Nerf Compost

Anandamide · 2019-03-31 15:31:20

There has been lots of talk about nerfing compost, but there is basically no agreement as to why we would need to nerf it, or how you would nerf it. I just wanna talk about our options and maybe we can all agree on something. Most of these Ideas are not my own but im not gonna fill this with a bunch of citations because im not sure exactly on where I read what, so yeah.
Most of the problems boil down to there being too much mutton and all of the litter from it. We already have a bit of a solution to that, and that is feeding shorn sheep. Yes its less efficient but with how OP compost is right now, no village is going to die from feeding some shorn sheep. Now that we have shrimp this is even less of a problem. Shrimp does exacerbate the mutton problem though as there are now fewer meals containing it being eaten. Another complaint is that we get too much soil.

Reduce soil
One way we can nerf it is having it yield less soil per cycle. Alone, I think this is the worst option, as the mutton problem will get out of control. Less soil means faster cycles and more food as a waste product.

Nerf mutton
The most obvious implementation of this would be reducing the nutrition of mutton based foods. I dont like that option as mutton clearly should be a high pip food since it requires a number of "complex" tasks to produce, and basically every technology before engines. We can do something similar though without changing any of the actual food values. Instead of putting mutton straight into pies, you would put six mutton into a crock, mash it with a sharp stone, and yield four bowls of mutton filling for a pie. With no other changes, this would almost eliminate the litter problem, encourage use of more pottery, and make baking a slightly more interesting task. You could buff/nerf the other pies too in a similar way, putting the ingredients in a crock and having it yield four bowls of pie filling, the buff/nerf coming from how many ingredients you have to add. ***Unless we got four ingredient pies, using a crock, I would propose it takes three units of ingredients for four pies. So for berry pies, three bowls of berry yields four pies, carrot berry or rabbit berry or rabbit carrot would take one bowl of one and two of the other(probably two berries or two carrots), and for the triple pie just one of each ingredient.***

More complex compost
Right now we only make compost with sheep, and there is only one kind of cycle(maybe two if you consider feeding shorn sheep a different cycle). If you could make compost using other animals or even just other food/tools that all have different trade offs. Some will give you lots of food and little extra soil, while others yield almost no food and lots of soil. They could have different profiles of iron/water/soil/labor usage and what kind you use will depend on your situation and what you are optimizing for. Even just having one alternative compost cycle would get rid of a lot of the problem. *** You could even have one cycle as the base, it stands on its own, and then you could have side compost loops that cannot stand on their own, and need some kind of product from the base cycle to do their thing. ***

Last edited by Anandamide (2019-03-31 15:39:19)

DestinyCall · 2019-03-31 16:37:16

For the love of god, don't NERF composting. Jesus.

We need dirt, so we produce compost. We need food, so we make pies. These needs will not go away if you "nerf" sheep or pies. We still need dirt. We still need food. Crippling these resources in some way (like reducing the number of uses on a shovel) will just make these chores more labor-intensive and boring. Too much mutton or too many pies or too much fresh dirt is not the real problem.

Lack of storage options and diversity of compost options is the core problem. It is why we can have "too much" of a valuable resource. Right now, sheep are one of the only domesticated animals worth keeping. They are the only source of poop needed for composting. They are the only source of meat that can be made into high efficiency food. It makes no sense to stop making mutton pies when you MUST have sheep to produce compost. And the choice between feeding adult sheep and feeding baby sheep is a clear one. Feeding adults is a waste of resources, compared with using the same input to produce the same products AND meat. You are NOT helping the village by feeding adult sheep - you are just being lazy and wasteful. Of course, sometimes you just don't have any room for more sheep or any need for more mutton. Since mutton doesn't stack up (or decay away), if your bakery doesn't keep up with your shepherd, you can eventually run into the enviable problem of having too much mutton. Stackable mutton would ease this problem and clean up the village. Also, providing cold storage and adding meat decay would also elevate this problem while creating a new challenge for villages to manage.

Personally, I want to see new recipes for pork that allow it to be used as a viable food source and I want to see additional animal products added to pigs and cows, so we can use them for composting and other things. Cow hides and beef from the cows. Poop and lard from pigs. Our village shouldn't JUST have mutton pies as the only food source. It should have many domesticated animals providing meat and other products. It should have many ways to make compost and many different avenues for producing a stable food supply.

