Buffing the non-travel benefits of roads

[Sevenless]

Roads without traveling along them are... quaint. There's some mild convenience in using them, but it's offset by lulling you to potential animal attacks at the very least. Further, many people have complained there's no real incentive to actually pave under them, which would seem appropriate. No matter what happens to the travel weariness situation, I still feel these changes are appropriate. It might actually help alleviate some of the issues caused by travel weariness modifications since it would make roads significantly more usable without quick teleports.

Issue #1: Lack of protection compared to travelling.

Currently when following a road you are open to pve and pvp attacks. Since we're taking the time to actually walk the road, the same protections that a traveller receives should be applied to someone walking the road. Animals will not aggro, players cannot attack you. However, if you are waylayed by hitting any object on the path, you lose these protections and get kicked out of following the road. This gives protection against animals, and at least some degree of protection against pvp although someone could easily drop a log in front of you to knock you out of the path if they see you coming.

Issue #2: Speed

Walking a road provides zero benefits compared to just heading out yourself. In fact, since roads usually zig zag a bit to get around obstacles sometimes it's faster to travel manually. To alleviate this, roads should give infinite stamina while following them. This provides dual incentives. First, it becomes faster to follow it than heading out on foot because stamina always limits manual travel speed. Second it actually gives paving the road a benefit, since unlocking higher speeds in forest terrain is now beneficial. I wouldn't want to say "this benefit only applies to roads that are paved" namely because it would make this benefit far too difficult to actually acquire, and many would go back to ignoring the follow aspect of roads. I don't expect most roads to be paved, but at least some would find it useful.

Issue caused by these changes: Unintended horse buff

Horses become a bit OP with the above listed changes, especially in the situation of unpaved roads being slapped everywhere. I would potentially suggest a nerf to horses making it so that they are limited to the same travel speed options that hearthlings are. Sprinting would be disabled in forest terrain to encourage paving and limit the travel speed of horses somewhat. I would actually suggest nerfing horses to only being able to sprint on pavement to further incentivize paving and using roads, however I will 100% admit I'm not sure if this has adverse effects elsewhere in the game that are tolerable (pvp? hunting? etc).

[Agame]

This is full of nerf requests for stuff that is useful.

No.

[ErdTod]

Only kinda good thing here IMO is speed+stamina bonus (not infinite stamina, though) for following the roads. Something like chasing the rabbit in the shoes, or the speed buff.

And since i'd like to see paved roads too for the sake of RP, prolly fot that to happen signs need to provide a bluepring of pavement, that would make it easier to pave (similar to the surveying tool, but for paving without the need to move from tile to tile, but ratehr building it like a structure)

[jorb]

Will consider a speed or stamina buff when following roads.

[Granger]

I would be happy if characters following roads would give a chance to stomp natural tiles to dirt and destroy vines on pavement.

[ErdTod]

@Granfer - that's awesome way to "pave" with dirt roads without work!

[terechgracz]

I would be happy if characters following roads would give a chance to stomp natural tiles to dirt and destroy vines on pavement.

Would like this happening everytime you walk. Would like to see roads from villages toward water or nearby swamps. The minus is less stealth but if you want be stealthy you have to go diffrent path everytime.

[Granger]

I would be happy if characters following roads would give a chance to stomp natural tiles to dirt and destroy vines on pavement.

Would like this happening everytime you walk. Would like to see roads from villages toward water or nearby swamps. The minus is less stealth but if you want be stealthy you have to go diffrent path everytime.

Thought about that too, but this should get another data layer (tracking traversals so tiles would only turn when passed over repeatedly, with decay reducing the count so a decay hit won't instantly turn a heavily used tile back to nature) as IMHO having a boolean chance of turning random tiles through walking over them once would turn the world ugly - but such a chance would be enough when coupled with following roads as these make sure that always the same tiles are traversed.

Thus: quick thing to randomly turn tiles when following roads, long term project to add a traversal tracking layer to the general world that acts as an arbiter between decay and character movement to decide between nature flourishing and hearthlings trampling it to dust...

[pppp]

It can be made so some shoes, maybe snakeskin shoes, prevent stomping to allow stealth mode. Rabbit slippers can reduce stomp rate. Horses should stomp more.