redram

@Anthony Mooney Also you don't need the stone hoe mod. Stone hoes are in vanilla now.

I'm not sure I'm so into breath being used for anything other than suffocating. Stamina I'm totally behind, and would add physical tasks like smithing and combat to the list of things that use it.

I haven't used crocks yet, but iirc from what other shave said you can either right click the crock on the pot of food, or vice versa. Then seal it with fat/wax (wax only in 1.10.5 and up). Jamm is 2 slots honey plus 2 slots berry.

Ya, I'd like to see a tab that has all the non-object topics. It seems like right now it returns game mechanic topics if you enter something in the search bar that has no match. But I think it'd be better if there was a tab for the mechanics, so the player could find them a bit easier.

Well, I think you still need to keep game balance in mind. It's currently very hard to multiply your plants - just a 5% chance to get an extra seed at harvest. If 1 portion of grain can be turned into 8 seeds, they you could extremely rapidly multiply your grain crops, and grains also have the advantage of being by far the longest-lasting food. I think that would be extremely unbalanced from a gameplay perspective. Seeds being edible could have some utility. I could see all seeds being edible, mainly to get rid of them, but they should not give much satiation, but maybe more nutrition that you'd expect for their satiation. If they don't spoil, that would make them a possible addition to a kit of 'backup' food. I could also see them being usable in place of grain as a portion in troughs. I think that might be a fair trade at current rates. Correct on the harvest vs seed thing. Some plants would give double seed, but only after you could no longer harvest the food. This would require a bit of planning and thought on the player's part. For general tree growth rate, if it were me I'd have trees take a year or two to grow (in single player. In multiplayer I'd probably go the full 30+), so that planks and wood in general might have some actual value, but I'm pretty sure that's not the devs' preference. But I'm fine with food-producing plants having long growth times, while trees that are only good for planks have short times. I realize it's inconsistent, but I think it's fine for balance and variety.

Depends on what the intended play arc is. As long as more natural sources of forageable food were available, the player could survive for some time just hunting and foraging. I think the early game having a large foraging component could be acceptable, possibly. As for year length, I'm just going off of what I seem to remember being the loose plan. 12 days per month. I'm assuming the year length will be configurable in the end, so the player should have control over that. Remember that I'm only suggesting a few plants take a year or more - perennials and fruit trees only, really. My table of real-world to game equivalency right now suggests anything from 13 game days for radishes to 47 game days for parsnips and flax, with tons of 20-30 day things in between. Remember that garden crops irl don't grow all year. In my middle-of-the-USA climate, they have to do their entire thing in 3-4 months. 20-30 game days is 8-12 hours irl. You spend the early game foraging, and growing crops. If you plant perennials as well, they're ready in the next year or two. The perennials are just a small minority of food crops. Sort of an emergency supply, at the end of winter, really. They allow the player to feel more secure, their base more mature. They are a tangible indicator or progression. As for other features, it just depends on how close the devs want to be to rl (and how much work Tyron wants to do). I think it'd be great if the plants had as many of the characteristics of their rl counterparts as possible. Asparagus is definitely a once-a-year harvest thing. If it had 10 stages of growth, you'd harvest it in stages 1 and 2 maybe, but no other. Rhubarb could theoretically be several times a year (but it also needs to be cooked to be edible, like how cattail roots are now). Some plants actually would make a lot of sense as multiple-harvesters. Beans, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. In those cases they could yield relatively small amounts every so often, rather than a large amount all at once. So potatoes might have 9 stages of growth, and be add 1 to the yield in each of the last 6 stages, with each unit of yield giving potatoes in decent amounts. So you can harvest as you go, or all at the end (but they give no nutrition, as their downside). Tomatoes might only yield in the last 4 stages, and relatively small amounts, and also if you don't harvest a given stage, it does not accumulate - the fruit rots, but they do give a lot of nutrition. Beans might be somewhere in between. Some plants may give annoyingly high yields of small satiety items. So beans can be harvested for 6 stages maybe, and each time you get like, a stack of 16 units of beans. But each unit only fills 5 or 10 satiety. So you have to sit there chomping on them for a long time to eat them uncooked (maybe this makes vegetable soup a useful thing, to combine those items easily to one meal? Maybe a given pot slot holds 2-3 times as many bean units as it does 'normal' food?). As opposed to Tomatoes which may yield 1 unit each time, but that 1 unit fills 100 satiety or whatever. So more convenient to eat. Some vegetables like carrots might have a trait that you actually have to let a plant mature and die, to get seeds. So you don't get any food at all from that mature plant, but one plant gives you 2 seeds perhaps, baseline. So you grow 2 plants to eat 1 of them (you have to harvest them BEFORE they mature to eat them), and let one mature fully for seeds. This means that they're far easier to multiply as long as you don't eat either plant, but you're using two fields worth of nutrients to get one edible crop and still replant. An interesting choice perhaps (fast multiplying might be too powerful given nutrient replenishment)? Onions could work the same way, possibly. It'd be possibly a lot of extra work for Tyron to create a system where these things are possible. But Tyron & Saraty are avid gardeners too, so maybe they'd like it. Idk. But I wanted to bring it all up, because it's going to be relevant very soon. If fully done, I think it might be the most true to life system in any game. I'm working on a table right now, to try to figure out just what sort of array we could have, attempting to imitate reality where feasible. I'm only familiar personally with temperate zone crops though. And the tropics are kind of a big hole in the game right now for livability.

