Darmo

With smiths, you are referring to the notion of the alloy system being less cut-and-dry, and more about different ingredients adding different properties?  I'm honestly a bit skeptical of that idea, but I guess we'll see.

The build-your-own spell thing, I don't know.  It seems to me like it could be very difficult to balance, nevermind the implementation.  I've played  a couple games that had such a system, and it seems like it ends up with tons of min-maxing, and just seems very bland.  Just my personal experiences.  My background is good 'ole Dungeons & Dragons, so I'm kind of biased probably, towards more defined spells. 

Limited customization might be more manageable.  So you have a ranged damage spell, and the player can choose the damage type, range, and AoE, which are all tradeoffs.   Maybe an armor spell that grants a specific tier of armor, and the tier, duration, and area of effect are tradeoffs.   But things like an armor spell that grants a bunch of resistances and also flight and a a light aura, that seems to me like a bit much.

Scribes, I kind of imagined as being linked to a study object - a lectern perhaps, or desk.  I was imagining the NPC being linked to the lectern, similar how golems in Thaumcraft get linked to chests or other objects they're meant to interact with.   Maybe the player, when they first pay the hiring fee to the scribe, the scribe gives the player a contract, and that's the object used to link them to the lectern (same role as golemancer's bell in TC).  This contract vanishes somehow if the scribe leaves due to neglect (not sure exactly how that would trigger).  The player can fire the scribe by giving them back the contract.  The lectern could have a spot to store paper and ink, which is what the scribe uses to make the notes they produce.   The research points accumulate on the scribe, so it behooves the player to make sure to take care of the scribe, lest the research be lost.  Also the player can hire multiple scribes.  But only one scribe can be using any given bookcase at a time.  It might be good if, once assigned to a lectern, scribes do not move, so as not to overly burden the processor with pathfinding.

Basically, I envisioned all mages employing scribes for the purposes of making the books they use to make items in the upper tiers, if not also for player spell learning.  Player research is mainly for learning spells, and producing the books the scribes draw on to make to make notes the player uses to produce the item-ingredient books and learning books.

Some more thoughts on how magic could play out.   I rather liked Thaumcraft's system of requiring the player to examine every block and item with the thaumometer (at least, the older versions).  I liked how that sort of simulated the player researching the natural environment to learn how to harness it's energies.   Depending on how difficult the initial entry into magic is desired to be, this could be taken even further.  Some thoughts:

BLOCK RESEARCH

The Mechanic

Spoiler

 

If it were desired to magic magic a difficult trade to start, and also randomize it a bit, it could be done be requiring the player to actually 'research' items and blocks in the world.  This would be done by the player crafting a 'research bench' or something like that.  It would have a gui, that would have 4 main areas.  A 16x16 grid, and three slots - one slot for the item to be researched, another for the tool to be used, and another for blank paper (the blank paper use discussed later).  The player puts their research tool in the slot, and this allows them to put an appropriate item in the other slot.  So any stone item will require a chisel or hammer for research, while organic items require a knife.    With the tool in place, the player puts an item in the item slot, and this transforms the 16x16 grid into a picture of that item.  Blocks will look exactly like one of the faces.  Inventory items will have the picture with generic background filler squares where it is transparent.   But each pickable square will involve 1 pixel from the graphic.  I'm not sure how doable 16x16 is within the size of things.  Could go 8x8 if 16x16 is too big.

 

Now, the player then picks various squares of this 16x16 grid, revealing them.  The player is looking for magical patterns hidden under the graphic.  Depending on the tool tier, the player can reveal more boxes for each item.  Simple stone tools, the player can only reveal maybe 20 squares (less than 10% of the 256 possible).  After the player reveals 20 squares, they've learned all they can from that item and it is deleted and they have to put a fresh item in.  So here is an incentive for high tier knives (and chisels).  Maybe at steel the player can pick 60 squares (almost 25%). 

