View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0008776 | Valley 1 | Gameplay Idea | Jul 5, 2012 6:19 pm | Jul 8, 2012 2:24 pm | |
| Reporter | ZCaliber | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 1.109 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 1.112 | ||||
| Summary | 0008776: Farming for farms | ||||
| Description | Given the important nature of Farms and keeping the populace from starving, I'd suggest lowering the cost of buying Farms in the Opal store. Currently 20,000 orbs seems a bit high, especially just starting out, to rely solely on random chance of getting a building that is neigh essential to the smooth operation of a settlement. I'd suggest lowering it to 10,000, to put it into 'You want to mostly find them than buy them' but still make it within' reasonable purchasing goals. My logic being that the rest of the structures are largely optional (For the most part) but farms are sort of the lynchpin. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
| related to | 0008842 | resolved | Chris_McElligottPark | Covered farms in Secret Missions |
| related to | 0008807 | considering | Make common buildings craftable |
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You can think of it as "when just starting out, a settlement is really just scraping by to survive; it's going to take some work before people start getting enough food to be really satisfied, and start doing their best." With zero farms when first arriving at a settlement, nobody should starve - they'll just be grumpy and uncooperative. Perhaps you could even rescue one more survivor; but rescuing 2 or more, I think, should cause starvation (until one dies, and you're back at your previous level of max food shortage before starvation). How about if a settlement has zero farms (and you have zero 'unplaced' farms in your inventory), all missions on that continent which drop buildings will only provide farms? Once you have one farm, building drop-rates would go back to normal. Once you've reached this point, I think the 20k cost of farms is fair; I prefer the feel of deciding whether to place a farm, thereby increasing your population capacity (or perhaps making them even happier, if they're demanding even more food), or another building of similar cost that improves your settlement in a different way. So while I agree with you that something should be done to help a settlement get farms when it has none, I somewhat disagree with your proposed solution. |
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Ill leave this open for now, but I tend to agree with Pyrrhic for this one. |
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I agree with Pyrrhic, his idea seems to be the kind of simple and elegant fix I've come to expect in this game. |
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Not much of a settlement without a food source; more of a death camp. I agree with Pyrrhic that 'when first arriving at a settlement, nobody should starve'. Whether that means the settlement starts with a covered farm in an adjacent tile or whether the settlement tile itself provides 4 to 6 food probably doesn't matter (implementation detail). However, I'm not sold on the whole 'first building reward' is always a farm, if it's always a farm, then why doesn't the settlement just start with a farm? |
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Well, currently nobody starves (dies) when you arrive at a settlement. If you rescue survivors (increasing your population) without increasing your food sources, though, then things might get worse (although character death from lack of food is currently disabled and may never be enabled, according to http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AVWW_-_Post-Launch_Series_2_Release_Notes ). In one way, there's no real difference between the way it is now, and giving settlements an initial farm. The way it is now, a settlement can get by with a slight food shortage (which I suppose represents everyone digging up roots, cooking dead animals, and just grabbing to eat what they can; people survive, but not very happily); an even bigger shortage of food might cause an even worse situation. If a settlement starts with a farm, then it's like this food is the only thing the settlement's population is eating; if the population increased to be greater than the amount of food produced, then there would be trouble. To me, the difference between the two is that without a farm, there's an excuse to make characters grumpy at the beginning of a continent (which adds some challenge, fits with a post-apocalyptic theme, and makes the player feel good when they are able to lift the settlement out of its misery). If a city has a farm and even a little extra food, then to me it seems like the city isn't sad and in need of a hero, but feeling normal and doing OK; you're just there to spruce things up a bit. I wouldn't suggest that settlements start with a farm, basically so that the city can seem worse off initially; I'd prefer that getting a farm felt like an accomplishment, an important first step - instead of something that's already been taken care of for me. The only reason I suggest that the first building reward always be a farm, is because it's such a foundational building, and the player might feel really frustrated if the RNG just isn't giving them a farm. (For subsequent farms, the player should be able to acquire enough consciousness shards to buy a farm, if they aren't finding any.) Plus, it feels kind of weird if (thanks to you finding almost everything but a farm) a city gains all of these towering profession buildings, yet still has just as much measly food as it started with; and I guess that poorly-fed characters wouldn't be very happy about doing their jobs. |