With the seasons update being the next update, I wanted to discuss a bit about how crops work, and could potentially be re-thought a bit. Currently, all crops behave the same. You plant, they grow, you harvest at the end. Presumably in seasons, there will be a 'die' stage added at the end, where if you don't harvest the crop, it dies and leaves seeds, but no produce. Right now VS crops vary a bit in maturity length, but i game terms all are relatively short. Anywhere from 3-6 game days. By my estimate, if we try to have them scale with a RL year, but with regard to VS's 144 day year, crops will need to generally take 5x as many VS days to mature as they do now. They also vary a bit in nutrients taken, and of course the major difference is the nutrient used. These characteristics do suffice to make each crop different in some way, but nutrients used comes across as kind of minor difference in my experience, so for instance spelt and rye are nearly exactly the same, differing only by .6 days in maturity. Onions, parsnips, and pumpkins all read as the same on the wiki, though I'm not sure how yields compare (and pumpkins obviously have a very different growth habit). But they use the same nutrients, and all mature in 7-8 days. I think the game would benefit if there were more differences in crops, so that each crop had at least one characteristic that made it noticeably different from any other in it's class (by class I mean vegetables vs grains). As such, I wanted to toss out some ideas of ways to add more character to crops. PERENNIALS - I think it would be good for there to be some perennial crops. Asparagus, Rhubarb, and Artichoke as examples. Perennial crops could stil need fertilizing, but would not be replanted every year. This would require the ability to fertilize soil blocks with a crop on top - currently not possible, as the crop blocks access to the soil from top. Asparagus and Rhubarb would specifically fill a niche of being early yielders, giving food in the spring, when the player is just planting their normal crops. How to accomplish this harvesting in a perennial context is a question. Perennials could effectively be a sort of bush 'flowering' and presenting a crop at a very early time of year. So asparagus would 'flower' with tiny new shoots, and then 'fruit' with taller shoots. The plant itself could either just remain always in the same form, like a bush, but just change color in winter (simple way) or could go through stages of 'growth'. Sort of creating a hybrid crop-bush, that fruits like a bush but shows growth stages like a crop, but never dies. Personally I'd like to see bushes have stages of growth too, so you can't transplant them so easily. So if all bushes became like this, that would make it easier to integrate vegetable perennials in that scheme. Since perennials are only planted once, they should have very long maturity dates. a year or more. Maybe 2 or even 3 years for asparagus. I would also suggest bushes take such a long time when replanted. Such a change would present a serious choice for the player in the earlier game - leave the perennials in their wild spot to get fruits soon, or transplant them to more convenient spot, but then have to wait a long time to get food? TEMPERATURE - Plants would - as part of the seasons update - presumably die if the temperature gets too cold. However, what if there was more detail there? Plants could die both at too-hot and too-cold temps, and could even have temperatures where they 'pause' their growth, but don't die. So for instance rye or spinach - in the right climate - could be planted in the fall, pause growth during the winter but not die, and then mature quickly in the spring, for early food. Brussel sprouts could be forced to pause during hot spells and die if too hot, making them work better in cool climates. Root vegetables could even have their own mechanic where the