 

What the player is looking for are patterns.  So this assumes that spells make use of patterns in some way.   So say for instance the player, in order to cast spells, must craft spell books or scrolls (paper use ahoy!).  This may involves special inks, and symbols in a certain order or pattern (linear, or in rings like witchery) in their own crafting gui block.  These patterns, if they're abstract, could be randomized per seed.   On the research table, the player is trying to find the patterns hidden under the picture.   So in each seed, the item or block(s) that contain the recipe for a given spell is randomized as well.  So the player is examining a birch log, and discovers the symbol for a healing spell.  But they're using a copper knife and have already used 25 picks, and only have five left.  Can they figure out which direction the symbols go (if linear) before they run out of picks?  Let's say the pick all the wrong sides, and run out of picks.  but now they at least know that the birch log contains the recipe for that spell.  So they can focus their research there.  If the exact location of the recipe in the graphic is randomized each time, they may have to try several more.  But it could also be fixed, and now that they know where it's located, they will probably get the whole spell recipe next try. 

 

If there is only one spell recipe in the graphic, it's going to be hard to find.  It could be that there's more than one spell icon (all the same, just in different spots to increase chance of being found). So the player has more chances to discover which spell is hidden there.  But the recipe is not necessarily by the icon.  Moreover, there could be 'dummy' icons in various places.  Maybe they are part of the real recipe.  Maybe not.  But these distract the player.  Especially good if the real recipe is in a fixed location.  These 'dummy' symbols will increase the chance the player will pursue wrong leads in various areas. 

 

Now, I'm thinking there's no code reaction when the player has discovered the patterns and spell.  It's up to the player to take good notes irl, because the game is not going to hold their hand for them.  Or if it's to be easier, the player could have a spellbook that automatically notes a spell when then have revealed it entirely in one sample.

 

 

 

 

The Meta

Spoiler

 

Now in multiplayer, I think the effect this has is that players could band together in their research, splitting the effort.  Moreover, an experienced mage could choose to just tell a pupil the recipe for a given spell, allowing them to skip the tedious research (for that spell at least) simulating the passing down of knowledge by the more learned.  Or they could tell their pupil the item that contains a given spell, if they still want the pupil to do some work for the knowledge.  It allows player knowledge to be meaningful and valuable.

 

There could be tiers of recipes based on item rarity/difficulty to acquire.  So anything that can just be found in the world would just be tier 1 spells (stone, dirt, wood, etc).  Then ores and tools derived from them can contain higher tier spells.  more rare and expensive items like crucibles, beds, and armor might be another level, and things like bloomeries and blast furnaces, well, maybe they're not involved at all. Or maybe they're guaranteed to contain a high tier spell.   The point being you don't want a basic spell hidden in the firebrick block.

 

And of course, this block research could be a gateway for upper tiers, if the lower tiers of magic are desired to be relatively simple and accessible for players.  So low tier magics are simple defined recipes, but to get into the really good stuff, you're going to have to do the research. 

 

This sort of mechanic could also bring an element of adaptation.  A player may not always be able to find every spell they want easily.  The large number of tree and stone varieties might mean that the player just can't find every spell, without travelling huge distances.  This may or may not be good.  On the not-good side, some players may find it frustrating, not being able to find a specific spell they seek.  On the other hand, as long as there is a large number of spells, the player may effectively have a different experience in different playthroughs, with their early magic career using the spells that they find, so maybe sometimes they're a healer type, sometimes offensive, sometimes buffs, just depending on how thoroughly they research.  One of the interesting aspects of this system is that it would reward IRL diligence on the part of the player, in terms of keeping careful notes on what they've researched, and what they haven't.  But eventually I think things will even out, as the player find more and more item types.  You could even have players specializing in traveling far and wide, bringing back exotic samples for the town mage to study!

