4.64 Balance Observations & Discussion

[FlowerChild]

For once, I think I would have to disagree with you, Saru. I find fishing rather easy: not labor-intensive at all. Six fish in a matter of a minute or two is quite significant next to 9 fully-grown stems not popping a single pumpkin after six days (six days of full-growth).

Not when you realize that you can build your farms as large as you want.

Remember: I didn't really decrease the overall output rate of pumpkins. What I did was make it require a more significant time investment to get the same output going.

With fish, it's a flat rate you can never exceed (short of redneck fishing) of X fish per minute. With pumpkins, your output rate is effectively infinite.

[Sarudak]

Yes but you can have a field of 100 (or 1000) pumpkin vines whereas you can still only have 1 steve fishing for you. I'm not saying that the growth rate couldn't be adjusted and I haven't had my vines around long enough to say yea or nay to that. Simply that the comparison between fishing and pumpkin farms is not valid.

EDIT: Ninja'd

[Ulfengaard]

With fish, it's a flat rate you can never exceed (short of redneck fishing) of X fish per minute. With pumpkins, your output rate is effectively infinite.

Ah, I understand now. Makes much more sense.

See. Not design savvy. Apologies, both of you. *returns to lurky-ness*

[MrPlatypus]

On the topic of pumpkins vs fishing, I think I am going to have to side with Ulfengaard. If you consider the problem in terms of the early game, farming pumpkins for food requires you to settle down permanently. Fishing, on the other hand, is an easy source of food wherever water is present. I guess my point is that since farming pumpkins requires you to settle down, the food output could be a little more reliable.

Edit: Have been convinced by Sarudak with the flat rate vs infinite output argument.

Edit 2: Realized it was FC who made the above argument... When will the fails stop...

[FlowerChild]

Also worth noting: use bonemeal if you've got it.

It's applied to melon growth (not just the plant) ever since I implemented Hardcore Bonemeal, and one of the reasons I've extended grow times on pretty much every edible crop is to further encourage its use.

Overall though guys, keep something in mind: bigger farms are cool. They motivate base expansion, provide a sense of accomplishment to the player, encourage the player to plan in the early game with regards to creating irrigation via HC Buckets, give you building projects to work on, and are all in all a very good thing.

One of the first design problems I ran into with MC when I first started playing vanilla a couple of years ago was that I was having a blast building myself a nice big farm with pleasing paths, fences, archways, and the whole nine yards. Then I realized I could do it all in a single block with a bit of bonemeal, and had an immediate "Wtf?" reaction. Hence my deep lingering hatred of vanilla bonemeal and my wanting to incentivize large farms in general.

[Sarudak]

Although the more I think about it I think fishing is overpowered rather than pumpkins being underpowered. It's basically a get out of jail free card for the hunger system. It's totally renewable. Relies only on greatly abundant relatively easy to acquire materials (wood, string, water). You can do it at any time of day without exposing yourself to danger. And for all those advantages it provides a return equivalent or better than making scrambled eggs for no inputs.

[FlowerChild]

Can you reign in the suggestions here Sar? Both this post and one from earlier today contain them, and while I appreciate your observations and enthusiasm, I really don't appreciate that part, or the precedent it sets.

Also: the same thing we just said about melons also applies to chickens (and even cows in that you can always find more to increase your milk output). Melon and chicken farms operate hand in hand in the early game.

Are they more work to setup initially? Sure. But they also provide a potentially limitless food source that requires very little effort once the initial setup is done.

I will take a look at fishing though as it's not an activity that I tend to engage in, even now.

[Sarudak]

The last post was meant as an observation only not as a suggestion and I edited it to reflect that. I think fishing needs to be compared to hunting/gathering and considered how it fits in the nomad lifestyle since it's easy to make a dirt hut and fish for the the night. I will be more careful about avoiding future suggestions.

[FlowerChild]

The last post was meant as an observation only not as a suggestion and I edited it to reflect that. I think fishing needs to be compared to hunting/gathering and considered how it fits in the nomad lifestyle since it's easy to make a dirt hut and fish for the the night. I will be more careful about avoiding future suggestions.

Yup, it's cool man. I was more struck by the earlier one:

I wonder if you were to make wooden buckets if there's any reason not to make the hardcore bucket option only affect the ability to move water and never allow the player to move lava regardless of the option?

And like I said, want to avoid the precedent as this thread already has a nasty tendency of spiraling out of control. As you've probably seen yourself, one person doing something tends to cause an epidemic that is then exceedingly difficult to bring to a stop, like what happened yesterday.

I suspect what happens is that people just read the last post to a thread, don't read the whole thing or even the OP, and do whatever they see others doing figuring that's the way to go.

[Six]

Very short observation here, I've found with the torch / coal change that all my coal has been going into torches and furnaces have been kept burning with planks alone.

[ThePuzzleMasher]

I think It's more efficient to use high efficiency sticks than planks, you get 1 bonus unit of smelting time per two planks I think.

[Sarudak]

I think It's more efficient to use high efficiency sticks than planks, you get 1 bonus unit of smelting time per two planks I think.

Exploit!

[MrPlatypus]

I think It's more efficient to use high efficiency sticks than planks, you get 1 bonus unit of smelting time per two planks I think.

