Another biome specialization idea

jasonrohrer · 2019-04-26 05:24:37

Inspired in part by this post:

http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6153

To quote my response there:

Trade requires SOMEONE having something that you don't have, not some distant area having something that you don't have in your local area.

One of the off-the-wall ideas that I floated before was personal biome locks. Maybe a travel lock is a bad idea, but this biome diversity idea brings up another idea: personal skill/knowledge limitations based on home biomes. If you're from the plains, only you can snare rabbits. People who aren't from the plains just don't know how, and can't do it. So if you want rabbit fur, you need to find a plains person to help you. I.e., the plains people "own" the rabbits.

Maybe the rabbits are invisible to people who don't live there, or the snare recipe just doesn't exist for them. I guess it could be as simple as being unable to interact with natural objects that aren't in the biome that you were born in.

Anyway, that would allow biomes to be close, and people to be close.

And as part of this, maybe there's one common biome (green) that everyone can do stuff in, so there only needs to be one core food tech tree.

Maybe you can tell someone's home biome by looking at them, based on race.

Imagine mountain people who can mine, and desert people who can tame horses, and swamp people who can gather clay to make pottery, and snow people who can club seals and fish, and jungle people who can pick bananas and gather rubber.

Think of it like mana colors in Magic or something.

I can imagine it being frustrating to "know" how to do something and not being able to do it. I can also imagine this being really hard to message to new players. Oh, you're a redhead, so you can't pick bananas. Which is why it would be tempting to make these things invisible to people who don't have the know-how (would be less frustrating).

But it would certainly cause trade. If you wanna make a car, you'd have to seek out and interact with all kinds of people (mountain people for the iron, jungle people for the rubber, desert people for the oil, etc.) And they'd probably be more willing to help you if your brought them something that they don't have easy access to themselves.

Which reminds me of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8

futurebird · 2019-04-26 05:37:48

I think this would just mean that fewer cars get made. The car really needs more documentation and tutorials. And since towns keep dying the work that people do on a production line keeps getting reset.

Also this comes back to the issue of storage and surplus. Each of these peoples would need to produce a surplus of things they don't plan on using for trade. We would need ways to store and transport the surplus. At least each of the components of the car would need other uses, so there was a reason to make it even if you don't have trade partners yet. Rubber works better than most materials because you can make balls and tires and the tires are great because you just can't make enough of those every town needs them. I think will will get rubber towns without giving players magical gifts if we can just get towns to last longer and sustain more people. I have seen some great set-ups for making rubber and in one case a town that outfitted it's neighboring town with rubber tires after doing all of their own carts.

Dodge · 2019-04-26 05:53:22

That seems like a way to force trading into the game instead of it happening organically

It would make much more sense if people had specialisations, for example the more you smith, the more recipes you have access to, maybe you could do it faster and more efficiently over time too

The tailor would exchange a red long dress that took him a lifetime to master and get the technique to make (recipe) (hence making it a rare object) for a hoe from the smith, to give it to the farmer so he can grow wheat for the baker, that will make pies for the tailor.

Maybe there could be limitations to the number of specialisations and recipes a person can have in one life, there could be basic recipes that everyone has access to, and more specialized recipes that would be only accessible by crafting and over time.

Tarr · 2019-04-26 05:54:30

The problem is each biome basically requires people from all walks of life to be able to do anything what so ever.

Jungle people are useless until newcomen tech or at the very least when someone upgrades a cart as their abilities are
-Fetch bananas
-Catch malaria

They can't make rubber without getting buckets/bowls from other people and they certainly can't cut trees with a knife without help

Arctic players can't even feed themselves at all due to fishing hooks being native to prairies and shrimp requiring sheep. This also doesn't account for their doubled food drain rate for living in the coldest biome.

Desert players have horses and half the material to make rubber so they're also in screwed territory like arctic players. Double normal biome drain rate but at least they have respawning food sources.

Swamps end up being the only biome you can actually farm in so I guess at least people can live there. They also are the only people who can do any sort of pottery or tech climbing due to how much material is located in their biome.

Prairie is the only other biome that can almost get to farming levels due to having access to waterskins but like everyone else they don't have water. Stew crops are great and all but no water = no farming.

Badlands has the most needed items to get others rolling along with sheep however they can't ever produce a domestic due to lacking carrots and bowls.

Basically none of the biomes are independent enough for them to survive if say your neighbor dies or suicides which screws you for the sake of existing in an area that is less than opportune. Instead of focusing on limiting what people can do you should be encouraging people to be able to meet. At the very least if people can mingle they can find out what the other town/city/village needs.

futurebird · 2019-04-26 05:55:45

Dodge wrote:

It would make much more sense if people had specialisations, for example the more you smith, the more recipes you have access to, maybe you could do it faster and more efficiently over time too

This already happens different players have different skills and practice makes you much more efficient at most tasks. Have you ever see someone making pies or smithing at lightening speed? They know the best locations for the tools and if they are not disturbed and nothing is moved around they can do it much faster than other players.

