Kulze

As a overview for different fishing mechanics. In general all of them demand a bit or more player attention, patience and/or skill in some form or another. One of the most known ones likely is 'Stardew Valley' and 'Palworld', that style does the following: - You throw out the line - You wait a moment for a fish to 'bite'. - A small cylinder appears with a fish depiction and a bar inside, your task is to keep the fish symbol over the bar - With a click you raise the bar, without it falls down gradually. The fish moves more or less erratically depending on difficulty. Minecraft: - You throw the line - You wait for 'bubbles' to appear after a few seconds (which can feel like ages) - Those bubbles come closer, and when they reach your bobber the bobber gets pulled underwater. At this moment you click to successfully catch whatever you reel in. Project Zomboid: - You search for 'bubbles' (active zones) and throw out your line there - You now get a half-rounded bar depicting 'line tension'. Left is loose, right is under force. - When a fish bites - depicted by movement of the bobber - a minigame starts where you have to reel the fish in without getting into 'yellow' or 'red' line tension, or it is damage or even snaps, loosing the fish and the line. Rust/Abiotic Factor/Twilight Princess: - Throw out the line - When you get a bite the bobber moves in a direction. - You have to counter the direction in which the bobber moves by inputing the direction. - When the fish calms down you can reel it it, if you reel during tension too long your line snaps instead. My personal take is that a good starting point would be the simplistic Minecraft direction here, though the strain-mechanic of Project Zomboid is a good expansion for that ultimately, leading to a small minigame which costs a bit of time but is not too significant while also giving the process a more active component overall. The bubbles would provide a more lenient timeframe to take action compared to now, or something similar happening, like the bobber taking some mild dips first before ultimately be submerged fully from a bite. And the minigame would then counter te reduction in difficulty from that through a more active element which is based on a player-skill basis.

Fair, a minigame is definitely good. I like the Project Zomboid one the best plainly spoken. Simple and needs you to use materials repeatedly if you're not good at it, but is lenient. Also... which type of fighting? Should it be boxing? Wrestling? Western style shoot-off? I'm open for ideas!

Well, mod-wise we already have drying wood and peat, and trying them out... they're not really intrusive, so I would say it would be a fine addition, as long as the recipes allow to take into consideration that you can use the dried versions for the same crafts as the non-dried ones, otherwise it can become quite a bit of tedium. Or if the drying takes respectively long, which I'm leaning towards. As for timeframes... since this is solely a improvement of pre-existing materials which already get us through the time well... it can take long, there's no issue with it. Some very very long-term mechanics are actually something which VS would do well with. So, I would argue that it all can take substantially longer. Initial drying which can happen outside taking 6 months to make higher quality firewood, which simply burns longer. Outside you're forced to 'top cover' it with something, not a solid block but it would be nice to use for example branches from the berry bushes we destroy for that, so no new items have to be introduced... but leaving the potential to introduce boughs from trees for it along the way if so wanted. Another 1 year when stored as firewood then to make it into hot- and decently long-burning firewood. That has to be done under actual solid-block coverage, but outside a 'closed room' to allow ventilation to dry it out naturally. And I'm against a stop of drying time in cold climate, if we take it as a substantially long time then that shouldn't need to be taken into account. But ultimately such a mechanic can go many routes ultimately in how it's implemented. That one shouldn't cause too many issues plainly spoken but provide a good chunk of immersion and reasons to build more realistic. So I would say it's a 'pro' overall. And as a bonus I wanna say I like to season my wood oriental style. Some Garam Masala is definitely more enjoyable then the salt and pepper approach!

