Darmo

It'll affect the animals you find. Check out the TFC climate page It's very useful info. You'll have clay, but 4k is too high to find cows or horses. I think it'll also be too high for 2/3 of berry bushes to show up. But, rainfall changes more often than stone types. So you shouldn't have to travel as far to find a different rainfall environment.

It might be nice, on the anvil page, to clarify where the non-tool metals fall, in terms of being able to make sheets.

I've been thinking about if there's room for two magic systems, and specifically if there would be a place for 'druidic' or nature-based magic. I wanted to put some thoughts down here. Pollution/Degradation One of the early parts of this thought was, what would make this magic 'nature' magic, and how would it be different from a more 'by-the-book' arcane magic. I was thinking of a lot of natural processes or components, but one thing that jumped out at me was, if it were to be nature-based, the aesthetic would best be supported by methods which lend themselves to nature. So one of the concepts I came up with, was the notion of degradation of nature. The game could have a way to track this, and nature magic works best in areas where it is least disturbed. So, perhaps there could be a counter for each chunk, that tracks degradation. Much like it tracks whether the fishing or panning/sluicing are overworked. But rather than being overworked, the number would be a threshhold. And above certain thresholds, certain nature magics will not work at all, or will work only at reduced power. There would be two numbers - a minimum and a current number. Some acts will increase just the current number. There will be spells to heal degradation done by small acts. Other acts will increase both the current AND minimum number. The minimum number is just that, a minimum, and can never be reduced. It represents permanent harm. Some things that could increase environmental degradation: - Any time a dirt, natural stone, or ore block is broken. This would be a very small increase, but only to the current number. This could easily add up fast, but the druid can heal it via appropriate magic later. cutting down a tree would degrade according to the amount of wood dropped. - Every time a 'processed' block is placed, this raises the minimum and current values. But removing them lowers both by the same amount. Such blocks are smooth stone, bricks, anvils, farmed ground, metal sheets, bloomery and blast furnace blocks, etc. Maybe plank blocks even. If TFC2 doesn't have chisels that'll simplify it. Otherwise the fact that chisels turn these blocks to air will have to be addressed. And yes, stone blocks and metal sheets and anvils don't produce pollution. But the idea is to not have druids using them in their area. - Every time a bloomery or blast furnace is lit, this raises the minimum & current, and not just in the chunk it's lit, but basically every loaded chunk around the player, the the amount goes down the further away you go. Basically these kinds of industrial processes represent the greatest harm, and permanent, via pollution. Pit kilns and forges may just increase the current number, not the minimum, and in a smaller area. Because druids will probably still need *some* metal tools. The druid will of course need a way to tell how degraded a given chunk is, though this may have an associated skill and go in stages of accuracy, like the cooking taste mechanic. Chests, barrels, fences, etc would all be fine, unless sufficient alternates are provided. Yes, a druid could in theory let their animals roam free, or capture them with 2-high walls, but I don't think either of those is a great solution. Roaming will just be annoying (unless the druid can eventually tame ANY animal enough to command it to stay in place) and 2-high pits or enclosures just aren't scenic. It would be fun though, if druids could magically grow some kind of natural hedge-fence. So that gives an idea of the nature of pollution. The idea is to *not* have druids existing side-by-side in a town with people running blast furnaces and such. The druid should be surrounded by nature. And this notion runs somewhat