The food system right now is unbalanced because there is a single pillar that supports all major industries in the basic village - farming, baking, clothing. Sheep are the core of all these processes. As long as SHEEP are the only way to get balls of thread and the only way to get dung and also provide free meat ... we will have a meat pie-based food economy. No way around it. So don't NERF the compost cycle. Expand it.

Anandamide · 2019-03-31 16:59:08

DestinyCall wrote:

For the love of god, don't NERF composting. Jesus.

Guess you didnt read my post because I basically called for most of those solutions aside from meat decay. "Nerf Compost" is just a bit of bait. Compost is OP currently,you will never convince me otherwise. Just from the byproducts of one cycle, you can feed one clothed person for their whole life and still have a bite or two of mutton pie left over. You cannot just straight up nerf it without breaking the game, and thats why I call for other compost cycles or a more complex one that uses the base cycle(or a nerfed version of it). If you consider shrimp, and the milkweed you need to grow for it as part of the cycle too, you can feed almost two clothed people for their whole lives from a compost cycle(it does require more than one cycle to make a net but it gets more than one use so there is going to be an average number of shrimp produced per flece from a cycle. Doing that you still have enough soil to grow many crocks of stew, more milkweed, and even a batch or two of salsa and chips. When we had fewer foods and the average yum was lower, then nerfing it would be much worse, but now we have so many food options and one cycle compost could potentially yield hundreds of extra food from all of that yum. We should be composting to farm for our food, not farming for compost to make food off just its waste products. Just like you should yum to live not live to yum.

Last edited by Anandamide (2019-03-31 16:59:38)

Anandamide · 2019-03-31 17:02:07

The only other solution to the mutton problem would be adding more foods you can cook with mutton, but we already have so many kinds of food that it feels like overkill until we get some other content updates. That doesnt solve the OP compost problem, but would at least make cooking and using all of that mutton more interesting.

futurebird · 2019-03-31 17:42:48

Just make it stackable. Tomatoes and peppers are also annoying for this reason. I rarely see a village with a "surplus food problem" there are other things to do like build, and work on complex tech and to do that you need a generation or two of surplus food.

Don't "nerf" anything make other animal meat useful. Make pigs useful. On what planet are tacos the only thing you can make from pork?

I hate the idea of something that was fun in the game becoming super hard all of a sudden.

pein · 2019-03-31 17:43:56

well i think a middle phase for sheep would be needed
where you can sheer and get poop but cant kill it yet

then you feed again and you get meat and fleece/skin

this would make fleece to be part of it, less poop, less meat
the fleece is needed to so many places and generally you need huge population to eat all the meat so you can do some clothes

Whatever · 2019-03-31 17:54:04

DestinyCall wrote:

For the love of god, don't NERF composting. Jesus.

+1 pls dont nerf compost

Also please dont make it more complex to make. Its already hard enough for new people to learn it.

Tarr · 2019-03-31 17:58:11

Just make every piece of the cycle decay if you don't use it. It took me an hour to try to clear out the rainbow families large sheep pen which never got fully cleared out while I was there. Threshed wheat/meat/poop - All of it should decay if people aren't going to use it in a timely manner.

Turning all the poop I did into compost just created another giant mess area with the threshed wheat which is so plentiful in that town I doubt it will ever get used up before the place gets culled naturally. At the very least threshed wheat should go in a barrel or something so you can keep the clutter of it contained to one area. Mutton and poop can just decay like after an hour or something, poop maybe even more frequently if you want because people will overproduce poop and not actually turn it into compost.

Overall this is another thing where we either need a container to put stuff in, either the stuff needs to decay to clear out the space, or removing the ability for sheep to poop and move it to another animal such as pigs.

Whatever · 2019-03-31 18:03:36

i prefer better storing options like barrels, much more than making things decay.
if something should decay than please slowly.

futurebird · 2019-03-31 18:04:58

If the items decay people will make them "on demand" only. It also take a bit of the fun out of finding ruins. IMO.

pein · 2019-03-31 18:26:10

decay would be good but then a transition for it, like a few min before it vanishes
would be nice to use sheep bones for something
like a shaman clothing or grind it and put on something
maybe ice could preserve food

actually even pies could decay and decay food could be put together for compost, like 8 of them would make a compost pile

DestinyCall · 2019-03-31 18:50:39

Oh I like that idea. Food decay -> item used in compost. Instead of using the current sheep cycle or as an additional aspect of composting.