Well, given that the rust world is 'leaking' into the player-world it would make sense for it to be available to a degree. Or not if that's what caused the rot in the first place, we got no clue for that as players, that's only in the devs minds available. So could be a complete bust... or a viable option. But it was primarily for the acquisition of temporal gears for end-game as a thought anyway. And yes, the Rift Ward is underperforming, actually... all Jonas devices are. They're showcased as 'revolutionary' and everyone would want one... but then they're just... sad plainly spoken. The 2,5% chance to let a rift through ruins the functionality, and the lack of ability to acquire new gears since you remove the only source of potential gears is the other. Plainly spoken it should be a perfect solution in the current situation and there needs to be a source available... or either the timeframe or radius needs to be expanded, and quite substantially. I would say 90 days in the current situation which makes it feasable to leave and acquire a new gear along the way as using it is for homesteading without being bothered. Or the size being 150 or 200 blocks radius rather then 50. Or as you mentioned... temporal storm protection, which would make acquisition and usage of them actually reasonable... and to even have temporal storms activated as most just turn it off since it becomes nothing else then a tedium over time sadly. Nice base idea... not properly fleshed out yet. The other being the night vision goggles, which come at a significant downside of having no helmet hence, which is a danger, for the upside of being able to carry a shield and have vision. Sure, it is substantially better to see far at night outside as well... but by the time you got that you don't care about bears anymore, which are the most dangerous thing you could walk into at that time. They miiight be decent in caves with the shield, which is highly dependant on personal skill to use it properly, because if you get hit you'll loose a significant amount of health comparably. Their use-rate of temporal gears actually is fine, but they should be either able to be worn with a helmet... or be a repairable defensive equipment at at least bronze level to make up for the downside. Hence being an actual upgrade. Yes, which would be the mechanical stage in this example, which is a powered sluice. Could be that the sieve removes coarse material and you can only use the reduced one in sluices... or foregoing the whole sieve aspect entirely and it just has a different loot table entirely. All the proposals are basically that: - Keep mechanics longer-term viable - Provide sources for materials which are hard to acquire but wouldn't cause major gameplay issues. - Provide a source for new formerly not acquireable materials for other mechanics building upon it. The question is only for the mix&match there anyway. Some nice directions overall here.

For the more complex systems aspect... you bring up some good points there @MKMoose . Especially in the terms that it'll easily cause one to skip parts of the progression by sidestepping it with the panning. Though I would argue manually doing that should always be the case, even with a mechanical method, having to still interact actively which counteracts it. Which brings us to the tedious portion then, which is a risk, you're right. So, let me adjust an idea I think could work out by working with the reductionist method. The materials which are the most tedious to acquire currently in the game are gold and silver, which panning inherently seems like an option to counteract, but it is also a sought-after material, so I'll work related to the premise of reducing 'large' results in favor of providing a more precise outcome. My idea there would be the following: For it I think the sieve can still play a significant role. In panning we commonly get a classification of material, The 'material' we use is made up of 3 parts. 'Coarse material', 'Classified Material or Paydirt' and 'concentrates'. I think a process of this kind could work hence: - We use a sieve to make a 'standing sieve' - With the 'standing sieve' we extract the 'coarse material' to create 'paydirt', the 'coarse material' vanishes for us, immersion-wise it means we forego all stones, clay, gears and so on in favor of a higher yield for others + introduction of new materials potentially. - The 'paydirt' is collected as a form of 'sludge' in a bucket underneath the sieve, at a much lower quantity. Now we can work with that further along the line. Either directly panning for increased results of silver/gold/copper and so on, maybe small gems as well, would be a prime way to introduce access to gems, based on initial material. And we can also introduce mechanical screening/sieving processes there. We use this 'Paydirt' in a machine that can be expanded with progression to extract materials from it, primarily foregoing the former loot tables in favor of more precise ones. This can be tied to story progression as well. The one thing I'm specifically thinking about is to gather 'prima materia' from it, which then allows us to infuse rusty gears making them into temporal ones, which is the biggest bottleneck for end-game machinery after all, and it could be the core source for this. Also introducing maybe a bit more focus on the alchemical lore background of the game. Basically re-introducing what Falx did in smaller degrees, using the leftover remnants in the world to get into the more fantastical 'science' of the world. This way we can reduce the loot pool and it can be designed to avoid the premature access of materials without it becoming tedious. Using large amounts of gathered materials to create small specialized outcomes and those also unlocking further technological progressions or allowing upkeep of things you cannot properly upkeep currently, like the Rift Ward.

