Kulze

What exactly is said 'situation'? And how does it repel players?

As many people modders can be 'iffy' in personality. Be it credits given, be it that they solely don't want anyone else changing what they designed and so on and so forth. I know it is at times a issue in the minecraft community as well, which has the largest modpack community after all. I don't understand it either, but it's a thing that exists for some weird illogical reason.

Sounds like a good idea plainly spoken, those who keep a pack up to date simply needing to be allowed to use the respective mods in their pack and hence able to adjust them to fit into the modpack accordingly. All for it, good idea simply.

So, the whole topic is still about why it would necessitate a individual (not a company) to make a disclaimer and have a reasonable way to ensure it upholds. The why is for now because people say it's either leading to more low quality results (reasonably, but otherwise sortable) or because it's personal fears. Specifically @VaelophisNyx you should take a step back from the tries of guilt-tripping (that tends to backfire heavily) and use actual relevant reasons for the topic at hand. Because first off: No individual cares if those centers spike electricity costs for locals (that's a failure of governmental management), nobody either does if they use tons of water (once again failure of governmental management) and also nobody does about their CO2 emissions... which are laughable in the large scale of the planet. Even major projects like the 1,7GW 'Stargate' AI cluster in Texas makes up for a total of... a whopping 0,0000146% of the global human created greenhouse gas emissions. It's can be utterly ignored. Nobody gives comparably China as a whole crap for producing ~30% of humans totality of greenhouse gases, but you're happily using your PC which is created with those - vastly - more environmentally damaging parts majorly. Same going with kitchen appliances, clothing, toys, pots & pans, consoles and loads more. So don't be a hypocrite, if you actually care about environmental health then start by focusing on those with the actual most impact rather then peanuts while trying to guilt-trip people about it. Otherwise it's not helping your case. And the 'it'll damage the hardware' is the responsibility of the developer itself to remove the option at the basis already, like limiting FPS accordingly, not allowing the program to hog 100% resources at any time and so on. Basic safety measures which VS upholds quite well. And that brings us to the next point. How would one even go ahead to check if something is AI created in the first place? What metric do we have to decide 'ah yes, this is made by AI, not by a human'. Because @FairyKairi fair point with the usage of the cloud-based system specifically. But then what about models used locally? For coding as example the going ones are 'Qwen3.6', 'DeepSeeker-Coder-V2' and 'Gemma4'. There is no usage of the internet besides downloading the models and then telling them what you need. How would you be able to differentiate from someone copying over large portions of code and adapting it only in miniscule amounts as needed compared to someone writing a relatively simple mod 100% manually? It's not companies providing the mods, it's individuals. A company being forced to be transparent to the eye of the public and hence making known the technology and methodology they use is great to properly decide if you'll get into a contract with them... but that's not the case here, and it's also not enforcible. Will hence be a AI-checker be used? If someone uses a similar layout of coding as the AI is prone to produce... will they then be auto-flagged for it despite never having touched it? That all seems just very very problematic for me and at best-case unenforcable and hence useless. So while I get the sentiment of 'I don't want to see AI even being looked at from apart the room for anything I personally use' it's just not a choice to have or possible to even enforce. If someone finds a reasonable solution? Sure! But by now there was none as the tagging itself is sadly not feasable and only causes more effort by now.

