Bring back perception on Quality

[jorb]

What I think sucks eternal monkey balls is the fact that one Q98 spot of anything -- at least theoretically, and often enough in actual practice -- completely devaluates every quality spot of lower quality to near nil. When my alt located a spot of Q78 soil my first thought was "What if the Waynevillains come and take it away from me! ", only to be followed by the sad realization that "Why would they, further Q-spots are useless to them. ". That, if anything, sucks.

There are two separate issues here: The pace at which you can extract material from any given spot, and how much you can get out of it in total.

Let's assume a Q spot has 90000 points. Let's, furthermore, assume that the spot radiates 90000/100 tiles ~ 900 tiles out. Let's furthermore assume that clay extracted from it has 90000/100 = 90 Q, and that, for each unit you dig out, the spot loses one unit per quality of the stuff extracted. (Extracting one unit of Q90 clay reduces the clay spot to 90000-90). Let us then assume that the spot regenerates 100 points per ten minutes of rainfall, or somesuch. It could, perhaps, be regenerated by other factors as well. Composts, fertilizers, what have you. Depending on what type of spot it is. It might also be a good idea if you factored in the distance at which you extract harder, so that you can't easliy exhaust the spot by grief-mining at the perimeter of it. It might also be cool if the spot took much longer to regenerate if it had been mined harder, so that you had to "milk" it, in order to ensure a constant flow of high Q stuff. Mine it too hard and it would take ages to bounce back.

Assuming we port the villages to the square claim system, they would be able to have almost infinite claim areas. This way it could be feasible for villages to control far vaster tracts of land without having to build a gazillion authority objects. You could thus protect at least the most meaningful uptake area of the spot.

Something like that might be an interesting model.

[ElGato]

What I think sucks eternal monkey balls is the fact that one Q98 spot of anything -- at least theoretically, and often enough in actual practice -- completely devaluates every quality spot of lower quality to near nil. When my alt located a spot of Q78 soil my first thought was "What if the Waynevillains come and take it away from me! ", only to be followed by the sad realization that "Why would they, further Q-spots are useless to them. ". That, if anything, sucks.

There are two separate issues here: The pace at which you can extract material from any given spot, and how much you can get out of it in total.

Let's assume a Q spot has 90000 points. Let's, furthermore, assume that the spot radiates 90000/100 tiles ~ 900 tiles out. Let's furthermore assume that clay extracted from it has 90000/100 = 90 Q, and that, for each unit you dig out, the spot loses one unit per quality of the stuff extracted. (Extracting one unit of Q90 clay reduces the clay spot to 90000-90). Let us then assume that the spot regenerates 100 points per ten minutes of rainfall, or somesuch. It could, perhaps, be regenerated by other factors as well. Composts, fertilizers, what have you. Depending on what type of spot it is. It might also be a good idea if you factored in the distance at which you extract harder, so that you can't easliy exhaust the spot by grief-mining at the perimeter of it. It might also be cool if the spot took much longer to regenerate if it had been mined harder, so that you had to "milk" it, in order to ensure a constant flow of high Q stuff. Mine it too hard and it would take ages to bounce back.

Assuming we port the villages to the square claim system, they would be able to have almost infinite claim areas. This way it could be feasible for villages to control far vaster tracts of land without having to build a gazillion authority objects. You could thus protect at least the most meaningful uptake area of the spot.

Something like that might be an interesting model.

moar ideas plz :3
I like to know what you're thinking

[warrri]

Or you make caravans so you can make trades with more than 102 units per run. Then you make digging resources theft.
Then you remove teleporting, isntead add marching (with caravans, or just make caravans steerable like boats over land, thsi will need bridges too).
There you have. One village claims the best spot for themselves and actually trades with others. Othe cant get the resource without trading, and if they dont want to pay that much they have to take lower q resource spots, which make them worthy.

[Zirikana]

jorb: So do you mean that the perimeter of the quality "zone" radiating from the Q spot would decrease in size as it got mined away, or that the size would stay constant but the quality would decrease overall with more and more mining? I can see either way being good or bad, but i haven't thought too hard about it yet...

The idea of having quality taper off to a background level as it reaches the edge of the zone is a great one. Allow for a centralized control of the bulk of the resource, but allow gleaners and suburbanites to get at least some benefit even on the edges. (not sure if that's exactly what you meant, but it seems to amount to the same thing)

As far as recovery rate goes, putting in a non-linear form for bounceback from rain fall would do the trick. If you mine a 90k point (specific quality? what the heck unit would we use for that?) spot down to 10k, it will recover at some rate x1 points/day. If it's only down to 80k points, make it recover at some faster rate x2. I may be way off, but it seems like that would give some more interest to the whole recovery/stewardship thing you're working on.

warri: +1. Are you imagining a caravan as something like a massive uber-cart? maybe have it drawn by oxen/cattle, so that only larger communities can afford to establish a caravan route, but lower level people can still buy space on the caravan...

