Gazz

Right. No fat shaming animals! =P

The issue: This is a "strict" voxel game (no terrain smoothing or such shenanigans) so if you build roads, they always go in a perfectly straight line. The obvious use case for using those roads is for the player to travel in a likewise straight line... but mouse sensitivity and screen resolution makes that an impossibility. You're always that little fraction of a degree off no matter how hard you try. The suggestion: If the player is moving forward and his heading is within 2-3° of the 8 main directions (0°, 45°, 90°, etc.) then the game will slowly micro-adjust the heading to exactly match the value of this main direction. There would be no UI, nothing to know, nothing to operate. It just "works better". - - - - - - - - Maybe I'm unlucky with resource spawns in my world but there sure is a lot of walking involved in getting all the things.

I know mineralogy, geology and crystallography as part of my job and I really don't want to deal with it in a game. Galena displays as Lead Ore in the game, there is Bi-Zn bronze to match the existing tin bronze, halite is rocksalt, and so on. Download: https://robert.hentschke-keramik.de/VS/Mineralinguistics.zip

Also related: The almighty storage cellar. While doors do have a minor benefit, using trapdoors in place of a door has a bigger one. (the wiki page on that has been outdated for a long time) It's only another 5% but it's definitely worth a few planks and sticks.

On the actual topic... I'm having a bit of trouble with the range. With abundant ores like copper a range of 7 is optimal for me. It's close to the 5-block "reach" of a pick so it works well with a grid and it's low enough to not generate a lot of false positives where you track 2 separate deposits. With rare ores like tin I tried a range of 12 and I got nothing. And nothing. And nothing. Now as a developer I'd probably go "Tough shit. Enjoy a range of 7 and keep digging."

In my game it has turned September and I'm really curious how winter is going to turn out. Now I may be a bit over-prepared with some 25 crock pots of hearty meals in storage plus an ample supply of grains for porridge but no point in taking risks! I just saw mention of greenhouses somewhere here. I didn't know this was a thing. It doesn't seem to be mentioned ingame at all...

That said... The ingame guide on "Prospecting" says: "Prospecting Ready to move on from the copper age?" I would rephrase that to include The Catch: "Prospecting If you have good stockpile of copper for crafting tools you are ready for the next challenge."

I did reinstall the game recently and apparently this is off by default. Without knowing the secret command a new player would have no idea that this even exists. (add to that that you have to find the "mode" key which is inconsistent with other typical "harvesting" tools) Even with it enabled starting out is rough. Yes, you can find the "probability cloud" for copper but you absolutely must have copper to break the rock below so if you find very little on the surface (as I did) your 1-2 copper picks can run out before you find that first vein. I ended up running a panning macro and walked away for an hour or two. I don't think that this should be the intended gameplay.

While you play you are getting messages like "A temporal storm is imminent." If you save/quit and reload the game later, the storm still occurs but it may be a surprise because you get no warning message. (not everyone plays this daily =)) Offhand I cannot think of other likely messages to be repeated upon loading a savegame but there may be some.

Either way you put it you're dealing with a can of worms of varying player expectations. That's why I made the suggestions specifically for tool heads. Simple, useful, and no arguments.

But that's exactly what I mean. In combat it should be quite hard to "quickly undress, heal, and dress again". Making the UI "laggy" to achieve that can not be the way. This is what my suggestion would streamline. If you hit something (or get hit) while wearing armor with a Healing Efficiency of -50%... then you get this debuff, giving you those same -50% for say, 10 seconds or however long works - regardless of wearing armor. Out of combat heals always work at 100% because it is assumed that you take the time to peel off that armor first. Then gear switching can be quick and crisp but "combat heals" are done at a penalty. Forced UI lag is still UI lag and that's never a good thing.

Right now the way Healing Efficiency is implemented causes a lot of micromanagement (the Barbie dressing game) - and it does not have to. The way I understand the purpose of Healing Efficiency is that you should not be able to quickly and cheaply heal up in combat. How I would design it: Being in combat (getting hit or hitting other entities) creates a timed debuff that applies the Healing Efficiency. When the timer runs out you can heal at normal efficiency. If you do heal in combat anyway you accept the loss knowingly.

Hmm. I'd need a much bigger hotbar to reserve space for that and even then the game would constantly fill those slots up with whatever is picked up. A more likely scenario is that you Shift-click armor into the inventory (like when you want to heal up) and then you have to equip it from there. I would also suggest a different approach on handling Healing Efficiency but this topic is not the place for it.

In my current game I have large tool racks of bronze tools and weapons, 18000 units of bronze in crucibles, ready to re-heat and cast, and a pile of about 70 ingots. Plus plenty of ore to make more. In case of war, I guess. I'm just saying that with the current system it's perfectly possible to pile up completely unreasonable amounts of metal. Now what I _did_ do is create a mod to re-balance the ores. Not a flat increase (there is a game option for that) but weighted to predominantly increase the "rare" ones. Still a lot of work traveling and prospecting but it's a... bigger needle in a haystack. I hear you on accessibility. Ingame documentation / guidance is sketchy at best and item descriptions (like on the hammer / propick) that could point out special features and controls are sometimes completely missing. (I know, it's alpha and that's not at all the focus)

This was certainly improved in 1.12.11 but here is another: I suggest that empty armor slots should be the preferred target for armor items. Right now they default to switching between backpack and tool belt and that makes putting on armor a bit harder than it should be.

Smelting (used) tools is a balancing consideration so I wouldn't go there. The not-yet-attached metal tool heads, however, are basic inventory items. If I can cast it for 100 units, I should be allowed to smelt it for 100 units.

There is macro software like Autohotkey. It does hotkeys but also text replacement. If I want to place a "no ore here" waypoint on the map I type "//zero" and on the chat line appears... /waypoint add darkblue ---

When mining you will quickly add up "temporal debt" or however you call it. A temporal storm means standing on a dirt pillar for several minutes. In a "stable area" it took 7 minutes to fill up 50% of that cog so you basically go AFK for that long. (at a mine I tried to fill the time with cutting wood / making charcoal but that doesn't take very long) In both cases the gameplay of standing there waiting for several minutes is not exciting or rewarding. In a single player game, sleeping on a bed in should turn that temporal cog so it can be used to pass time during a temporal storm or fill up that cog so that you can continue mining. Of course you should be smart enough to be sleeping in a safe location, just like sleeping isn't a great idea when you're starving.

Thank you. That worked. I had tried to place it in water but that only replaced the water block...

In a completely different Discord channel someone revealed the secret. You have to press F.

When a crock contains rotten foot it will eventually turn into an empty crock automatically. With a bowl there is no timer displayed and I found no action that would empty it. (well, eating that "food" empties the bowl but... that's yucky =))

Still not working in 1.12.9 stable... or missing a critical piece of instruction.

Master of Magic, Magic Carpet, Bard's Tale 1, UFO/X-Com, Civilisation 1, Gunship 2000, Wasteland, X3. There can't be just one game.

Well, what does the game want to be? It's true that right now mine carts would not be a big help with mining - only with large distance transportation. The question is: Is "mining infrastructure" an actual topic in the design? If not then this may simply be working as designed. Prospecting actually works. The issue is that there is zero guidance on it ingame and not everyone plays games with a Wiki up on another monitor. Improve the interface / documentation of it and it would work fine.

Sometimes RNGesus is trolling you hard. After a lot of prospecting I found a nice copper deposit. After digging down a few blocks I hit a layer of quartz-in-rock that requires a bronze pick to get through. LOL