Exploit!

It does kinda make sense that by "chopping" the wood into smaller pieces, you create more surface area and allow more oxygen to feed the fire, improving the fuels performance.

[Elevatator]

1 log = 4 planks = 16 high efficiency sticks = 8 burned items. (+ saw dust, if that burns) >/= coal
So yeah, exploit.

[MrPlatypus]

1 log = 4 planks = 16 high efficiency sticks = 8 burned items. (+ saw dust, if that burns) >/= coal
So yeah, exploit.

So that would essentially make them equally as efficient as charcoal, but only once you have a saw. I now see this as a problem because the saw comes before the kiln in the tech tree. :/

[ThePuzzleMasher]

1 log = 4 planks = 16 high efficiency sticks = 8 burned items. (+ saw dust, if that burns) >/= coal
So yeah, exploit.

that's been in there for a while so I thought it was a feature.

[Sarudak]

While it used to be less significant when fuel was less significant I would still say that it's always been an exploit.

[FlowerChild]

Yup, the relative burn times on wood items is currently fucked. I already planned on addressing that with a balance pass on them.

[FlowerChild]

So that would essentially make them equally as efficient as charcoal, but only once you have a saw. I now see this as a problem because the saw comes before the kiln in the tech tree. :/

...

It does kinda make sense that by "chopping" the wood into smaller pieces, you create more surface area and allow more oxygen to feed the fire, improving the fuels performance.

No, you would expect it to burn quicker and hotter. Total energy output over the duration would remain the same.

Guys, can you please just stop screwing the fucking pooch in this thread and keep it to observations, leaving analysis and solutions to me? Like seriously, wtf is so hard to grasp about this concept?

We had one valid observation followed by 6 totally extraneous posts for pete's sake.

[0player]

Flower, did you know that fully grown pumpkin stem gives off three seed when broken? I did not until yesterday, and I see this as a potential game-breaker. Haven't got around to advanced restonery on our server yet, but I think it won't be a problem to make a farm working on this effect.
Fresh stem gives 1 seed, and there's stage with 2 seeds, too.
I must say that fishing works fine; it's rewarding but you are going to invest quite a time and fuel in it, and it feels balanced overall. It also provides some activity to do at night. Nothing's funny more than cowardly building a corridor to nearby water from your shelter while you're on Cow Fetch Quest.

[FlowerChild]

Flower, did you know that fully grown pumpkin stem gives off three seed when broken? I did not until yesterday, and I see this as a potential game-breaker. Haven't got around to advanced restonery on our server yet, but I think it won't be a problem to make a farm working on this effect.

I did not actually. Thanks for the info man. I suspect I'll eliminate the seed drop entirely on them, given that's the whole point of a plant producing a fruit :)

[BobSlingblade679]

My first non-abandoned village I found had carrots. Thus, my staple food atm is kebabs. So, that's a nice bonus I didn't see before- using kebabs. Before, I had no reason to, but now, I'm really glad they're there!

[FlowerChild]

My first non-abandoned village I found had carrots. Thus, my staple food atm is kebabs. So, that's a nice bonus I didn't see before- using kebabs. Before, I had no reason to, but now, I'm really glad they're there!

Good stuff. Yeah, that was my intent with kebabs and steak and potatoes: one for people that find carrots, the other for people that find potatoes.

Glad it proved useful to you :)

As an aside, how did you feel about the stick consumption with the recipe? I assume you didn't find it overly cumbersome given the enthusiasm you expressed above, but it was a question on my mind while I developed it.

[Nutty]

Observations of a player coming straight from BTW 4.54 to 4.64 regarding coal and assorted resources:

Disregarding the impact of mob damage/wound system, I have found that one of the consequences of the changes to torches and charcoal production, is that I value iron significantly more. Most of the time, I go cherry picking through caves, come out with a couple of stacks of iron and then proceed to do with it as I wish. However, due to coal becoming far more valuable, I cannot go caving/mining without severely impacting my hunger stores, as I must use coal to produce torches at a 1:1 ratio, which takes away fuel that can be used to cook meat. Putting mobs into the equation means that digging for coal in the early game is suicide, which leads to a very interesting risk vs reward system. By risking almost certain death and using lots of already difficult to get coal to go deeper, there is a high chance of coming out with both iron and a fair bit of coal. Putting Hardcore Spawning into the equation results in some very tense moments when I decided to (for the sake of seeing what would happen) enter the bowels of the earth. Ultimately, what these changes to coal have done is that they have given me back that experience I had when I successfully survived my first ever night in MineCraft back in alpha. For that I thank you.

[FlowerChild]

Well, I'd agree with the above, except: wood :)

You can really burn wood freely in the furnace. Coal basically becomes exclusively for torches, and I'm fine with that, as the advantage of stuff like coal and particularly charcoal, isn't in how much energy they contain, but rather how compact they are. Given that they amount to effectively the same thing in that regard due to how MC's inventory works (carrying a stack of logs equating to carrying a stack of coal), I think the torch thing does a decent job of abstracting that concept.

To me, it also provides an aspect of increased wood use and potentially even deforestation (I tend to burn a lot of saplings myself rather than replant them), which I think suits the mod very well