Philosophy on finite resources

Greep · 2019-01-12 17:39:44

So the last few updates have seen a lot of advances to complicated tech: Oil, engines, and radios. How many are actually worth building as far as increasing your town's longevity? Absolutely none: They all require usage of very important finite resources. That's pretty sad. We're supposed to be working on making a good town right?

However, it gets worse: After playing on a custom server with infinite iron for a few weeks, I'm pretty sure none of these pay off even then. Oil took me about 4 lifetimes. Since the main use of oil is just to cut down on charcoal a bit, did it save me and other players on 4 lifetimes worth of making charcoal? Not in a few weeks' time it hasn't, and the longest cities on main servers last like a day. Cars take a few lifetimes as well. Have they saved me a few lifetimes of gathering? I actually think they're worse than horsecarts after using them for a while, so I'd have to go with a no. And radios make a bulb blink

The conclusion seems pretty clear to me: There is no reason for using any finite resource revolving around high tech, high labor items in the game at all, as the high labor cost alone means their usefulness is dubious. Not to mention if a griefer can already ruin hours of labor by griefing some high tech, they shouldn't also destroy 10,000 pies worth of iron with it.

Last edited by Greep (2019-01-12 17:41:11)

Booklat1 · 2019-01-12 18:04:49

kerosene pumps + oil is probably an efficient upgrade as it's not much more expensive to build the pump itself. Problem is we don't have that many uses for oil so getting drills + distillery for this might be too much.

My main concern about oil tech is that we don't really run the risk of running out of kindling (made a post about this few days ago) so it's obviously not all that much worth to trade iron for oil. Finite resources are needed to make this game reasonable but balancing the major drives of economy and progress in each game stage is really hard.

I hope Jason does a few more updates on electricity but then moves to balancing and adding branches of earlier tech.

CrazyEddie · 2019-01-12 18:30:16

All of this tech is there to be pursued for its own sake, period. It's not efficient. It doesn't need to be.

In the real world, all of this tech is extraordinarily efficient. Technology (and its associated social processes) is the most productive act of creation since the Big Bang and I mean that literally. But that's in the real world. OHOL bears no more similarity to the real world than a stick figure does to a human being. And that's by design, and it's fine. It's a game.

Games have goals, and the goal of OHOL (one of them) is to build these things that Jason has given us the means to build. Why? Just because, that's all.

Greep · 2019-01-12 18:39:59

I'm less concerned with these things being "not efficient" so much as "actively bad" for a civilization. They're already not worth the effort labor-wise, making them hurt your town is like putting salt on a wound.

I also don't think Jason would agree that middle tech like this should not be worth making. Nearly everything from the pump early on is worth building, most essential! Every iron tool (except locks), every well upgrade, ceramics, etc.

Last edited by Greep (2019-01-12 18:41:38)

lionon · 2019-01-12 19:00:09

Greep wrote:

I also don't think Jason would agree that middle tech like this should not be worth making. Nearly everything from the pump early on is worth building, most essential! Every iron tool (except locks), every well upgrade, ceramics, etc.

Not quite, there is so much useless stuff... it just gets ignored by the players, since once it uses up it's novelty shine, it's just that useless and boring... and knowledge about these things is considered arcane and also uselss and some even an utter resource loss so players who are dedicate to a civ's survival might even stop you.

For example: potatos, tacos, bonsais, dogs, fishing, keys (many agree on doing in the end-effect only harm), domestic goose, pigs, crowns, cards, dice, dies, tracks, all apocalypse "magic", pine walls.

The list is huge, you just forget about this, since a few weeks after their introduction all these things are quite forgettable .. sadly.

Dodge · 2019-01-12 19:03:05

10'000 pies are boring, a car is fun to drive.