[jorb]

The fact that any one Q spot (the one with the highest know Q) is in a sence the only meaningful quality point in existance creates a fucked up market. If it were the case that Q spots were exhaustible, at least if mined hard enough, and if not allowed to regenerate, then even the nub who stumbles across a decent Q spot might make a living selling clay from it. You could perhaps also create various tools of extraction -- shovels and hoes and whatnots -- whose quality could determine how "kind" they were to the resource spot. Using a good shovel when extracting clay might make the spot deplete slower, and, thus, yield higher Q for a longer time period, as the values would all be tied to one value in the spot. With this system, the best Q spots would have to be mined fairly selectively for the quality in them not to deplete.

What you are suggesting warrri, is the present system but with better trade. While I would love to have a better trade system in place (or a better system for moving across large distances, rather), it doesn't solve the problem that bothers me with the present system: That one high Q spot renders all other Q spots essentially useless. Nobody can use a Q 20 spot for anything if there is Q50 available. With a system like the one I just outlined, that spot would at least be meaningful for less important projects, as you wouldn't want to extract clay from the Q 50 spot to use for those, if for no other reason than to not diminish the Q50 spot. This would also serve to make the map more interesting, as you would feel the need to control not just one, but several spots. You would, in short, have to think a bit more about how you use your stuff.

@ Zirikana: I meant that the spot would diminish along all dimensions when it was mined. It would raidate a shorter distance, it would yield lower Q stuff. The number of units left in it would always determine the other variables of radiance and whatnot.

[warrri]

What you are suggesting warrri, is the present system but with better trade. While I would love to have a better trade system in place (or a better system for moving across large distances, rather), it doesn't solve the problem that bothers me with the present system: That one high Q spot renders all other Q spots essentially useless. Nobody can use a Q 20 spot for anything if there is Q50 available. With a system like the one I just outlined, that spot would at least be meaningful for less important projects, as you wouldn't want to extract clay from the Q 50 spot to use for those, if for no other reason than to not diminish the Q50 spot. This would also serve to make the map more interesting, as you would feel the need to control not just one, but several spots. You would, in short, have to think a bit more about how you use your stuff.

If you know theres is a better spot but just cant get access to it you will still have to rely on a worse spot. All the lesser spots right now are useless because you can easily get the best quality by using villageport and kin spawning.
Anyway i could live with your suggestion too, as long as it doesnt mean i have to give up 1000 hours of manpower for building up the village because the spot got dry meanwhile and we have to settle somewhere else. And i also hope were not speaking of amounts like 10 tea pots per day..

[Haba]

I would like to see alternatives to possessing high quality spots. Something that involves more effort, but helps to stay in the competition, even if you happen to be too far from the HQ spots to trade. Water purification, composts, fertilization etc. Resource system itself could use some diversification, so that you'd actually have to make harder choices when deciding where to set up your village.

[Cookie]

You realize you have to grind pottery to check for clay and soil first? You realize need a hide before you can check the water q? You realize that running around with your main has the same odds on finding hq spots as running around with new spawned alts? You realize that while you run around with your main you can even feed him and gain lp and stats?

I've had a great deal more luck finding stuff with alts than I have had with my main. My playing style resembles the one attributed to Chak, although more out of the impulse to start over repeatedly rather than because I see an advantage to exploit. It makes a great deal of sense to me to start out on the map by creating a character, taking a quick look around and if the spot is super continuing with him or her, but if the spot sucks the balls off a brass monkey, simply making a new alt. Using alts on the old map for example, I have found four ready established but unclaimed mines. Of course using alts on the old map means that you end up in less exploited territory so there are more accessible resources to find than in the developed area that tends to spring up around my main, whereas in the new map all spots will have an equal chance of being a dud or a settler's dream.

It also is worth noting that no well established player would dream of using the q47 clay ten minutes journey away if he can get to q76 clay half an hour further but this is not the case with newer or lower level players. That q47 clay will do very well if I need an oven to bake q5 bread dough. I might actually not be grinding for points competitively and be more thinking happily in terms of having the prettiest farm or secretly developing a vampire persona or something. And in the current climate of paranoia, I think that some players are avoiding the q76 clay spot just in case it is being camped by high level player killers. I think it is worth noting that there are many different playing styles and goals available in H & H.

So I have no problem with Chak's suggestion. The one thing I am sure of is that the new map and all noob characters will result in new dynamics and new problems and new screams of protest, and new happy ways to exploit or compete. Either way it's good. It would be highly amusing if a shortage of carrots results in players having to push exploration at the expense of all other stats in order to find anything. It would be even more so if quality perception is brought back. Imagine q35 carrots as the new gold!

[Avu]

q35 is still only as good as q10, you mean q 40 of course.

[Potjeh]

Yeah, quasi-depletable is fine with me. I understand the concerns, but I think the main problem here is that you just don't need that much clay. If you made treepots lose quality with use, and made jar quality matter and have them deteriorate with use too, a village's daily need for clay could easily exceed the daily production of their high quality spot.