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How about another idea: What if the other 'basic' structures provided 1 food (or 0.5 food) each? Would that go towards making a farm less of an "I need this now" structure, while still being desirable in its own right? |
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Thanks! * The shard cost of covered farms has been reduced from 20k to 15k. |
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I would much prefer that the settlement gets some kind of "farm" bonus rather than giving food production to other basic structures, though the settlement should really only produce 3 food (survival levels) at the start since it's not a fully fledged farm; this is with starvation in mind (which is something I do want to see, since perpetual hunger would otherwise look a bit odd.) I'm not so sure about favouring farms as the first drop, since I may want to start on the professional development for ingredients for spells to then go get aforementioned farms; it's another order of doing things rather than only having one path. |
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I already wrote this in another comment, but oh well, it fits here: How about making the "basic" buildings (like farms) craftable like the spells? Another way to spend your granite, cedar or whatever. This way you can obtain it without having to hunt for a secret mission drop. |
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Ipkins, I like your idea of being able to build buildings with craftables. If you haven't already, I think you should make that a separate suggestion. |
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Maybe they should eat all the Plums and Cherries we have lying around :) |
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They're probably acid plums and acid cherries. |
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It might be worth increasing the drop rate of farms too. It may be that I've been unlucky, but I've played three advanced-start worlds in different betas since the farms have been added and I've never had one available as a result of a secret mission. I ended up having to purchase them for 20k/15k, at which point I had around 8-9 people in my town from rescue missions which happened, well, pretty much as a side effect of me grinding to try and get a farm reward from secret missions. If farms only supported, say, 2 or 3 people each it wouldn't matter so much if the drop rate was significantly higher too; it's not as if I was struggling for other town buildings, I think I had almost every other bonus building possible at that point (+jump height, +entropy/water/air/etc, +movement, etc). |
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darke, I created case 0008842 (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=8842) to address that exact issue of having to buy farms. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 5, 2012 6:19 pm | ZCaliber | New Issue | |
| Jul 5, 2012 10:58 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026360 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 11:03 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Edited: 0026360 | |
| Jul 6, 2012 8:53 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Jul 6, 2012 8:53 am | tigersfan | Note Added: 0026374 | |
| Jul 6, 2012 8:53 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Jul 6, 2012 9:10 am | MaxwellDemonic | Note Added: 0026375 | |
| Jul 6, 2012 9:11 am | MaxwellDemonic | Note Edited: 0026375 | |
| Jul 6, 2012 10:39 am | vadatajs | Note Added: 0026390 | |
| Jul 6, 2012 11:26 am | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026398 | |
| Jul 6, 2012 12:05 pm | vadatajs | Note Added: 0026400 | |
| Jul 6, 2012 12:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0026405 | |
| Jul 6, 2012 12:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | considering => resolved |
| Jul 6, 2012 12:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 1.112 |
| Jul 6, 2012 12:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Jul 6, 2012 12:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Jul 6, 2012 12:27 pm | BenMiff | Note Added: 0026406 | |
| Jul 7, 2012 3:37 am | Ipkins | Note Added: 0026433 | |
| Jul 7, 2012 3:48 am | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026435 | |
| Jul 7, 2012 6:24 am | Ipkins | Relationship added | related to 0008807 |
| Jul 7, 2012 11:53 am | SerinityFyre | Note Added: 0026458 | |
| Jul 7, 2012 2:27 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026475 | |
| Jul 8, 2012 12:45 pm | darke | Note Added: 0026510 | |
| Jul 8, 2012 2:23 pm | SerinityFyre | Note Added: 0026516 | |
| Jul 8, 2012 2:24 pm | SerinityFyre | Relationship added | related to 0008842 |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:30 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Suggestion - Gameplay => Gameplay Idea |
