a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Now that we have only a small sliver of arctic for the entire map, oil is depleting at an accelerated rate. There are perhaps two to three tappable tarry spots in a 1k radius of the current ginger fam at any given time. Oil is the resource that unlocks advanced civilization and allows families to continue to survive. The amount of oil available now is not enough to sustain four families for any extended period of time. Without teams of dedicated skilled players, it's hardly enough to sustain one family at an advanced level.
I do not think the game is in a fun state if it takes an elite few players doing nothing but ferrying oil from thousands of meters away for their entire lives to keep civilization going.
I have a couple suggestions on how to fix this.
1. Give Black family tarry spots. Oil is found in the desert IRL; this makes sense and doubles the amount of oil available on the map.
2. Decrease the radius at which a tarry spot drains surrounding tarry spots. The radius on this seems to be exceptionally high and much higher than it is for water. I feel like this value might have been balanced for a pre-band world and now that bands are in the game, needs to be revisited for balance purposes.
I honestly think doing both of these things would not be overkill.
Last edited by Rookwood (2020-12-26 00:53:08)
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You can always dig up more natural springs for water, it's only iron unlock that won't happen. Ponds also exist. Ferrying crude oil or kerosene is not the only way of solving water issues, if that's the underlying problem.
Ferrying water from a natural spring you've dug up, in my experience can make for a rather "chill" life. It reminds me of playing kindling maker.
Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-12-26 02:21:35)
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Nothing in this game is balanced around any future thought out update which is what leads to all these weird problems. Oil was balanced around the rift which is why it's so funky for tarry spots which lead to the new oil drawing system. However, spacing isn't remotely balanced around the plane of tarry spots existing only horizontally.
Other examples of this being stuff like twins not being able to curse is a balancing mechanism for the rift as groups cursing the same person basically instantly removed them from the rift.
Worlds oldest SID baby.
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Oil was balanced around the rift which is why it's so funky for tarry spots which lead to the new oil drawing system.
Rift wasn't balanced against a server full of players or even remotely close to full of players. Bigserver idea wasn't balanced against a rift idea, and couldn't be, since any sort of bigserver system with a small area would have the issue of resources running out turning the game into a lack of survival game instead of a survival game even if multiplayer survival means the survival of one's immediate family only. "Everything runs out" in the end isn't consistent with a deep survival game, because "evolution" becomes impossible at some point in principle, if not in practice also.
Danish Clinch.
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"Everything runs out" in the end isn't consistent with a deep survival game, because "evolution" becomes impossible at some point in principle, if not in practice also.
EXCELLENTE POINTY SPOONY WOONY, Oil should be INFINITEEEEEE i am in a direct call right now with all the OILEEE providers in the world to tell them to stop having limited quantity of the BLACK GOLDZZZ, the world should run on oil for the end of timez, having oil running out makes absolutly no sensiz
NOTHING SHOULD RUNZ OUTS
I see only one solution we need to DUPLICATE EVERYTHING
IF YOU PRINT MONEY YOU HAVE INFINITE MONEY
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You can always dig up more natural springs for water, it's only iron unlock that won't happen. Ponds also exist. Ferrying crude oil or kerosene is not the only way of solving water issues, if that's the underlying problem.
Ferrying water from a natural spring you've dug up, in my experience can make for a rather "chill" life. It reminds me of playing kindling maker.
Iron is just as important in late game towns as water. So no, these are not real solutions. In fact, if you wanted to play optimally, you've just made points as to why you should do these things for water and save all your kero for iron, but we both know that's not the intended game design either.
Ponds give two buckets of water on average. They are not a real solution and only should be used for emergencies. I've seen people do nothing but get water from ponds and it hardly even keeps water levels above usage rate.
Wells are viable in the sense that they provide enough water, but you are forgetting the time factor. How much water can you provide to a town by ferrying from new wells? The first few wells, quite a lot, sure. But then after that? You would have to be doing this for your entire life as you said, and how much water could you provide your family in that time? How long would it last them? I'm betting no more than an hour's worth, which means someone born after you died would have to do this again. Dedicate their whole life to getting water.