For example, replace the mashed carrot/berry bowl with "decayed food". Put decomposed food onto straw, then add poop to start a compost pile. Allow other domestic animals to produce poop when fed. Reduce the chance of poop from 100% to to some chance depending on the animal. Pigs poop often, sheep less often. Maybe cows poop rarely, but it is a double-sized poop. Then it would be less cluttery to have lots of animals that all poop and domestication is important but SHEEP are not the entire focal point.

If food decay could be paired up with some kind of cooling/storage option, even better. A root cellar (dug with shovel) for primitive food storage. An ice chest or pot-in-pot evaporative cooler for mid game. And a full freezer or fridge for late game. Early on, you would need to focus on harvesting and using perishable fresh foods immediately. More processed food options should last longer not decay at all.

Anandamide · 2019-03-31 19:08:00

How about vermicompost. Shovel on newcomen tower stakes gives worm box holes. Fence kit + boards + rope give worm box kit. Worm box kit + holes give you a worm box. Paper + shears gives one basket of worm bedding, and depending on if we got food decay, you would add in x many bowls of decayed food or x units of some food other than current compost foods. Top it with a worm. Real vermicompost wouldnt do this, but we could also have it require the sheep bones. Sheep compost gets nerfed to net 3 baskets of soil after replant, and vermicompost will yield 8-10 baskets of soil and three worms(can be fisherman and shrimper at the same time now).

Amon · 2019-03-31 19:43:31

I would make pigs and cow shit just as Destiny said. This would leeway some pressure off from sheep being overfed for compost and the mentioned mutton and soil problems and spread it out to more animals that would now, hopefully take on more prominent roles (pork still needs better recipes to be viable. Pork pate????)
However with the more and more uses of wool the sheep pen will always be overflowing in manure now that adults poop too and we need the wool.
Perphaps only feeding adult sheep should produce manure? Hmm? And now there's a distinction if you want to focus your production towards meat or towards manure. (considering before the adult pooping it was lamb -> wool, meat, manure/ adult -> wool)
Feeding labs -> meat and wool
Feeding adults -> wool and manure

Yeah I really wonder why the heck sheep manure is used for composting in the first place. As far as I know, at least over here it's aged cow manure, (we let cow farmers mow our grasslands so they can feed their cows grass and from them we get some nice composted soil back for our gardens and grasslands.)

Also very fond of the improved composting box ideas still.

Alternatively.

HONESTLY I now as I write this realize I am also not very fond of how composting works here anyway. it's a 3 + water step process wich produces a lot of soil.
Generally a domestic compost pile was always added onto and in a continous production.
Perhaps one day we will have a nice box which will have a set amount of space and will accept any organic trash, ruined foods, banana peels, manure, hay... while continously converting them into compost on the end...

jinbaili83 · 2019-03-31 22:35:29

Animals need balancing and rework.
In real world in non intensive farming, animals eat lots of food that is not digestible by humans - grass.
in OHOL 6 gooseberries and carrot give 37 food when eaten raw but turned to mutton + wheat (64 as bread) make 240 food as mutton pies. That is more than double profit over less procesed food plus wool and dung.
Milk is even better but noone bothers making lots of it.

I think feeding animals more often can be better than nerfing soil/compost. So that players are rather using animals to condensate energy in food and not multiply it.
Adding intermediate life stages , starving adult animals, extra feeding to get lamb (like in case of cows and dogs).

Maybe there should be natural resource(clump of weed) that stops adult animals from starving without constant care from players or cuts on some feeding costs when fed manualy.

Digital_Anna · 2019-04-01 00:14:41

I really don't understand... isn't it the point of the game to make the city so prosper that you can build road, cars and interconnect cities together?

You're saying there's too much soil but a city has to be super advance to have soil surplus... it's always a problem when you set up you village... and as others said, why would you just want to farm and not have enough time to explore? if you spend your childhood taking care of the farm, making compost and produce food, you can live your older age with everything you worked for in you early life and create and build more stuff.....

