Pontoons

[Onionfighter]

I know there have been many boat suggestions, oh well.

Pontoons: Essentially large rafts that carts, battering rams, or livestock can be transported on. Compared to rowboats, they would move quite slowly (walk or crawl).

[Flocke]

and what about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_%28crossing%29

maybe as a new form of terraforming in this game:
make deep water to shallow water!

i'm not sure but can you pull a cart through shallow water? is that still possible now?

[jlt314]

second that. it would be awesome being able to make your own fords and to cross rivers without having to build a boat and to make your own fords . it has to be costly to prevent abuse (e.g. 100 stone and 100 soil per 1 grid unit of ford), otherwise all rivers will be forded in no time. maybe making a ford should make the river unpassable by larger craft than basic rowboats and rafts, or forcing passage would partially destroy the ford, forcing advanced communities to erect bridges.
maybe having a second skill, which terraforms shallow water into deep water, e.g. making certain shores forbidden to land from rowboat. maybe adding a skill to find fords, too.

[Jackard]

second that. it would be awesome being able to make your own fords and to cross rivers without having to build a boat and to make your own fords . it has to be costly to prevent abuse (e.g. 100 stone and 100 soil per 1 grid unit of ford), otherwise all rivers will be forded in no time. maybe making a ford should make the river unpassable by larger craft than basic rowboats and rafts, or forcing passage would partially destroy the ford, forcing advanced communities to erect bridges.
maybe having a second skill, which terraforms shallow water into deep water, e.g. making certain shores forbidden to land from rowboat. maybe adding a skill to find fords, too.

so do you just arbitrarily come up with numbers and never give your ideas a second thought because this entire post is ridiculous

[jlt314]

there are 4 small smybols, "e.g.", in front of the numbers. this means that I'm well aware of the following numbers being arbitrary and open to discussion
otherwise, the existance of fords is a valid idea, because right now players, especially ore-seekers, cross rivers by building a new boat at every shore. artificial fords are IMHO also a valid idea, but need hard constraints. I've suggested using stones and soil to build up an artificial shallow area, as a shallow crossing a river (with current gameplay) would be a ford. while I'm not sure if fords were built during medieval times, the modern day technology to build artificial shallows and islands works by setting down a foundation of massive boulders and piling sand and soil on top. setting up a special skill is nigh useless (a single ford-builder would just need to cross the map once), so the constraint has to be by materials (and anything below 100 appears too little to me, as chipping, digging and laying down 10 stone and 10 soil would take just a few minutes).
it's obvious that a ford impedes shipcraft, so I've suggested forcing players to either bridge rivers or carry boats and rafts overland around the fords (in the current gameplay rowboats freely cross shallows, so overland wouldn't be needed). but while a boat trip works this way, larger ships need an interaction effect with fords. this could be either simple blocked passage, or destruction of fords by forced passage. I've suggested the second option, but that's of course open to discussion.
and if such a terraforming method is added, the reverse action should be added, too. maybe a combination skill to dig channels and dig out shallows.

P.S. so if you don't like 2 numbers, come up with your own suggestions, nee?

[Onionfighter]

Oh, for fuck sake, how about some goddamn pontoons?

[jlt314]

let's make rafts of e.g. 3x3 grids and pontoons of 5x5 or even 5x7 grids although I'd like to see them crafted from logs. or maybe a few boards (3-5 for raft, 9-12 for pontoon) and lots of blocks of wood (15-20 for raft and 60-70 for pontoon), and of course different speeds - boats move at running speed, rafts at walking and pontoons at crawling. and if the devs say that's possible to code, then actual pontoon bridges

[ImpalerWrG]

While not a terrible idea I find Pontoons inferior to naturally occurring fords (shallow water section in river) with the ability to walk animals across it. The fact the maps already been generated may make this impossible to add as a natural feature and I am not in favor of making them artificially. Larger vessels like barges have been discussed and moving livestock on them should be possible but having a vessel primarily for livestock seems like a poor use of developer resources.

[Jackard]

otherwise, the existance of fords is a valid idea, because right now players, especially ore-seekers, cross rivers by building a new boat at every shore.

fords are a nice idea and have been brought up before, your suggested implementation of them was not. here, ill highlight the parts of your post that are bad ideas or just plain wrong since im such a nice fucking guy:

second that. it would be awesome being able to make your own fords and to cross rivers without having to build a boat and to make your own fords. it has to be costly to prevent abuse (e.g. 100 stone and 100 soil per 1 grid unit of ford), otherwise all rivers will be forded in no time. maybe making a ford should make the river unpassable by larger craft than basic rowboats and rafts, or forcing passage would partially destroy the ford, forcing advanced communities to erect bridges.
maybe having a second skill, which terraforms shallow water into deep water, e.g. making certain shores forbidden to land from rowboat. maybe adding a skill to find fords, too.

there are 4 small symbols, "e.g.", in front of the numbers. this means that I'm well aware of the following numbers being arbitrary and open to discussion ;)
otherwise, the existence of fords is a valid idea, because right now players, especially ore-seekers, cross rivers by building a new boat at every shore. artificial fords are IMHO also a valid idea, but need hard constraints. I've suggested using stones and soil to build up an artificial shallow area, as a shallow crossing a river (with current gameplay) would be a ford. while I'm not sure if fords were built during medieval times, the modern day technology to build artificial shallows and islands works by setting down a foundation of massive boulders and piling sand and soil on top. setting up a special skill is nigh useless (a single ford-builder would just need to cross the map once), so the constraint has to be by materials (and anything below 100 appears too little to me, as chipping, digging and laying down 10 stone and 10 soil would take just a few minutes).

it's obvious that a ford impedes shipcraft, so I've suggested forcing players to either bridge rivers or carry boats and rafts overland around the fords (in the current gameplay rowboats freely cross shallows, so overland wouldn't be needed). but while a boat trip works this way, larger ships need an interaction effect with fords. this could be either simple blocked passage, or destruction of fords by forced passage. I've suggested the second option, but that's of course open to discussion.
and if such a terraforming method is added, the reverse action should be added, too. maybe a combination skill to dig channels and dig out shallows.

P.S. so if you don't like 2 numbers, come up with your own suggestions, nee?

[Jackard]

For one, ten stone+soil for each tile across an entire river is not the trivial task you seem to believe it is. For two, anything you can use to blockade rivers is a bad fucking idea and defeats the entire point of boats. And if fords are meant as a workaround for the difficulty devs are having with adding bridges, why the hell would you offer bridges as a solution to fords blocking travel. Finally, if fords are supposed to be so expensive why would you make them so easy for griefers and other players to destroy.

Your shit was not thought through.

While not a terrible idea I find Pontoons inferior to naturally occurring fords (shallow water section in river) with the ability to walk animals across it. The fact the maps already been generated may make this impossible to add as a natural feature and I am not in favor of making them artificially. Larger vessels like barges have been discussed and moving livestock on them should be possible but having a vessel primarily for livestock seems like a poor use of developer resources.

Natural fords are great, we got close to seeing something like them on the fractal test map.