It's not the action that's 'fun', it's the dopamine release attached to a mechanic which provides a random outcome. This is the same psychological function as gambling of any kind provides, just in a non-detrimental way as there are no stakes applied to it which cause negative outcomes to the user. And this simply doesn't uphold, and I'll explain in more detail. But I understand the notion. There is always a effort/reward aspect. Otherwise we wouldn't get mechanics like livestock management since that would remove the 'going out to gather' portion. Any such mechanic which allows you to not explore but instead settle is directly countering the need for exploration, but it's also the goal to achieve, which demands proper balancing 'simply' (it's the hardest part). Vintage story ultimately starts out as a harsh wilderness survival game and allows the player to progress into a comfortable homesteading environment over time. The need to go out and seek a forest vanishes as you start making your own tree farms. The need to seek food vanishes as you build up farms, livestock and orchards. The need to find light sources (well... torch holders and bony soil for candles) in easily accessible ruins vanishes as you start to do beekeeping and metalworking. The game actively makes it so you reduce the need for exploration further and further after the acquisition of the respective materials and finding the biomes which provide you those materials. You won't run out of limestone after finding it, or bauxite, or olivine... and even iron after 2-3 nodes since they're commonly quite huge. Exploration is ultimately for the storyline, for the initial acquisition of resources until you have enough for a long time as well as for the acquisition of more unique decorative elements and items generally from ruins. To keep exploration existing long-term there needs to come something which further demands it along the way. As for panning directly... the core reason why people do it are for 3 different materials, and potentially 5 if expanded upon. - The common one... copper. - Avoiding the need to mine hundreds or even thousands of quartz blocks for silver and gold (fulfilling the initial 3) - Potentially expanding into the acquisition of gears and temporal gears, which are rare drops after all. This allows to play into the upkeep of stationary Jonas tools like the Rift Ward... which is simply a tool basically nobody ever uses as upkeep is unsustainable. Copper becomes a non-topic, you acquire it in absolutely massive amounts, so panning becomes ignorable for that. It never becomes ignorable for gold and silver, even at the current pace it partially keeps up with the pace of acquisition otherwise, but it's - as has been mentioned - extremely boring ultimately as you only stand there and hope for those things to drop. Gears and temporal gears are directly reliant on combat. And since a Rift Ward denies combat you cannot provide the upkeep without countering directly what the task of the Rift Ward is. And here specifically is the biggest potential for expanding on the panning process existing, besides the action itself being made more enjoyable and hence used more prevalently. If the sieve can be used to speed up the panning process for example we can already counteract the need for gold/silver acquisition, which is the most known realistic implementation of why panning would be used, to acquire hardly available rare materials after all. And if we go further ahead with it then a progression into it would allow the homesteading aspect to flourish further, allowing people to do a repeated mechanic - the panning - to acquire gears and temporal gears in a amount which keeps up with the usage of those from a Rift Ward for example, achieving that the danger of the rust world is counteracted to a degree, as the Rift Ward promises after all and fails at entirely in the current implementation. Further along the expansion of the loot table can lead us to the acquisition of more rare materials. This allows the expansion in more pronounced and complex systems building onto current end-game demands on one hand... or simply the acquisition of very rare materials like cinnabar, lapis lazuli or gemstones that actually further on allows the introduction of mechanics related to this (gemcutting is a well asked-for topic here). As for another prime reasoning there is the option to expand into the topic of 'early currency' usage, hence electrum as coinage, which could be a very solid and decent choice for 'town specific' trades as we've already been introduced to society still existing from the storyline. Either for special high-value trades as an option without reliance on gears... or simply a completely different loot-pool of further introductions as the game progresses in content. So there is a lot of potential available, the question is only which to take, and if none... why panning itself should stay a chore system to counteract bad spawns instead of becoming a enjoyable thing which actually allows rewards for effort and time invested (you need to gather the materials and stand there doing it after all)

Yes, that's a good copper-level stage solution, agreed. Yes exactly, that's the general notion. This is why it's not utilized despite providing potential resources one can use. Overall after the extra posts I think a 3-step panning system would be a relatively nice one overall. - First we start of with normal panning, the usual way it's currently done. - The second stage would be copper-age, with the sieve. It being a option to expand on the usage of the sieve generally because in a SP world it's useless, so why not give it a use-case? My idea here is to further craft it into a 'sieve stand'. Take a sieve, add 4 planks (legs) and hence make it a 1x2 block. Then have flowing water coming from above in the following setup (top to bottom): Water --> Sand/Gravel --> Sieve --> Pan. This then does nothing besides increasing the work-speed of the pan by 2x or 3x. Still manual, no change in the loot-table. - The third stage is the suggestion I have with a mechanical panning setup out of bronze. Expanding the loot table actively, also manual but based on mechanical power. It's fast, it allows more material to be processed at the same time and gives increased rewards. This way it would provide a progression-based mechanic into it, speed it up (which is the current core issue but necessary early-game) and allows it to have a fitting place without creating overabundance. Also this would be a prime reason to actually settle close to a gravel-desert of any kind. Those biomes offer no resources, don't look enticing and are generally avoided by players if they can do so. In this situation it would allow a use-case and settlement there for the resource opportunity.

To be fair... this is a bit deeper reaching then simply the mod portal given said person is a hire now. Maybe might be good to revise that decision plainly spoken.