plant part 'dies' at a given temperature and won't grow any further - going dormant - but the player can still harvest the root. However if things get a lot colder, then the root is ruined as well. So there could be 'pause', 'dormant', and 'dead' temperatures. It allows more variety of behavior, and more nuance of climate, in terms of heat being able to make some crops not well suited for a climate band. NUTRIENT MODIFIER - Right now all foods give their nutrient - as I understand it - as a straight scaling of the satiety of the food. I think it would be good if a given food could have a nutrient modifier. So you could do something like have potatoes for instance have a 0% nutrient modifier, and so give full satiety, and not take much nutrients to grow, rot slowly, but give no nutrition. So the player could have a choice for a very filling, very long lasting, not too nutrient intensive, but non-nutritious food. As opposed to other vegetables that would mostly give full nutrient compliments. Potatoes could additionally have a longer harvest window due to going dormant but not freezing to death until rather low temperatures. They could also be less targeted by rabbits, perhaps. And something like a tomato could have a 130% nutrient modifier, but they have a long growing seasons, don't keep well, and are very temperature sensitive. It'd generally put more potential wrinkles in the different crops. SEEDS - TFC handled winter-killed crops by simply dropping a seed packet as a placed item, so it would persist. That's a way to do it, but even better would be a 'dead' version of the plant, that drops seeds when broken. Presumably root vegetables will just drop seeds, to simplify things. Though one could of course do something like make potatoes (presuming they can be stored in a vessel through winter) be able to be replanted in the spring. They could perhaps still have a seed version, but the seeds take 2 years to yield. I think seed yield chance should be increased for instance by having bees nearby, while being decreased by things like being subject to disease or drought. Perhaps if traders sold seeds, we could be more strict with the stages at which plants will yield seeds. SUPPORTS - This is getting into stuff I've suggested before, but I think it'd be great if some crops yielded more when properly supported. Tomatoes, peas, and cucumbers come to mind. Trellises could be made of sticks, but only last one season, or made of metal and be reusable (bronze last forever, iron/steel have limited uses due to rusting). The bad part of implementing this of course is having to have 2 entirely separate sets of growth stages. But it's yet another thing to set some vegetables apart. DISEASES - Another previously suggested thing, but wanted to suggest the added bit that plants which are 'temperature stressed' (paused but not dead) could have increased chance to fall victim to pests or diseases. Depending on how detailed we wanted to get, some varieties could have their own pests/diseases. You could even have pest/disease maps similar to ore maps, so pressure could be more or less in some locations. though the game probably has plenty of maps I suppose. And players might not like discovering they invested all their time building a base in an area that has a lot of pest/disease pressure. WEEDS & MULCH - Also has been suggested before. But to tie in here again, plants that have been overwhelmed by weeds could have their growth significantly slowed, or even stopped. Mulch prevents or at least severely discourages weeds. Temperature stress could enhance weed growth. I think that covers a good bit for now, and hopefully gives some food for thought. One thing I'd really like to get other players' input on is crops grown in more tropical areas. I'm only really familiar with temperate crops, and that seems like the easiest thing to get english language google results on.