No difference from manual modding. It's just the inhibition limit being reduced, otherwise the same. Ah yes 'proper disclaimers' like 'cigarettes are unhealthy, don't use them!' duh! Or 'this chapter of this web-novel mentions a single curse-word, beware!'. There's a limit to protecting people without making it just a worse environment overall. And as stated, with AI we don't even know where exactly the line lies yet, so the logical approach is to wait rather then to cause extra effort, illogical decision-making and potentially a detrimental outcome by being quite a lot to proactive. Great! That means it does what it is supposed to do. When the difference between human and machine is for all measures and purposes non-existent then it is neither logical to use a disclaimer not is it possible. If someone gets a code presented, which works, and then they go and change the naming for the values and functions... how can you call the difference? Ever? It's not possible and hence leads to false positives, punishing people for things they haven't even done, while others which use it can get away since there is not a single option in the world existing to make it known in the first place. Yeah, tough shit for you plainly spoken. I detest for example companies which are listed on the stock market because they inherently need to primarily work around shareholder sentiment and not customers. Do I now go out and enforce every company to write a disclaimer of 'we are listed on the stock market'? No, I don't. Don't go around forcing people to do extra work because it goes against your personal believes unless it's been proven to be detrimental, which in term of AI usage it is not yet as there are no long-term situations around it even existing. Obviously every second joe goes 'oh cool, so even without knowing much I can no do things!' and doesn't uphold the basic necessities needed to ensure the tool is properly used. The same as early power drills, early power planers, early power saws, early CNC, every 3D printer and so on shared all universally. They were garbage, extremely dangerous and allowed every random joe to produce things either at their own or the danger of multiple people besides themselves. Are you for forbidding 3D printers because morons use them to make pipe fittings for farm-sized hydroculture systems despite them leeching cancer causing chemicals into the water which is taken up by plant roots? No, you forbid the usage in that specific case. And it was only done after finding out that 'this specific case' is a problem. Same for AI, just because some uninformed people make low quality things for it doesn't mean it's universally to be shamed, you reduce the use-case to the places where it makes sense instead after finding out 'this won't work in the current way'. Not outright kill it off. So now let's go to actual solutions, which has 'zero' to do with AI: - The ability to mark mods as broken for a specific version and a proper reporting function for it. That is then checked by volunteers which are willing to put in the time, and only then is marked visibly according the the outcome. This removes low quality mods which cause issues (memory leaks for example). This allows broken mods to not be displayed to people when searching for specific versions. This ensures a baseline quality standard to be upheld. And when someone provides repeated broken mods on a regular basis then can still actual action happen in terms of barring that person from uploading in the first place to remove influx of more broken mods.

I don't see an issue as long as a mod works as it's supposed to work. Plainly spoken I could care less if a human wrote it or AI did. For art I understand it at least since it has copyright issues. And quality is generally a problem, always. But besides that as @LadyWYTmentioned it's not even feasable to do as what substitutes 'proper' usage isn't even remotely handled. AI is first and foremost a tool, I don't expect every carpenter to provide a warning label of 'this was made partially with a CNC machine' either. And I repeat, in relation to art since it's a copyright issue there overall still (and even that can be argued about to a surprisingly large degree as the whole topic is a huge rabbit hole of slippery slopes and risky argumentation opening the pathway for absolutely destroying human-based iteration as well) it's at least acceptable to have a disclaimer. Anything beyond a disclaimer is just beyond reason for the moment until lawmaking overhauls the decades-long ignored issues everyone in the field knew were coming but never bothered with it before it was far too late.

Eh... maybe, I'm not fully on board with that evaluation. It depends on the cooling method. The most likely I would argue fits very very well into VS is 'Pot in pot' cooling, which is a watertight internal pot, then a layer of wet sand and a porous external pot. The evaporation cools the internal chamber down massively. In 40C° exterior temperature it can reach sub 10C°. For the ethyl based cooling? Maybe... with more Jonas tech absolutely a possible thing. The technology is there since 1650 after all at the basis, they just didn't realize the phenomenon before 1755. That's quite early, kinda fits similar to what we see in overall technology from 'jonas', so access would be potentially possible. Powering would be mechanical as well, not with gears, it's not a eldritch device but instead a physical one, lore-wise easily explained with 'we didn't have much food left and needed to preserve everything as well as we possibly could'. Wasn't my point. Vanity as said has a place. It's distinct form functionality though. Vanity improves immersion and allows more choices for basically no extra effort for a developer to be introduced. They're variants, based on the same systems. Functional systems need a ton of effort, so you really need to think about if they've got a viable place which people will actually use, that time could've otherwise been used to improve a lot of other things... like creating the variety to reduce the need of complexity.

Necessary? Absolutely not. Fitting? Absolutely so! We're moving slowly but gradually towards Jonas-Tech after all, and there was big-scale machinery existing on eldritch concepts. So having something to keep food fresh in a situation where food is already extremely limited will probably have been a prime concern anyway. The question is only which form it takes. One upside of it is that it allows together with the ships and - hopefully - future carts and similar things to expand the range of access for players. Hence enabling to actually deal with more then the climate you're settled at directly. So for that part it might become useful. Yes, and that's fine. Vanity has a place, absolutely so! But... it's vanity, not functionality. Vanity doesn't need to be taken into big consideration. But I'm all for things which increase the options there, like mushroom farming for example. You don't need it... but it would be nice to have it.

