Manufacturing, Medicine, And Me!

[Nappist]

As we can agree on, the hassle of inventory management is a part of the game in cataclysm: Do I care X or Y? Which will be more useful? Where should I stockpile it for later?

My comments therefore come down to two sets of items:
MEDICINE, which you can basically carry sufficiently finite amounts of to do anything you’d like with absolutely no weight and no volume up until you reach the arbitrary limit of 100…

And CRAFTING items which are totally and utterly useless for anything except crafting which takes several minutes-again, useless in any combat scenario that I can think of barring trapping yourself in a room behind two metal doors and filling it with traps before opening the doors… but if you’ve managed to get stuck in that position you probably have Other Problems.

For meds I advise go one way or the other: Either create a separate “inventory” page for just medicine that can hold 99 (mixed) or of each unit(s) before overflowing into your normal inventory with a volume and weight per pill, or give them actual volume or weight.

For Construction items: Specifically those items that are used only for and with construction and serve no other purpose is to just create an ample “inventory” that you can just stockpile them. Sure, it’s not realistic, but really what you’re doing is taking away annoying and pointless inventory management (you’re always going to stockpile construction since it takes forever to build anything if it has any weight or mass) and while gathering the materials in the first place makes sense from a gameplay perspective… dropping them all in one corner and having to carefully pick up each item to ensure you don’t overburden yourself in volume and weight so you don’t crash the game while crafting is annoying. Yes, it’s realistic, but it’s also tedious.

Which is not fun. It’s not even !fun!. Not at all. Except maybe the “crashes the game” part.

[i2amroy]

Two notes:
1)For meds right now we have plans to eventually implement a “small items” feature. The basic idea is that items that normally have no weight/volume (such as medicines) will begin to gain weight once a certain stack size is reached. This should be dependent upon the item in question, and thus could be made that batteries start to gain weight/volume at a stack of 100 while nails don’t gain it till 1000 for example.

2)Personally I’m in favor of the realistic construction. Having done quite a bit of construction in real life I see exactly what sort of problems attempting to pick up 20 2x4’s could cause. What I would like to see is a potential split between “long” boards and “short” boards though, with sizeable weight/volume differences between them. This would allow for construction of smaller things (such as tables, benches, maybe doors) with small pieces of wood that you can carry more of while still requiring the large ones to make things like walls.

I would also like to note that a general good practice when constructing anything is to drop your supplies on the ground before you work though, afterall you don’t attempt to build a door while carrying a bunch of 2x4’s in your backpack, you set them down first.

[Nappist]

So basically the idea I came up with is already being implemented. Fine.

I understand you like tedium and wasting time fighting with game mechanics that are “realistic” but essentially unfun. I don’t. Because that’s exactly what it is. If construction already requires plenty of both out of game and in game time, there’s no real gameplay reason to extend the amount of time you as a player spends. Both points you’ve brought up are things I’ve already addressed in the first post and pointed out why they should be changed.

Also “the game crashes because you do it” is not a good reason, and never will be.

[halberdsturgeon]

I don’t see the big deal about having to gather materials for construction when you need them. What exactly are you finding so cripplingly unfun that would warrant adding hammerspace into the game as a solution?

[Miloch]

I really don’t find construction to be that tedious to gather materials for. If I have need of materials, I minimize my inventory, grab a hammer and screwdriver and go tear apart furniture in a house.

[i2amroy]

Also “the game crashes because you do it” is not a good reason, and never will be.

I’m not quite sure what you are talking about here. Are you having problems with crashing during construction? (Because I’m not.) If so would you care to elaborate on what your problem is so we can fix it (Version, reproduction steps, save files, etc.)?

[vultures]

Errr… you too, sir, haven’t done the wiki homework (OP).
a) carry only the basic equipment on you; carefully plan your sequences ahead
b) set up a base; preferably a wilderness one, until you’ve proven in combat for security reasons regarding mobile bases
c) stock up on food, water and meds; explore the surroundings for more stocks of those
d) remember to have fun

I really understand some of the issues people can have trying to get comfortable ingame, and take game status into reason - but why’d you ever bother having piles of junk, and gather even more? Did you ever bother and think about the concern taken when drawing some of the most useful examples, like LMOEs? They’re perfect pieces of the big-scale puzzle - creating items needed for problem solving. And how in the world could you bust the quota for items when you alone cannot sustain a medium base, those ment for half a dozen people? What’s wrong with sinew->rope logic? It’s only similar to the “How to screw a lightbulb” =>> “Plasma Accelerators in your Lawnmower” hint!
I don’t get how small glitches can frustrate people on such a short notice.