 

 

NPC Scribe Research

Spoiler

 

Now if there's one thing players hate it's grinding, and one thing they love is automation.  I think it might be interesting if the player could be allowed to hire NPCs to help them research.  Perhaps they can find and rescue a scribe in a fortress dungeon.  Perhaps scribes show up from time to time in a town, or on a ship.  But in any case, somehow the player can get the scribe to come to their place and help research.  The player must feed them (same for rescues or hires), and must also pay them an initial hiring fee, plus a salary (a rescued scribe has no initial fee, and works for half the salary of a hired one).  If the player does not feed them, they simply don't work.  Maybe disappear for stretches of time to go buy food.  But if the player does not pay them, they leave.  A hired scribe just goes back to town (requiring a new hiring fee).  A rescued scribe either disappears, or goes to town and becomes a  regular hireable scribe.  The scribe would need an interface where the player can place their food and salary, and check it form time to time.  Perhaps food in the scribe's inventory does not decay, or decays at a slower rate?  Scribes only work while in a loaded chunk, or maybe that's a config,  to prevent them from being OP on continuous SMP servers.

 

In order to perform research, NPCs must be near bookcases full of books.  Books can be made by the player, perhaps bought from shops, or found in dungeons.  Ancient dungeon books (librams) are most effective.  Player produced books come via the research method mentioned earlier.  As the player reveals squares, if a certain threshold of their picks reveal a symbol - dummy or not - they get a research note.  This is what the blank paper slot is used for.  With several research notes, the player can produce a research tome (treatise).   However, when the player discovers a spell icon, this automatically produces a special research note, which is used to produce a special book (tome), better than research tomes.   Treatises, tomes, and librams provide research points, which are accumulated by the scribe (maybe via a placed desk block of some kind) and eventually when they reach a certain threshold they have a chance to produce a manuscript.  Manuscripts reveal something to the player - perhaps a specific item that contains a spell recipe.  Perhaps the recipe itself.  But the idea is, it allows the player to bypass doing the research themselves, at the expense of feeding and paying scribes.   This gives a use for excess food, incidentally.  If manuscripts can track who has read them (and it's not ridiculous code-wise to do so) then maybe other players can also get a 1-time clue.  But it may be better for the sake of balance to have it turn into a treatise. The various kinds of books could also serve as ingredients for magic items and blocks of course (keeping in mind that tomes and librams will be in somewhat limited supply, unless the player can produce them somehow at top tiers) this would keep the research mechanics useful, even after the player has discovered all spells.  

 

 

MAGIC TIERS & DELIVERY

Spoiler

One of the obvious ways magic could progress would be through spell power naturally.  Higher tiers means more damage/more defensive/more fun spells. 

 

However, it could also be a matter of delivery.   So for instance, the early tiers of magic may require the player to scribe a given spell down on a scroll.  Scrolls don't stack very high, and perhaps take a while to read.  They're not ideal, perhaps difficult to use offensively due to the time they take to read.  This could be Tier 1 magic.  Tier 2 might be books.  Books are more involved to make, but they don't stack - they have multiple uses.  More than a stack of scrolls.  And perhaps read faster.  So These simulate the copper and bronze ages, in that they are a simple-ish tech (paper).

 

Magic tier 3 is wands.  These can hold more powerful spells, and are multiple use, like books, but more uses.  They're simple right-click use, so easier to use in combat.  Magic tier 4 is staves.  Similar to wands, but more powerful, more uses, more range.  These two tiers involve gems or something like that, and are analogous to the iron and steel tiers in terms of work.  Tier 4 might introduce item enchantments with charges - a sword that causes fire each time it hits, a breastplate which extinguishes the player if set on fire, or a ring of feather falling (if we got jewelry slots).  But all limited number of uses.

 

Tier 5 introduces permanent item enchantments, and tier 6 permanent  area enchantments.  Additionally, if feasible from a code and gameplay perspective, perhaps the mage can cast multiple spells from one device, or even with no devices at all?  In my mind this involves large crystals, as I suggested before.  But in any case, it takes things another step above the paper in tiers 1 & 2, and the gems in tiers 3 & 4. 

