Topic: questions about the economy
mxb2001
Joined: 2019-05-20, 18:49
Posts: 325 OS: Linux Version: 1.2  Tribe Member Location: The land of the thirsty spider |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 06:58
My 2 Pfennig: As a newbie wells made 2 impressions on me 1) Ugh have to call a geologist every time I need one of these little things? 2) They do what? Run out? How bizarre. 3) Wait they only go from 100 to 66% when they run out? Oh how pointless 4) So I wasted a lot of time looking for wells when in fact you can just plop them down anywhere. Umm yeah got carried away there that's 4, heh. Whatever change you decide on I'd address point 3 because as a newbie it kind of gives a bad impression (of course by the time a newbie learns this they are hooked so it's not a fatal flaw or anything...) The best thing would be to make them rarer so searching has value but I actually saw a editor map with water symbols on it and realize that this is a map problem, not a program problem, so that's impractical. So perhaps if they went from 100% to 5% (like mines) that would give the water dowsers some point and actually make it as interesting to find fresh water as it is minerals. So in short, make water work exactly like minerals because they're interesting. OK just had a inspiration, what if when a water resource is first tapped a die roll is made to see if it is a never exhausted supply (you hit an artesian well say), this would actually emulate my suggestion that water is rarer, so now only a % of water resources are permanent and the rest are small amounts that get used up quickly. This would let you sink wells at random at first but once the ones only surrounded by temp water dry up you have to start looking for more until you get some permanent ones. And maybe the geologists only locate the permanent ones (the spam when sending them out is another irritation they find dozens and it bings like a school bell ringing : ( ). So the roll is made also when a geo searches to set which water is permanent. Anyways, it's probably not programmable so haha oh wel... -- 
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GunChleoc
Joined: 2013-10-07, 15:56
Posts: 3317  One Elder of Players Location: RenderedRect |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 09:51
I'd be OK with 1, 2 or 5. I think making water a surprise package would introduce too much of a random element that has nothing to do with player skill. Busy indexing nil values
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Nordfriese
Joined: 2017-01-17, 18:07
Posts: 2082 OS: Debian Testing Version: Latest master One Elder of Players Location: 0x55555d3a34c0 |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 10:03
strongly against
against
Agreed. This makes sense though only if
Agreed. But your point about blackland etc is a problem here, so how about replacing the water resource with a water probability for each terrain then?
Better than 1) or 2)
My favourite
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teppo
Joined: 2012-01-30, 09:42
Posts: 425 Tribe Member |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 10:59
In my point of view, the most single annoying thing about water resource is the fact that geologists go digging soil, while I am short of iron/coal, which surely is not there. If wells are modified, the reverse would become similarly true. Therefore, the biggest improvement would be to prevent geologists from going to buildable terrain when sent to mineable one, and vice versa. Having said that: I think that if the wells do deplete, then the probability of finding water should exceed the probability of finding ore at depleted mine. In case of option 2 of KoN list, the "no" -case should have a probability of success rate of >5% (and <60%). And generally, if wells are made less efficient, one should consider whether an empire mine should still require marble to build. In the Roman cities that had many structures of marble, it was not that scarce resource. I am okay with options 1, 2 (remarks above), 3 (remarks above), 4 (remarks below), and 5. No strong preferences between these (but modifying the geologist would be an improvement). I made the implicit assumption that in option 4) the success rate (instead of resource amount) would depend on soil humidity, and the water resource drawn on map would boost that probability from the baseline value. Geologist would report success rates when dowsing. However, without reading the posts, I would not have written this assumption down. I wonder how many other silent contradicting assumptions still lie around. (edit: soil fertility => soil humidity) Edited: 2019-05-30, 13:27
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Nordfriese
Joined: 2017-01-17, 18:07
Posts: 2082 OS: Debian Testing Version: Latest master One Elder of Players Location: 0x55555d3a34c0 |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 11:09
If the terrain east and southeast (r+d) of the flag where you send the geologist is mineable, he will search only on mountains, otherwise only on meadows. When searching mountains, he will find water resources only if they lie directly on the border between mountain and meadow and vice versa.
Fertility, not humidity?
-1, since no terrain (except lava etc) has 0.0 fertility, so all terrains come with a built-in "baseline"
Three resource indicators for water would suffice IMHO: 0-33% (low resources), 33-66% (medium resources) and 67-100% (high resources)
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teppo
Joined: 2012-01-30, 09:42
Posts: 425 Tribe Member |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 12:22
ÉDIT: You are right. In my memory it worked differently in the distant past.