counter to the stated goal of multiplayer coop, but I think it would be worthwhile nonetheless. THE EQUIPMENT I was envisioning druids as using a variety of grown tools and blocks. I haven't got details yet, but for instance there could be moss blocks that grow atop natural stone and dirt, but only underneath trees. The druid could influence these blocks in various ways to grow more powerful, and spread. These could either power a mana system, or be required adjacencies for other process blocks to function. There could be other such plants, as well as stonehenge-like obelisks. Different setups could give different powers. Druids could also use crystals in their magic, as suggested above. Hopefully it could be tied to moon cycles in some way. There would probably be some overlap in spell effects between druidic and arcane magic, but in general I would imagine arcane having more pure-damage-dealing type effects, with druidic perhaps focusing on taming animals, or even allowing the druid to tame and/or mount animals not otherwise mountable, like bears (maybe vanilla mount mechanics prevent this though) I was imagining the druid using copper, silver, gold, lead, and platinum in their processes, in pure forms. No bronze, as it's an alloy, and certainly no iron or above. I'm not sure where silver and gold and platinum fall in terms of workability on anvils - the wiki anvil page does not currently address that. However, I think it would be best if druids did not make anvils at all, but instead upgrade their raw stone anvil (via magic, or something else) to progressively higher tiers. It could retain the base stone, but add suffixes, i.e. 'basalt moon anvil'. Stone anvils would of course not degrade the chunk. I would imagine druids mostly using magic, and magic staves for weapons. And either magic leather armor, or additional types could be added. There could be chitin added via giant insects, crabs, or turtles. Perhaps bone armor. Or even wood armor magically grown and enhanced. Or even magical versions of silver, gold, or platinum, though I know that may be dicey as those were specifically removed some time ago for good reasons, and the unenchanted versions might risks confusing non-druids. It would be interesting if druids could actually grow special magical varieties of tree (ironwood, etc) that could be fashioned into armor using a smithing system, but perhaps using a different tool from hammer. Aside from armor, I'd mostly imagine druids using the metals in making vessels for their magical concoctions, maybe scythes for harvesting magical flowers, etc. Hopefully the currently useless game flowers could be incorporated into an herbalism system. In line with the idea of pollution and degradation, if the druid is carrying armor or weapons of forbidden material types, their magic would be greatly reduced, and their other work hindered as well. The tricky part though, would be making this a distinct skill branch (assuming that's desired). I imagine there would be skills associated with nature magic and arcane, and skill in one could detract from the other. If the player wants to be the best at one, they can't dabble in the other. This would enforce a magical dichotomy. But keeping a player from setting up a druid base in one area, and an industrial base in another, would be harder. Unless the notion of pollution were extended to the player themselves. So severe acts such as lighting bloomeries and blast furnaces degrades the natural essense of the player themselves. Overall, the idea would be to encourage 'druid' characters (and remember, 'druid' is just shorthand for a player focusing on nature magic - there's no classes in the game and no mechanic will actually forbid the druid from making and using the industrial blocks and iron+ gear) to create home and environs very different from the 'classic' style of player town. I was imagining simple cottage, with logs of big shady trees having all sorts of mystical looking sylvan plants, stones, and crystals. Pools of special water, etc. Maybe even fairys, dryads, or kodama, that the druid could attract or summon to enhance the magic. Basically, a different, very mystical, setting.