 

I envision it as being important though, for lower tier materials to still be used in the later tiers.  So books and gems maintain importance.  Paper, gems, and leather are all kind of minimally useful in TFC1, so it'd be nice to see them be useful and desirable items in TFC2.

So those are some thoughts I've had of late, on some possible systematic aspects of magic.

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I think there are a few problems with his system, and while you could argue that it doesn't have a logical explanation, the argument could be made that one has simply "run out of knowledge."

To be clear, I wasn't meaning to say it's a bad thing - skill webs don't have to be logical, they're just game progression devices.  Skill webs are simple to understand and balance, and that's not a bad thing.  It just depends on which direction the devs want to go.  Simple hard divisions, or softer but more complex, arguably more believable divisions.  Or a mixture. 

As for the stat points, I like the idea, but I feel as if there would a limit for players who do not kill mobs.

That's true. Perhaps there would have to be other ways to gain xp, similar to how smelting gives xp in vanilla.  This could play out as 'special' xp tracks for each stat.  So you have your player levels, which can be used for any stat.  But separately each stat has an xp track that the player improves by doing things involving that stat.  So just by doing tons of smithing they can gain enough xp to level their STR or CON, but *only* those two.  This skill-specific tracking kind of already happens with skills, and maybe it's just the skill.  So once you get your blacksmithing to adept, you can raise your str/con again, without having to grind mobs.  But this also uses the next player xp step at level 5, so you're not 'doubling up' on points.  You'll either have to get to player xp level 10 (at which point you can pick any stat), or get to the expert level of blacksmithing.  You could also do other skills to raise their stats, but you would have to get them up to expert as well.  You wouldn't get a stat point for them at adept, because you already took your adept point at blacksmithing.

I don't know that I'd go the route of players spending multiple points on a skill.  I think it may be best from a player understanding perspective, to keep it as a skill web, with simply 1 point used for 1 skill on the web.   Although something similar to Fallout perk system might interesting, if the skill in question has enough depth to have multiple levels of benefit. 

I would consider Earthboundflyer's skill web system much harder to explain logically.  What logical reason could forester, smith, carpenter, adventurer and farmer have to conflicting?  They're all just manual labor.   I consider trade friction to be more about dissolving boundaries, allowing a player to pursue as many things as they want at the lower tiers.   EBF's system is more of hard division system, based on a skill web.  Simpler, but less believable imo.

Personally I'm not super into the notion of having to sacrifice just to maintain my farms and stuff.  However, I'm definitely on board for gods to be a factor in the game.  So I find that a certain island, the inhabitants worship some certain god which gives them a special bonus of some kind.  Keep things a bit random so players don't just know when they see the mobs exactly what powers they have.  Maybe there's a temple somewhere on the island, that's extra difficult, and has better resources or something.  And if the player destroys it, thereafter every so often they can be attacked by cultists, wherever they are.  Something like that.

But on the player side, I'd be more inclined toward gods being mostly a magic thing - clerics and druids, to us D&D analogies.   I'd probably prefer their influence to be very minor or not at all for non-magic players. Just my opinion.

Phyllite is a really terrible rock type imo.  Hopefully the mid layer is better.   You say it's mostly dry grass, is there any clay?

I would suggest reading this post, the clothing post, and the regional difficulty post.  They're long, but if you read those three, I think you'll have a pretty good idea where things are going.

In general I'd say the innate trait thing isn't really a great way to go.  If it's skill related, then maybe the player doesn't want to pursue that skill.  So now they have to spam-create characters till they get the bonus they want, or live with being sub-optimal compared to people who got the trait associated with that trade.  If they don't find out till well into their career, they're going to be disappointed when the find out and it's not what they actually wanted to do. 

If it's random bonuses to hunger, damage resistance, that's better as it's generally useful, but those are things that imo would be better done temporarily via actual trades, such as magic or alchemy (or permanently via item enchantment).  Giving a player a permanent buff like that is going to be either op, or so minuscule as to make no noticeable difference I think, and it will take away from buffing trade skills.  And again, what you're likely to end up with is 1 or 2 that are most useful, and players will just recreate until they get what they want.

