Water Carriers

Greenwood · 2019-11-21 10:16:39

Considering the recent water shortage, perhaps there's a strategy a family could attempt to follow in order to make a living and keep dry well towns alive a little longer.

Although newcommen engines are harder than ever to construct, there's plenty of water if you have a shovel and follow the well graident west. So how about this. Whenever you spawn into a town, simply take a shovel and go straight west from your town well. When you arrive, use local stones to construct a shallow well and return the shovel.

Now you've got yourself a water source. However, to transport it back to town you'll want some buckets and preferably a cart. You can use a bowl to fill buckets until a deep well is invested in. Simply fill up the buckets, put the buckets in the cart, and deliver to the town. If you can't find a well then a series of ponds also works nicely for this. As long as your children understand the mission, you'll be able to keep a dry town alive for generations to come so long as your kiddos keep on carting that water back to town. If the well you've dug runs out, there's another one westwards. Or you could try a different direction. As long as you have a dedicated water-carrier then it shouldn't be too hard to keep carting the water until you can make a newcommen engine.

If you wanted to be really industrious you could even make a business out of it. Two or three people, each with a cart and 4 buckets, could produce a lot of water through such expeditions as they utilise the limitless map. The more buckets you have, the fewer trips you need to make. In other words, until you town is seeded with a great enough variety of races, you're better off making buckets than newcomen parts. Eventually you'll end up with a massive water stockpile for your cisterns despite having a dry well. Even one kitted-out person doing this for their whole life will be able to supply your town with more than enough water.

As your town might never have the luck to find the right family, if you use this method of water-prospecting then you'll have time to construct a bell tower and attract them straight to your doorstep. I did something like this once with a cart and two buckets using nearby ponds, and I got a surprising amount of water back to town. Shame I started too late in life and the town died anyway. Ponds have a surprising amount of water in them, and there are a surprising number of unused ponds XD.

What do you all think of this water-carrier profession idea? The main challenge is in creating a dynasty that keeps up the business for long enough.

Last edited by Greenwood (2019-11-21 10:49:31)

Kaveh · 2019-11-21 11:07:10

I've personally done a lot of water carrying in my lives, especially when we'd run out of oil in the rift. Plenty of ponds to keep going for a while even in the rift, so this should definitely be possible in the boundless world. Bringing a fence kit, mallet and stakes along with your shovel would allow you to put a quick fence down next to the well so your horse doesn't keep running away, and you can immediately turn the well into a deep well when needed. Bring another fence kit with you next time to put next to the deep well, remove it when the well is empty and take it to the next well/set of ponds.

That bad thing about water carrying is that it can get boring fast, even though it's important. Perhaps you get some satisfaction out of knowing you're helping the town, but that doesn't mean your kids would want to carry on the work. You'd just have to make sure to get enough water to fill a lot of cisterns by the time you die, and hope someone wants to pick it up a bit after.

Gomez · 2019-11-21 11:39:34

yep totes, also making camp essentials at the well allows for well hopping to find other families and the well line will also help other families find the town. If you make some camp essentials you may even get lucky enough for another race to move into unknowingly next door to where they need to be, ha!

Last edited by Gomez (2019-11-21 11:40:42)

DiscardedSlinky · 2019-11-21 12:11:06

It's insane the amount of people that would rather starve than get water from a pond. They'll bitch and moan about no water until the end of time and do nothing. A horse cart can carry a lot of buckets dude. Get water.

This is also a great job for new players. It's easy to understand and it's important.

MrShuriken · 2019-11-21 12:19:05

Cant use a horse if your WHITE

DiscardedSlinky · 2019-11-21 12:37:09

MrShuriken wrote:

Cant use a horse if your WHITE

If you're not killing yourself when you're white you've already made a huge mistake.

Spoonwood · 2019-11-21 12:37:27

Greenwood wrote:

In other words, until you town is seeded with a great enough variety of races, you're better off making buckets than newcomen parts.

If you had to pick one of the two, your family would probably better off with someone making buckets than a newcomen pump before the water changes. Or at least could be. Buckets for rubber back then, buckets for milk (milk costs very little water for the food you get out of it), need the buckets for water anyways, a bucket for saltwater if making sauerkraut which is still better than berries, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of other uses of buckets.

Greenwood wrote:

As your town might never have the luck to find the right family, if you use this method of water-prospecting then you'll have time to construct a bell tower and attract them straight to your doorstep.

A bell tower now requires a minimum of 25 hours to complete. Supposing average generation time is 30 minutes, which I think is high, that's 50 generations. I guess you could be right even given that calculation, but I think we would need an example of this happening given the current water system as it stands.