Don't be afraid to roam far. You can find a better rock layer, surface nuggets, crops, animals, and all kinds of stuff. Much more interesting than panning. Make sure to get a minimap mod, and mark the locations of nuggets, especially if you pick them all up. Beware of starting areas with rainfall under 250. They won't have clay, which is an even bigger problem than lack of copper.

I had another thought on possible burlap use. It's only going to make sense if there's any desire to make food (specifically fruit) less easy to get, so this is all made in that context and if that's not a desire then this is not going to be a useful suggestion. I've noticed that it's pretty easy to set up a very extensive fruit farm, what with berry bushes and trees. In the right climate zone, it doesn't take much wandering to get loads. I thought it would both give a use to burlap, and make fruit producers more valuable early on, if burlap sacks were the only item that could hold berry bushes and fruit tree saplings (and maybe regular saplings as well). It seems like stack sizes can be be different for inventory vs container, looking at log piles. So maybe saplings and bushes would only stack to 1 in player inventory, but higher in the burlap sack (Though logs are higher in inventory than in stack slots, so maybe that doesn't work in reverse?) It would be additionally interesting if plants in player inventory had some sort of 'rot' timer (12 hours or less maybe, reduced by high temps), which if it runs out the sapling/bush disappears, or turns into sticks. Timer does not decay in burlap sack. This would represent that carrying bushes and trees bare-root is not good for them at all. It would allow players to gather nearby bushes and fruit trees without a sack. There would have to be some sort of precaution for bushes to make sure the player cannot just place and immediately break it again to reset the timer (maybe a 'sapling' version for bushes, like the early stages of crop growth?) The player could still gather them from farther away without a bag, but they'd have to carry them, plant them before they dry out, and come back again and re-harvest them later. The sack could for instance have just 4 slots, like vessels and log piles, with max stacks of 4 in each slot, and could be constructed using some burlap, jute or other thread, and dirt. This would set up an early game choice between using your jute for ropes for animals, or for sacks for transporting bushes and trees. This might make fruit trees and/or bushes more important in the early game, as it won't be as easy to set up massive fruit farms (especially if fruit trees only gave saplings in the right season, or if a beehive is nearby, etc). For extra hardcore-ness: -Burlap sacks can only be carried though extraordinary means such as player back, donkey, cart, etc. -The sack has a matching set of slots for dirt (16 sap/bush, 16 dirt). And every time you place a sapling in the sack, is uses up one block of dirt. You cannot place a sapling in the sack if no dirt block is available -You have to keep the sack moist -Saplings/bushes which are placed bare-root (from player inventory) have a flag like 'root shock' or something, which reduces their growth speed when planted(the flag is applied when the rot timer decays a bit). Saplings placed in a burlap sack have the 'root shock' flag removed, so they grow at normal speed when planted. When the sapling is removed from the sack and placed in hotbar or inventory, the 'rot' timer starts again and the player has a brief time period to plant it before the root shock flag is re-applied.

Fair enough, but you said earlier (emphasis mine): That implied to me that you thought just by being close to the equator, they wouldn't be present. Which is not true. I've seen cows 6k blocks from equator. So based on that I thought I'd help out by pointing out they *might* still be near. If you've explored all the blocks within that range and found no cows, and high rain biomes, ok, fine, but if so I did not know that you had explored so much. Rain is not tied to the equator, to the best of my knowledge, but simply to biome. *Average* biome temperature, to the best of my knowledge, IS directly tied to distance from equator. But in my experience does not reach 30 until near 6k from equator. That's why I said what I did.

Ya, I gathered that from "stick head in", but it's true that a button would solve the issue.

Just FYI, you can totally find cows near that latitude. Sheep will be further.

I think it'd be a fun addition, in combination with rebalancing of the food system. Because without rebalancing food, I don't see much use for it. The most obvious and immediate uses are crop related. Having bees near your crops and fruit stuff causes them to yield more. And I think that's a good use. Because right now it's pretty easy to get food in all but the most extreme climates. Fruit trees, especially. I think fruit trees could be made to only yield a trivial amount per block, unless bees are nearby, then it increases to something like current. IRL, the bee industry is largely driven by actually transporting massive amounts of bees to the almond groves in California every year. Huge industry. So if someone doesn't want to bother with bees, natural beehives would be another bonus thing to look for near the base Of course there's honey and wax, but they'd need real uses, otherwise why bother? I don't think minor food taste alteration is enough. Healing uses sound good though (in combination with other materials). And wax can be worked into gemology (if it comes in) and probably be worked into magic somehow. It might be fun to have bees propogate flowers as well, though not useful strictly speaking. If you want to get really hardcore, then garden-grown crops would not produce seeds if not pollinated by bees (wild crops would always make seeds of course). I could further imagine beekeeping clothing being made from burlap, giving a currently useless material a use. The bee system itself could be as simple or as complicated as justified by the amount and importance of its uses, naturally.