So towns would need a 24/7 water ferry-er to keep them going. The logistics of that would fall apart very quickly, and it's why it doesn't happen. Also, it's boring and not fun gameplay. Again, you've made points as to why this is optimal, yet neither of us wants to do this every single life, but we should if we were really trying hard to make towns last as long as possible.
Jason has clearly designed the game around reaching oil technology and having an on-demand supply in town. This allows water to be refreshed quickly and efficiently provided there is kerosene. Alternatives are often used in emergencies, but they are not real solutions and not fun gameplay.
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Iron is just as important in late game towns as water.
I don't think this correct. At least one engine needs produced early or mid game. The number of tanks needed also has a finite number. I don't think a town needs 20 trucks, and I would guess 5 is even exorbitantly high. I'd even argue that 2 trucks is hard to justify. Iron needed for hoes, shovels, and axes may increase, but stone hoes and stone hatchets do exist. Also, and as a better point, an advanced town can barely use a froe for much useful at all. So over time what will iron produce with respect to survival prospects?
It seems to me that the same quantity of iron becomes less useful over time with respect to survival. More water on the other hand becomes more and more needed over time due to food generational decline, and how players munch more as generation number increases. I don't mean all players, of course, but munching will happen.
You would have to be doing this for your entire life as you said, and how much water could you provide your family in that time
I went from natural spring to dry deep well one life playing as black and doing such for a white town. According to onetech, there's 46 buckets of water expected to go from natural spring to dry deep well. I ferried things *on foot*. Much quicker on a horsecart, even if one just drops the buckets and chases it after all of the buckets are full. It wasn't a maximally close spring. I think it was 240 or 280 tiles from the home pump, not 200 tiles.
I dug up the same natural spring in another life. I don't think I've used 11 charges of kerosene in one life before, nor thought about increasing the number of cisterns for water storage, and wouldn't since the kerosene would be there. When I was ferrying water, since I wanted to drain the well or get it close to such, I thought it would be better to increase the number of cisterns, and I did such to ferry more water in another life where I dug up a spring also. So, likely, in the black digging up a spring for whites case, the town ended up with more water overall than had I used kerosene which was sitting around (iirc, the white town was on a charcoal pump, and maybe they had sulfur around).
It's more powerful to do such for your neighbor family, I think, than your own family. Like how when you're black and your white family was your recent Eve run, that white family is your family, even if you happen to be black.
So towns would need a 24/7 water ferry-er to keep them going. The logistics of that would fall apart very quickly, and it's why it doesn't happen.
The logistics of a water ferry-er are much simpler than a kerosene ferry-er. Much easier to learn remember, and execute since it's not like the fire in the forge will go out when water ferrying, nor will there be other people at the smithy headblocking one while trying to make tanks. Nor the kindling issue. Heck, more kindling would be available for cooking with more water ferrying (ideally for other families, not one's own) and thus less time spent gathering branches or firewood. The logistics of doing oil rigs doesn't fall apart, so I see no reason why logistics of a water ferry-er falls apart also.
Also, again I enjoyed water ferrying. Admittedly, I haven't enjoyed it when I've done so from ponds (have to find another pond soon, it quickly dries out, a boar might come nearby, where is a swamp to begin with?, I don't like scaring off the goose and end up stopping from draining a pond, which makes for another complication). But, when I dug up a spring and then water ferry-ed, that was enjoyable.
I do think that I'd rather ferry water from shallow or deep wells with buckets than do oil *for water*. Searching for branches for kindling. Needing to do a whole bunch of steps to get an oil rig up. Unlucky runs which need half a dozen or more pipes. Rubber tire busting on the oil pumpjack... ick. The complication of making a fuel injection nozzle for a steel pipe to make oil. Then having to worry about whether the kerosene stays around in town and consider if we have a secure space for it. I might prefer doing oil for water on some days. But, after doing water ferrying from a well I dug up and made, I think I'd rather ferry water from a well on most days, and probably 9 out of 10 days.
Have you done any ferrying water from a well Rookwood? And I don't mean a 40 tile away well. I mean one at least 160 tiles away.
Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-12-26 16:26:21)
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Also, the game is open source. It is not any one person's game. I don't see how one person's intentions for how the game gets designed end up mattering that much in the end, because of that.
Danish Clinch.
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Also, the game is open source. It is not any one person's game. I don't see how one person's intentions for how the game gets designed end up mattering that much in the end, because of that.
AH YES VERYYYYY GOOD POINT, since it's open source YOU should remove bears from the main game because that's how it works right?
"jason's intentions dont matter because the game is open source even though he makes all the decisions that affect how the main game is going to be"
EXCELLENT
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Spoon, a single oil well provides 572 water buckets. A well provides 46. That's the difference. Over 12x the water.
A single oil pull might last a family an entire day if they manage it properly. While a single well will last maybe a couple hours at best. And you still need oil anyway for iron. And there are still 4 families to divide both wells and tarry spots among, so they will run out quickly regardless which is my point.
I really don't understand why you are arguing so much against adding more oil into the game as if well spots are any substitute.
It makes all our lives easier and I think having both the northmost and southmost families with access to oil would be a good balance.
Last edited by Rookwood (2020-12-26 17:18:43)
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Spoon, a single oil well provides 572 water buckets.
An oil well provides tanks of crude oil only.
A well provides 46. That's the difference. Over 12x the water.
The well yes. But, if doing such for another family, and it gets dry is likely the condition, the well can reset after the player who dug it up doesn't have family anymore, I think. I know for sure I've seen a well I dug up reset on the on bigserver2 to a natural spring this past week. If I had played a bunch of times, or more other people played, that's an expected value of 46 buckets per well with many wells worth of water supplying that town. If done 20 times per day, that's over 800 buckets of water with less traveling, no fire, less concern about someone yeeting things to the woods, and more cisterns full of water makes the water supply harder to wreck. And it's a lot less iron cost.
My point wasn't to argue that more tarry spots were in the game. My point lies in that if you're concerned about kerosene for water usage, well, maybe using wells makes for a better approach, and of course, using ponds for water has its uses.
Lastly, no, the oil game does not make all of our lives easier. There exists a certain selection of players who detest /die babies. Oil makers often /die to do oil rigs. Their lives get made more difficult by /die babies. Of course, I'm not saying that you're a /die player, but players using /die to do oil is a thing from what I've heard, and it would shock me if that's incorrect.
Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-12-26 19:41:49)
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Yes, they /die to get to ginger. If Black fam had access to oil too, they would /die half as much. Thanks for making my point.
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Also, on the iron point, a whole lot of that iron goes into engines and doing oil rigs. If a family didn't do any engines or oil rigs, or donate resources for those purpose, they might not run out of iron before they died out of non-water related causes. Or they might get some iron from other families or scavenge from dead camps.
I have seen no indications of a family ever dying out from a lack of iron. Who has? No one can eat iron. Iron is good for decreased pip drain rate due to fire if babies aren't overfeed (I see lots of 'noes' on kids, such is going to happen), and for kindling for cooking. Players have seen water shortages and food shortages happening around the same time also.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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The most critical use for iron is hoes. If a town does not have iron, it cannot make hoes and therefore it cannot farm and therefore it will starve. Alternatives like saplings and stone hoes are not efficient enough to replace themselves.
But I suppose you want us to have dedicated skewer and milkweed ferry-ers as well along with the water haulers. Why even build a town at that point? We can all just get in a big caravan and march west to never-ending fields of untapped resources.
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No engine made, no pipes, no oil rigs, and no tanks is more than 20 steel hoes. Less water consumed in making those things.
Also, less concern about an engine getting yeeted or destroyed. No need for a vault if no engines and tanks. No engines and there's less around interesting for the players who belong permanently away from the main play area.
I think stone hoes are efficient enough to replace themselves also. 21 expected uses on a stone hoe. The milkweed can get grown. Which isn't to say that such is pleasant, but I think I'd pick growing or gathering milkweed for a stone hoe over doing an oil rig most days of the week. Easier to learn that process also than doing an oil rig. And doesn't require any /die at all if there's a desire to such immediately.
Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-12-26 22:11:32)
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Now that we have only a small sliver of arctic for the entire map, oil is depleting at an accelerated rate. There are perhaps two to three tappable tarry spots in a 1k radius of the current ginger fam at any given time. Oil is the resource that unlocks advanced civilization and allows families to continue to survive. The amount of oil available now is not enough to sustain four families for any extended period of time. Without teams of dedicated skilled players, it's hardly enough to sustain one family at an advanced level.
I do not think the game is in a fun state if it takes an elite few players doing nothing but ferrying oil from thousands of meters away for their entire lives to keep civilization going.
I have a couple suggestions on how to fix this.
1. Give Black family tarry spots. Oil is found in the desert IRL; this makes sense and doubles the amount of oil available on the map.
2. Decrease the radius at which a tarry spot drains surrounding tarry spots. The radius on this seems to be exceptionally high and much higher than it is for water. I feel like this value might have been balanced for a pre-band world and now that bands are in the game, needs to be revisited for balance purposes.
I honestly think doing both of these things would not be overkill.
I think another path can be to repeat the bands north and south also, say 300-500 tiles you get desert, jungle, and ginger bands again. It just looks so dead north and south.
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Nice to see you around Sage!
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Iron is the most important resource in regards to advanced civs. An iron veins gives you about 75 iron ingots and costs about 660 pips. This is insanely expensive compared to oil based iron. One tarry spot gives you 720 iron profit (864 total). One tarry spot gives 576 buckets of water.
Now to the cost of a tarry spot.
1 Newcomen atmospheric core (reusable) [3 wrought iron, 1 rubber]
4 stone blocks (reusable)
1 pump beam kit (reusable)
1 rope (reusable)
1 blade [1 steel]
1-12 pipes [1-12 steel, 2 buckets of water]
1-12 charcoal
1-12 buckets of water
1 engine (reusable) [17 steel, 1 wrought iron, 1 rubber]
1 oil spigot (reusable) [3 steel]
24 tanks [24 wrought iron]
1 tank kero [1 wrought iron + previous pump]
Base oil set up will cost 63 iron. 24 of that is reusable. It will maybe cost 14 buckets of water. This is based on a bad run of oil. Oil can cost less than two buckets of water sometimes. Iron is in higher demand for pumping oil than water. It costs almost an entire iron vein to set up for drilling oil. Water is important but its the main resource in keeping people alive, not progressing through tech. Iron makes tech and tech makes water. Past a certain point oil based water is the only stable source. Given water is easier to come by naturally this makes iron more important than anything in regards to late game. Its also one of the most poorly managed resources in the game, making it even more important to produce surpluses of. Iron makes oil, oil makes iron and water. I see people dumping tanks upon tanks into diesel wells but i hardly see people drilling for iron.
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Iron makes tech and tech makes water. Past a certain point oil based water is the only stable source.
The oil based method is one way to make water.
But, oil is finite and runs out. It's not stable at some point in time.
Wells resetting has only time based limits so far as I can. If you missed it, I played as black one life, then in the same family saw a well reset as black also in another life. Well reset is a stable source of water past a certain point in principle, while kerosene collapses or forces family movement.
Also, ferrying for water frees up more kerosene for iron production. I could be wrong, but I would guess that engines out hidden somewhere could be secure than behind a fence in town.
Good to see an analysis here.
Last edited by Spoonwood (2020-12-27 00:26:17)
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Spoon. It's very simple. Jason wants us to use oil. You can come up for reasons why we should stick around with stone age tools, but he designs advanced technology around oil.
You are coming up for reasons with why we should avoid using oil to acquire resources and while they may technically exist and they may in your opinion be viable, the fact that we have to discuss such things means there is a problem with lack of the resource that Jason intends to be the end game resource, oil.
Last edited by Rookwood (2020-12-27 00:39:11)
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There are perhaps two to three tappable tarry spots in a 1k radius of the current ginger fam at any given time.
I'm not exactly sure but I believe the tapout range is 160 tiles or something. I know this because my oil strategy post band update allowed me to tap one spot at the top of the band and one at the bottom of the band, at the same x position. I maximized oil potential by only drawing oil from only those two ley lines. When those were used up within 1k, I'd look in the middle and sometimes would get lucky and find more available. You could probably get 6 or more within 500 radius with that strategy if everything lined up ok. I'm curious how many I did surrounding my outpost.