I can see multiple options here for it to work: - The mentioned 'single block' cooling unit. Potentially even attaching multiple of those units together in a line. The Aqua vitae isn't used up anyway, mechanical power though is needed. - A room-cooler, which does exactly that, only working in a actual room, not a 'false' room. Cooling side, wall-block, power access and heating side are 4 different blocks to build together for it to work. - A dedicated multiblock structure, room-freezer. Piping, tanks, heat exchangers properly built into a room-shape and internally (outside of the heat intake) being for example glazed... or made with vitrified ceramic. That would enforce it being late end-game only with those mechanics introduced. Hence vanity primarily. As for blue cheese: Nobody makes blue cheese anyway despite it being a nice recipe. You gain 0.4 years (without waxing) for shelf-life baseline and you loose 4x40 satiety from it. It's not worth it at all sadly. Also it's a complete exception as a recipe,mandated to use the proper time of the year to do it rather then 'anytime'. So plainly spoken I would simply ignore the existence of it for this suggestion, it makes no sense to include it anyway as the demands are specifically built around not using a proper room. It's likely a unfeasable suggestion overall, a nice idea though. By the time it would become accessible food is already an abundant source and hence we wouldn't need it without substantial additions to the game. Though where I see it becoming a interesting mechanic would be greenhouses. Created heated or cooled greenhouses in biomes that usually wouldn't be able to support the respective plantlife. That would be a viable end-game solution as it allows expansion into different places with the increase food variety being fully available this way.

I get why, but it's also troublesome to handle. If it's community-feedback then how will you handle false positives for example? Is it a list of versions it works with? And what about people stating it after short usage but along the way something breaks which isn't often used, leading to issues with a specific mod? How to see for the player directly if it's the version causing the issue versus incompatibility with another mod as well? How to handle those false positives and false negatives? It's commonly not done because it's a big mess of fringe-cases that make it unreliable at large to do that, though some functioning system there would be really nice to have, I agree.

Oh god... I can already imagine the knocking. 5 drifters come by and all you hear the whole night is 'thump thump thump thump...'

Yeah, the 'gills' one is primarily for middle-european forests, which is a great thing for me as most people hence often only gather boletes here and leave the other tasty stuff sitting around. As the death-cap and the parasol for example are hard to identitfy for people without knowing their markers it leads to less people having a deadly outcome from foraging. There's a wide variety of extremely good and tasty mushrooms in the milk-cap category though growing as well, which are generally overlooked, same with other gilled mushrooms like russula, which yes... is always poison, but breaks it down upon heating it and becomes hence safe to consume. One way to counteract the issue with people needing to have the knowledge would be to introduce a series of lore-books related to wildlife and plants. So not only journals surviving the temporal instability but also survival journals and actual learning books. I think that would make for a good option to allow taking away the information from the item itself without necessitating the usage of the wiki unless you're a real-life mushroom forager, instead getting the knowledge from a in-game source but not inherently.

I like the expansion of the gardening/farming system definitely. Though instead of introducing 'soil types' I think the direction of making only 'soil' itself would be a better solution here, more lightweight and simple. What I mean with that is that all those tags can exist... but only if the proper nutrient composition and other aspects are existing. My suggestion hence is the following: - The already existing 'NPK' values we have are kept. - Add 'airation' as a new quality to soil. - Add 'water retention' as a new quality to soil. - Add 'bio-activity' as another quality to the soil. That's basically the real combination of how soil gets its different results. If it's clay it's dense and retains water hence easily, but roots have a hard time getting through. If it's gravel it's the opposite, it's quite well airated, but doesn't retain water easily. Same with the bio activity. Gravel/sand isn't a lot of biological matter, hence doesn't make for a great place for diversity to thrive, but a compost is highly biologically active. The NPK is simply the nutrient density of any specific material inside it anyway, which plants leech from the ground to grow. This would allow things like crop rotations as well as using plants for their special attributes... beans for example being a Nitrogen (N) fixer as they bind it from the air, adding it hence to the soil. So if you wanna plant (N) reliant plants you can first plant beans, increase hence the (N) value while also increasing the values for water retention and airation in some manner. Same with other plants accordingly. Some provide materials, others leech heavy amounts... would be a fun complex system.