They're ruins of past civilization. Once in awhile you'll find loot vessels in them - sometimes they're out in the open, sometimes they're buried within the ruin.

That wouldn't fix the issue. Players always want all their food, at least in times when decay matters. Decay is a mechanic that tries to keep food relevant as a limited resource, and drives the player to use other game mechanics like cooking and preserving. It's not to force players to 'count their calories' and throw out food they don't think they'll need in the next few days. When you're running around looking for a place to settle in the early game, you're fighting decay, you want every scrap, but it's a race against time, and composting isn't even relevant. I think the only way to fix this issue of a half-life system might be to have all containers (and the players inventory) have a special 'output' slot that they cannot put anything into. That slot would basically be reserved just for rot. Might even only show up if the container has food, otherwise it's hidden. However that single slot would need to be able to accept an entire inventory of rot, otherwise you're back to the same problem. That or there would need to be able to be a dynamic number of these output slots. As many as required. And theoretically they could dynamically place the rot back into the regular chest slots, once slots open up due to the entire stack decaying. That would be more helpful if not for the infinity issue, of course. If chests auto-combined stacks as they rotted, that would help a lot though, I think.

Nothing prevents a tier vs tier system from having other factors like speed reductions or damage type specific reductions. That can still be based on the actual type of armor, rather than material. As far as basic reductions go there's always going to be a statistically superior one, even in your scheme.

The heightmap in my example is primarily for establishing oceans-mountain-river relationships, and giving rivers direction. It would - for the reason you mention - need to be limited in it's max height. Perhaps to 80% of world height or something. And it would be a uniform smooth slope, unless occasional jumps for waterfalls were necessary/possible. The landform heights would essentially be added on top. That would hopefully leave room at the 'top' for mountain-like stuff to happen. So your chunk map might have an elevation of 160 at one chunk, but then the landform noise on top is what adds the interesting detail, perhaps adding up to 50 additional blocks of variation in height. That's be total 210 blocks at the example point (160+50). Even at the max chunk map height of 200 (for a 250 world height), 50 in variation would be safe (though not allow for trees, so there'd perhaps need to be a 'tree line' elevation). It'd take some consideration and condition, but I think it's doable. This would probably have an effect on the max continent size you'd want. If sea level is 110 and the max elevation of the chunk map is 200, then you've got 90 height gain max from ocean to mountains. 90x32 gives about 2900 individual blocks of 'run', if elevation decrease by 1 at every chunk. So a max continental 'diameter' of about 5800 blocks. Which is a lot, but far short of 32k. Which may be alright though; it'd allow for large oceans and bays and lakes internal to the continental box of 32k square, which would help break things up so the 32k box is not as obvious. Of course if there could be areas where the elevation doesn't decrease at every chunk, that'd help extend the width of the continent. The chunk column stuff would be great of course, but I imagine would be an incredible amount of engine overhaul?

Also I think your active item slot has to be empty (bare hand)

Ya I don't really see the point of an eyeball planet either. And I agree that east-west wrapping is just fine. No need for north-south. My biggest beef is the lack of oceans - I try not to harp on it too much, but given the topic this seems like a place for it. I don't see oceans as wasted space at all, but as a good boundary. To me, the world gen as it is is overwhelming. The world is infinite in all directions, effectively. So I cannot 'finish' exploring in any direction. This is an exhausting notion, and aggravating because it means that in any given direction I could maybe explore just a bit farther and find that one great ruin, or better landform. The world is infinite, and yet without order, it becomes to me - in a macro sense - chaotic and potentially the same in all directions. I think this is not optimal. When I was in my last year of high school, I took an 'architecture class, which was basically really just meant to be learning the drafting software. The teacher mainly taught physical education, so he knew nothing about the software, so he basically just told us 'make whatever you want'. He gave us a project without boundaries, and the result of having no boundaries means that you have no basis in which to anchor. Projects were dull and pedestrian. It was high school of course. But still, what I realized later in my college courses is that boundaries and unique conditions are what make projects interesting. They're what defines them and gives them character. I think the same is true of world generation. I think that having oceans would add good boundaries to the game. A player can reach an ocean, and then 'check off' that direction in their mind, and focus in another direction. Rather than constantly forever having the choice at any given moment to continue in a direction endlessly, or switch directions, knowing that that direction is endless as well. A player can establish in their mind a 'map' of their home. A map with boundaries. I think it is easier for a player to 'take ownership' of an area when it has well defined boundaries, as opposed to being just a part of an endless fabric. Moreover, I think that having oceans would allow us to have mountain ranges that make sense, and with mountains and oceans, you can have rivers and valleys. I think the verisimilitude of the world would be greatly advanced by this. I can't claim to know much at all about world gen, but from perusing online discussions it does seem like you need a defined 'continental areas to get this sort of thing. So I support this general arrangement, along the lines of what Tony says. Though specifically I would suggest 32,768 block square. Which is 1024 chunks. This allows a chunk-level bitmap to govern heights across the entire region, as well as mapping oceans, land, and mountains. I think that's all you need to then start drawing rivers on that ~1mb image. Once the rivers are drawn, the 'normal' world-gen then takes place around them, but is always (or at least mostly) 'stapled' to the rivers. This way you don't have to worry about nonsensical elevation changes, because the rivers govern the elevation in their chunks. From what I've read, it's doable, it's just a matter of how much area you want in your zone. A 32k square is a lot of space - much more than TFC2 had for each 'island', and I think you could create a great diversity of landforms in that area. Anything from archipelagos to Continents. As long as each zone is guarantee to have *some* land, I think you could avoid the vast ocean deserts of TFC. Moreover, you could start to organize the minerals. You could have the top sedimentary layer tend to be thicker the closer you get to the ocean. So if a player wants coal or other sediementary resources, perhaps explore more towards the ocean. If you want ores found in igneous/metamorphic, head inland towards the mountains perhaps. If you want to settle in a swamp, then the coasts will be your better bet. If you want a mountain home, and you start on a coast, then you could know to head perpendicular to that coast, or perhaps follow a river inland. So ya, that's my dream in terms of world gen.