[KA101]

[quote=“i2amroy, post:2, topic:1545”]Two notes:
1)For meds right now we have plans to eventually implement a “small items” feature. The basic idea is that items that normally have no weight/volume (such as medicines) will begin to gain weight once a certain stack size is reached. This should be dependent upon the item in question, and thus could be made that batteries start to gain weight/volume at a stack of 100 while nails don’t gain it till 1000 for example.

[/quote]

Uh, i2amroy, 100 is the default spawn-quantity for batteries, so accumulating volume/weight at that point would effectively make them a non-small item. Is that a serious number, or are you just pulling it for an example?

(And this feature is in, more or less. Over 100 vitamins do tend to add up.)

[i2amroy]

Uh, i2amroy, 100 is the default spawn-quantity for batteries, so accumulating volume/weight at that point would effectively make them a non-small item. Is that a serious number, or are you just pulling it for an example?

I was just pulling it as an example, a more realistic number would probably be ~1000 for batteries (though maybe they would begin to accumulate weight at ~750 but wouldn’t begin to gain volume until ~1250 since batteries tend to be pretty dense).

And vitamins isn’t really valid as an example in this case since it has a default weight/volume of 1. The idea that I was attempting to portray is fractional weights, so that things that normally have volume/weights of 0 (such as nails) will gain them if you carry enough of them.

[Hyena_Grin]

[quote=“i2amroy, post:2, topic:1545”]Two notes:
1)For meds right now we have plans to eventually implement a “small items” feature. The basic idea is that items that normally have no weight/volume (such as medicines) will begin to gain weight once a certain stack size is reached. This should be dependent upon the item in question, and thus could be made that batteries start to gain weight/volume at a stack of 100 while nails don’t gain it till 1000 for example.[/quote]

What kind of battery gains weight when you charge it? That is silly.

A battery should have a set weight and is either charged or uncharged. I don’t actually really like the current battery system. (it works for a placeholder but it makes absolutely no sense).

I’d rather see batteries be objects that have a set weight, can carry a maximum charge, and can be recharged from other batteries using a battery charger. (In real life you can only equalize the charge between two batteries, but for the sake of simplicity, transferring all the power from one battery to another is easier). you could have Small Batteries (with a maximum charge of 500) that work in small devices (such as the mp3 player), Medium Batteries (maximum charge of 750) for use in medium sized devices (such as the flashlight, hotplate, and radio), and Large Batteries (max of 1000) for large devices. You would tend to find batteries of different sizes with varying states of charge (averaging around 100).

Anyway this was about medicine and stackable items, but I just think batteries should be handled differently.

I am actually in favor of small objects such as meds having a small weight/volume. Just make your total volume functionally truncate. So if you have 100 max volume/weight, and have 100 volume worth of gear plus 0.99 volume in stackable items, then functionally you are still at 100/100 volume until you pick up 0.01 more volume, which will put you at 101/100 volume.

[Scheuche]

What kind of battery gains weight when you charge it? That is silly.

Every kind of battery!

scnr, going back to lurking now.

[i2amroy]

What kind of battery gains weight when you charge it? That is silly.

The kind that is actually a bunch of smaller batteries?

And if you wanted to go the small/medium/large battery route then you would probably want to set the limits at 100 (the max charges of a flashlight/mp3 player), 200 (hotplate/vacuum sealer), and 500 (tazer/welder). You could probably also make a tool that allows you to transfer charge from one battery to another (maybe with an internal “storage” battery that can hold 1000?), since with most normal or rechargeable batteries you can’t charge one battery with another (trying to do so will cause either a very hot battery, a ruptured battery, or a wasted battery depending on how they are connected and their respective voltages).

[KA101]

1. Watch out–there’s a capacity-doubling mod available for all fine electronic devices.

2. Requiring that I not have just “batteries” but “small batteries” to listen to music, or “large batteries” to weld, leads to the usual increased micromanagement, item fiddliness, and opportunity for RNG screwage.