Well, that's the question though, is it? I would imagine that the check for the character position being the part which causes the delay of the 'indoor' buff, not the check for it to be a viable room itself. After all if that would happen then storage vessels would be in a rather shoddy position. What I think is that it proclaims the specific blocks as 'indoor' as a simple flag, checking whenever a block gets added/removed into the world, which is likely what causes the limitation as then in all cardinal directions + up/down it likely checks the maximum distance limit for existing blocks before going forward with the room-check itself, creating one if it fulfills all conditions ultimately. This only works 'so far' performance-wise, which is what I imagine causes the limit of room-sizes currently as otherwise the performance hit would probably be too high since I imagine it being a O(n²) operation performance wise. It's hence likely a 'instant' action for the room flag (so if you place a vessel inside it gets that flag applied immediately rather then having to re-check) while the player position is a irregular check which happens every few seconds so performance is saved. So to create a larger room with less limits it would need to be changed from a boundary check to a adjacent check system, which is substantially less resource friendly. It can definitely be done! But it's a complex system for sure which isn't lightweight as the current one seems to be. So I imagine it to be on a low priority if implemented, unless rooms get a vaster range of functionality which makes them more important to have outside of simple temperature management and spoilage, for which those sizes suffice. One way to make it needed would be a 'comfort' system similar to what games like Enshrouded or Valheim have, a buff directly tied to how much effort into varied interior decoration has been made.

I mean, yeah, absolutely, would be great and nothing to even add to it. The issue is as was mentioned: Performance. The larger the check-function to determine if a room exists the worse it is performance-wise. The only solution I see there is to define room-areas in the game as a static when the game realized 'yes, this space is closed'. Only happening for any block which goes through a 'state change', hence when we set down/remove a block it calculates from there to see if there is a room available, as a low-priority task to not interfere with performance. The major downside? It could take very significant amounts of time to create a room this way, removal would be easy, because of a room isn't connected to another room when the block is removed it would automatically be able to tell 'this is the outside, delete the room'. But creation? We could see minutes of a place not being a viable interior space as the system simply hasn't finished computing if it actually is one... or if it's a open space, even if the system solely checks along boundaries instead of inside-blocks. This makes troubleshooting quite a lot harder and emergency creation of a space potentially non-functional when direly needed.

You're absolutely right, it is a HEFTY buff. But it's limited to combat only and also a bit misleading in design. After all you'll commonly eat meals made out of either meat+veggie to be filling (if meat's available) or pies which are grain and veggie/meat. So you always have 5 Bonus HP anyway, which means your 'available' bonus HP from actual effort is 7,5 and not 12,5. You reach those baseline 5 automatically without doing anything at nigh all times outside of dieing. And you're absolutely right! It's a good buff type, and a good system to reduce the difficulty substantially for those which aren't top-tier at combat, hence why it is definitely a 'has to stay' mechanic. The 'joy' option though would provide a extra incentive which is not related to combat itself, and hence applies always... so something to be sought out if you're good at combat or not... or if you're intending to engage in combat or not. What the game misses is simply a incentive to always push you to eat as varied as possible rather then allowing to absolutely forego it without any negative effects for your playstyle. For me personally the last time I actively went for food variety out of the HP reason was back in .18 for example, ever since I've foregone it entirely and just done variety because of personal RP reasons, hence without incentive itself, which is not something many people go for. Incentive is important.

@HAG-646 I think provided the best solution for the moment. Every ingredient getting a 'joy' value which reduces when repeatedly eaten would provide the best results I imagine. It's simple, it's flexible and only needs to be balanced around the overall expected variety for one to have. That's only the case if someone has a need for high health, which often isn't the case as the game progresses. Neither spelunking happens regularly then, nor are the story areas repeatedly visited every day. The goal here is not a specific system but a solution to provide a reason to keep variety up no matter what you do. If you build you're not focused on variety of food, whatever is available and easy is done. Same with farming, woodcutting, basic material collection. There is no necessity to have high HP during those times as you progress, even without the nutrition buff a decent armor will keep any potential dangers quite minimal at that time already. What I imagine could be a overall solution is to implement the 'joy' mechanic which was suggested with a single 'universal' buff which is 'action speed'. This would then affect movement speed, the ability to hammer metal or add clay voxels, general tool speed, so a bonus to mining, cutting, harvesting. It starts at the baseline we currently have anyway and then goes up to around 10-20%, something in that range I imagine would bode well. Not game-breaking but still a significant difference to seek it out.