I'm late to this discussion, since this was posted the day we left for 2 week vacation. But my belated 2 cents is that having armors whose damage reductions operate in different ways is probably going to be confusing, mainly, possibly also hard to balance. If you did have 3 types of reduction in the game, I think it'd be better if they were consistent across armors, rather than each armor only using 1 of the 3. It would look like a consistent system. 3 different things could read as indecisiveness, or incompleteness. I of course have a preference for the 'tier vs tier' notion I touched on in this post, but that's for a different topic. As for the rest I generally agree. Keep the number of 'active' armor slots small (gauntlets and boots and such can still be there for decorative or accessorial purposes), armor could affect other things like combat speed or number of container slots, etc. A lot depends on the overall goals of the system.

General may have been better, but for simple questions like this, Discord is an even better option. Much more frequented. Regarding your original question, I *think* that whatever mods are in the mod folder, and checked in the mod manager, will be used? I'm not sure on that though. But for the peaceful mod it would be relatively easy to test. It's a mod that doesn't add any blocks, so I really don't think you have anything to lose by just trying it.

No oceans in the game right now, and it's not clear if there will be. As I recall, Saraty found oceans in TFC (the minecraft mod that inspired VS) to be a 'waste of space'. And there were some pretty bad huge endless oceans it's true. Personally I don't think that makes any and all oceans bad. I think oceans would actually be good, and I think they'd be necessary to have 'realistic' rivers, which I think would be extremely good to have. But in any case, that's sort of the state of things at the moment.

I think all the other animals we currently have are either able to be domesticed, or in the case of wolves, their pups will probably be how you get dogs. My guess would be that this is probably intended for wild animals that won't have any domestication purpose, like foxes. But that's just my guess.

Combat in VS is about like MC I think, minus the shield and armor, which aren't implemented yet. As for how it ends up, there's been a lot of suggestions regarding that. I don't think it's set in stone yet. Your biggest worry is wolves, because they can kill you in two hits. So you need to have your head on a swivel in temperate forests. Pillaring up is an easy way to deal with them though. Once you have iron sword, things become much better. The grind is not that bad - tech right now tops out at iron tools, there's no machinery or other fancy uses yet. The sticking point can be bronze. A lot of people seem to have a rough time finding cassiterite. Though you can also do bismuth/zinc for bronze. Mainly just learn to use a propick. If you try to find bronze components just randomly caving, you'll probably have a hard time. The grind right now is significantly less than it was in TFC, in my opinion.