Greenwood wrote:

What do you all think of this water-carrier profession idea? The main challenge is in creating a dynasty that keeps up the business for long enough.

It's a good idea, but how good it is I think another matter. It was a lot more sustainable in principle before the water re-regeneration rates got nerfed to some extent, and I suspect once to a large extent (the wiki has suggested this strategy in outline form since before the temperature overhaul). I know shallow wells use to regenerate faster, and I think deep wells did regenerate faster at some point in time before that. Importing water from distant sources and using cisterns, getting a jump on water regeneration early, clearly has more power with better regeneration rates. I know that partially from playing on low-pop servers and since I'm not constantly playing, I've sometimes gotten lots more water while I've stopped playing (or at least that's what I've think has happened). 2 and a half hours is nothing at all in the time of a low-population settlement in Eve-chain play, since most of the time during the day the player won't be playing. In comparison, 2 and a half hours in a continuously existing settlement is a much larger fraction of the time in which the settlement exists.

Maybe there's value in considering rebalancing water regeneration rates.

Spoonwood · 2019-11-21 12:44:25

Kaveh wrote:

I've personally done a lot of water carrying in my lives, especially when we'd run out of oil in the rift. Plenty of ponds to keep going for a while even in the rift, so this should definitely be possible in the boundless world. Bringing a fence kit, mallet and stakes along with your shovel would allow you to put a quick fence down next to the well so your horse doesn't keep running away, and you can immediately turn the well into a deep well when needed.

Unless something has changed, horses can be biome locked in a small biome surrounded by a larger biome. I haven't tried to biome lock a horse in a while, but I doubt it's changed. Also, hopping back on the horse for a split second resets it's timer on running away.

Kaveh wrote:

Bring another fence kit with you next time to put next to the deep well, remove it when the well is empty and take it to the next well/set of ponds.

Deep wells regenerate water (slowly... it's two and a half hours/some percentage calculations... though that could help out a few generations down the line in principle). Can the water regenerate if you remove the stanchion kit? Also, where you say fence kit, I think you mean stanchion kit (bucket on top of a fence kit).

Spoonwood · 2019-11-21 12:51:41

DiscardedSlinky wrote:

It's insane the amount of people that would rather starve than get water from a pond. They'll bitch and moan about no water until the end of time and do nothing. A horse cart can carry a lot of buckets dude. Get water.
This is also a great job for new players. It's easy to understand and it's important.

I remember an early life of mine where I tried to find a belltower town, used a horsecart, and hit a snake basically without even seeing it. I got lucky and had a child the moment I was off the horsecart. I told of him my tale and the boy spelled out the letters 'R O P E'. I repaired my horsecart, and the boy was even kind enough to tell me not to feed him anymore saying 'no more f'. As I recall I got back on my now repaired horsecart and went back on the way to the belltower town. I hit another snake and had problems finding rope and that was pretty much it for that life. I wasn't using a zoom mod.

I don't think importing water is difficult. But, if doing it on a horsecart, I think you at least want someone with a zoom mod. There's very little time to see what's coming when on a horsecart without a zoom mod according to my memory. I'm also skeptical of a new player figuring out how to repair a horsecart on their own, and that seems more likely to happen. A new player won't know about how horses and snakes interact, I don't think.

Last edited by Spoonwood (2019-11-21 12:52:58)

Kaveh · 2019-11-21 17:56:33

Spoonwood wrote:

Kaveh wrote:
Bring another fence kit with you next time to put next to the deep well, remove it when the well is empty and take it to the next well/set of ponds.
Deep wells regenerate water (slowly... it's two and a half hours/some percentage calculations... though that could help out a few generations down the line in principle). Can the water regenerate if you remove the stanchion kit? Also, where you say fence kit, I think you mean stanchion kit (bucket on top of a fence kit).

Well so what I mean is
1. Dig well, bring fence kit to build fence for the horse next to it (it's true you can lock it in a biome, but it's just easier to have it on a fence, you'll need the fence kit later anyway)
2. Bring back a bunch of water
3. When the shallow well is empty, use mallet + shovel on the fence next to it
4. Add one of your buckets to the fence kit, then put it on top of the well
5. Bring back a bunch of water & bring a new fence kit as a fence next to the deep well
6. Once the deep well runs out, remove the fence again and place it next to the next shallow well (i.e. loop back to 1)

etc.

Like this you always have a stanchion kit with you, as long as you make a new bucket whenever you use one to build a deep well. You never remove the stanchion kit you put on top of the well, just the fence kit you put next to it (so ye I did mean fence kit, not stanchion kit).

Spoonwood · 2019-11-21 19:43:54

That sounds clearer. Thank you for the clarification Kaveh!