Imo mosquitoes (and other wildlife to a lesser extent) in the wrong biome, current eve spawn mechanic and the fact that we are spread on 15(4) servers is much more of a civilisation/village killer than lack of iron, when you have a horsecart/car and the tools to make an iron mine getting iron is really easy

Maybe making the different engine parts recyclable to avoid griefing and noobs why not, but if you count the villages that actually died because of a lack of iron im sure it's close to zero

Greep · 2019-01-12 19:06:37

Lack of gatherable iron basically doesn't happen. Increasing time wasted by experienced players to gather iron as close iron veins dry up does happen, though. Those people spending their lives getting iron could have been doing something highly productive that wasn't iron gathering. And that does cause towns to die since there's usually like 3 people at most who are carrying a town.

@lionon this is true, although almost all of those are small features, except the apocalypse magic.

Last edited by Greep (2019-01-12 19:09:07)

lionon · 2019-01-12 19:09:05

Greep wrote:

Lack of gatherable iron basically doesn't happen. Increasing time wasted by experienced players to gather iron as iron veins dry up does happen, though. Those people spending their lives getting iron could have been doing something highly productive that wasn't iron gathering. And that does cause towns to die since there's usually like 3 people at most who are carrying a town.

Plus what I hate about the idea.. so I spend an hour life time to gather valuable ressources... which is not thaaaaat fun to play. But for a towns survival if thats the game, and then somebody else wastes them on stupid vanity projects. If someone wastes their own gather work, for their vanity stuff, fine, but this splits is bad. Someone does the hard work and someone else wastes it like it's nothing.

Dodge · 2019-01-12 19:26:37

You mean the same experienced players that would leave the game if this was a pie making simulator?

We were stuck at steel for a long time with every week having updates that were nice but didnt feel like moving up the techtree and the game actually going anywhere, now we finally have that with the recent updates on engine, oil and now a huge update that adds a lot of content

Sure in it's current state the radio is more aesthetic than anything but it's just been added and the possiblities with all the new advancement we make for next coming updates is what is really interesting, yes updates like fishing and paint are nice but you dont really see anything interesting coming from this

And no it doesnt cause towns to die, because if you are at the level of having the different tools to make a car then your village has a pen, a good kitchen, and enough food and ressource to make iron gathering and dying from starvation not an issue

I've never seen a village with cars or even the different tools to make a car without a sheep pen, dont even know if it's possible
Also never seen a village advanced to the point of cars where lack of tools was a life or death situation, food shortage in car advanced civilisations are very rare

But mosquitoes in desert killing geared noob girls and ending a civ sure that happens quite often

Greep · 2019-01-12 19:29:34

Well, there's probably about 1000 iron in gatherable distance of a town. If iron gathering was a non issue, we'd see most towns with about 100-200 iron lying around. Seeing an advanced town with more than 20 is a rarity, and I usually see them with none or a handful. Interestingly, I tended to see mid size towns with the most iron (ones that only just recently hit oil), suggesting it is quite a large issue for larger towns.

Edit: Also, I agree that this is a lesser issue compared to some things you mentioned. It is, however, a completely unnecessary issue.

Last edited by Greep (2019-01-12 19:35:15)

CrazyEddie · 2019-01-12 19:34:36

That's because there's no reason to gather more than that at one time. So people don't.

Resource value is always local, localized in space and in time. If there are 20 iron stockpiled (i.e. here and now) then bringing one more here and now is low-value. If there are only two stockpiled, then getting one more here and now - or many more - is extremely high-value.

Greep · 2019-01-12 19:37:03

Well, I gathered iron a lot in bigger towns. If you're a male, it's just what you do. It's possible that it was due to lack of awbz, but it would frequently take me an entire lifetime to get a single iron vein in the really big towns, although in the mid sized ones it was all over of course.

Last edited by Greep (2019-01-12 19:37:19)

Booklat1 · 2019-01-12 19:45:04

Iron is way more balanced now than it was in the past. We have proper iron sinks and we don't generate tons of iron with each mine.

