The Milkweed problem

ClownBaby · 2018-12-08 07:38:56

I'm wondering if this issue should be tweaked a little bit. Milkweed is very inefficient, and doesn't go very far whenever it is grown it seems like. In a group of intermediate to advanced players there is no issue, but here are some things I have noticed in low tech/less experienced towns:

People plant it too early techwise. In my opinion it is not worth growing unless you have a pump and compost. There are exceptions, but I have seen towns deplete our available water maintaining milkweed when we don't even have steel tools yet.
Any product is quickly squandered. I believe this is due mostly to inexperience, but I see it used on stone hoes, bows that no one is going to use for a while (besides griefing), thread for irrelevant clothing, mistakenly made into a lasso, etc.
It feels a bit too scarce. If everyone were perfectly efficient with it it would be fine, but in any town past gen 3 you generally need to start looking pretty far for it.

Some potential solutions:

Make it more common. Probably doesn't need to be by too much, but I feel the effect ever since the jungle came in and encroached on the other biomes.
Create another source for it, maybe boar/mouflon hair, a new tree, etc. Doesn't have to be easily craftable, just an intermediate way of producing it
Make farming it more efficient. Every soil/dirt investment gives you one milkweed stalk, while gooseberries give you 7 items for no tool usage, carrots give you 5, wheat is very efficient and gives you straw byproduct as well, etc.

Any thoughts? I find it a bit more of an annoyance than I think it should be. Maybe a few months down the line it solves itself as people get better.

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-08 08:28:53

Early food is abundant now that we have jungles. There needs to be something that's difficult.

The only issues I've noticed with milkweed is a) people don't plant it enough and b) people leave the f*ing seeds cluttering up working spaces instead of only keeping what's needed and keeping it where it won't get in the way.

lionon · 2018-12-08 08:30:50

Stone hoes are actually more efficient on iron usage then steel hoes, considered the iron needed for the soil for the milkweed.

Lassos can be cut now.

I'm a fan of the idea of way bigger biomes and alternative ways to accomplish things in the biomes, like some other way to make ropes without grasslands. But as the biomes are a "rag rug" as now, I don't see an issue with milkweed.

Tramax · 2018-12-08 10:00:54

Actually it got mathematically broken down on the forums and ultimately when iron is low it's far better to use skewers, not stone hoes given the amount of soil and water needed per use of tool.

lionon · 2018-12-08 10:04:28

Tramax wrote:

Actually it got mathematically broken down on the forums and ultimately when iron is low it's far better to use skewers, not stone hoes given the amount of soil and water needed per use of tool.

Yes, but that wouldn't help to make my point about milkweed

Floofy · 2018-12-08 13:42:58

ClownBaby wrote:

People plant it too early techwise. In my opinion it is not worth growing unless you have a pump and compost. There are exceptions, but I have seen towns deplete our available water maintaining milkweed when we don't even have steel tools yet.

Actually, as long as there is milkweed at a reasonable distance (or even unreasonable once you get a horse), i feel like milkweed farming is not worth it. It takes roughly 3-4 minutes to get 3 ropes from a milkweed mission. What time does it take to create 12 milk weed plants... and it cost 24 soil + 12 water + 12 hoe usage.

ClownBaby wrote:

Any product is quickly squandered. I believe this is due mostly to inexperience, but I see it used on stone hoes, bows that no one is going to use for a while (besides griefing), thread for irrelevant clothing, mistakenly made into a lasso, etc.

I also feel like people sometimes use milkweed a bit too much. It should only be used when truly needed, especially in more advanced towns. For example, once you get sheeps, you can create thread and needle to save on milkweed.

Overall, i think its fine. The game is actually too easy later on (other than the fact that you can get way too few girls).

The_Anabaptist · 2018-12-08 14:12:17

How is this for an idea:

We already have the animation of Monarch Butterflies pollinating Milkweed before it goes into pod form. What is that animation was tied to a pollination bonus for any food bearing plant 1 tile around the Milkweed plant? That would encourage the cultivation of 1 milkweed for every surrounding 8 berry bushes, for example. Hopefully this would slightly lessen the frequency of soil refreshes for berry bushes due to increased food production. Then everyone would also have to decide if they cut it now for the product, or leave it alone for the berry bonus.

