So 42372 appears to be the pr, and looking through it seems to confirm that surface ranks 1 & 2 are confusing (and basically pointless) bloat. You can technically butcher medium-sized animals on medium surfaces, but who even cares? How am I supposed to know what constitutes a “medium” animal anyways? So human corpses are “large”, what about a boar or a deer? This just isn’t intuitive to me at all. And there’s still the issue of differentiating between surface sizes.
“type”: “tool_quality”,
“id”: “SURFACE”,
“//”: “A flat surface, like a table or a mat. 1 would be the size of a cutting board.”,
“name”: { “str”: “surface” }
In the code, a size 1 surface is equivalent to a cutting board. Is that… is that even worth simulating? Wouldn’t that mean a ton of different items can technically qualify as clean surface 1? Is someone planning to designate what I assume are dozens upon dozens of viable items as such? How does this improve the game?
IMO paragraph: We don’t need multiple ranks of clean surface. Medium surfaces are both rare (more accurately - not ubiquitous) and undesirable (or at least, excessively niche), and this current implementation will only confuse players. It would honestly be better to take them out entirely so people aren’t running in circles trying to figure out why they can’t butcher/dissect (not the best option, but preferable to status quo). Small surfaces are just a bad idea, flat out (no pun intended). They’re the kind of abstraction that will only complicate the game without contributing anything compelling.