It's a fun idea, one I'd considered suggesting, but I thought I saw a similar idea get shot down somewhere, though I can't find it now, even under "ice box". Dynamic temperature, I've seen discussions before that indicated this is kind of a non-starter due to the complexity, but who knows, maybe TFC2 is different? Also, the Cellars Addon basically does this already, but using snow rather than ice. I think the issue you might run into is that most places, people like to build their 'sky freezers' at the top of the world where it's perpetually cold, if you're far enough from the equator. If you're anywhere that ice forms for more than a few days, I think you're probably ahead to go the sky freezer route, as they don't need maintenance, although they can be tedious to climb up to. I could see an ice house being useful in tropical areas where even the top of the world is too warm for a sky freezer. But then you have to trek a long ways to get the ice. To make ice houses/boxes truly useful, I think you'd have to somehow make sky freezers non-workable, and I don't know how you'd do that unless you have some kind of 'freezer burn' or something for if your food gets *too* cold, maybe in combo with too high up. That said I think it'd be a fun mechanic, in line with the other detailed constructs of TFC, such as charcoal pits and blast furnaces. I don't see why you wouldn't just use a regular saw for you ice saw. It'd give the saw a left-click use. The way I envisioned the ice box mechanic: was not as a room, but as a special storage block, 1 or 2(max) blocks tall, made of metal sheets. This block would need to be surrounded by seven columns of ice blocks - one in each diagonal direction, and 3 in the cardinal directions. The remaining side must be a door. The several columns must be 1 block taller than the top freezer block, and there also must be an ice block on top of the top freezer block itself. So basically your freezer block(s) must be encased in a cube of ice, including diagonals, except for the door and the ground. If these conditions are met, the ice box blocks are at or near freezing, preserving the food inside indefinitely or nearly so. The ice blocks melt over time, but only the top-most block in a column. Maybe there would need to be ice layers created, like charcoal? One layer melts every so often, based on ambient temperature (maybe around 6 hrs at middle latitudes in summer?). So if you use the bare minimum blocks, they'll only completely freeze the top ice box block for presumably something like a couple days at mid-lats. The solution is you stockpile more ice blocks, either in the manner of old (i.e. pile them in a huge pile and hope they last the summer) or actually create an 'ice silo' around your fridge, meaning you stack the ice blocks up in really high columns. The top layers keep the bottom layers from melting. The ice lasts longer if you further surround the ice columns with columns of thatch (but just cardinally adjacent, not diagonally. In plan, what you'd end up with is a freezer block in the middle, 7 columns of ice around it plus a door, and a further 11 columns of thatch around the ice columns, and presumably a blank spot to access the door. Since the ice box must be surrounded on all but one side by ice, you can't place two adjacent to each other, but you could space them one apart, so they share three of the ice columns. Personally I think I'd make the ice block itself back-carryable only, but that's probably too grindy for some. But when you see old ice house pictures, it was a huge production using horses and tracks to slide the blocks. It might bring an interesting use to minecarts, which would probably be reasonable since your base is likely by a body of water, so you'd not need hundreds and hundreds of track. It'd also be fun to see people set up track on ice, and have to remember to remove it before thaw. Unfortunately this plan would probably have some sort of ramification with regard to ticking blocks or something due to the ice melting, I don't know. And it would be nice to have a new solid thatch block to prevent people falling to their death through the thatch while trying to replenish the ice silo. But to me it seemed the best way to get a pretty faithful representation of the old ice houses. Both our ideas though, are a lot more complicated than simply having a special ice box container, with a special slot for putting ice blocks, and it sucks up an ice block each day or something.

I'm with Bunsan. If anything, I'd like the second shift-click to *remove* 1 log from the pile. To me it's much more annoying to have to mess with the gui to get one log out for cooking or making a barrel or those accidental 1-log-pile placements.

Right click with empty hand seems reasonable. It's how people drink from ponds in the early game anyway. I don't think it would be gui-annoying very often. Personally, I almost never have empty hotbar slots. I pretty much 100% always am accessing containers with something in hand. The most annoying factor would be if you do forget, use an empty hand to try to access the gui, drink a bit instead, and now your barrel is not 100% full, and you needed it 100% full for making your alcohol or whatever. That would be annoying. I don't really see it as a necessary mechanic. But then, I almost always have 3 jugs on me at all times, unless I'm at base. Bunsan has a point though. There's already a GUI, a 'drink' button could be added...

I think because the chisel allows you to create stairs.

If this is a reaction to that 'smithing guide' post in the guides forum, that popped up today, that was a necro of a very old thread. I don't think there's been a lot of discussion about this topic recently. Per Kitty's point, I think the only way to bring randomization to the hit buttons would be to have several sets of pre-selected numbers that are known to work, and each world/player seed picks a set. Then it's just a matter of figuring out which set the player/world uses though. Personally I'm good with the system as it is really.