For the issue with punishing a solution... a line of solutions is also doable, though it's then important to take into consideration how much effort it is in accumulation. If you need more time to save you food then you need to actually gather said food it becomes unfeasable, especially early-game. So weather and blight are definitely on the menu. Rats? Fun idea, though a lot harder to balance if either of the aforementioned is introduced. But still viable, just harder. As LadyWYT pointed out, having the ability to design this yourself in severty is definitely a major point, so further expansion of the world options as well as commands to adjust those things mid-game. With the choice of having or not having it, as well as severty it allows a lot of player agency over it. Baseline mild versions being introduced but much like cave-ins it can be expanded upon to become a significant issue to handle. That's a big plus in my book at least. The rat idea specifically is a bit more complex as we can see from the variety of solutions being thrown around. Granaries sound like a great idea. Which opens up the discussion about root cellars, granaries and greenhouses in general though. If another addition comes in... would it make sense to then also look over the functionality of a root cellar especially? If we got granaries for large-scale storage of grain it kinda calls for a bit more immersion with root cellars as well. Vessels are a nice thing... though they're prone to accumulate moisture, making vegetables rot easily as any rot stays trapped inside. One option to make the food storage itself harder without significantly hindering early-game would be to introduce dry-storage. A grated box at the bottom with a filled grated box at the top. Any rot goes down and hence doesn't spread as fast. Vessels are good for dry-goods storage in general though, hence dried meat, grain, those things. In smaller amounts for grain especially though I would argue, making the granary itself a feasable and sought-after building along the way. One issue with the current system is after all that harvests produce a massive amount of grain, and grain is extremely long-term storable, so expanding on the need for containers is one countermeasure definitely. This way we can also introduce the rat issues and tie it into the common other issues of root cellars. The first being that the necessities for a root cellar get expanded. The bottommost block needs a intake vent (adding a new variety of block out of a few possible materials. Dirt and brick specifically only) while the topmost block of the room has to have the same. Intake and outtake airation. Splitting up the storage methods into different types rather then 'vessel is best' would already implement a lot of extra effort, hence larger scarcity. With the airation it plays well into rat plagues, as a hole in your cellar is a prime reason why a rat would be able to get inside in the first place. So a grated vent as a upgrade starting mid-game (bronze, or iron later on) would be a interesting addition. And early game the need to manually trap and empty those traps to ensure reduced losses. I rambled on a bit there, got me some ideas, but I hope the overall direction is visible from my post at least