I think it's better to give players a direct choice - either via a skill web like earthboundflyer's suggestion, or stat points/trade friction per my suggestion (or both)

Though it's true that Rust Never Sleeps, irl rusting to the point of actually losing significant amounts of metal is a very, very slow process (unless accelerated by other factors such as salt).  It's not really worth modeling this in game imo.  Lets just assume the player oils their stuff once in awhile.  Magical/alchemical rust is another matter, but would simply be a durability reduction I think, no need to have a separate system.

Beyond that, stainless is a relatively modern invention, and I believe it is impossible for a blacksmith to weld in traditional blacksmithy ways.  The irl methods involve noble gases and arc welding.  Not that either of these couldn't just be ignored - TFC2 after all.  But, they are arguments against it.

It looks like six basic trades, actually.   I assume this is done with a tech tree where the player selects the branches, utilizing levels apparently, and this allows them to use certain skills?    These are 'hard' separations of skills?    That is, if you haven't selected Forester, you cannot mine at all, since mining only appears under the forestry trade?  As ChunkHunter says, it seems like it would make single-player very difficult.  Personally I think I'd prefer a system with softer limits between the more minor crafts of the game.  I do love that automatons are in there though!

Have you read, understood, and followed all of the rules listed in large text at the top of the suggestions forum?(Yes/No): YES
 

So, this thought largely came about as I was thinking about how one might limit the number of skills a player can reasonably pursue, per the Exclusivity of Trades Post I made awhile back.   It involves a couple possible different ways to limit the number of trades a player could pursue with a given character.  I searched the old TFC suggestion forums and found no discussion of this in the first few pages, but even if it had been, TFC2 right?

STAT POINTS

The player could have stats.   Could be full-on D&D-style Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.  Could be different.   But the idea would be that different trades require different stats to be good at, or maybe even have flat-out stat-gates.

GAINING POINTS

The player might start with 1 in all stats, and then they get a stat point for every X levels they attain.  I'll use 5 as an example.  So when the player *first* reaches level 5, they get a stat point, which they apply to the stat of their choice in the appropriate tab of the inventory/skill/etc screen.   THIS ONLY HAPPENS ONCE.  If they die and attain level 5 again, they do not get another point (but they do keep points already earned, maybe).  They get their second stat point at level 10, and so forth.  This makes experience levels very important, as opposed to how they are now, just a kind of nice hp bonus.  I'm not sure what the hard/practical level limit is.  Some googling turned up a lot of answers, but it seemed like many felt the practical limit is about 50.  Players may not like being limited by level advancement though.

STAT GATES

Stats *could* come into play via 'hard' gates.  So a smith for instance, can work copper (tier 1) with 1 or 2 strength, depending on the desired balance.  Tier 2 metals require another point of strength.  Tier 3 another, etc.  If the player does not have sufficient strength, they just can't work the metal period.  This can probably be applied to other trades as well, such as magic, but perhaps using intelligence in that case, for example.

STAT SLOPES

Stats could also be a 'soft' limiting factor, if the systems inherent in each trade become more difficult with lower stats.  So in the case of smithing, perhaps the unseen target numbers for each tier of metal get higher and higher.  A copper pick might have a target (in a specific seed) of 50.  A bronze pick 250.  Iron 500, steel 1000.  But the amount that the smithing buttons moves the pointer also changes depending on the player's strength.  A weak player will have to spend more and more hits to work higher tier metals, as their strength lags behind 'the slope'.  While a player that keeps their strength in line with the tier slope, has to expend much fewer hits.   So weak players will spend more hammers, and more time just getting up the vicinity of the target, leaving less time to find the sweet spot before cooling.   If a system such as exhaustion came into play, the weak player would also become exhausted sooner, as each hit would reduce that meter (Increasing constitution would increase the player's exhaustion meter, obviously).  In this way, a player *could* still smith metals without pumping STR, but they will pay a price in efficiency.