I agree, it'd be interesting. Everyone has their own 'thing'. I'd be ok with more work to make flour for instance. I think it would help the feel of progression in terms of food being a little harder to get at the beginning. There's only one way to get bread and that's flour, and so by altering the milling mechanic, you can directly control how hard it is to get bread. And being able to create a water source block would certainly be useful for farming. But I think only if it can be done before the 'end-game', and only in very cold regions, where the crop window is tight. Or maybe if it could counter tropical heat. But the notion of pumps for mine water supply interests me not at all. I think it'd be too much work to set up for a mine, which is temporary. Not only would the setup be tedious, but keeping the pump powered. To me the most unattractive aspect of the game is dragging animals around, and the last thing I personally want to see is me having to drag animals from mine to mine in the early-ish game. I think the incentive would always be to work around it by just using massive amounts of jugs, or simply put a barrel at the bottom of the shaft. Heck, even just digging a sloped channel from the same water source down into the mine would probably be preferrable, as I wouldn't need to power that. Getting water is a problem with multiple solutions and I don't think you can railroad the character into using pumps for it without changing all the other solutions as well. And in general, water hauling isn't really a very interesting mechanic to me. Now pumps at a home base - to make a mountain-top more livable for instance - that I can get behind, because it's a permanent investment. But keeping it fueled still doesn't seem attractive to me. I'd rather just put out rain barrels. Other people would have different opinions - maybe they're not interested in making flour harder to get. I think the best use of powered stuff will be for for 'new' purposes. Things like hoisting non-carryable stuff from the depths, or to the tops of mountains. Powering mine-cars (which isn't new, but redstone was always a placeholder from my understanding). And, even though it doesn't currently work this way, there's nothing to say that the system couldn't be altered so that metal items in the forge *do* heat faster with a bellows, which would be a new mechanic, and one which I think players would use. Maybe there is a powered roller-mill, into which the player put a hot ingot, and (after time) out comes a metal sheet, no smithing required. Maybe there is a powered trip-hammer, which liberalizes the preciseness with which the smithing arrows must be aligned. Maybe there are new ores - adamantine - which when the player mines them, they do not come out in ore form, but in block form. The player must then put the block in a mechanical crusher to extract the ore. Perhaps this crusher can be used by the player, to insert a piece of rich ore of any type, and they get back that piece of rich ore, plus a 10u nugget (takes some time). New uses. Fun uses.

Aye. But the parents are individual cases. A federally controlled education system is all-encompassing. 'The Big Lie' isn't perpetrated by one-offs. It's perpetrated by a system. We'll always have to deal with 'the crazies'. They're annoying but mostly harmless. I'm far more concerned about government sponsored propaganda.

To a degree. I mean, a large part of mechanical power in history has been grinding grains. TFC just doesn't work that way currently. But it definitely could. The other major use would have been moving around building materials - stone and lumber. But the way TFC currently is obviates that as well. It's the realism vs 'I want to build' conundrum. I think TFC2 will largely need to offer some more specialized uses, because I don't see building material transport as likely to change much. Making flour production more of a grind...might work. I think there'd be a line to be careful of in making it *too* 'grindy'. It'd definitely go a ways to making people value food more. It might even make salads attractive to use sometimes again, since bread would be more time consuming to make. I do rather like the idea of no more red/blue buckets. You want water or lava somewhere? You pump it there (or use magic?). It'd be nice if water could be done at steel or black steel tiers though, rather than red. Honestly, it feels like right now by the time you've achieved top tier metals, having water somewhere other than natural pools really isn't that big a deal. Ya, you could make barrels non-ladder-carry-able. But I feel like I'd probably just carry 20 jugs with me on a water run instead, and/or build a stairway. In imagining the effort to set up a working pump system for each mine, I just can't imagine it being less onerous than simply a massive jug run. And that's only assuming I can't just have my ladder shaft go all the way up, so the rain fills the barrel at the bottom instead, which is easiest by far.

