Central highway?

tocal · 2020-05-13 05:00:42

So this is a map of all the towns over the last few weeks. I think they're all the towns since the last server update?
My thought is this. Would there be a benefit for a server-wide east to west highway? The highway would go through the center of the eve spawn locations... which is roughly equal to the town distribution. This would help eves pick the best town locations along the center line, or far away from the center highway if they want more natural resources for the town.

First I'll describe the problem, then how the highway might help fix some of the issues.

Problem: The game currently has a number of critical flaws that make everything super fragile.

One, the game has gotten pretty unintuitive and complex as far as eves starting towns goes. There's well placement, getting iron deposits, dry spring gradients, homelands, sprouting iron by placing stones in a circle so you can make a shovel so you can dig your first well... it's all super arcane and unless you're one of the 5% of players that understands it all... You're going to use pond water until it runs out then your lineage dies.

Two, in order for a town to survive, there needs to be a black, brown, and ginger family on the map to enable continuous water supply. If one of the races die off, all the other towns are at risk of dying off too unless that racial family can quickly re-establish themselves. If all the towns are old, the gingers are the weak link.

Three with the new yum changes, property gates/locks, leadership/posse, difficulty in getting oil... it has become pretty easy for a group of griefers to kill towns. The fragile balance usually just needs a town to have the griefers understand the arcane rules better than the normal players. If that happens, the town will die.

Now, the solution and how a highway might help this.

An eve's best chance at restarting a racial family is to find an already established town and restart it. The best way of doing this is to find a town, go close to the well to establish a new well she can draw water from to claim the homeland, then just walk back to the established town. If they need water, they can walk to the homeland well a bit and carry water back from there until they get an engine up and running on their well again. The problem with all of this is finding an existing town in the first place. A central highway might make it easier for eves to find old towns. A walk through the wilderness is better if you can walk south, find a road, then follow that to the next best town.

All towns could link up via the central highway. Most towns don't ever actually finish a road between two different towns. If all towns had to do to link up was point their road north or south out of their town, it would make road building have much less risk of creating a road to nowhere.

A fast road back in time (aka east) would help people carry resources from dead towns up to new towns. Some resources are permanent and very helpful for towns, such as horse carts, glassware, tools, and permanent clothes. If these items could be looted all the way back in time it would give towns a better chance at survival.

How to implement

The highway could be mapped out with pine needles at first to make it easy, then paved over with stone if people were feeling there was value to it besides anchoring. The towns located off forks in the highway could be labeled with waystones. This would work kinda like street signs. The edges of eve spawn range could possibly also be marked with pine needles, to give an even better idea of the normal town distribution bounds. There should be fence posts regularly spaced along the central highway, to allow people to anchor horses without having to jump back on every 7 secs.

Last edited by tocal (2020-05-13 05:15:04)

testo · 2020-05-13 07:55:33

Hey Morty, someones looking for you. Make a big ass road so we can lose even more horses.

Jamie · 2020-05-13 08:56:40

testo wrote:

Hey Morty, someones looking for you. Make a big ass road so we can lose even more horses.

When you're born into a city with a big ass road and think theirs other towns at the end. Only to find ruins and a whole lotta nothing after 30 minutes.

You then see Morty expanding the road into the infinite nothingness. Time to suicide because you'll die of old age anyway before you make it back. You are content as the snake bite venom courses through your veins, "Still better then farming".

Last edited by Jamie (2020-05-13 09:00:20)

Arcurus · 2020-05-13 09:52:32

if in a server reset the roads are not reset, why are there not natural road systems evolving? or are they reset? or is it the eve placement which goes always in new terrain?

tocal · 2020-05-13 14:57:24

I think in a server reset. everything is deleted and generated again. In this trail of towns, the oldest death I saw was 2020 May 28.

pein · 2020-05-13 15:10:41

monis are so far down, maybe that led the to so long line? quite weird

no scaling but the closest town was 200-800, I think it's the current only bell town
I really liked the fact that they had an expert waystone to browns right next to it, and they were blacks

would have needed like 5 minutes more to contain their mosquitoes with 6 bell bases and fences

yesterday it was unoccupied, a brown family could plant a lot of trees there and make it work a bit more

I was a daughter of eve, and we started a camp under gingers, 300-400 NW under a huge swamp, they were afk and not many girls so died out 3-4 gens in, it had several spots 3 mines activated, I think like 40-80-40 distances alwayss had 3 mines next to cities

tocal · 2020-05-13 16:02:25

Those blacks were the Garden family. They have a bell tower. I was choosing to spawn into that town for a while to keep it going. They had a central location to all the families, but I think they died when the Gingers to the SW of the town died to griefing and there was nobody making oil on the map. I know the Gingers were griefed because I was there making tacos when it happened. The town survived the griefer but the pop plunged and they never recovered.