That's no different to today. It's the core reason why farmers in most western countries currently struggle extremely, because money movement has been shifted too far from sustaining necessities to upper-level things which don't 'produce anything' or are luxury goods. It's untenable unless there's a way to guarantee outcomes... which there is no working option available that's upholding commercially. It's literally the core frustration for farmers. And intentionally introducing frustrating uncontrollable things in a game without any method to circumvent it reasonably is a prime way to kill the fun of people. With mechanics attached to it to allow player agency behind it it's another topic though and can work. So the question rather is: What would allow us to implement inconsistency in food generation without causing a massive issue at the same time? I think with the 'blights' part you're on the right track there. Monocultures are prone to getting and spreading blight wide-scale. So smaller-scale fields and distance can play a role. This returns player agency to reduce damage and not cause critical failure especially in the first year where it would be devastating for many players as they don't have the means (being respectively knowledgeable and skilled does circumvent it anyway) to 'take the hit'. But it still allows for it to be a general occurence. It does increase the infrastructure aspect needing to be managed instead, makes time more tight. Hence keeping fields at a smaller sized and distanced from the same type of crop is a workable thing for sure if properly implemented. The same goes for scarecrows. Managing seeds being taken away with them and enforcing simply more effort to be taken to allow crops to grow without failing. It would also make sense to properly introduce 'flowering' stages hence, them being depending on plant before/while or after being ripe, having to give up one or the other. That might become quite invested though to learn for a new player. For storage I'll definitely state 'no' though, you've already had the risks applied once, double-dipping into it would just be too much then, something needs to stay solid to keep it enjoyable as a game. And unless we get proper long-term lasting storage options like smoked meat for 5+ years dry-hanged in a room or have a overall farming rework it's just not a good thing to have. There is a reason why the majority of people go for pies ultimately. Grain and veggies are both easily accessible and can be stored for massive amounts of time compared to meat after all and the pie turns into empty storage space rather then pots and crocks while also needing a bowl with you. The idea of @LadyWYTalso works, with the heat-/cold-waves, though only with some additions. Standalone ultimately you then still have no player agency over it. All your effort can simply be wated and that won't feel good. It becomes viable though if we gets an option to heat up a greenhouse though. Cooling it is unviable... but heating for the earlier/later times of the year to extend farming time does absolutely function. It's not perfectly realistic as plants don't only react to weather changes but also the wavelength of light which changes depending on the season and hence sun-positioning... but it's closer to a realistic and risky farming experience without taking control completely out of the player's hands. As for 'store more': That's no 'counterplay' that's just extra work, hence extra tedium. Not a good solution. If that's the case it's easier to reduce yield then introducing a new mechanic, it ultimately has the same effect then. Realism for the sake of adding realism tends to lead to a worse experience then otherwise. Ultimately VS still is a game and has to fulfill the fun-factor, realism simply has to be sacrificed for that.

Fair enough.

That's not the only issues. When filling spaces with sufficient amount of chiseled blocks then light behaves... weird. Like making grates and lighting them underneath. If enough are added suddenly the whole area tends to turn dark. The whole lighting system with chiseled blocks is still rather... wonky. Needs some work overall. I think that's sooner or later due for a comprehensive rework at large anyway.

I mean... as stated: 'Wurm Online' was quite an active game - and still exists nowadays - which uses that exact system in place actually. And it's interesting, functional and actually quite well designed with their other mechanics in place. That was by the way the last game where 'Notch' (the creator of Minecraft if not known) was working on before making himself self-employed. He's the co-creator of the game. It's the inspiration for a game to allow adjusting everything in the world fully as well as making it block-based, albeit Wurm only had 2 layers, above and below ground in functionality for the longest time unlike Minecraft. Much earlier project simply.

I mean... 'Devil's' and 'Bitter' kinda are quite a bit of a tell-tale naming sign I think the damage from bitter boletes to be quite un-fun though, instead a nauseous debuff would be nice, loosing quite a lot of nutrition instead of that mild hit. The only ones which actually are name-wise an issue are 'Elfin saddly' 'Jack-o-lantern', 'gold-drop milkcap', 'earth ball' and 'pink bonnet'. All others are quite reasonable. Whoever eats a 'fool's', 'devil's', 'death' or 'laughing' is kinda at fault for their own mistakes. 'Sickener' and 'Death's cap' being kinda obvious ones especially, anyone even trying that one without thinking deserves it Generally: A 'one time eaten' method would do the system well there. It's a compromise between the fairly useless existence of poison mushrooms now... which pose no danger since their danger is directly conveyed... and the wiki-mandate basically. So you don't need to remember things but your first experience will be interesting for sure. I would even argue a world-setting for that is a prime addition. - Reveal mushroom effect (Default) - Reveal effect after eaten permanently - Reveal effect after eaten until death. - Never reveal effect. This way the choice is there and allows for fun situations without pushing the whole system ad-absurdum as it currently is the case.