Other major trades - magic for instance - can have similar things.  But minor crafts could also be affected.   For instance if gemology became a fairly complicated craft, it could play off of dexterity.  There could be an entirely separate branch of smithing for jewelry (mainly for enchantment) that relies on dexterity rather than strength.  If there were perhaps different branches of magic, some might play off wisdom instead.   The agriculture skill could involve wisdom (bonus seeds only with high skill+wisdom).  Looms could use dexterity (introduce a chance to fail and lose half the thread).  Butchering could have reduced yield for low dexterity.  Scraping the hide has a chance to reduce leather yield by 1, or ruin it entirely, with low dexterity.   Arrows could have some random error introduced, reduced by higher dexterity.  There's a lot of minor ways to influence these non-trade tasks.

Whether stat 'gates', or 'slopes', or a combination, I think this system would allow the player to customize their character to a degree.  Maybe they spread out their points so they can do some low-tier smithing, and also low-tier magic.  Or they go all-out on constitution and strength and become a smithing machine.  The hard part is making sure all stats have a good amount uses (charisma may not make the cut)

TRADE FRICTION

Trade Friction is the concept that some trades could conflict with others directly, discouraging or preventing the player from pursuing multiple trades.   I suggested this in my nature magic post, in the magic thread.  In that case, pursuing blacksmithing a lot 'contaminates' the player with pollution, bumping up a hidden meter that, if it goes to high, starts to interfere with or prevent certain nature magics.  If nature magic and arcane magic both existed, arcane magic could also have a similar taint, to discourage a player doing both kinds of magic.   So a player smith would have a harder and harder time, the further they try to go in nature magic.

The problem with this is it might be hard to rationalize a reason in some cases, and the more trades there are, the harder it becomes.  

So why would magic interfere with the smithing trade?  It could be that the magic of TFC2 is heavily earth/magnetism based, and that all this messing with geomantic forces gives them a personal quasi-magnetic field.  This field alters smithing, such that rather than the target number being consistent for the mage for any given product, it has a chance to be different sometimes.  And if the mage delves too far, eventually the smithing target is different every single time, for the same product.  Maybe some move buttons will even start to randomize.  Eventually it would become prohibitively difficult for the mage to do smithing.   

But if alchemy became a full-on profession separate from magic, what then? It could probably be argued to still pollute vs nature magic.  Maybe even have contaminating effects on arcane magic.  But why would it impede smithing?  So that's kind of an issue with the trade friction concept.

There could also be trade completion order issues, which must be watched for.  The friction would need to be constant, in everyday use of the trade.  Otherwise, if there were for instance just gates where a druid can't progress if they're polluted too much, but otherwise pollution has no other effects, the player could complete the druid ladder first and then start smithing, with no issues, having passed all the druid 'friction gates'.  By incorporating pollution checks into every spell use and item creation, the player cannot continue to be a great druid if they then contaminate themselves.   Yet, if nature magic did not have a static effect vs arcane magic, the player could complete the nature magic tree, and then do all the arcane tree.  Losing their powerful nature magics, but doing all the arcane, effectively completing two full trees in one playthrough.  This may or may not be a concern, but an LPer could complete both tracks in one LP.

So those were my thoughts on this so far.  I don't know if any of this is of interest to the devs, but to do it right, it would probably need to be planned from the start across many areas, so I wanted to get the thought out there.

This page will tell you under what conditions the animals spawn.  Check your F3 screen and see if the areas you're in meet the conditions for any of them.    Cows and horses are generally limited to somewhat dry plains areas (rainfall <500).  Sheep also have some rather tight conditions.  Pigs are by far the most common in my experience, as far as animals you can actually domesticate.  But even within suitable conditions they can be a bit rare.  It may indeed just be a case of bad rng.

