The new smelter gives me depression

[Undefined]

As this is the only thread talking about the Stack Furnace: What happens if you put Chalcopyrite in it? Does it give only the copper with the iron becoming slag? Does it just not smelt?

I've only seemed to get copper in this situation

[Apocoreo]

Any mechanic which accomplishes that is fine, but I would like that to be possible, because it is IMMERSIVE and cute.

100% agree, that's definitely a draw to the game. But if immersion take precedence all the time you're going to see constant critique thread about balancing.

[eliminator]

I am totally cba making a bot for this stuff. You use it for only like 3 days at most and i dont mind clicking it once in a while. Also you can probably detect it by overlay change instead of clicking in X seconds.

[Jackwolf]

If it's something you'd be willing to make a tad more obvious, you could also show the bellows "meter" in the window when you click the stack furance

this, a bar for the bellows like the temperature of the fireplace would be useful.

Ooh, yeah, I like that. Simple, yet effective in conveying/displaying

[Agrik]

Talking about with specificity about specific mechanics is a lot more likely to engender change than talking about us in banal generality. Feel free to suggest improvements.

Botting gets encouraged when there is a too simple (brainless) activity with too significant reward (outcome).

Thus, either the activity needs to be made to require more brain usage (instead of time), by a mini-game, for example, or the result needs to be diminished to the point that botters cannot be bothered to run a bot good enough to accomplish it. Likely both.

BTW, one of the best mini-games I met in HH was that old fishing with actions and messages, though I'm not sure whether it was dependent on sufficiently many parameters.

[jorb]

Talking about with specificity about specific mechanics is a lot more likely to engender change than talking about us in banal generality. Feel free to suggest improvements.

Botting gets encouraged when there is a too simple (brainless) activity with too significant reward (outcome).

Thus, either the activity needs to be made to require more brain usage (instead of time), by a mini-game, for example, or the result needs to be diminished to the point that botters cannot be bothered to run a bot good enough to accomplish it. Likely both.

... so what's your take on them (bots), then?
Our philosophy has been, and remains, that we – rather than spend our time fighting losing battles – should focus on building a better game with fewer incentives to bot. We try to take botting as a sign of a broken game mechanic, rather than as a sign of broken players.

Been here since forever. I agree entirely. The discussion should, imho, be about how we can do that better, with reference to specific interactions and how they can be concretely improved. The general point is entirely uncontroversial.

[Agrik]

...should focus on building a better game with fewer incentives to bot. We try to take botting as a sign of a broken game mechanic, rather than as a sign of broken players.

I'm glad to see this rare stance.

The discussion should, imho, be about how we can do that better, with reference to specific interactions and how they can be concretely improved.

Well, a quick fix would be to diminish bonuses (from blowing the bellows and from turning the spit) until the mechanic is improved.

A workaround may be to add auto-turning and auto-pumping mechanisms, so anybody aiming at industrial scale production would switch to it (instead of using tons of "slaves"). it can be a mechanism for the windmill slot, for example.
Another workaround may be to make frequencies of the additional action and the main loading/unloading closer, so anybody loading/unloading can do the action, thus not needing (...additional) bots.

While the mini-games... yep, that's a good question...

1. Basically, the food should still get spit roasted even without turning, but with lower or just different FEPs. Then, roasting spit may affect FEPs depending on how fast and when it was turned, when other action were made (I don't know much about spit roasting). All this relative to special "events" during cooking, with effects of event->action combination depending on many parameters... for example, place, so no two spits placed side-by-side would work exactly the same way, though there can be many other places in the world where the spit would work exactly the same way.

Wind may be a good example of a not-obvious parameter that can differ between places and change with time, can be measured but not easily pinpointed where it would be exactly the same. Or temperature. Or weather in general. Maybe local weather parameters could disallow at least simple copy-pasting of event-action algorithms between different workplaces.

I think, generally, all the activities that require constant presence of a character, that have time costs, need to be requiring attention during that time, or they would become very reasonably automated.

Now I came to think of it... the realistic manner of spit roasting is probably too simple, so the problem may be deeper, in the very mechanic of labor alts. Perhaps the efficiency and speed of actions, the figures of stamina and energy should depend on stats, so a fresh and undeveloped character would be nearly useless for "slave" labor (throwaway alts).

2. The bellows can be a mini-game of maintaining the temperature and the airflow (O₂) over time, against different varying parameters, including ones that differ between different pieces of ore (e.g. hardness, quantity - "size of the vein" - in that tile, other things that depend on coordinates of its origin).

I'm sorry, can't continue thinking and writing thoughts now and don't know how soon will be able to.

[Apocoreo]

A general way to reduce botting is not to focus on bots and botters but on those not botting and what make their villages less effective than a botter's. A village manually getting closer in power to botters has less incentive to bot. Automation of tasks can help with this.

I think a huge change, possibly one that would take up much development time, is queuing tasks. If I could shift click and queue up multiple destinations when walking, I would. That's an extra keystroke, but the clicks are more concentrated in a short amount of time, which lends to a more relaxing experience. If I can shift+rclick and queue multiple flower menu items from multiple items in my inventory, then I don't have to wait for the hourglass to time out to click again each time and I don't want to go to Ard's now-sketchy client to use a script.

I know you want specific solutions to specific problems, but a lot of issues are systematic. The latter I just said could apply to slicing cheese, splitting logs, shucking oysters, all of which I've seen separate scripts made for (even though pBot ahs the api to just clock the first flower menu option).

Anyway, this is a little offtopic, maybe should move to the botting discussion thread and let this one die?

[Agrik]

2. The bellows can be a mini-game of maintaining the temperature and the airflow (O2) over time, against different varying parameters, including ones that differ between different pieces of ore (e.g. hardness, quantity - "size of the vein" - in that tile, other things that depend on coordinates of its origin).

I'm sorry, can't continue thinking and writing thoughts now and don't know how soon will be able to.

Trying to add something...

Perhaps the metal outcome should be affected by skills and credos of the person who blows the bellows, maybe instead of the person who mined ore.

Maybe the increase in smelting speed, or its duration, should depend on stats... smth like str, con, maybe dex... relative to Q of ore. I.e. a person with str 200 and con 200 would make the same effect on smelting Q200 ore as a person with str 10 con 10 on smelting Q10 ore.

Maybe a hidden effect of something like "familiar ore", which gives a small bonus to smelting (speed, success probability or Q capping/change in proportion of Qs used in formula) if the person who put the ore in, who blows the bellows, and who mined it, is the same one.

I have no more ideas for now...

[ZantetsukenX]

As this is the only thread talking about the Stack Furnace: What happens if you put Chalcopyrite in it? Does it give only the copper with the iron becoming slag? Does it just not smelt?

I've only seemed to get copper in this situation

I was in the same boat. Two stack furnaces and 20 full loads later and didn't see a single cast iron. Had I not found a single fucking square big node of tin ore that just so happened to get me 2 bars of tin, I would not have been able to make the smelter to get cast iron. The fact that cast iron is now gated between finding both tin and copper is fairly cancerous as it used to be that you could rely on that 4% chance of Chalcopyrite to get you cast iron in order to advance forward with anvils.