I don't know that we need buffs because you can really learn and get better at tasks in the game.

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-04-26 05:58:33

You biome lock people and I guarantee you never see a car made again in this game.

People don't travel more than 100 tiles outside the village for anything but iron and alum.

Now you want to make everyone travel for a resource that isn't going to be there 95% of the time?

Welp guess my prairie family has mastered rabbits and wheat... Too bad that's all we are going to get because there's nobody else around us and nowhere else to go.. hope you like catching rabbits my son little jimmy, cause that's what you're going to be doing this whole life.

As far as pencil man milton's definition goes, he pretty much proves that we have free market in game. How many people who use the iron for tools actually knows where it came from? How many people eating those berries will never make or even question where the compost they used came from? We all do a job for a final outcome, and that outcome is civilization.

Stylingirl · 2019-04-26 05:59:01

Aside from the racism, slavery, and human trafficking that the lovely players in this community would most certainly enact, I don't think this would necessarily be realistic. There's just too many specialized things needed from different biomes that the only way you'd be able to find someone from the most essential biomes is to wait until you've given birth in that biome, then haul your kid back to town and wait for them to be able to craft the things you need.

And what if they have no idea how to craft the thing you need? Do you go through step by step, guiding their hand through the whole process because your character doesn't "know" how to craft it? What if your kid doesn't want to be controlled by other people to craft things they didn't want to spend their playtime making?

ClownBaby · 2019-04-26 06:05:01

You mention not wanting to make big overhauls in the other thread, but how many changes would be required to have this be in a "fun" state?

If you are from a swamp biome, you can make bowls and baskets, but any other biome you are stuck being a perpetual scavenger until you find another family. If you are from a mountain biome, enjoy your useless chunks of iron, maybe you can finally get value from them a few generations in when the swamp and plains families are established and trade to make a bellows. Not to mention that the jungle/snow/desert biome are fairly useless in the grand scheme of things, the desert and jungle don't become necessary until your town has an adze already.

Not to mention, you will often get shoehorned into a job in your life. Right now you usually have at least 5 solid choices to maximize the towns' benefit, 20 more minimally helpful or neutral choices. If you get "biome locked", you now have one good choice, and like 5 mediocre choices in your life. The number of items per biome would have to be tripled in my opinion to make this interesting. That is not a quick fix.

Dodge · 2019-04-26 06:07:37

futurebird wrote:

Dodge wrote:
It would make much more sense if people had specialisations, for example the more you smith, the more recipes you have access to, maybe you could do it faster and more efficiently over time too
This already happens different players have different skills and practice makes you much more efficient at most tasks. Have you ever see someone making pies or smithing at lightening speed? They know the best locations for the tools and if they are not disturbed and nothing is moved around they can do it much faster than other players.
I don't know that we need buffs because you can really learn and get better at tasks in the game.

Yes but currently everyone can make everything as long as they know how to do it out of the game, keep in mind that when you start a new life you are born as a baby, why would a baby or small child know how to make a diesel engine or a newcommen pump or even pies?

They only know it because you the player knows it, but from the perspective of your new charachter, your new life, it doesn't make any sense.

Have you ever tried learning baking + farming + smithing + tailoring etc, in real life?

It's almost impossible and even if you are able to do it, you would only be a mediocre baker + farmer + smith + tailor etc.

That's why we have specialisations to be good at one specific thing, master it, and be able to be more efficient,fast and knowledgeable.

Dodge · 2019-04-26 06:32:56

An expert shepherd could maybe get 3-4 fleeces per sheeps, then trade with an expert tailor that could get 3-4 ball of thread per fleece, an expert shepard and tailor that trade together would become really efficient and be able to make clothes a lot faster but becomming a master would take a lifetime.

Same could be for a hunter that snares rabbits, gets wolf skins etc, if he's experienced or master he could get more skins depending on his level of experience and maybe luck.

Baker could get more pies from the dough, potter would get more bowls and plates from one clay and have access to more ellaborate pottery etc.

Maybe there could even be nerfs like a smith trying to farm could have a probability to lose wheat when he plants it, or water it etc.

DestinyCall · 2019-04-26 06:43:03

The current state of the resource distribution has all the different biomes heavily interconnected. We don't just make villages at the intersection of swamp and grasslands (with prairie nearby) because we like the ambiance. Most of the early game tech requires clay and water found in swamps or long shafts/curved shafts, dirt, or milkweed found in grasslands. You can't start smithing without access to rabbits (prairie), iron (badlands), clay (swamp), and fire (grasslands). Tundra is pretty useless and you can avoid going into jungle unless you are looking for rubber, and the desert is only really useful in the late game. But the rest of the biomes are heavily interconnected to such an extent that it would require major restructuring to allow people to function in a biome-locked village.