Since we just had a devlog icebox, I thought I'd drop some ideas about how ice box and storage might work. I would hope that ice boxes would require ice to function, and, hopefully ice storage is in itself a mechanic. I don't know if there is a feel for 'when' in the tech tree ice boxes should be thing, but it's a factor to consider when designing the recipe and process. ICE HARVESTING For ice harvesting, presumably lake water will freeze in winter. This could be simply mined via a pick of course. irl ice saws were used, so the saw itself would be another possibility, or even an ice-specific saw, though that would probably be a bit much. The process could be drawn out (hence making ice box refrigeration more significant) by making the harvesting of each block - in raw block form - perhaps require a right-click-hold harvest method, like harvesting a corpse. This would allow it to take a quite awhile. The block could still be straight broken with a pick, fast, but then you get nothing (or ice chunks, but they can't be stored long-term) ICE STORAGE Once harvested, an individual block could be highly encumbering, slowing the player immensely. Making it very attractive to have a cart of some kind to move the ice. I would further suggest the stack size in player inventory be limited to 1, and hotbar only, if not offhand slot only, but that's kind of getting into the inventory discussion. Suffice to say, I'd like to see ice blocks be not easy to move in quantity. Even more interesting would be if a block could be placed, and then 'pushed' by the player in-world causing it to slide along in real space. This might be faster than carrying by hand, but cannot climb at all. Only go down. If a block falls more than 1 block, it shatters into nothing. This would allow the player to have a subterranean ice house, and just slide the blocks in. Once in the ice house, the player needs to properly store them. Once temperature is above freezing, the blocks should melt pretty fast, UNLESS they are bordered on all 6 sides by either another ice block, or a hay block. This would give use to hay blocks. If bordered on all sides by ice blocks, the block does not melt at all. This makes high volume storage better than thin layers. If bordered by some hay blocks, then the ice will melt. The more hay blocks the faster. I don't know if this would potentially cause tick lag though. To remove a block, the player removes a hay bale, an pulls out a block of ice. Harvested ice blocks would need to be different from natural ones, so the stored ones don't require the saw to remove. The player then replaces the hay bale. The whole blocks is still hard to move though, so at that point the player can perhaps break the ice block into chunks, for easy transport. Since chunks can't be stored long-term the same way as blocks, the player should only break up ice blocks as they need them. ICE BOX The actual food storage would happen in the ice box. I think the ice box should be a 2 block tall assemblage, like the bloomery. One half is for the ice, the other for the food. Storage should be less than a normal chest by a column maybe. The construction could be very simple (2 chests plus some straw bales) but presumably this will be one of the best food storages in the game, so I'd instead go for something more involved. For one, metal lining. So several sheets of metal. Copper, bronze, or even stainless, depending on the desired tech gating (Yes I know stainless is a very modern metal, but given the chromium and such it's clearly being angled for). Galvanized steel would also be a possibility. The insulation material I would suggest as perhaps wool or some other animal hair, or perhaps alternatively cork, if cork trees were a thing. Mineral wool could also be used - interestingly it is drawn from slag, so might tie in with the metal refining mechanic. Even the wood case (if one is required) could perhaps be made of milled lumber, requiring a sawmill (so not just regular planks). A combination of metal sheets, insulation material, and milled lumber would I think make it a pretty involved item to make. How often the player needs to stock the ice would need to be carefully balanced. Too often and they won't be practical, too little and they'll be OP. Offhand I would think the ice should last 2-3 days at minimum, so that the player doesn't absolutely have to be on time every day. But possibly longer yet even, if you want to allow some slack for the player to go exploring for several days. But then again, maybe they need to construct an automated ice delivery system to deal with long absences? Anyway, that's my initial thoughts. Make ice boxes expensive, possibly higher tier, and make ice not trivial to harvest and store.

At this moment they don't do anything, and you cannot break them. However, it sounds like soon they will be functional. Don't know if that means we'll be able to move them or not.

Yes, patches of sand and gravel appear in all biomes, so that you should be able to find something to pan anywhere.

Just fyi, because it wasn't clear to me if you know about it already, but there is a cooking pot in the game that allows you to make soup, stew, and porridge. I think this feature came in after Stroam's suggestion. This system will be expanded upon over time, to be sure. But it's pretty labor intensive for each new system, so it's slow going.

