DeanF

Coin armor. But made with gears.

I was pretty opposed to firearms in the game. But then I watched some videos where players used the firearms mod that basically added smoothbore muzzle-loaders and I had to admit... it didn't seem discordant. It still seemed primitive. And heck, we have bombs already. So I guess that now I wouldn't object, especially if reload times were appropriately long. Meh, those are all debatable. Early muskets were practically small cannons. .75 caliber was typical. And no, muzzle velocity wasn't particularly high compared to a modern rifle, but it was still supersonic and that's a big chunk of lead. You're thinking of things like the little .36 pocket pistols that ladies carried in their muffs when you say underpowered. But muskets ended the age of the plate-armored knight, for heaven's sake! Yes you could make musket-proof plate, but that was so heavy that they eventually only made them as cuirass rather than full suits. And early firearms like matchlocks were certainly cheaper than swords- by a huge margin, actually. But not cheaper than common soldiers' weapons like pikes or other polearms. So that's a bit relative. Accuracy, again, is relative. No, smoothbores are not accurate by modern rifle standards, but nonetheless more accurate than most people think, especially when carefully loaded. That's why commanders tended to save the first volley- "Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes!", and so on. I won't get into it, but they lose accuracy mostly during rapid fire. Which is what militaries cared about, so their bullet tolerances were loose so that they could be reloaded faster, for instance. But a tightly-fitted smoothbore ball could be pretty accurate. At least as much so as a bow or crossbow. Here are videos of someone shooting a smoothbore and ringing the target like a bell, center of mass hits every time: Seriously- when you see the target later in the video he had three shots stacked on top of each other. If you are unfamiliar with Karl Kasarda, he's one of the more academic GunTubers. (As opposed to the hairy-chested GunTubers.) He is one of very few that I'm willing to watch any more, along with his old partner Ian McCollum. And here is a relative firearms novice (see his awkward stance) doing the same: You got the big advantage right, though- it was a hell of a lot easier to train a musketeer than an archer. Especially at long ranges their trajectory is much more flat. "To train an archer, begin by training his grandfather." But firearms are better in many ways. There is a reason that every culture that was ever introduced to them came to prefer them over their other historical weapons. Yes, even the Japanese.

Yes, this is true. The folks at cartographersguild.com, where they make fictional maps, are quite dedicated about criticizing this mistake. They call them the River Police. With extremely rare exception, rivers combine, they don't fork. Another thing that trips up amateur cartographers for some inexplicable reason is the fact that water flows downhill. I still get boggled when I see that one violated. Given the way that VS worldgen proceeds in chunks, I can see a lot of difficulties with generating rivers. They sort of have to flow downhill, and how can that be predicted for a downstream chunk that hasn't generated yet? You might have to recreate the whole worldgen process to include an erosion mechanic. Steal it from a program like Wilbur?. (Wilbur works by moving voxels downhill scaled for slope and rainfall.) I suspect that is why all of the mods that add "rivers" result in some pretty odd geography, like holes punched through mountains. That's just a problem with any game that descends from that other voxel game, y'know? The basic worldgen that got inherited is problematic. It really should be erosion-based instead, but crap that's practically starting development over again completely. The little streams and rivulets that we have now are a lot easier- they just need to end in ponds in low areas instead of magically dissipating.

I like it. The clamming might be easier to implement. Put "shows" like breathing holes and squirts in sand that has clams. But oyster shoals in shallow saltwater would be pretty nice, too- those could work sort of like berry bushes. An while we are at it, where are the crawfish and crabs?

A very interesting video. But the programming isn't really insurmountable- it's been done before, at least as early as the 1990s. The problem is players... Players generally decimate ecosystems in games. See Ultima Online for an example: Or at least that's the example that I remember. Have complex ecologies actually worked in a game at some point? Also, the idea might actually work in a solo game. If you decimate the local wildlife, then there are no animals left to hunt and it's your own fault. But in a multiplayer game the Tragedy of the Commons always manifests.

Hmm, I just learned that animal spawn areas persist. For instance, even if you deforest an area, the wolf spawn locations there will still spawn wolves. So maybe we do need animal markers? For marking hunting grounds, per se... A wolf and bear to mark danger zones, or maybe their paw prints or something, and then prey animals: a pig, a sheep/goat, a deer, etc. A fish symbol, for sure.