There was a time people actually made rails. They were useless but people still made them because iron was so common. People also made a ton of knives. We don't have a problem with iron, we have a problem with the cost in iron not being worth one technology upgrade. Or more importantly the upgrade to an entire era of tech, since the pump is the main reason to move to oil gathering.

Dodge · 2019-01-12 19:51:55

Your point was "How many are actually worth building as far as increasing your town's longevity? Absolutely none"

So you want to increase town's longevity that's great but how can there be longevity issues if towns die anyway for causes that are not related to iron?

Maybe you're talking about non vanilla servers that have different settings but in this case it's totally different and makes no sense to talk about in the forum for vanilla server unless specifying it

I get that it can be frustrating to see lack of basic tools and seeing someone doing trivial stuff with important ressources but it has no impact on the longevity of villages at least not at this point in the game

Finite ressources in an infinite world mmmh

Erudaru · 2019-01-12 21:06:52

Finding iron is never impossible, but I it can be a really boring job. And the sheer thought that it is finite is quite discouraging. That's how I feel. I'd love to have a way to upgrade a mine or something like that. But I think Jason wrote about this somewhere and if I understand correctly, he wants towns to die out, people to migrate and start over. Iron would force you to do that at some point.

Kinrany · 2019-01-12 21:41:45

CrazyEddie wrote:

All of this tech is there to be pursued for its own sake, period. It's not efficient. It doesn't need to be.
In the real world, all of this tech is extraordinarily efficient. Technology (and its associated social processes) is the most productive act of creation since the Big Bang and I mean that literally. But that's in the real world. OHOL bears no more similarity to the real world than a stick figure does to a human being. And that's by design, and it's fine. It's a game.
Games have goals, and the goal of OHOL (one of them) is to build these things that Jason has given us the means to build. Why? Just because, that's all.

I strongly disagree.
I believe Jason is trying to simulate parts of the real world, just like any art worth seeing does.
But even if he didn't, in the spirit of the "death of the author" I think this game is about the relationship between human civilization and technology, among other things.
And new tech being worth inventing is really, really important.
In the long term new tech being worthless is a disaster for the game.

Grim_Arbiter · 2019-01-13 00:28:35

Greep wrote:

Well, there's probably about 1000 iron in gatherable distance of a town. If iron gathering was a non issue, we'd see most towns with about 100-200 iron lying around. Seeing an advanced town with more than 20 is a rarity, and I usually see them with none or a handful. Interestingly, I tended to see mid size towns with the most iron (ones that only just recently hit oil), suggesting it is quite a large issue for larger towns.
Edit: Also, I agree that this is a lesser issue compared to some things you mentioned. It is, however, a completely unnecessary issue.

See i think it depends on the ambition of the town builders. I've seen towns with mass stockpiles, but the highest tech is a newcomen pump. That mass iron is usually strictly for tools and nobody really builds anything else. Once they hit oil like you said the iron goes bye bye and tech projects take off.

Kinrany wrote:

I strongly disagree.
I believe Jason is trying to simulate parts of the real world, just like any art worth seeing does.
But even if he didn't, in the spirit of the "death of the author" I think this game is about the relationship between human civilization and technology, among other things.
And new tech being worth inventing is really, really important.
In the long term new tech being worthless is a disaster for the game.

Who knows what the on the tech tree could become important. With the radio tech, there are a lot of the crafting ingredients that can and probably will be used for other things down the line. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you release all of known and theorized tech that can somewhat mimic human progression? One tech tree update at a time.

Greep · 2019-01-13 01:10:50

@dodge I'm talking about vanilla servers, custom servers can do whatever. As I've already said, it is true iron is a lesser reason for town death even if it does contribute to it. I'm more talking about how higher tech has a perverse incentive, which just feels wrong.