Greenwood · 2019-11-21 21:09:07

If you build roads then it'll become progressively easier to farm your nearby wells. It'll also make your town easier to find for explorers.

Eventually, if wells regenerate over time, you could even have relative sustainability simply by having loads of wells under your control. If you had, say, the central village deep well + 6 ponds and 4 shallow wells in every direction, that gives you a much greater regeneration bonus. If you build roads then you might even get a maximum of 8 of 12 wells under a city's control. Perhaps a town's priority should therefore be to gain control of as many wells as possible. Even once you have a newcommen engine this is not perfect. By spreading out your influence, a town can last for a very long time indeed. With roads it should be more sustainable.

pein · 2019-11-22 03:40:15

Technically you could do a mining cart track from well to well and once the well is empty connect up to the next.
Sure someone has to be there and send it back but 200 tiles will cost you 33 blades only. This implies that you could use a Newcomen at least to make it worth.

Cities need a cistern, not well. IF your goal is to eventually make a Newcomen you should be on the move.

Last time we had like 3000 tall and few thousands long line of families along the weeks. I think moving right is the correct solution. Tarr monument would help people orientate better. Or at least a bell town. Since there is no spiral, we can't make a bell which brings people from sides, we can only bring them back to right side so going straight right making small camps and no buildings until you meet others is the smarter choice.

Coconut Fruit · 2019-11-22 03:55:24

I didn't see this topic...
http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8500

BinaryBlackhole · 2019-11-22 07:48:32

I looked at the Tech tree and it turns out that it's better to not upgrade the shallow well.
A shallow well produces 33 units of water every 36 minutes. A deep well produces 80 units of water every 150 minutes.
The shallow well also has a few other advantages. The quicker regen times will likely make it easier to maintain tradition. The fact that shallows well capacity is measured in bowls mean that the last use can be supplied with one bowl of water as opposed to one bucket of water. As a result it will be easier to keep some water in the shallow well.

sigmen4020 · 2019-11-22 07:56:37

BinaryBlackhole wrote:

I looked at the Tech tree and it turns out that it's better to not upgrade the shallow well.
A shallow well produces 33 units of water every 36 minutes. A deep well produces 80 units of water every 150 minutes.
The shallow well also has a few other advantages. The quicker regen times will likely make it easier to maintain tradition. The fact that shallows well capacity is measured in bowls mean that the last use can be supplied with one bowl of water as opposed to one bucket of water. As a result it will be easier to keep some water in the shallow well.

Using regenerating water isn't really viable. A dry shallow doesn't produce 33 bowls of water every 36 minutes, it only produces one. Same thing with a deep well.

You can notice that it says "last" on both of them. That's because they regenerates one bowl or one buckets worth of water respectively.

Last edited by sigmen4020 (2019-11-22 07:57:05)

Greenwood · 2019-11-22 08:21:43

Hmm. So if you had 16 deep wells then you'd get 16 extra buckets every two or three generations. Not too bad, although getting that many wells under your control would be extremely difficult. I agree with the idea of using railroads or just roads to transport the water though. Most villages will never find the families they need to create a newcommen engine, and even if they do, oil is another matter. Spending your iron on rail might be the solution we're missing.

Spoonwood · 2019-11-22 09:31:47

Greenwood wrote:

Hmm. So if you had 16 deep wells then you'd get 16 extra buckets every two or three generations.

No. Generation time in a very small family where there existed just one child per generation would be the difference between the mother's birth time and the child's birth time. That was a silly phrasing... it's how much older the mom is than the child. Given a generation on average is 20 years to 30 years, two or three generations ranges from 40 to 60 minutes. So, it ranges from 40/150 to 60/150 of a bucket that regenerates for one well. I remember Tarr mentioning that there was another factor based on probability, but I don't know how to calculate with it or what the number is (given it's there). That's more like 4.2 to 6.4 buckets every two or three generations. But, the bucket of water has to regenerate, so it will be less than that in a game context.

Greenwood wrote:

Not too bad, although getting that many wells under your control would be extremely difficult. I agree with the idea of using railroads or just roads to transport the water though. Most villages will never find the families they need to create a newcommen engine, and even if they do, oil is another matter. Spending your iron on rail might be the solution we're missing.

Well, railroads would have to exist.

denriguez · 2019-11-22 15:49:48

(Creaky old man voice)

You kids don't know how good you've got it! Back in my day, we didn't have buckets, cisterns, pumps, or tires for our carts! When our well ran out of water, we had to fill a cart with baskets of empty water skins and hightail it to the nearest swamp, uphill both ways, in the snow. AND WE LIKED IT.

Sometimes the water carrier would forget to set a home marker, and what do you think would happen then? EVERYBODY DIED.

Those were the days.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-11-21 10:16:39

Water Carriers

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