Let's equally face it that everything kids are learning up to probably age 14 is dead simple. How many people forget multiplication? Grammar is probably the most complex, but I honestly couldn't tell you what my language classes were like then, so I'm not sure. I would say that everything up through about 8th grade (US) is so simple the parents do not NEED to have their own innate knowledge. That's what textbooks are for - I don't think anybody homeschools from pure memory. Even beyond that into high school, a lot of things are very simple, very textbook teachable. I'd honestly say that grammar probably requires as much innate teacher knowledge as anything. There's nothing that says that if one begins homeschooling, one must do it through the child's 18th year. A great many homeschoolers around here only homeschool through the lower grades, and then send their kids to public schools for high school, if not earlier. This allows them to influence the most early and highly impressionable years, where kids are extremely easily brainwashed by liberal education. Additionally, it allows the parent to teach things which liberals have managed to remove from public education, such as the constitution, a positive view of US history (and present), and civics in general. By the time they're teenagers they're probably as prone to disregard their teachers as they are their parents on social issues. The problem a great many parents have is, there there can be a line between 'sex' ed and 'perversion' ed, and moreover how early sex ed is tought. I would definitely want my kids to know some basic stuff. They don't need to be instructed on acts. And they don't need to be taught these things when they're 8. I will return again, to local control. These things should be under the control of the local schools, not the federal government. Respect the local culture. Funny how for liberals, everyone from anywhere outside the country, you have to respect the hell out of their culture. But if you're an American, and especially white? Oh, you don't have culture. Look, you can't just argue that anything in history that was bad was done by "convervatives". At the risk of getting into an argument over labels, I would say the worst attrocities in history have all been done by 'liberals' (I'm mainly going off body count here, rather than details of particular cruelty - i.e. Inquisition). If we're taking 'liberals' in this context to mean people who don't like the current social milieu, then the communists and their ilk who performed the various attrocities in Russia and Asia in the early 20th century are far and away the worst. And far from isolated examples. They are perfect examples of the result of rampant federal power vs a disarmed populace in most cases, and the inherent danger therein. I can't speak for other 'conservatives' (and many conservatives would not call me that) but the main thing I want to return America to is a point where everyone took responsiblity for their own well lives, rather than relying on the government for handouts. That's the worst thing going on in this country right now. Return of local control to states would be great too. I want people to actually be free. Not have their lives dictated by the feds.

These are fun ideas, but TFC2 will need to be significantly different from the current game to really have enough use of these things, to justify the time it would take to code it all. In the current game, there's no notion of quality difference for products of querns. So powering a quern wouldn't gain anything in terms of flour production. And unless the food system is significantly changed to reduce the ease with which one can gain huge food surpluses, I don't really think it'll be a big benefit. Changing the flour milling system to do like, 2oz at a time on the other hand, would probably greatly increase the incentive. I can see some benefit to powering the quern for grinding of graphite or kaolinite, but not a whole lot. I usually do that stuff during in-home nights anyway. If there was a 'quality of process' involved - for instance hand-ground Kao/Graph only had a 50% chance to produce a product, while milled was 100%, that would be much more incentive to go to all that mill effort. Still, the quantities of those two things needed are small enough the mill probably wouldn't even wear out any parts, and then it wouldn't be used anymore (unless the player is really into dyes) Moving water to a barrel would be mildly useful, but I think only to pump water down into a mine, so you don't need to go refill. Above ground barrels, it rains so often I don't think the pump would be useful there. Even a mine barrel can use rainwater if it's a straight shaft down from the surface. If your winters are long the rain barrel method won't work, but then - logically speaking - your pipes would freeze anyway. In general it's pretty fast to pop outside and grab a barrel, which will last like, 15 days or more I think. Blast Furnaces, I don't think it would be worth it. As Kitty mentions in the myths thread, bellows do not increase the rate at which items in forges heat up. Only the speed with which the forge itself heats up. It's a common miconception. Once the forge or blast furnace is at full heat, you're not helping anything. Mechanical power for this would probably be largely wasted effort, unless this system changes in TFC2. A big heavy gate, I'm not seeing the use for. At least currently. In TFC2 presumably mobs will have some block destroying power, and then a big drawbridge or something could be useful. But I would think the use would be so intermittent, I'm not sure how worthwhile a mechanism setup would be there unless the speed of raising difference would be drastically faster. But unless attacks are pre-warned well ahead of time, if the player-power method is super-slow, they're probably going to get surprised more often than not. This would definitely be a legit use for a geared mechanism of some kind (ala dwarf fortress) even if player powered. Elevators could be a legit use if there are more very-heavy items in the game that cannot be transported even on a player's back. I suggest this in regard to magic crystals in the magic thread. It could also be useful if one wants to build mountain-top settlements and have animals up there. This could give both minecarts and hoists/elevators a use. Steam power, I would love to see - but I'm not sure what it would do beyond the above systems, except power minecarts. And unless minecarts get an actual game use, there's just no need for that right now. Believe me, I'd love to see these systems, especially steam power. But the game in it's current form just doesn't have the need for any of these things imho. They're all relatively easily accomplished by player power. I have a whole sand-casting system dreamed up, but I've not bothered posting it because there's just no need for steam power right now. I would suggest maybe focusing more on ways to bring a *need* for mechanical power into TFC2 because right now, I just don't see it.