I'd love to see some kind of regional specilization or branching tech trees that allowed people to build villages outside of the grasslands. But I don't see any reason to punish exploration and adventure by not allowing people to utilize resources from other biomes.

futurebird · 2019-04-26 06:51:47

ClownBaby wrote:

That is not a quick fix.

Yeah. For this to work do StylinGirls idea, add all of the foods and animals and recipes to make multiple tech trees. Without that this would just make the game about looking for wild food that will run out (lucky green biome people would live the longest if they have enough wild berries) and putting resources on the border in hopes that others might do the same. Forget trade, just give everything you can't use to someone who can and pray they are able to help you later in return.

Mostly hide that cactus fruit behind a dead tree and consider giving it to your sister since without her your line is dead.

Roblor · 2019-04-26 07:02:59

You are making a lot of work for yourself, Jason. This is not feasable with the current itembase, as is illustrated above. And racial-restrictions is not my recommended way of going about things. Remember how sceptical you were to griefer-nerfs before they first got implemented?

The_Anabaptist · 2019-04-26 07:04:53

I've been thinking along Dodge's lines lately, so I will happily second this idea. It could work in many ways.

Gatherers who have harvested x of an item get extra resources from a harvest after a while.
Smiths have to learn a progression of skills, must fire x clay and/or something else before being allowed to work iron or more advanced projects.
Bakers have a risk of ruining things in the kiln or an open fire until they have made x attempts.
Tailors with advanced skills can repair old clothes

Advancing to the modern era requires skill specialization within the population. Who knows, maybe this would lead to guilds, unions, schools?

The_Anabaptist

JonySky · 2019-04-26 07:10:00

Jason, these last days I have decided to leave the cities and towns with a horse to explore other cities and small settlements ...
Yesterday, I was exploring about 4k from my city and I found several early settlements, but none of them had inhabitants
I found 5 early settlements ... only 2 had iron tools and only 1 had stew, the rest had a small berry farm and nothing else

Rather than "force" trade, I think we should first solve the problem of:

1.- duration and survival of the early camps
2.- natality (extinctions of lineages per / die)
3.- distances between settlements and time lines
4.- natural borders between biomes

I think that trade and cooperation between cities should not be forced, what we should do is build the basis for it to happen naturally
just like human civilization, it is only necessary to see how it happened in the ancient world
look at Greece, the Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, the travels of Marco Polo or Cristobal Colon ... there are so many examples!

Ilka · 2019-04-26 07:17:50

Jason, mercy After all, these ideas will kill the game.

Only people of swamps can make clay products?
So the inhabitants of other biomes will never build a furnace and start blacksmithing. But the marsh people also will not start blacksmithing because they can not catch a rabbit and make blacksmith bellows.
Jungle people will be useless because you made the jungle an area that is actually not useful, but it is very dangerous.
Similarly, people of snow biom - fur from seal is very good but you can do without it.

Trading in the game may be about something really valuable, for example, the people of the jungle may be the only ones to produce a medicine that gives resistance to yellow fever.
Desert people can cure the snake bite, etc.
These products can not be too complicated to produce and must be easy to carry (bottles). Other proposals - ointment treating wounds, clothes that give resistance to animal bites and weapons, improved backpacks, vases to which a lot of cereal bowls can be poured.

I still do not know how you want to force people to trade with such a small player base and long distances between camps, but I think that the things I mentioned every player would like to have.

Vexenie · 2019-04-26 08:50:13

Dodge wrote:

That seems like a way to force trading into the game instead of it happening organically
It would make much more sense if people had specialisations, for example the more you smith, the more recipes you have access to, maybe you could do it faster and more efficiently over time too
The tailor would exchange a red long dress that took him a lifetime to master and get the technique to make (recipe) (hence making it a rare object) for a hoe from the smith, to give it to the farmer so he can grow wheat for the baker, that will make pies for the tailor.
Maybe there could be limitations to the number of specialisations and recipes a person can have in one life, there could be basic recipes that everyone has access to, and more specialized recipes that would be only accessible by crafting and over time.

So your saying, that we should have this kind of tech tree?
Like in smithing, the first smithable items are axes, chisels and shovels, since those are just a piece of steel, one edge banged or all of it banged flat.
Like tailors start with making loincloths and just simple rabbit fur clothes, then advances to making fur coats and backpacks, to linen clothes. Hats would then separate, from making straw hats to fur hats, we then could make those felt hats.

This is all very complicated, but it would be nice to see specialized people on stuff, like the person who can smith all the steel tools, while the other can't, but can sew all the clothes, which in return, the smith can't do.