But I haven't explored this since the band repositioning update. Is there still a gap of 200 tiles between top and bottom tarry spots? If not, this strategy is out the window..
Last edited by mangoma (2020-12-27 01:08:29)
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Spoon. It's very simple. Jason wants us to use oil. You can come up for reasons why we should stick around with stone age tools, but he designs advanced technology around oil.
You are coming up for reasons with why we should avoid using oil to acquire resources and while they may technically exist and they may in your opinion be viable, the fact that we have to discuss such things means there is a problem with lack of the resource that Jason intends to be the end game resource, oil.
Unfortunately it doesn't work out that way on that basis. Everything runs out, implying that oil runs out. There is no end game resource to save towns or get more iron indefinitely.
On a larger scale, the same is true for a village. Maybe it can start to feel like a steady state for a few generations, but in reality, those generations are making a grave mistake by living that way. If they're not developing the next level of survival technology, they are dooming their village in the future.
...
Even if we had a level of survival technology past oil, there still would have to exist some finite level on survival technology with finite resources.
There is no such thing as perpetual technological evolution in this game and can't be, which implies that "evolve or die" in the longterm just means die.
And oil is something exhaustible:
But some things are perma-exhaustible. Like if you chop down a tree and don't plant a new one, that's it. If you dig a wild carrot up, that's it. And a few trivial things, like tinder and leaves, are still infinite, because it would feel too weird to make them limited.
It's why the notion of this as some sort of long-term survival game is a sham.
The problem here originates from the lack of vision for this game being a longterm survival game, and that "evolve or die" contradicts the possibility of a longterm survival game, even if lineages did survive updates.
Danish Clinch.
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But I haven't explored this since the band repositioning update. Is there still a gap of 200 tiles between top and bottom tarry spots? If not, this strategy is out the window..
Okay so I spent last night doing oil for the Red family and I can confirm now that yes, the repositioning of the bands (having the ley lines not be on the borders anymore) has effectively cut the oil potential in half. This is actually pretty bad and I'm not sure if Jason intended for this to happen in that update! I would suggest shortening the tap out radius by 40 tiles, so that it's still possible to tap two tarry spots on the same x position if they are on opposite sides of the band. Does this make sense? Should this be a bug report?
Last edited by mangoma (2020-12-27 19:43:27)
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mangoma wrote:But I haven't explored this since the band repositioning update. Is there still a gap of 200 tiles between top and bottom tarry spots? If not, this strategy is out the window..
Okay so I spent last night doing oil for the Red family and I can confirm now that yes, the repositioning of the bands (having the ley lines not be on the borders anymore) has effectively cut the oil potential in half. This is actually pretty bad and I'm not sure if Jason intended for this to happen in that update! I would suggest shortening the tap out radius by 40 tiles, so that it's still possible to tap two tarry spots on the same x position if they are on opposite sides of the band. Does this make sense? Should this be a bug report?
The same issue can occur with longer lasting families or more players in one spot, even with more tarry spots.
Finite resources mean inevitable doom at some point in time, since perpetual technological evolution is impossible and time constraints.
A short tap out radius just puts off solving the problem which is that things can't scale or last long.
Regenerating tarry spots or unlimited oil has much more potential.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Finite resources mean inevitable doom at some point in time, since perpetual technological evolution is impossible and time constraints.
A short tap out radius just puts off solving the problem which is that things can't scale or last long.
Regenerating tarry spots or unlimited oil has much more potential.
100% agree, I'm just saying that if Jason *insists* these resources must be finite (and I have a feeling he will) then he ought to adjust the tap out radius to be balanced with band repositioning so that we can at least be as productive as before. But yeah, the finite endgame resource thing is a pretty huge bummer. What initially drew me to the game was the idea of civilizations growing ever more technologically advanced the older they got. The problem here might be that there's just not enough content to have that happen so having a finite endgame resource means he can sort of hide that fact. /sad
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