I was thinking of making that central highway road so I could go back in time scavenging resources to make critical town infrastructure. Namely, engines, bottles, rubber, and horse carriages. There are a lot of dead towns with tons of iron laying around, unpicked crops, and full cisterns. I could then hide engines and such in the wilderness and go get them when a new town started up. Like a new town starter kit. I could also put some furs there to make bp for new town. It would be a full time, multi life project... but doable with a road to cut down on travel time.

The key to starting up a dead town is the engine and oil. Get those, we could occupy towns indefinitely.

OminousBladeBlank · 2020-05-14 20:23:07

Intersting.

Of course, roads are so vital.

Unfortunately, whatever town bears the burden of building it is faced with a huge issue:

They lose labor force for keeping the town alive.

They lose resources easier.

There is no immediate benefit to the town at all. They are down a cart or two, food is used up, and labor is diminished, all for no real gain to the family.

It's basically griefing for the greater good.

Still, roads are simply so important.

Maybe Jason can allow multiple roads to be placed per flat stone - that would help a ton. or make a concrete recipe that has a similar effect with many uses.

Roads are so expensive.

Arcurus · 2020-05-14 20:48:39

OminousBladeBlank wrote:

Intersting.
Of course, roads are so vital.
Unfortunately, whatever town bears the burden of building it is faced with a huge issue:
They lose labor force for keeping the town alive.
They lose resources easier.
There is no immediate benefit to the town at all. They are down a cart or two, food is used up, and labor is diminished, all for no real gain to the family.
It's basically griefing for the greater good.
Still, roads are simply so important.
Maybe Jason can allow multiple roads to be placed per flat stone - that would help a ton. or make a concrete recipe that has a similar effect with many uses.
Roads are so expensive.

building roads actually goes quite well, managed to stay alive mostly on wild food while building. with a horse wagon you get the flat stones quite well. the biggest issue is, that the towns wont life long enough to really benefit.

Additionally the current incentives makes it not much economic reasonable to build the town up again and on top of that the eve spawning goes more and more away, so no road system has time to develop.

tocal · 2020-05-14 21:47:10

I have spent my fair share of time road building. I prefer to use a rubber tire hand cart to the horse cart. The horse running away all the time is pretty annoying. I guess 1 life for collecting flat rocks and placing them and another life to lay the road would work, but I haven't tried that yet.

I really wish we could get a road system up and running, but the towns aren't living long enough for that to matter, like you said. That's one of the reasons why I suggested the central highway... it would be a permanently useful road and thus possibly warrant its building.

Arcurus · 2020-05-15 08:56:00

tocal wrote:

I have spent my fair share of time road building. I prefer to use a rubber tire hand cart to the horse cart. The horse running away all the time is pretty annoying. I guess 1 life for collecting flat rocks and placing them and another life to lay the road would work, but I haven't tried that yet.
I really wish we could get a road system up and running, but the towns aren't living long enough for that to matter, like you said. That's one of the reasons why I suggested the central highway... it would be a permanently useful road and thus possibly warrant its building.

yea was helping another guy with building the road, he brought the stuff, i placed it. Then later i also used horse to bring, collecting with horse is quite functioning well, the placement you can do later.

What would be the fun with a god given central highway? its much more fun to build roads together manually. Lets better fix the original problem of eve placement and town revival.

By the way something like rivers would be nice, which you could travel with a boat. this would give also some kind of orientation...

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-05-13 05:00:42

Central highway?

#2 2020-05-13 07:55:33

Re: Central highway?

#3 2020-05-13 08:56:40

Re: Central highway?

#4 2020-05-13 09:52:32

Re: Central highway?

#5 2020-05-13 14:57:24

Re: Central highway?

#6 2020-05-13 15:10:41

Re: Central highway?

#7 2020-05-13 16:02:25

Re: Central highway?

#8 2020-05-14 20:23:07

Re: Central highway?

#9 2020-05-14 20:48:39

Re: Central highway?

#10 2020-05-14 21:47:10

Re: Central highway?

#11 2020-05-15 08:56:00

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