Humidity. Sorry for sloppy writing.
still humidity.. Scaling factors are of course debatable. On most maps this would lead into "find an unused red slot, build & forget" approach, while some desert maps would show a difference: 60% is not that different from 100%, but around 20-30% the motivation to pay attention starts to outweigh the nuisance of using geologists everywhere.
No strong opinions on details, although I would make a distinction between ~16..32% and 0..15. Edited: 2019-05-30, 17:27
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hessenfarmer
Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16
Posts: 2759 One Elder of Players Location: Bavaria |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 13:30
Here is my vote in order of preference: 6) easiest to implement (the map ressource is already finite), needs probably small changes for the default amount values. With a range of 5 and default 10 a well produces 910 buckets of water -> no big change in gameplay and AI. Assumption precautions in empty well efficiency to cope for higher empire and frisian need for water.
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hessenfarmer
Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16
Posts: 2759 One Elder of Players Location: Bavaria |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 13:52
this applies for all opinions I strongly believe. But everybody her could expect that his opinion is respected. As I respect your opinion on not having a finite ressource which is different from mine.
With the numbers given I tried to point out that with proper values the change wouln't be that much different from the current implementation. Depletion would only occur very late on normal maps taking a default of 10 anf radius of 5 resulting in 981 buckets and a 40 second working cycle the well would operate smoothly for over 10 Hours. which is 10 hours it works at 100%
At least you have more options in map and scenario design.
see above a depleted well after 10 hours is different from all the time. even with half the time running it would be not to often.
Compatibility will still be given no matter if and how we change the game. I can't see how this is baccking up your position.
which is no real challenge
You did. your sentence was telling him off, because he has no right to do so due to him not playing online.
You did as you told Nordfriese to leave and doing his own mod.
see above. you did.
I am of the opinion that if a majority can be achieved that is enough.
Why?
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king_of_nowhere
Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35
Posts: 1668 One Elder of Players |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 17:16
regarding soil humidity: it is a value set in all terrain types that regulates tree growth. on desert world, the most humid soils are meadow, mountain meadow, steppe, and high mountain meadow, with values of 0.6, 0.5, 0.5 and 0.4 respectively. those are the only soil where it's practical to build wells. productivity would be a bit lower than it currently is. fits with desert that water would be harder to find. on green world, all the meadow terrains are betwee 0.55 and 0.65 humidity. mountain meadow is 0.75. steppe is also acceptable at 0.4. same productivity of current wells. winter is the terrain where it's easier to find water, as the various taiga terrains all have humidities from 0.7 to 0.85. well, amid snow getting water is not a problem. on wasteland, hard ground hummidity is average 0.2. with a well productivity of 20%, it would require 3.5 times more wells than now. changing humidity value would screw up all the trees, so maybe it could be made that well productivity is 10% + humidity; then blackland wells would work at 30%, one would need twice as many wells as now, annoying but no tragedy. EDIT: regarding consumable water, the problem with the assumption of 900 buckets for a well is that it requires:
those are fairly unrealistic expectations. You'll generally build your wells close together when you have strands of land where you cannot make large buildings. Many will be made in the small bits of space close to the mountains, so they won't be getting water from the mountains. And most maps don't have many water resources. I'm thinking of something like the nile econmy challenge that einstein made last year; on a 24 hours game with limited fertile soil, well depletion would be a real nightmare to deal with. Maybe that's a corner case, but still. I'm also thinking of something like a no metal challenge map; if you have a 5% chance of getting a well to work, and the food you produce has a 5% to make a mine work... ouch! In the end I only see two possible scenarios: 1) you can build wells and forget about it. You can get away with ignoring water resources. You may need some more or some less than you need right now. 2) You can't get away with dry wells. You must seek water. And option 2 would not be a big deal in short online matches, but it would definitely cramp some styles of play (all those involving long games, when water would invariably run out). It would also impact some small maps, where you may be forced to dismantle a farm to tap into your few remaining water sources. that's why I'm against making water limited. Edited: 2019-05-30, 17:25
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fuchur
Joined: 2009-10-07, 14:01
Posts: 186  Widelands-Forum-Junkie Location: Germany |
Posted at: 2019-05-30, 22:52
Ok, here are my thoughts about wells. I think I never bothered to send geologists to search for water. Maybe only at the very beginning of playing widelands. It's mostly build one and forget it, build a new one if water is scarce. Now there are different suggestions to change that. Partially with a potentially high impact on gameplay, balance or old maps. And I'm not sure if all of them are thought through in all details. And that would mean a lot of work needs to be done. In my opinion that time could be invested better in working on other features. Conclusion: I vote for option 1 or 5. I could live with option 2 as well, but I don't fancy the other ones.
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