I don't post to Reddit, so feel free to borrow this idea and post it on the official suggestion subreddit.

The_Anabaptist

tana · 2018-12-08 16:29:15

Tramax wrote:

Actually it got mathematically broken down on the forums and ultimately when iron is low it's far better to use skewers, not stone hoes given the amount of soil and water needed per use of tool.

I actually saw a couple of weeks ago a player plant a huge milkweed farm because we had no iron and we needed hoes, but he kept breaking the hoe in the process, so he basically planted milkweed to make the hoes he needed to plant the milkweed.

MultiLife · 2018-12-08 16:51:07

I think it has always been ridiculous how you MUST harvest milkweed to make ropes. Milkweed stalks are the last thing I've heard people use in making rope.

This game desperately needs a layer of alternatives to things like rope, baskets, needles, fire making and even branches (multipurpose stuff with trees; branches, sticks, skewers etc. - what do you mean I can't hack apart the tree to get multiple branches, sticks, logs, firewood and roots? Why can't I get a pile of leaves to burn gloriously?). Multipurpose stuff with animal corpses too pls. So much stuff to harvest from them. Bone meals for farms?

Back to rope.
Read some wiki about rope:
"The ancient Egyptians were probably the first civilization to develop special tools to make rope. Egyptian rope dates back to 4000 to 3500 B.C. and was generally made of water reed fibres. Other rope in antiquity was made from the fibres of date palms, flax, grass, papyrus, leather, or animal hair."
Man do I want alternatives to baskets, talking about reeds.
But yeah so many options, but our lord and savior is milkweed.

lionon · 2018-12-08 17:45:53

tana wrote:

I actually saw a couple of weeks ago a player plant a huge milkweed farm because we had no iron and we needed hoes, but he kept breaking the hoe in the process, so he basically planted milkweed to make the hoes he needed to plant the milkweed.

The stone hoe has in average 20 uses and requires hoe 4 uses to be created for it's rope, so in average it's 5 ropes created costing 1 rope. I say the player was doing alright. As long there was enough food he didn't take all the soil from.

There is also an iron price due to the shovel for the compost and the soil again in berries, carrot and wheat for the compost, but it's rather negligible.

PS: Unless he used two tills on one soil... then this would be much worse.

thundersen · 2018-12-08 17:46:14

Yes, I'd like to see an alternative, more efficient material for ropes too, like wool for thread.

Maybe cotton, which could be useful for making clothes and bags too? Or skip that stage entirely and make synthetic rope from oil.

Floofy · 2018-12-08 18:19:51

tana wrote:

Tramax wrote:
Actually it got mathematically broken down on the forums and ultimately when iron is low it's far better to use skewers, not stone hoes given the amount of soil and water needed per use of tool.
I actually saw a couple of weeks ago a player plant a huge milkweed farm because we had no iron and we needed hoes, but he kept breaking the hoe in the process, so he basically planted milkweed to make the hoes he needed to plant the milkweed.

A stone hoe has around 20 uses. It takes 4 milk weed, which takes 4 uses. But it also takes 8 soils... and it gets kinda hard to estimate how much 8 soils is worth, but my guess is its worth it in the end.

But all of this being said, i still feel like its way better to take an horse cart with 4 basket, get a bunch of milkweed far away, and come back with 16 ropes

lionon · 2018-12-08 19:52:45

Floofy wrote:

But all of this being said, i still feel like its way better to take an horse cart with 4 basket, get a bunch of milkweed far away, and come back with 16 ropes

This works you. However my guess is for a good portion of people, it just ends up the person, the horse cart and the baskets are never to be seen again...

Floofy · 2018-12-08 20:30:44

lionon wrote:

Floofy wrote:
But all of this being said, i still feel like its way better to take an horse cart with 4 basket, get a bunch of milkweed far away, and come back with 16 ropes
This works you. However my guess is for a good portion of people, it just ends up the person, the horse cart and the baskets are never to be seen again...