Panning is significantly underused, that I have to agree with. The classic panning should stay as it is, a early-game method to get copper going and some more rare goodies along the way. But I'm also for a mechanical improvement for late-game to not let this quite fun - but unrewarding ultimately - mechanic be left behind. Thus a method to use mechanical power and non-rapid streams of water to pan for materials with a expanded loot-table would be quite enjoyable. Not only does it increase the usecases for gravel and sand (primarily gravel) which you plainly spoken will nigh never use in the sheer amount you get it but also act as a sideways expansion in general which mandates a progression. Still needing manual oversight, this is important to not make it a automated resource production method, but having to put in and take out materials at the spot while dealing for example with material not moving properly or having to push it back up when something goes wrong... hence ultimately leading to a similarly immersive mechanic as forging, clayshaping, knapping and so on are. Currently the common way it goes for panning is that it's entirely ignored after the initial usage outside of early-game candles from bone-soil. But beyond that? It's made redundant entirely as it provides nothing in a reasonable manner which has functionality and isn't dozens of times less efficient then any other method. Mechanical panning hence can especially lead to the acquisition of gold for brighter lanterns, also it would be a prime positioning to put it in place after the acquisition of bronze. This setup specifically could be made out of bronze as a water resistant alloy, which then leads to Tier 2.5, hence black bronze more naturally, which also is the time when brewing becomes naturally a reasonable investment, allowing to not only rummage through hundreds of quartz blocks but also to acquire them in this separate way, optimally with a similar time-investment which is a reduced amount for the term of processing (which would be the mining) but instead a larger investment in terms of bronze to achieve the intial setup. Furthermore while we currently have gotten a use-case for electrum in the future content going along I could very well imagine that more advanced trading functionality with society could be a thing, hence electrum being a currency as would be historically accurate for a earlier currency-based society. Since society in lore degraded because of the constant danger still existing it would make for a very good addition in that regard which would keep mechanical panning a ongoing process that has a reward which isn't easily ending.

Yeah, would be nice, but unlikely to see. And pixel-drawn things already exist, you can make some really good stuff with baseline chiseling, sadly those things get a bit large usually.

First we gotta have yeast, the bread we got in VS is basically hardtack. Same as the pie crust being a hard crust, not the modern softer ones. But yeah, I'm always for expanding food options. Would also like roasts instead of primarily stews, a baking pan with meat, fat and veggies inside turning into a nice roast would be great. Or sausages, those would be great to make too. Stir fries with a skillet, all fun things which would be fantastic to have.

Well, the lore is primarily set into the middle ages, albeit 'middle ages +' to be specific. Falx did invent a boatload of things through his gazing into the eldritch realm of the rust dimension. We know of steam power from the Archive already, so coal-powered mechanical power is definitely something which would fit. Same as an expansion of overall usage of mechanical power. Automation of bellows for one, more detailed options to handle metal. He plainly spoken provided the power for the industrialization to happen and lore-wise we see this to be the case. So the setting is late middle-ages mixed with industrialization basically, and outside of 'eldritch' systems it shouldn't progress beyond that significantly, and if so then only through means acquired later on in the storyline which isn't implemented yet. Before we think about steel engines and the likes... a simple cart would be nice to have first of all But the expansion into more mechanical contraptions is absolutely something I would enjoy to see, with automated versions like the rift ward which doesn't use up gears very fast but would allow longer-lasting measures. Overall 'Jonas machinery' would be a very loved concept to introduce, providing a natural improvement compared to the current water wheels and windmills in terms of automation, allowing a electricity-like (but not being electricity itself) concept which opens up for a large amount of potential use-cases. But we're rather far away from that still.

That's literally what the job of an API is, to provide a general access point from which you then derive everything So you get the input specifically for the player and what happens beyond that is not the player's thing anyway, it's a QoL aspect. But takes a bit to coding properly to make it happen. It's not unfeasable though or especially 'special'. Just a baseline API, literally, a 'Application Programming Inteface'.