For instance, if everyone grew potatoes, it wouldn't be the major contributing factor to town collapse, the iron cost is actually only about triple that of carrots I think and will never reach that of oil + cars. And yet, nobody knowledgeable grows potatoes on vanilla servers for obvious reasons even though it gives a double yum bonus: it makes iron that much longer to gather for something trivial and can be replicated in better ways. For potatoes, it's not so big an issue, because it's a single food item, but when it becomes "every tech introduced in the past month and likely in the future" then I think it's worth discussing.

I think the root issue here for iron specifically is that iron was nerfed to a level that makes somewhat sense just for basic tools, and then suddenly iron is now used in far greater numbers for non-tools.

If jason wants towns to potentially run out of resources and collapse, I don't mind, but this shouldn't happen when pursuing things that are actually productive and feel like they are meant to be pursued. It'd be sort of as if you were playing Castle Doctrine, and the amount of money you spent on your castle could never bring in as much as you spent. Why bother spending it then. You'd do that if it might bring in more.

Last edited by Greep (2019-01-13 01:37:54)

dangergirl713 · 2019-01-13 03:30:33

Honestly, once you have a horse cart, there is no such thing as finite resources other than water but even with several buckets you can overcome that with the horse cart.

The biggest issue with going up the tech tree to the oil and kerosene wells is that not many people know about it so if you get birthed into a high tech civ that has been revitalized by a new eve spawning there, you usually have a bunch of new people standing around or running around wondering how to power the kerosene well or how to make kerosene.

Honestly most of the players I've played with do not learn to move up the tech tree beyond making iron tools and a sheep pen. You would be lucky to find someone that knows how to make a horse cart honestly.

Dodge · 2019-01-13 09:16:08

@greep i think you're missing the point you say all these technologies are useless and use ressources that are needed from a survival point of view but even if it' true we do the same in real life, we build racecars that have no practical use for our survival or tv's and personal computers that uses ressources that could be used only for survival, but they provide entertainment wich is value in itself

"If jason wants towns to potentially run out of resources and collapse, I don't mind, but this shouldn't happen when pursuing things that are actually productive and feel like they are meant to be pursued."

What? then how does he make a civilisation run out of ressources if there is no other way to use the only vital ressources that is "limited", sure there is other limited ressources but there are not vital like iron, if you nerf limestone to the ground it's not going to collapse a civilisation and that's the point he has to nerf iron and provide an iron sink because it's the only ressource that he can use to make civlisations run out of said ressources

Maybe later in tech we will get some sort of excavator to upgrade the iron mine that works on oil and gives you a random chance to get iron and other minerals, in that case oil would be nerfed and become the new iron, building the excavator itself would require a lot of iron but if the civilisation is able to do it it is rewarded with a larger quantity of iron than the investment for the excavator and the challenge in that case would be to balance the needed iron for survival with the iron used for the construction of this new tech

"the iron cost is actually only about triple that of carrots"

carrots require one iron use to tile the row, two if you use only one soil, you can count the shovel use for compost but since the shovel use produces a larger quantity of soil it's probably in the 0.08 use or something like that so it gives you a maximum total of about 2.08 use in the worst case and 1.08 use in the regular case

Potatoes on the other hand requires a tilled row plus an additionnal soil to mount the potatoes but tha'ts not the worst it also requires 2 shovel use per potato (one to pick up the potato and one to drop it on the ground), a potato row has 5 potatoes so to dig all the potatoes it will cost 10 iron use

So if we dont count the cost of soil it comes to 10x times the cost of a row of carrot

Shovel as an estimated use of 41 (that's on average) it means with 4 potato rows you will most of the time break a shovel and in worst case scenario less than one row of potato will break the shovel

In the really worst case scenario (shovel used 5 times and breaking) one row of potato can potentially use 2 whole iron ore, that's how bad potatoes are atm, yes you can combine two broken tools and make a new steel tool but it still comes to one steel per row in worst case scenario

Last edited by Dodge (2019-01-13 09:19:15)

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#1 2019-01-12 17:39:44

Philosophy on finite resources

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Re: Philosophy on finite resources

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