That... seems to be very accurate lol

Only thing that could happen to me is like...
"Oh i don't need home marker, i'm good at finding my home whitout it"
"WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT TOWN"

Vexenie · 2018-12-08 20:48:23

Floofy wrote:

lionon wrote:
Floofy wrote:
But all of this being said, i still feel like its way better to take an horse cart with 4 basket, get a bunch of milkweed far away, and come back with 16 ropes
This works you. However my guess is for a good portion of people, it just ends up the person, the horse cart and the baskets are never to be seen again...
That... seems to be very accurate lol
Only thing that could happen to me is like...
"Oh i don't need home marker, i'm good at finding my home whitout it"
"WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT TOWN"

Literally every fucking time

Good luck:
Searching iron
"OK my town is south"
Takes small curves that don't affect the way back home
going back to home that for me, takes a bit too long than finding the iron
"HOLY SHIT WHERE IS MY TOWN!"
"AAAAhhhh it's here, thank god"

Bad luck:
Searching iron
"OK my town is south"
Takes big curves
goes back home
"OMG WHERE IS MY TOWN!"
Roam around with a cart full of iron until old age, very old age
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! IT WAS HERE!"
finds out, somebody already found iron
"Fuck this"
Dies

Worst luck:
Searching iron
"OK my town is south"
Very far away, probably with valuable item, like a pickaxe
Goes into swamp or desert
Doesn't notice pig or snake and get bitten
"WHAT THE SHIT"
Regretting my choice to go find some iron
lose hope that nobody will find this and is forever lost
dies
Quits game
Goes into own room
Watches youtube on phone

Floofy · 2018-12-08 21:01:05

Vexenie wrote:

Floofy wrote:
lionon wrote:
This works you. However my guess is for a good portion of people, it just ends up the person, the horse cart and the baskets are never to be seen again...
That... seems to be very accurate lol
Only thing that could happen to me is like...
"Oh i don't need home marker, i'm good at finding my home whitout it"
"WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT TOWN"
Worst luck:
Searching iron
"OK my town is south"
Very far away, probably with valuable item, like a pickaxe
Goes into swamp or desert
Doesn't notice pig or snake and get bitten
"WHAT THE SHIT"
Regretting my choice to go find some iron
lose hope that nobody will find this and is forever lost
dies
Quits game
Goes into own room
Watches youtube on phone

I very rarely die to pigs since i use zoom out fog and i'm super carefull, but apparently, i over estimate very greatly my ability to find my home back. I sometimes end up in a different town lol

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-08 21:35:59

HOME MARKER IS CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY

Tech path: sharp stone -> basket -> home marker

ALWAYS

And for god's sake STOP MOVING THE HOME MARKER STONES you clueless noobs, they SAVE LIVES

wio · 2018-12-09 02:13:52

I don't want to make the game easier, but I do hate how I almost always find myself wanting rope and being unable to find it. I end up planting a bunch of milkweed crops and if I try to do some other productive thing while it is growing, another guy just takes it all.

It would be nice if milkweed had some other purpose that made it more compelling for people to plant it. For example, straw can be used for flour, baskets, and compost. There is no choice but for a higher civilization to farm it as they run out of soil. For milkweed, you'll have some civilizations with carts and some civilizations without any. In fact, the prevalence of baskets, carts, and backpacks are basically a metric for the average IQ of the village you're born into. Maybe some people like that this aspect of the game has more variety than other aspects.

Anyway, you could make the game more challenging while encouraging milkweed cultivation by having it be a requirement for some other thing. For example, if you grow milkweed, it lowers the chances of nearby crops being eaten by bugs.

What do you guys think?

Last edited by wio (2018-12-09 02:15:01)

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-09 06:33:11

Right now the game is based around crafting with item combinations, i.e. milkweed + milkweed = thread, thread + thread = rope, rope + stakes = snare. This means that even if there were another use for milkweed besides making thread/rope (say, milkweed + stone = linen, linen + needle = cloak), while it might encourage people to plant more milkweed, it won't make it any easier for you to get the rope you're wanting. Milkweed will get planted more and then used to make linen.