For every realistic system it's always the same question: Does the added realism improve immersion far enough to counteract the lost convenience? If there's a use for different-sized trunks then it absolutely can make sense. Smaller ones being readily available to directly get sticks or making beams out of it with reduced cost compared to larger logs (wastage). The ability to cut down larger sized part into smaller ones comes also in as a gameplay addition there. If it's solely increasing item count without function then I wouldn't want to see that plainly spoken. Root systems are always a problematic issue. They are tedious to handle... and well... while realistically expected they just tend to not be 'fun' plain and simple. Though when it comes to root systems which are visible aboveground (wetland trees form them at times) then that's a completely different topic and can visually enhance the game quite a bit I imagine. So not a complete 'write-off' idea, but likely hard to implement growth of that kind without making it feel 'wonky' in some form. For the wood splitting itself: Having the ability to use planted log as a fixed place interact with any sort of 'prepared' wood would be a prime addition. Plainly spoken I never understood why debarked logs are locked behind the copper age. Sure, it's a better looking - potentially at least - building material, but debarking is a very easy job for most trees. Some directly peel off, others splinter off with a bit of pressure at least, especially after drying. So one solution I see there is to have solid logs (with bark) be allowed to interact directly with any debarked log put on top of it, enabling the usage of an axe on it when interacted with it, then getting the crafting option of what you wanna produce. This actually could even be the introduction basis of a woodworking system itself. An axe for any rough working that can be done (planks definitely are 'rough') but tedius to take off material, shown by having to do a lot more steps then otherwise would be seen and producing less while also only working on simple (hence straight) pieces. Anything complex, hence things which aren't just a straight split then would enforce a saw, which also acts as a faster and more productive tool for things like planks. Less waste. Also the interactive crafting is a very big thing in VS, so I'm very much for the immersive option while taking away the grid-recipes. The less grid recipes in my opinion the better. For the tradeoffs: - Yeah, sub-blocks definitely create some form of overhead. Performance-wise maybe, depends on the code, can go both ways. Either not even worth a thought or with a mediocre system taking up substantial resources. I see more issues there arising with spawn complexity. If there's sub-blocks would they need to be moved after growth occurs? Hence deleting and adding those again? That can lead to a ton of odd bugs for sure. Same as when any sub-blocks are at the top. - It's a big system... and I would say 'modular' in this case. We got a trunk, a trunk forms branches, those can grow out when at least mid-sized, max length from trunk, allows for quite sizeable tree structues I'm sure. The trunk can also - with age - then increase in thickness beyond 1 block, merging branches back in (which increases the count of different blocks by enforcing to have all the possible connection combinations, or 'overlapping' them simply) and hence allowing wider growth based on with (it can withstand more force, so can carry larger thicker branches). Fun idea for sure! Likely untenable though to come anytime soon as it would enforce a change in the world-seeding itself by reorganizing how trees are spawned in general. - Well, one solution for the leaves is that the first stage of a branch is a branchy leaf. That branchy leave can then spawn multiple leaves around it with pushing the distance further with another branchy leaf while the former block becomes a 'thin branch'. Hence more then a stick but not feasable to hold leaves directly anymore. That would create a natural tree-shape with the proper code attached. But definitely not 'lightweight' in performance - The bloat is only an issue as long as we don't have carts, wheelbarrows or anything of the sorts. Working down a tree would with the more complex (and hence larger-shaped) trees become a more invested process anyway. So carrying them off by type after sorting out on-site is how it would go. More similar to actual woodworking hence. That's a downside that inherently comes with this type of increase in realism. Can't reasonably be avoided without re-introducing the issue of the variety not adding actual mechanics. - Probably wouldn't need to cube it further, too much overhead I imagine. But it gives an idea definitely: Intentionally cutting branches to make the tree re-grow it at another applicable position around the now freed space. You could start shaping trees specifically this way over time. A bit similar to fruit trees which do regrow again after all. For the additional stuff: - Early beams and planks should plainly spoken be a given. It goes hand in hand with more invested woodworking, meaning planks alone wouldn't do much, could use it for 'crude' decorative stuff though when going towards vanity items to simply make the world more varied looking. Things coming to mind are generally rope-tied things, or those connected via a crude hole and being connected with a wedge only, no complex forms. Rope-tied doors, crude stools and tabling, that stuff. And for anything actually decent like a crate you then would need the saw for assembly, cutting it to size immersive-wise for the connections. And chests need copper anyway so they are not and issue. Beams are needed before copper anyway because of cave-ins for a more cohesive experience and are otherwise only decorative. - Stumps, yeah, no issue. Root system as mentioned would cause severe downsides, usually not worth those, they tend to be more problem then enjoyment. Too realistic. - Woodcarving is a big thing. Early on it would definitely make sense to get your first potential utensils this way. - Bark instead of whole oak logs for tannin. The highest tannin concentration is in the bark anyway, makes more sense then shoving a whole tree into a barrel Also it's really hard to leech the tannin out of thick logs instead of thin bark. - Leaf regrowth would be fantastic. As well as season-specific blooming/fruiting times. So seed management being a thing for trees itself. Also as @cjameshuff mentioned it would resolve issues with for example walnut trees. All in all nice interesting ideas! Some more feasable then others definitely, be it through gameplay issues or through the sheer resource need to code it properly. But well designed I can see it enhancing the game more in the 'manual crafting' direction then having the grid being used. Yes, that's called 'compass wood' Since the grain there isn't straight but curved and offers a high variety of shapes (which are naturally grown and hence keep stable) they were used instead of cut wood. Not only reduces it the surface area which takes in moisture but also has a higher natural stability for forces working on it. Could be specifically gathered from stumps and then used for shipbuilding of all sorts, being a necessity. Otherwise also as a side-use of firewood obviously.