In my opinion, ditch the biome specialization idea and replace it with a tech tree, where everything start with a sharp stone, like to make an axe, you need to use a sharp stone for a few times, so your character can realize, that with a handle, you can chop wood!

That's the reason why it's called a tech tree, first it's simple and in a neat line, but soon enough, you start to branch out, where one specializes in one thing and the other in other.
This would create the role of students and maybe text sheets, where young players learn from a master in that craft, by letting them do the simple smiths and the master does the more advanced ones, like blades, pick head, files and such, while the student makes all the axes, chisels and shovels.

Text sheets would help you learn stuff very quickly by just reading them, but you cant just make felt hats, while your knowledge is making straw hats, you'll need to read a sheet about fur hats before learning felt hats.

I'm tired right now writing this, so if anyone comments on this, I'll check

Vexenie · 2019-04-26 08:52:30

Ilka wrote:

vases to which a lot of cereal bowls can be poured.

Cereal? The wheat grain bowl?

EYY JASON! MAKE US ABLE TO POUR MILK IN WHEAT GRAIN BOWLS!

CatX · 2019-04-26 09:13:02

+1 to cereal

As for personalized tech trees, I think it works well in other games where your life isn't limited to one hour. But in OHOL, part of the challenge is to do what is needed to make the village thrive and survive. If the town needs a shovel ASAP - or say a water pump, and you know how to make one, I don't think you should be barred from it because you've been hunting rabbits until now.

If the conditions were such that people could start villages in every biome (and if iron mines were renewable) (and if road building was a little simpler) I think people would start more diverse towns and travel more between them.

I believe there's only one thing really needed to start a town anywhere:
- Kids need to be able to be productive while not starving to death

That's it, I think. That's all any biome needs to provide to create some ingame diversity.

Vexenie · 2019-04-26 09:29:17

Yeah, the biome thing is kinda ruining, but if worst comes to worst, then the tech tree is more better option, and also, you can make a shovel asap, as it's just banging a ingot till it flat

CatX · 2019-04-26 09:34:47

Really? Then I learned something new

Vexenie · 2019-04-26 09:40:29

CatX wrote:

Really? Then I learned something new

The update or the banged flat ingot

Sukallinen · 2019-04-26 09:52:21

I read J's post, so "where you are born", make small camp to prairie and voila' you have a kid there.

Anyhow, making double (or something) by being born on biome X could be good.

Offtopics:
I've been thinking on trade-posts, you put x items on cart (has to be special color or something) and anyone touching it can see what is wanted in exchange. i.e. cart has 12 iron, four baskets - to swap carts bring one containing (minimum) 4 copper. Otherwise trading just takes too long with chats and thiefs etc... ofc this would be bit trouble with hiding keys to inherit items etc

This would make radios important too, to inform others, but there is still the problem of finding where to go.

About "Ownership", by coloring items only their some wood-colored parts could maybe be easily installed ? Instead of drawing everything you could just tint every piece of item with color X that was pure wood color. No need to draw new sprites...

CatX · 2019-04-26 12:46:45

Vexenie wrote:

CatX wrote:
Really? Then I learned something new
The update or the banged flat ingot

Actually I think I misunderstood.

I thought the core idea was that "only smiths can make stuff, and they have to practice in order to build their skill before they can become smiths", i.e. you have to melt a certain amount of ingots before you can move up the tech tree and get the 'smith' skill which in turn will allow you to attempt to make a shovel. That sounds like a pain when life only lasts one hour.

And then I thought that in your reply you meant that if you hit a hammer head an extra time with a round rock, it also becomes flat/a shovel.
I've actually never tried to hit it twice, so I actually don't know what happens!

But now I realize that you tried to explain something else, and that we do have to make a hammer first before we can make a shovel, and I probably haven't grasped the core idea in this thread at all

Vexenie · 2019-04-26 12:53:40

CatX wrote:

Vexenie wrote:
CatX wrote:
Really? Then I learned something new
The update or the banged flat ingot
Actually I think I misunderstood.
I thought the core idea was that "only smiths can make stuff, and they have to practice in order to build their skill before they can become smiths", i.e. you have to melt a certain amount of ingots before you can move up the tech tree and get the 'smith' skill which in turn will allow you to attempt to make a shovel. That sounds like a pain when life only lasts one hour.
And then I thought that in your reply you meant that if you hit a hammer head an extra time with a round rock, it also becomes flat/a shovel.
I've actually never tried to hit it twice, so I actually don't know what happens!
But now I realize that you tried to explain something else, and that we do have to make a hammer first before we can make a shovel, and I probably haven't grasped the core idea in this thread at all

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-04-26 05:24:37

Another biome specialization idea

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Re: Another biome specialization idea

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