I am glad that was understandable despite my inconsistent descriptor use.    After thinking on it a bit, I said that the stomach - hunger as we're calling it now - wouldn't need a meter but after considering, that may not be a good idea.   In my example the player was eating discreet pieces, but higher tier foods might count as multiple pieces in one meal.  So it may be good for the player to have some idea where their hunger is.  Or they could just know by a text echo of 'you're full'.   But, if the hunger number spread is small, rather than a bar it could be a small icon at the left end of the nourishment bar.  Maybe in the shape of a tiny stomach, ala Don't Starve.  Or just a circle that gets progressively bigger as the character gets fuller.  Either way the nourishment and water bars might have to scoot to the right in order for such an icon to be big enough to be useful. 

Alternatively, the bar could change color.  Darker green for empty, light bright green for full.  Just a couple thoughts to try to save having another entire bar, but still have some indicator for the player.

Does anyone really think that some of the Indian ( read Native American ) populations were unable to efficiently preserve food for the winter and could not make alcohol or vinegar, just because they had no metal tools?

Technically you don't need metal tools as it is now.  You just need a large clay vessel.  But of course you'll be out all the grain avenues, leaving only a few possible alcohol precursors.

As for a handle, pretty sure you can already do that.  Though I don't think it makes a durability difference.  I could get behind that being a thing though.

But as for bone tool heads, the game would have to be drastically reworked so that stone isn't literally everywhere, because right now stone is far far easier to get.  Or, stone tools would have to be harder to make.  I'm not sure that could realistically be done though, while allowing bone tools to be easier, and still make them fit reasonably below the metal tier. 

You could limit the types of stone that can be knapped.  Which is logical.  I'm not an expert on these things but off the top of my head I'd say you could remove all sedimentary stones from the list of knappable stones (except chert apparently, which is specifically mentioned as knappable on some web pages).  This would however depend upon TFC2 (which is the only place this major a change could happen, and the forum this suggestion should have been in) having more animals than current, otherwise they would be too few.

But even in that scenario, the first time the player would have no weapon.  So they're going to have to punch an animal to death.  That seems a bit much to me.  Are we going to allow pointy fire-hardened sticks as spears next?

The whole thing just doesn't seem that worthwhile to me, in the overall scheme of things.

That's all well and good, but I'd assume the player is an adult when they start the game.  So they have tastes generated over the life they had before being stranded or whatever.  Moreover, taste provides an easy logic-gate to having individually seeded experiences.   Nutrition, from a logic standpoint, is much more cut and dry.  It's true that different people can have different dietary needs, but TFC does not having blood tests and stuff.  So how are they to divine what they need?  The food groups aspect is simple and serves the nutrition aspect well.  And I also like your suggestion from the other thread Tony, of having a separate system of requirements to get hp *above* 1000.  Maybe through 'vitamins' or something.  I thought that might be a good way to incorporate higher tier dishes.

It's not like it has to be either/or.   Both things can be involved in the system.   I think personalized taste is much more accessible and easy to understand, for the part of the system that requires some figuring out on the player's part.  We can have more complexity as things progress:

FOOD TIERS

Tier 0 food - raw foods

- spoilage can be very fast to slow

- provides NO satiation

- meets basic food groups for hp up to 1000

- does NOT meet vitamin groups for hp above 1000

- slow to eat

 

Tier 1 food - simple combos like salads, sandwiches

- Spoilage is faster for the most part

- provides satiation, in response to more closely meeting player taste

- meets basic food groups for hp up to 1000

- does NOT meet vitamin groups for hp above 1000

- normal or fast to eat

 

Tier 2 food - cooked dishes requiring specific portable tools (frying pan, kettle) - includes hot drinks, omelets, flapjacks, spit roast

- Spoilage faster for the most part

- can make durable foods with no vitamins or satiation

- provides satiation, in response to more closely meeting player taste

- meets basic food groups for hp up to 1000

- meets vitamin groups for hp above 1000

- normal or fast to eat

 

Tier 3 food - cooked dishes requiring non-portable process blocks, and tools (Cauldron or oven in combination with frying pans, baking pans).  Includes casseroles and other things that take a long time.  Perhaps combination metals (or those could be in an even higher tier). 