So i absolutely disagree. The problem isn't the compost or the sheep. The problem is people need to start planting trees and milkweed to craft other stuff. They should build more carts, wooden boxes, buckets for wells and houses with these. Most of the time, when a city is prosper i just see a bunch of people hanging out in the city chilling and not using anything useful to craft anything. Its cool to take it more relax and have more casual fun when the city is big, but you can still work your load and help the city grow.

wio · 2019-04-01 00:31:34

Having sheep drop two mutton instead of four would be good.

futurebird · 2019-04-01 00:40:14

This could be a case of expert players looking for the early difficulty curve again. So, the idea is to make the game harder. But what if there were other sources of difficulty. like exploring polar regions where even the best clothing is in effective to get some rare resource. Or danger of electrocution with some tech? This kind of thing is a nightmare for new players.

Bob 101 · 2019-04-01 02:31:55

I think it should be nerfed once a higher tech option is available.

Remember how deep wells got nerfed after the pump was added.

Last edited by Bob 101 (2019-04-01 02:39:00)

Anandamide · 2019-04-08 12:16:07

Bumping because relevant again. Something needs to be done about the poop.

Booklat1 · 2019-04-08 14:03:00

just make pigs poop and meat decay, sheeps are the biggest exploit since before yum.

Also composting IS op, everything with sheep is because a single bowl of food gives you 58885555 different resources. It doesnt help that the wheat from compost and mutton from sheep can turn into pies.

However, nerfing mutton is bad, nerfing shovels is bad and soil too. Composting is grindy, shouldnt be too hard but shouldnt reward you with all the stuff sheep produces. Food + soil + thread is OP

also, pigs suck

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-04-08 14:12:04)

Amon · 2019-04-08 19:20:08

How unorthodox would it be... If sheep did't poo but pigs and cows did?
(and pig meat was edible as is asdfgh)

food for thought.

But this issue was finally toppled by the clothes update.

Last edited by Amon (2019-04-08 19:21:26)

Glassius · 2019-04-08 22:16:10

Anandamide wrote:

Guess you didnt read my post because I basically called for most of those solutions aside from meat decay

I've read all of them and they are all wrong: they won't fix the poop apocalypse.

Maybe you guys did not notice, but Jason already fixed the excess of mutton problem and is just a minor step from fixing poop excess problem.

Mutton no longer a problem
Fed sheared sheep is becoming a normal sheep ready to shear, producing dung as byproduct. This means, a shephard no longer needs to make a place for growing lamb (few updates ago it was an only way to make dung) by killing adults. So, just teach people, not to kill too many sheeps, you won't have too much mutton.

Ball of thread problem
Excess of poop is just a result of extremally inefficient clothing crafting. To make a dress you will be producing dung as byproduct 12 times! Add hats, add sweaters, cloaks... Also, it forces players to do a tedious job by repeating the cycle gather berries, feed sheep, shear, make ball of thread, repeat... I've just posted it as bug on OHOL Github. Comment it and support it there.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-03-31 15:31:20

Nerf Compost

#2 2019-03-31 16:37:16

Re: Nerf Compost

#3 2019-03-31 16:59:08

Re: Nerf Compost

#4 2019-03-31 17:02:07

Re: Nerf Compost

#5 2019-03-31 17:42:48

Re: Nerf Compost

#6 2019-03-31 17:43:56

Re: Nerf Compost

#7 2019-03-31 17:54:04

Re: Nerf Compost

#8 2019-03-31 17:58:11

Re: Nerf Compost

#9 2019-03-31 18:03:36

Re: Nerf Compost

#10 2019-03-31 18:04:58

Re: Nerf Compost

#11 2019-03-31 18:26:10

Re: Nerf Compost

#12 2019-03-31 18:50:39

Re: Nerf Compost

#13 2019-03-31 19:08:00

Re: Nerf Compost

#14 2019-03-31 19:43:31

Re: Nerf Compost

#15 2019-03-31 22:35:29

Re: Nerf Compost

#16 2019-04-01 00:14:41

Re: Nerf Compost

#17 2019-04-01 00:31:34

Re: Nerf Compost

#18 2019-04-01 00:40:14

Re: Nerf Compost

#19 2019-04-01 02:31:55

Re: Nerf Compost

#20 2019-04-08 12:16:07

Re: Nerf Compost

#21 2019-04-08 14:03:00

Re: Nerf Compost

#22 2019-04-08 19:20:08

Re: Nerf Compost

#23 2019-04-08 22:16:10

Re: Nerf Compost

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