You can already preserve meat in salt; I think that fills the sausage niche. But a smoker for making jerky would be nice, though for gameplay reasons the smoked meat should not last as long as the salted meat- it is harder to find the salt, so it should have a benefit. You should also have to make it in batches- sort of like charcoal- to keep it from being ubiquitous in the early game. For example you might have to make a firepit in a hole, build a tipi smoker over it with sticks and some raw hides, load it with meat (and I think that bushmeat should work as well as red meat), and wait 20 hours or so before breaking it like a skep. These smokers could be different sizes and capacities, depending upon whether you use two small, medium, or large hides (and more sticks). The sticks and hide should be partly recoverable- when you break the tipi you get one hide and half the sticks back. These could be raw hides- they shouldn't need to be preserved, though preserved ones or even leather should work fine in a pinch. I envision each smoker having four input slots, like making a meal. Red meat, bushmeat, poultry, and fish filets should all be smokable, and lose a slight bit of nutritional value when smoked, again for gameplay reasons. The small smoker only accepts one item per slot (total 4), but the medium one accepts two (total 8 ) and the large one accepts four (total 16). But meat, fat, and berries is a pretty simple recipe, so pemmican gets my vote. Even better if you have to use the smoked meat above as the meat to make the pemmican, since after all pemmican is supposed to be made with ground dried meat, and then the benefit of all of that effort is that pemmican should last as long as salted meat. And it probably shouldn't be possible with fish... maybe? (Was there ever an example of fish pemmican?) You definitely should still have to make pemmican in a pot, though the cook time would be very fast. Production chains in survival games are always a good thing. So long as animal fat and the vegetable oils from sunflowers and olive are discrete, the vegetable oils should not work for making pemmican- only animal fat. Yet again for gameplay reasons, it might be best if pemmican were treated like other meals, meaning that you need a bowl, and crocks. Two smoked meat, a fat, and a berries makes one meal of pemmican. With all of these mechanics, you can definitely make salted meat more easily in much larger batches... once you have the salt. That's it's big advantage over pemmican. Pemmican should be a small-batch stone age technology. Hardtack or pilot bread might work, so long as you had to make soup out of it to actually eat it- the resulting meal could be called "mush". Otherwise hardtack should be inedible. But it should have some sort of shelf life, even if it's a very long one, like grain.

I want landform labels- a mountain peak symbol for naming mountains, a wave symbol (or maybe water droplet?) for naming water features, and something for naming valleys and depressions (not sure what symbol). I want to annotate that I live on Half-Moon Bay with Elephant Mountain to my north... There should probably be windmill and water wheel symbols. Likewise, a tipi symbol for campsites or small structures you've built that are less than a home base. I leave standardized 6x7 waystations everywhere, for example. An anchor symbol, for marking good landing sites for rafts, boats, and the sailboat. A question mark would be nice for doing map recon- as sort of a "What the hell is this?" on some map feature that you want to check out. And if we're doing that, then an exclamation point as a danger marker might be justifiable, perhaps even in a triangle like the European "Caution" traffic symbol, so that the color is easier to see. Alternatively, the circle-slash symbol might work. A symbol for a wolf and a bear have been requested by many people, but I'd rather just have a single generic symbol of a fanged mouth to represent any animal threat. Maybe a fish symbol, too. And honestly, I'd love what Simple Map Markers gives you- chemical element abbreviations. Perhaps as a toggleable option for those who don't like such things. Finally, what I hope is a helpful critique from someone with old eyes- the pickaxe symbol is too skinny to see the color easily. It should be crossed picks instead. Likewise, it might help to make the berries on the berry branch symbol a tad larger.

I mean in the ocean, not in lakes. And mundane animals like sharks, of course. Both only over deep water, since what I think would be desirable is to discourage long deep-water swims. Or is the sea supposed to be a peaceful, idyllic place?

Hmm. I'm not sure about a trunk in something like a canoe. But a chest, sure- all of the 1 block storage options. So I think that reed chests, wooden chests, and storage vessels should all be allowed.

Ah, yes, my chisel was used...

Is there a way to recycle a copper anvil for the copper? I tried putting it in the crafting grid with a hammer and an chisel, but nothing happened. I tried attacking it with the chisel with the hammer in my off hand, but it just dropped the anvil whole.

I'm thinking this, too. Even a stack of 8 would be overpowering. I agree that the game is very inconsistent regarding the size of gears, though, and sort of agree with a string of something less than a thousand. Sounds reasonable.

Yes, bears aren't really endurance hunters. Wolves are, though- they should pursue you relentlessly. They swim slowly, though- a human should out-pace them in water, unlike bears (well, brown and polar varieties) who can swim as fast as Michael Phelps. On that subject, boar can indeed be aggressive, but they generally don't make long pursuits. They should have the lowest pursuit times. And is it just me or are the goats OP? They're relentless, faster than you can run, and a butt damned nears knocks off half of your health in the early game.

Ooooh, nice. Madder- delightfully ancient. I approve. Isn't madder the reason that British uniforms were red? It was available and cheap? Or am I thinking of something else? Also, like cinnabar, I'm pretty sure that lapis was used as a pigment in paints, not as a dye for cloth, wasn't it?