You'll need a bronze anvil. There is no iron anvil in the game yet. I don't think the hammer type matters.

The upset only moving in one direction thing was part of my original suggestion. The one effect of that that perhaps is not ideal is that the anvil will need to be spaced away from everything around it, instead of the player being able to place it against a wall, or even in niche. May or may not be a significant annoyance, idk. Probably moreso in the beginning when you're maybe in a small rebuilt ruin or something and don't have tons of room. I do in general support the notion of getting rid of the long string of techniques, even if it were just to reduce the number to a point where you could have a single icon down low by the meters, like how TFC did chisel modes, where that single icon changes every time you press F. Just a bit less intrusive. The hold mouse button for force idea is interesting, and I would not be opposed to trying it out. It does make the system harder, so might turn some people off, idk. And at the same time, it doesn't create a 'secret code' like tfc had, which felt like an accomplishment if you could decipher it. Different pauses for different metals I feel like that would be too much. The metals are too many, and the acceptable range of pause to small I think. However I could see the effect possibly varying with metal heat. But again, that'd make it harder (probably more so than the force mechanic in general) and so idk if it'd be a net benefit or not... Quality based on strikes, idk. I think it only really gains meaning with the timing thing, because it's possible to mis-time and make the wrong move. For people who do not have very good personal skill at the timing, I'm sure it would be frustrating. It'd be interesting to try but also depends on mow much harder (if at all) the devs want the system to be. I do agree the heating system could stand to be tightened up a bit. Currently I can pretty easily do 4 pick heads using only 1 lignite chunk. Tongs I like, quenching to finish, there would need to be better communication of when you have pixels left to remove. Some recipes - the pick I think is one - have corner pixels that need to be cut off, but it's sometimes hard to notice because they're on the corner so the wireframe lack is not as obvious. As for the voxel count, I can kind of agree on removing that, in the current scope. It servers as a sort of loose punishment for being sloppy currently, in certain recipes that take a lot of pixels (spear and arrowheads I think?). But some recipes have tons extra so it doesn't matter so much. And only one recipe - the sheet - takes two ingots currently iirc? At that rate I'd probably just rather have it take two ingots to begin with. If the most ingots the anvil will ever take is 2, then it's probably just as well to get rid of it because I've seen it confuse newbs when they ran out of pixels and couldn't do anymore work. They'll try to re-heat it, still won't work, etc. Seems to me like it's not particularly great in it's current incarnation.

That's like saying there's nothing illogical about math. No, there is nothing illogical about math. But applying math in certain ways to certain situations can be. Food is not uranium. It doesn't decay like that. So you say that one of the strong points about this system is that the math is simple but when it's pointed out it's not simple past the first iteration, you hand-wave away the non-simple part? The rate of the tick-down changes over time. There's a real potential there for the player to feel mislead and confused. That's because it's a logical system with respect to food. irl if you pick 100 fruits, they're all probably going to rot around the same time. Each fruit is individually spoiling the moment it's picked. Not half at X time and a few at 7X. It's made quite clear in the cliff system, and the player doesn't have to question it. In this half-life system, the more work you do, the more you lose after the first iteration. In the cliff system all that food is available for you to use right up till near the end (I'm presuming, I don't know what the ratio will actually be). But one of your criticisms of a time-stamp system is that is clutters inventory in early game. If the player eats all of it in a short timeframe, then that is also not a problem. As for your last several points, I'm not sure what you're getting at. It seems like you're criticizing the cliff system at times, but you also refer to halving, which is not a thing in the cliff system. If you're talking about a half-life system with time stamps, then ya I agree that's probably the worst of both worlds. Tyron stated in discord that current plan is indeed to simply weighted average combined cliff stacks. And that does indeed effectively 'extend' the life of the lower stack. I would perhaps have went with an average that weights the 'more rotten' stack more heavily. Perhaps as if it was double it's weight or something. But, a straight up average is only going to benefit the player, not punish them. So it's not the worst thing in the world. I'll say this additional thing for the cliff system - it's easy to balance. You know exactly how long that food is going to be fresh. The half-life system, you gotta do the maths.