So, in this post, Kitty said (bold added by me): I wanted to inquire further on that, but that would have been OT, so I started this thread. Basically, I just wanted to inquire in a bit more detail; there will not be a chisel in TFC2, *period*? Or there won't be certain modes of the chisel? Smooth block mode, at least, doesn't require any subdividing of blocks right? It just switches one for another? Surely the chisel will still be around for that at least? I understand that the detailed mode would create absurd amounts of blocks. What about the slab and stair modes? Will those be gone too? I don't know the details, but I assumed they basically replaced a block with 8 smaller blocks - cubes in the case of stair mode, slabs in slab mode. Will these too be too much for TFC2 to handle? And if even slabs won't work, does that mean charcoal and snow layers and metal sheets will also be no more? And if all that were true, what of planks? Will those still exist? The loss of microblocks is definitely lamentable, I'm sure many will agree, but I think we can get by - I personally avoid them currently since they can cause lag if done in excess. But stair and slab mode, and planks, those are all really useful, and it would greatly impact the game I think, to lose them. Can we get some elaboration on those, as well as whether chisels will at least remain for smooth mode?

I actually liked the idea of needing different tools to harvest different crops effectively from that other thread, so I support this or some way to allow that. Offhand I thought there should be: Scythe - all grains (barley, oats, rice, rye, wheat) knife - peppers, corn, green beans, soy beans, squash, tomato, jute Shovel - potatoes, onions, garlic, carrot

*IF* it were desired to bring sleep into the game, I think it would be better to make a carrot, and not a stick. After sleeping you get something like a 16 game hour 'well rested' bonus that maybe lets you move a little faster, mine/chop a little faster, etc (only a little though). People don't like penalties, and I think they would especially dislike having whatever they're doing forcibly interrupted, but as a bonus I think rest would be much more palatable.

Some thoughts: - one button to sleep is too easily accidentally pushed. It needs to be a combo like Alt-S or something. - The basic bad effects should be the same as low hunger. Vision distorting potion effects should be for extreme sleep deprivation. - Death from collapse is way, way too extreme. The annoyance, or chance of mob attack if it happens in the open at night, is enough. Maybe some damage from hitting your head when you collapse. - I don't think the game can handle 'thousands' or even 'scores' of mobs - presumably that was hyperbole? - I don't think the alcohol mechanic as suggested is logical, but I do like having a potential actual use for alcohol. - Being able to sleep even without a bed would be nice in the early game, as long as the nights still insta-pass if everyone is sleeping in multiplayer. However it would get pretty annoying if you're playing with others and don't synchronize your sleeping. Unless you only need to sleep for like, an hour or something. - It would be good to have a coffee plant added as a crop (only growable in the tropics - the deep tropics, not 7k latitude) as kind of a no-side-effect method. - Overall, I'm not a big fan of the idea. It just doesn't add anything good, except being able to pass nights without a bed maybe. The main thing I like about it is giving a use to alcohol.

