terms of how far away you can take the selfie (or used to be anyway) but if it works like it used to, your full-size character can easily be made to fill just the middle third of the screenshot. Don't know how much further you can go. Don't know I ever tried.

Of those, I've only extensively played Planet Crafter, all releases, and I find it lacking in engagement. Kerbal bored me to tears. I gave it a dozen or so hours, and when it still lacked anything interesting, I could easily imagine how little replay value it would have. Kind of the same reason I've tried and ended up shelving games like every Civ except 3, Pharaoh/Cleo, Zeus/Poseidon, Emperor, Surviving Mars, Going Medieval, Manor Lords, Ostriv, Foundation, Graveyard Keeper, Portia/Sandrock, Infraspace, and similar. Once you figure out the "answers" in a playthrough or two, it's all "lather, rinse, repeat." It takes a major injection of randomness to keep things interesting. [EDIT] Oh, randomness or new content, either fills the "keep it interesting" bucket. I think it's probably ModDB that kept my interest in VS as long as it has. [/EDIT]

BTW, @lilith99, I wouldn't lose any sleep over limestone. The difference between linen sacks and backpacks is just shy of meaningless, and by the time you can forge plates, you can equip yourself better than if you had all 4 backpacks. So long as you are not a hoarder, 20 inventory spaces (27 with a mining bag) is more than enough to finish the game.

What I'm saying is without the "interruptions", the game is formulaic. Too many of the game loops have exactly the same "correct" answer. Without "interruptions, the major difference between playthroughs is only what kind of bronze gets me to iron.

Sure. But I've kind of shelved Planet Crafter, and not just because they went with this silly pollution motif. (Yes, I know they had to come up with something different, but still, it's kinda weak sauce. Particularly since it can be cleaned in no time flat with your multi-tool.) The main reason was it was not all that interesting. Once I had optimized around the trivial randomness, every playthrough looked the same. Moose and wolves are pretty easy to ignore, bears less so, but VS is in much the same place. Once you accept the fact that there is almost no difference between linen sacks and leather backpacks, limestone becomes almost a, "Why bother?" Unless you are handed limestone on a platter, you are better off racing to mining sacks than wasting time on leather. Sad to say, but bears are pretty much the only significant random factor left in the game, and not even that unless you play permadeath or at least limited respawns. No, not even ore. That just means you need to explore a little more widely, though not all that much. Iron is so massive that if you are in a decent location for it, it's just a matter of exploring a few caves.

For me the fun is not in the interruptions themselves, but rather in selecting the best way to eliminate or at least minimize their impact on what I wanted to do. Fences, ladders, trees, even the oft-maligned nerdpole, whatever.