So, to cut it down in size: @Rainbow Fresh I specifically called out nonsensical arguments, not reasonable ones. As you stated, and I also agree with, Moose's idea is currently the best in that regard, as well as the mod Bruno linked. I did absolutely smack down on comments which were absolute and entire nonsense though. And I'll also call you out on 'calling me out' there. If you re-read properly you'll see that I answered everyone but one person neutrally or positively, for a reason. The 3 things which led to it were: -'If you provide an incentive then people will pivot to it' which is a 'No shit Sherlock' argument but was used as a method to speak against it. That's bad communication by itself as it proclaims 'Incentive will cause people to stop using non-incentives' which is obvious. We don't use flint tools after achieving copper tools if we can help it. It's presented as a negative though, which deserves a verbal smack to be clear. -'People will make bug reports about it'... I hope you can see what a non-argument that is without issue. -'If a question comes then you won't be able to answer it' which was even repeated. And I did answer it neutrally the first time if you re-read. Only after repeatedly pushing on that - plainly spoken still absolutely nonsensical - point I went into smacking that verbally back. It's not a rocket-science thing presented, it's a simplistic system where said question is as simply answered. That was it. And the next time something like this happens I'll still smack down on it again because that way of argumentation towards my idea rather then something in the direction of 'I wouldn't like it, xyz would feel better overall' are extremely detrimental to any creative thinking. As mentioned above 'Devil's Advocate' only goes 'so far'. It has limits and if you go substantially beyond them you get verbally smacked, and reasonably so, it's to be expected to not create a walking menace. You're also right with it not fitting well into the survival realism style. I couldn't think of a tenable mechanic at the time which would be, Moose's did instead, which, Kudos there! So I went the second-best option. Gameplay-focus. If something is a shortcoming (food variety issues are sadly) and no realistic solution is found then a gamified one at least fulfills the job of keeping engagement for it. Same with your argument about it potentially becoming a tedium. Yes, that is a risk, absolutely so, fully on your side there! One solution is a tiering method, allows to keep effect variety low but probability of getting a good result nonetheless adequately rare which leads to low effort to get the baseline result but higher effort to maximize it all. Hence it only plays a role for someone actively hunting every bit of min-max possible. Which is also someone which is less likely to restart a map repeatedly, so likely not much of an issue, could become one though if not well handled. @Bruno Willis Like the cutlery idea! Would expand on the usage of material and allow better interior design at the same time. Plus a bonus for doing things with a nice base. Also great to see that mod already exists, didn't know about that one. Yes, that's one I agree with as well, a version of that absolutely should be vanilla. @MKMoose You're right, it's only for 'one', though the argument also was only about 'the one wanted'. Overall to miss an option would be higher, true. And the second... I didn't think about that, totally missed that position wouldn't effect it, hence 'meat,meat,parsnip,carrot' being the same as 'meat,meat,carrot,parsnip'. Yeah, then we lean more towards the lower variety option for buffing definitely, meaning with 60 different ones it would actually start to become a serious problem. Ultimately it would still keep the chance for that specific circumstance very low at least and is solved with a method allowing to change the buff for a specific combination, like alcohol or the new mushrooms. Good catch definitely.