Trace elements are not in and of themselves a health danger. Humans have evolved to deal with a certain amount of various bad elements - necessary since our primitive ancestors did not have the knowledge to refine them out. Today drinking water for instance has allowable levels of a variety of 'bad' stuff, including arsenic and lead. A miniscule bit won't hurt you irl, never mind in TFC, where I can fill a barrel with lead ore, and then drink from it the next day and have no ill effects. I don't know what studies or programs you refer to. Every google search I tried turned up nothing but articles promoting it, or at worst saying it's no better than industrial salt.

Ya, that's one way to do it. And in the instance of gay marriage, I do think it's wrong for instance, for a government clerk to refuse to issue licenses based on their religion, when the law in that state clearly allows for GM. On the other hand, it is a travesty to prosecute someone for refusing to serve a gay wedding. The reason is that there is only one government, and it is guaranteed in the constitution that you will be treated equally by it. People don't have an option of another government to go get a license from. Therefore religious refusal should definitely not be allowed. It opens the door for people to refuse other government services based on religion, and that. is. wrong. But cakes and photographs are NOT constitutional guarantees. In most cases you will have PLENTY of options for other people to get them from. You can be married without any cakes, photographers, or venue at all. You go to the county courthouse, spend 30 minutes with a judge (who should *not* be allowed to refuse), and bam you're married. And so to me, allowing people to exercise their religion in that case far outweighs the hurt feelings of gay people. You are guaranteed a government. You are not guaranteed a cake. Refusing to serve people based on race is slightly different, because no religion I'm aware of (and I am far from an authority) outlaws serving a certain race. So one can't plausibly claim religious exemption for that. There are a variety of cases where organizations are allowed to exclude whites (various scholarships, classes, etc) but nobody ever raises a cry about those. Laws about discrimination in this country are very lopsidedly enforced, and if they cannot be uniformly enforced, they should be done away with. I assume you agree, since you yourself said "You can't pick and choose equality, otherwise it's meaningless." That was written into the constitution in order to get the agreement of the south to form a nation. Which was needed badly in order to defend against the British. It was an unfortunate expedient and frankly they were doing well to get 3/5. Don't forget who enabled the slave trade (the Dutch). The original colonists came for religious freedom, not to own slaves. It was when European commercial interests entered the picture that slavery took off. Although we and everyone always had indentured servitude, which is all but slavery. As for homeschooling, it can be a mixed bags, and it's very much up to states to enforce standards and that's how it SHOULD be. The federal government should have no place, only the state. I can't speak for other states, but my state already has regulations for homeschooling. You don't just get to say "I'm homeschooling you won't see my kids" and the state is like "OK bye!". You have to submit plans and meet some standards. I think you would find in my state at least - and some studies find nationally, homeschooled children outperform public schooled ones on average. This is not surprising, because a parent who cares enough to homeschool their children is probably a very involved parent that cares for their kids. Those kids probably would have done well in public schools too, on average, though in some cases of disability homeschooling is probably preferable to public. The point is, homeschooling parents most often want the best for their kids. These claims of lack of socialization are largely a concern of religious homeschooling, I think, which can be very insular. We've probably all seen the outlier stories of crazy religious parents isolating their kids from society. Even then, what of it? We have the Amish here in America. There's no laws against being weird and anti-social. I think (*think*) most homeschooling parents are acutely aware of the danger and take steps to ensure their kids get plenty of outside contact. Homeschoolers in my state are very organized, and have regular 'play dates' for their kids. I am frankly of the opinion that the USA should offer assylum to European parents who are being persecuted for wanting to homeschool their kids. You may not *think* that school does not equal government, but if the (federal)government sets the standards and funds them, then yes, the schools are government schools, and a government with an agenda (that is, every Democrat government in this country) can insert their agenda against the wishes of the populace. You can't just dismiss the Hitler Youth as an anomaly. The entire structure of the Third Reich was indoctrination from the top down, and it started in schools. It's still going on today all over the place. Where do you get your ideas of home schooling? You seem to have this idea that homeschooling = only learns about religion, and never sees anyone but their parents. That is far, far, far from the general case where I am.