3. You might also consider whether you want players to continue to have perfect efficiency in their battery use: currently, any battery can reload any Battery-Powered Device, and the charge from any BPD can be pulled out (as batteries) and loaded into others. Making the “reload” more a “battery-swap”, so I pull out whatever charge was in the BPD and put in whatever was in the batteries, seems likely to lead to more fiddly micromanagement and dead/low battery clutter.

Thus, I’ll oppose this.

[vultures]

It’s totally not idiotic. I made a battery for my cordless phone.
Also, if you’re skilled enough, you can mod your AA battery device to use AAA batteries.
If it’s an issue of using whatever junk you have to make something work in order to survive the next day, I reckon I could use a car battery to push an ATM console to power up.

Do NOT try this at home.

[Hyena_Grin]

2) Requiring that I not have just “batteries” but “small batteries” to listen to music, or “large batteries” to weld, leads to the usual increased micromanagement, item fiddliness, and opportunity for RNG screwage.

I think you are dramatically overestimating the micromanagement increase. In a game that already has an absurd level of micromanagement compared to other games, a battery system that acts like an infinite bar you just fill up and distribute from your magical wand seems rather unfiddly. In real life batteries come in dozens of shapes and sizes, and in the absence of some amateur electronics modification you can only use those batteries the device was specifically designed for. I propose three types of batteries. And I think options for modifying electronic devices to accept larger battery types is more interesting than a flat capacity upgrade.

Secondly, if you have a device that you need a battery for, most of the time you have a battery also. It just might be dead. If you have an mp3 player with a dead (small) battery and can find nothing but medium and large batteries… then transfer power from your medium batteries to your small battery. I don’t see how you could get screwed by the RNG. All you need is either a battery charger or the relatively meager items and skill needed to fashion one.

3) You might also consider whether you want players to continue to have perfect efficiency in their battery use: currently, any battery can reload any [b]B[/b]attery-[b]P[/b]owered [b]D[/b]evice, and the charge from any BPD can be pulled out (as batteries) and loaded into others. Making the "reload" more a "battery-swap", so I pull out whatever charge was in the BPD and put in whatever was in the batteries, seems likely to lead to more fiddly micromanagement and dead/low battery clutter.

I don't see a problem with having batteries which are objects that can die. We have many items in the game which become useless clutter items after use. As for efficiency, I don't really see the current method as being particularly interesting or sensible. 'Power' doesn't seem to be represented by anything in the game, you might as well be picking up 'magicka' which you store in your wizard hat to power items. It is weightless, infinitely transferable, and without any realistic restriction. I'm sorry but it just doesn't mesh with the level of detail we have in virtually every other aspect of the game.

What I would like to see is a more interesting/in-depth system for batteries that a) requires some management, b) rewards electronics skill usage, because that skill has almost no use and energy management could become the basic pre-crafting skill for electronics, much as sewing is the pre-crafting skill for tailoring, and c) actually provides realistic amounts of battery life. I’m sick of flashlights that can only last for two or three in-game hours before sputtering out. They could (and should) last for several days and gradually get dimmer over the end of its life, as battery charge drains down. So honestly, I’m for less fiddliness using a system that is more interesting, more involved, and makes use of existing skills.

(And for the person who said that all batteries gain weight with charge - you are technically correct, because electrons etc do have a weight. It is just so small a change that it is impractical to measure the change. For all intents and purposes, batteries do not gain any weight when charged. Unless you are interested in atomic weights. We’re not, really.)

[Weyrling]

Considering the batteries issue, the UPS (presumably) has the ability to drain/recharge batteries, somewhat mitigating the RNG issue with multiple battery types, even more so when ‘extra battery mod’ is applied to it.
I’d definitely like to see something other than the universally applied battery super-stack, and being able to carry around thousands of beef jerky with no apparent issue.

I’d suggest a default minimum value so that everything weighs something or has volume in sufficient quantities, 1/1000 seems like a realistic minimum, can anybody think of anything they could carry thousands of without atleast some issue, aside from grains of sand?

[i2amroy]

1/1000th is also probably about right for a lot of in-game item weights as well, since most in-game medicines will reach 1-2 weight units (250 g) at approximately 1000 doses of medicine.

[fatkat61]

I’m all for making the power system in game more robust and realistic. I’d like to see the ability to make small batteries into medium batteries or something similar to how battery packs work, basically a few batteries taped together.