pein · 2018-12-09 07:27:20

member when people had a geekgasm watching your 16 milkweed? 4 ropes per hour man

the milkweed nerf hurt the game a lot
scavenging for milkweed is a good skill but eventually you can only calculate that once, it goes out, clear a full biome and mark it with some seeds to signal its empty

farming it its still good, i need a rope to get sheep and i need to help town too, so i don't mind a bit of waste on hoes to save time for me

stone hoes are bad, 12 uses, skewers are ok wth their 5 use but you cant farm them to use them to farm so eventually runs out
12 tilligns uses upa stone hoe so net effectivity is very bad, you can maybe plant 8 other things, or replant 16 but it's a 33% loss

but the main problem is people still make thread for clothes when you got sheep, or they make lassos, bows, tied shafts (which can make a sign but some just make a stone hoe anyway)
and the part when you plant a big plantation and plan to use it for bucket and carts but they use up 90% or all of it and you just wasted your time
10 for rope, bow arrow is ok, or even 4 more for 2 more arrows and 4 for first cart
if you got compost and mine you can and should do it every time, but people overdo it then just forgot it
box walled pens, sign, door, can be useful and looks good, but i think most of us doesn't plant much cause its get wasted anyway, killed someone for making extra hatchet with the milkweed i planted from wild soil during a bear attack, and she just questioned me what i want with it and took it anyway and made a dumb hatchet when we had one and an axe as well, i don't like to throw away 10 minutes of my life for nothing
same goes for paper making

we should still do it, cause rope is needed to restart towns, maybe we should lock it away
like im making ropes out of threads and put a yarn needle near it so noobs wont use on clothes but they still making lassos of it so no good solution without restricting access to it

CrazyEddie · 2018-12-09 09:39:27

pein wrote:

like im making ropes out of threads and put a yarn needle near it so noobs wont use on clothes

If wool is up then this is a great idea, and should solve a lot of the problem.

If compost is up, farming milkweed should be no big deal; go ahead and farm a ton of it, and don't worry if some of it goes to redundant stuff like stone hatchets and stone hoes. If you start a milkweed farm you should be keeping an eye on it and be the first on the scene to harvest it. Bring a basket, make ropes, and drop them all off at the carpentry area.

but they still making lassos of it so no good solution without restricting access to it

This is no longer an issue, since you can now undo lassos easily.

The_Anabaptist · 2018-12-09 13:36:49

Or you just stand in the middle of your out of the way farmed milkweed patch with a drawn knife and scream at anyone who comes into view:
"Get Out Of Here! I Will Knife You!" It is fun to play a curmudgeon telling people to get off my lawn. And it often blows their minds.

"Dude, I need some rope for the community."
and I'm all like "Don't Care, Go Grow Your Own! I Will Knife You!"
I haven't had to knife anyone, yet...

The_Anabaptist

The_Anabaptist · 2018-12-09 14:09:47

Just found this video on Digg.Com

http://digg.com/video/how-rope-is-made

It seemed appropriate for where rope making could be made to go in this game.

pein · 2018-12-09 15:05:07

i thought the lasso thing is just idea phase, nice
i know is kinda exploit but you can catch horses now, take to tiny desert and then cut it apart

wio · 2018-12-09 23:37:48

CrazyEddie wrote:

Right now the game is based around crafting with item combinations, i.e. milkweed + milkweed = thread, thread + thread = rope, rope + stakes = snare. This means that even if there were another use for milkweed besides making thread/rope (say, milkweed + stone = linen, linen + needle = cloak), while it might encourage people to plant more milkweed, it won't make it any easier for you to get the rope you're wanting. Milkweed will get planted more and then used to make linen.

Since fires have AOE heat mechanics, it's possible for milkweed to have a AOE bug repellent effect. Regardless, There are multiple ways to give milkweed alternate purposes without altering mechanics in the game. For example, you can have it so using a bowl and milkweed gives some special item, while still allowing you to pick it. More importantly, this can be done in an effort to make the game more challenging.

Last edited by wio (2018-12-09 23:38:46)

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#1 2018-12-08 07:38:56

The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

#3 2018-12-08 08:30:50

Re: The Milkweed problem

#4 2018-12-08 10:00:54

Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

#17 2018-12-08 21:35:59

Re: The Milkweed problem

#18 2018-12-09 02:13:52

Re: The Milkweed problem

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Re: The Milkweed problem

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