Yeah, this is the major point of contention after all. It entirely depends on how it's implemented here. For example, if the process of drying/smoking/whatever is used causes already a tradeoff to 'pay in nutrition to gain preservation time' and this preserved time is then not kept to have the food further 'decay' it's more then viable. For example: If we use berries then we have a 80 satiety food material. Which we then dry and loose 50%, hence it turns down to 40 satiety. This immediate hit is already a hefty one. And if it then goes beyond the 'best before' it drops further down, towards 20 satiety for example with 50% degradation... or in a 75% degradation towards 10 satiety. And plainly spoken? A full 1500 satiety bar filled with 75 or 150 pieces of food? That's a massive undertaking for storage and actual tedium to eat it because you'll stand there and watch the eating animation for a very long while... or move about without running and instead watching the eating animation. Sure it 'can' be done. And sure, it also will be done... but plainly spoken? If someone managed to stock up enough stores to last them for a winter this way then food definitely wasn't any form of problem since a long while anymore. The system by that point has lost nearly all functionality anyway, but even if we want to upkeep the functionality then we could still introduce a caveat into it. Such products would be fairly awful to eat anyway. Imagine trying to sustain yourself on dried leaves, dried fruit, dried berries... nothing fresh, nothing has the right texture anymore. Everything universally tastes as 'powder'. And any soup, stew or the like is basically either something similar to gruel or you get a tea. So one solution for that is that it incurs a further satiety malus if eaten as a form of 'primary' food. Everything besides the non-perishables provides always full satiety, but non-perishables besides all of their downsides can only make up let's say... 50% of the food taken in at any time (tracked in the background for the last 15000 satiety for example or whatever) has to be of the 'perishable' variety, and everythign beyond incurs a further reduction. So those 20 or 10 satiety can turn even worse... down another 80% for example, which makes it absolutely nonsensical to sustain yourself off of it... but not theoretically impossible. In practicality though? Absolutely so. We're now talking about 2-4 satiety in our example, and if someone manages to get through a winter with that... then they earned it, plain and simple

It's more about the ability to choose the type of preparation. Foregoing immediate calories available but not lasting until used up if prepared too much in favor of less calories but later on. This is what usually in such a system non-perishables become, which we see with distilled alcohol being the case after all, albeit the ratio there is plainly spoken a bit too high while the fruits themselves last too long. But that's another topic again. Also it's not increasing the grind, nothing from the existing baseline changes. It solely adds another route on top of the existing ones. This is not problematic with upholding the status quo. As for late game and the management still being important? Nah... not really. You need to significantly ignore anything going on for extremely extended timeframes which are just unrealistic to run into any problems. Which means ignoring livestock entirely, not farming, not doing any bee-related stuff, no orchards either. That... just doesn't happen plainly spoken. It goes substantially against the starting premise where the game pushes onto you to be prepared heavily or suffer the consequences. Running out of veggies or fruit? Possibly. Running out of grain? That's basically a non-existent situation. To then also not have rendered fat, honey or alcohol available at all is extremely unlikely already. Sure, can happen... but that's just the same as entirely ignoring the hunger bar in itself and then starving as you just don't eat the available food. And I agree, you cannot spend an hour of collecting a mountain of steaks and shove em in a box. But you can spend an hour being attacked by angry bees gathering combs, or an hour of harvesting fruit and making it into massive amounts of wine, or an hour of harvesting grain and having food stocks for a longer timeframe then that grain even lasts inside food stores. But I will also agree that games like Minecraft don't have that thought process at all, which foregoes a lot of immersion simply for existing. This still allows the option for doing unrewarding long-term stuff (which in SP wouldn't be done outside of travel rations at best functionally or otherwise RP reason) which plainly spokens 'punishes you' to treat your food this way... or to prepare the usual way. And from some ideas of mods like the jerky of 'Primitive Survival' and how people are adverse to them because of the miniscule nutrition they give it's also clear that high caloric food feels more convenient then large stacks of low caloric food which you have to eat one by one with the eating animation. Another point I'll have to actively speak against is the premise that such a option would forego the active food management. Since storage times currently are very long already (mroe then a year of multiple years) in such a case it is about not preparing enough... which a non-perishable production line which punishes the lack of spoilage by reduction of caloric density would only make worse after all... so you're more prone to actually mismanage it rather then managing it as at least needed. The reality is that people usually do at least a single harvest a year and have massive stockpiles with miniscule effort needed. Also as one more thing to take into consideration, such food would be excempt from the hunger pause. Not only has it relatively low calories compared to other foods... but the hunger pause is something which people who know how to use it is actually a massive thing. Eating a red meat stew at half or a bit less hunger bar does cause multiple minutes of no way to loose calories at all (30 second per 100 calories if the hunger bar hits the maximum). This is often done for woodcutting, as woodcutting incurs a 25 satiety per block cost which hence... is simply '0' instead. Which wouldn't be possible and which does significantly reduce how long your rations last. This all pushes any form of suggested non-perishable idea already very firmly into the position of 'emergency ration' as it's just not worth it to use otherwise. And emergency rations are used when you either screw up... there is mechanically a limitation which simply can't be countered (MP) or for travel as a backup to know 'I need to get back now' rather then thinking about pushing on.