Extreme Scarcity

[EpicAaron]

There is lots of exciting discussion about potential avenues of development. As the community thinks about various add-on ideas over the coming weeks, I'd like to throw out an idea that I have been mulling over in my head for months. I meant to bring it up to FC, but never really had the courage to do so. It's also probably a very unpopular suggestion.

I think trees and various other natural resources are far too renewable. The apocalyptic image of a clear cut hillside dotted with stumps or a burnt out grove of black trunks are some of the strongest aspects of BTW's design. The game really sticks it to you that your actions have an impact on the world around you. That said, even with the decreased growth time, tree farming is pretty much trivial. Players will plant trees in their bases in order to have a crafting table... this seems silly to me. You should have to move your base around a stump or somehow drag one over, not plant a stump right in your house. Of course, the convenience of having a table right there is too great--of course you'll do that! I wish orchards and groves were more of a project. Something to cultivate over the course of a play through.

I have the same feelings toward grass. It strikes me as very odd that grass's incredible growth time can be exploited to make conveyor belts to feed animals indefinitely. I love grass conveyors, but I don't love that they are the ultimate form of animal farming. Animal hunger evidently needs a lot of re-balancing, of course. My original vision for industrial animal farming was towers of hydroponic wheat and massive piston shovel plants producing grass blocks and recycling dirt. Of course, if grass took even longer to regrow, players would have to build even larger pastures. I know Dawnraider is not a fan of that idea!

Just something to think about. I love that Better Than Wolves encourages players to think about their own impact on the environment, and more features and tweaks that encourage thoughtful approaches to the long term health/unhealth of the world would be sweet. Hardcore industrial smog anyone? Hardcore blight infestation? That kind of thing.

[jakerman999]

I've actually had the thought "what if planting saplings was gated behind tilled earth?" before, which resonates with making planting crafting tables more difficult. I'm not sure it goes quite as far as you're thinking though.

I have a vague recollection of FC wanting to rework grass growing mechanics so that people stopped suggesting grass roofs as solutions to pens; but I also fear I'm putting words in his mouth. My own opinion is that the system could use some more depth; the snowball of animals eating themselves into starvation because of overcrowding is hilarious, but the tipping point needs to not be such a steep drop off and immediate thing.

[dawnraider]

Yeah FC did hate grass roofs. Quite frankly they are kind of lame, but the snowballing effects of animals eating grass is way to harsh.

Sarudak a while back had an idea about having grass have multiple stages which would help with that. I don't remember the exact mechanics he had come up with so I'd rather have him describe it.

[EpicAaron]

I love the patchy grass idea.

I think animals would have to consume a lot slower to make grass management more, well manageable. Right now, they eat so fast and so much that there is pretty much no way to establish a reasonable feeding schedule or pasture rotation.

[Sarudak]

The grass idea was pretty simple.

• Grass gets two stages. Call them patchy and lush.

• Lush grass can spread patchy grass to nearby tiles like normal. (this would be slower than in current BTW)

• Patchy grass grows into lush grass over time.

• Animals prefer lush grass and when they eat revert it to patchy.

• Animals will eat patchy grass converting it to dirt only if they can't get lush grass

The net effect should encourage people to build big fields. Weird stuff like grass roofs and pillars of grass won't be preferred because spreading grass is a much worse source of food than patchy -> lush growth. Instead you will prefer as many grass squares to be available to eat from. Additionally you should be able to easily tell by observation how much more capacity the field has (if there are 40% patchy spots then you're at ~40% capacity). Finally it will be stable because growth increases as more lush grass is eaten instead of decreasing.

[Lockeofamber]

I like that idea!

If I may, then perhaps an extension could be to bring back some of the vanilla functionality of bonemeal on patchy grass. Let bonemeal that drops onto it (so automatable with regular dispensers) decreases the time needed to go from patchy to lush by ~50%. This way, spamming doesn't come back, but you don't need insanely complex grass conveyors just to keep cows fed in a smaller footprint later in the progression.

[EpicAaron]

My sense is that automated animal farming should ultimately have the animals hooked into harnesses. There is something horrific and very BTW about keeping the animals in a single spot as breeding machines. Problem is, you can't fully automate wheat in the current version. Hardcore grain threshing?

[Whuppee]

My sense is that automated animal farming should ultimately have the animals hooked into harnesses. There is something horrific and very BTW about keeping the animals in a single spot as breeding machines. Problem is, you can't fully automate wheat in the current version. Hardcore grain threshing?

Definitely harnesses. Also force-feeding, preferably involving a hat, bellows-like compression, and mechanical power, reversing the process by which hats extract food from you. You have to dial in the timing though, since excessive overfeeding explodes the fed animal.

(also would be quite onboard with trees taking longer to grow. and I like the sound of multi-stage grass as an alternative or disincentive to things like grass roofs, maximizing the science of regrowth, and conveyors, which I don't want to normalize as the best solution. would want it tuned somehow so as to make pens more stable, without allowing them to support more animals)

[Hiracho]

Lol whuppee :D applying for lead designer? we need more of that darkness inside you <3

[Whuppee]

=p <3

[EpicAaron]

So, I got really into Factorio again this past month. When I say that, I mean it consumed me. I have been trying to squeeze play time in every chance I get. Truly a wonderful game!

Now, I knew the game had a pollution system and that this system played with the mobs somehow, but I never really paid much attention to it. That is, until I started a death world run. After my buddy and I witnessed an endless stream of biters take down our blue science level factory, we realized that we had fatally underestimated the game's mechanics. My buddy quit the run while I went into hiding, living off grid with some solar panels and science machines in the wood. I made some ineffective guerilla attacks against nearby nests and scavanged the old factory while avoiding packs of aliens. This was actually a fun little way to play the game. Eventually, the pollution cloud diminished on its own and the attacks stopped. At this point, I returned to the old nucleus of my factory and started from scratch. In this second factory, I pay careful attention to my pollution, turn off machines every now and then, and generally play a lot more enviromentally conciously (no more clear cutting forests!). I am having a blast.

My question is: can we do something like this in Minecraft? Can MC chunks have a pollution value that darkens the sky and makes the mobs more aggressive? BTW already has blight, but that system isn't used all that much. Factorio showed me that games can have robust enviromental systems that mirror some of our own struggles with industrialization, and I think that kind of thing is right up BTW's alley.

[jackatthekilns]

My question is: can we do something like this in Minecraft? Can MC chunks have a pollution value that darkens the sky and makes the mobs more aggressive? BTW already has blight, but that system isn't used all that much. Factorio showed me that games can have robust enviromental systems that mirror some of our own struggles with industrialization, and I think that kind of thing is right up BTW's alley.

I think there could be something to this. Maybe there could be some kind of balance between automated systems causing some new kind of trade-off giving the player an option to automate or see value in a more natural approach (i.e. large pastures for animal breeding v. automated slaughter houses) I know the slaughter-house is more in line with the traditional vibe of BTW, but I'm always up for ideas that give players meaningful choices. I know that was a big design goal for FC.

[EpicAaron]

Granted, I don't think BTW even needs to give the player a choice there. Factorio gives the player solar panels, but at the end of the day all the mining drills and ovens needed for a massive rocket-launching factory are going to cause a lot of pollution anyway. The inevitability of the destruction is part of the message, just like how players in BTW cannot help but slaughter everything in their path and harvest the earth. BTW exposes a ruthlessness of the human condition, as does Factorio.

If we had automated blasting charges, I'm sure massive craters would be a lot more common in players' worlds.

[dawnraider]

Personally I don't think that would really fit into BTW itself, although it could make for an interesting addon.