Game Development: Prelude pt. II

[rye130]

Rivers should now connect various bodies of water.
Rivers should generally be larger.

These changes might make it a bigger problem anyways

[Aisha]

Really love the payment model, tempted to suscribe now that it's fair but i feel that you need to let your suscribers / registered members know about this update in general because they have no idea what's going on unless they visit the forums. I understand you guys dislike annoying players with emails but when you implent such a great change the players need to be notified so they can come back.

[Kyaaa]

Fate Forage
Fate forageables have been significantly reworked, and should now appear more reliably.

I am still not a fan of this at all, and I don't even need to know how it fully works to have that opinion. If the Fate system is still a thing, then that is still limiting me from foraging anything worthwhile despite putting the time and skills into actually looking for good curiosities.
If I want to spend hours using my character with high Explo*Perc to forage things, then I should be rewarded for doing so.
I don't want to sit in a cave all day looking for nothing but Glimmermoss.

This shit is leaving a bad taste in my mouth before the new world has even started...

[loftar]

If the Fate system is still a thing

"Significantly reworked" means significantly reworked. It bears no similarities to the current system whatever.

[Tamalak]

At least give me the choice to spawn in the same supergrid as a friend so it doesn't take ages to get to them.

It is MUCH HARDER to introduce friends to the game when you can't spawn together.

[Aisha]

Do not worry, you can find your buddies easily with the party arrows.

[Smoopadoop]

LOVE YALL MY DUDES

[Ethan]

We've been developing, and here's what's new.

Quality Nodes
We considered removing the tri-quality system entirely, and we still may in the future, but in the end decided to simply generate more coherent quality nodes instead. Quality nodes you find should now generally/more often have some amount of quality in all dimensions, albeit with some distribution.

The tri quality system is very backwards.
Instead of implementing something and then trying to fit it into the game-play. There should be a gameplay mechanic, that needs tri quality to work.

Siege & PvP

• Added catapults. Catapults have 750HP, and can be used while they have more than 150HP. Catapults take 3HP damage per map pixel they move, and 200HP damage each time they fire. A catapult can be used six hours after it is built, and one hour after each repair. Catapults have a soak value of 3. Catapult shots deal, randomly, from 600HP and upwards. It is not possible to launch Hearthlings yet.
• Added a Shield to all claims. In order to attack a claim using a Siege Engine you will first have to break the Shield. While the shield is up, all damage dealt by Siege Engines to structures under the claim will be diverted to the shield. The Shield has 60000 HP, but can only take a maximum of 4000HP damage per hour. The shield's damage resistance increases with damage it takes, but is reset every hour. The shield regenerates 1000HP each hour. Once a shield reaches zero HP left it will break. A broken shield comes back online once it reaches 8000HP. You can find out the status of a claim's shield by inspecting the ground.
• Log Cabins have 5 soak and 5000HP. Timber Houses have 7 soak and 7000HP. Stone Steads have 10 soak and 10000HP. Stone Mansions have 12 soak and 12000HP. Great Halls have 25 soak and 25000HP. Stone Towers have 30soak and 30000HP.
• Thus: By adding more catapults/battering rams to a siege you can break a claim shield faster, asymptotically approaching a theoretical maximum of 3000 damage per hour (4000HP damage minus 1000HP healed), meaning that the fastest speed in which you can break a claim is 20 hours from the first siege engine hit, which gives 26 hours if you count the initial drying time on catapults. Once a shield breaks, siege engines will deal damage to objects as normal.
• Do note that destruction by hand is unaffected by the shield.
• We intend to align the battering ram more with this system as well, but for now it works as it always has until we've had time to implement a more civilian wrecking ball for peaceful purposes.
• Construction and repair of Siege Engines are all limited by a new resource.
• Nidbanes are now limited by a new resource.

Looks like an ok approach, if a bit boring.
A shield heals 24000HP a day.
You can do 4000HP an hour.
Raiders need to able to login for a minimum of period of 7 hours a day, to damage the shield more than it heals.
Doing an hour extra damage (4000hp) means the siege will last 15 days.
I hope you are expanding this system.

So current battering ram style (build and pray) is probably still better for a more casual raider.

Miscellanea
[list]
[*] The energy meter has been extended to hold 10000 energy, rather than 5000. New characters start at 5000 energy. Healing occurs above 8000 energy. Hard labour -- soil digging & mining -- is only possible above 5000 energy. We realize that levling soil sucks, and we want to improve that significantly, but for now we just hate your slave alts. Fuck 'em.

Everything else is 10/10. Good work!

[Glorthan]

At least give me the choice to spawn in the same supergrid as a friend so it doesn't take ages to get to them.

It is MUCH HARDER to introduce friends to the game when you can't spawn together.

+1. You can't really introduce brand new friends to the game if they have to spend hours walking to find you, and this way they miss the best stages of the game: the intial time before the charterstone goes up. You should be able to construct a one use structure to spawn a friend/alt at that doesn't require developed materials.

The update looks very nice by the way.

[FerrousToast]

Miscellanea
[list]
[*] The energy meter has been extended to hold 10000 energy, rather than 5000. New characters start at 5000 energy. Healing occurs above 8000 energy. Hard labour -- soil digging & mining -- is only possible above 5000 energy. We realize that levling soil sucks, and we want to improve that significantly, but for now we just hate your slave alts. Fuck 'em.

if this is how you're intending to go about heavy labor moving forward, you are going to need to SERIOUSLY consider how ALL heavy labor works, not just soil movement. This makes me feel concerned about a noobs ability to chop down a tree and start a fire (firebrands anyone?)