- spoilage very fast

- can make very durable foods that provide some satiation and vitamins

- provides super-satiation*, in addition to normal satiation

- meet basic food groups with higher bonus for hp up to 1000

- meets vitamin groups with higher bonus for hp above 1000

- normal eat speed only

* - super-satiation would be another hunger bar that overlaps the normal one, in a different color.  Once this bar is depleted the player goes through the normal hunger bar.  Only high tier foods can fill into the super-satiation bar.  Once into the super-satiation bar, the player cannot eat any more.  This will incentivize eating lower tier food first, to get close to max on first bar, and then eating the tier 3 meal.  This could conveniently simulate a multi-course meal, sort of.

Stamina bar and/or stat points, if added, could further be affected, stat points would perhaps be tier 4 or above foods only.

LIMITED EATING

Furthermore, things could be complicated by limiting how fast the player can eat.  Basically you take the tier 0 food, and limit the player to only being able to eat enough to slowly progress.  So to use arbitrary number examples because I don't know the real numbers, say tier 0 raw food restores 4 fullness per piece eaten (I'm using the new system of discreet pieces, rather than oz).  The max 'fullness' bar is 50.   But the player's 'stomach' (this does not have a hud meter) only holds 5 pieces of food.  So they can only eat 5 pieces at a time, filling their fullness by 20 and stomach by 5, then they have to wait.   Say their stomach goes down at 1 piece per hour, while their overall fullness goes down 2 per hour.  So they eat 5 pieces, and in 5 hours they can eat their fill of again, but their overall fullness has gone down 10 in the meantime, so they only made 10 progress in the fullness bar during that 5 hours.  In this way, if your hunger gets extremely low, you cannot just fill it immediately by eating raw tier 0 foods.  If you almost starve, it will take you 20 hours to fill your hunger bar again with tier 0 food no matter what, because the stomach limitation means you can only make 10 fullness progress per 5 hours.  However higher tier foods give more satiation, filling up the fullness bar more for the same pieces, so with good enough food you can fill your fullness up in one sitting.   

There's a little danger here in naming, in that tracking the stomach fullness separately from the other bar (probably referred to as hunger by most) may seem counterintuitive or weird - like saying the player has two separate stomachs.  It may be better to try to call the overall bar a 'nourishment' bar or something.  Hopefully that can be arranged so as not to offend peoples' sense of logic.

 

This provides yet another marked difference between food tiers, just in terms of convenience and fullness.  depending on the number spread, it may allow the cooking skill to straight up add satiation to the food.  This would be especially good if we go with a simplified system where the skill isn't going to provide useful information.      If we have several food tiers, I would suggest that a given tier only contributes to a certain skill ceiling.  So tier 1 food only helps advance the novice skill.  Tier 2 foods can advance the novice skill level, or the next level if that's where the player is.  And so on.

Ah, that makes sense on the decay mechanic.

As far as taste, it's true it's twice the information, but I think that the information will be more readily understandable, as it would describe the taste of the food in an absolute sense, and then how the player feels about that.  Rather than trying to make the player decipher both those features from one descriptor.   I was still proposing the descriptors start vague, and get more precise as skill levels up.    I guess when you were talking about a 'preferred food' system I thought this would also basically nullify the cooking trade, as I was understanding it to just mean the player tasted a given food once, and found out if they liked it or not.  If there was still going to be a taste component, I did not pick up on that.  I thought I was actually proposing a way to save some of that system, and the associated skill benefits. 

I had intended to come back and make a few more suggestions, regarding skill dictating what dishes you can make, and a brief re-hash of my spice suggestions from the old thread.  Plus maybe a stamina bar as another thing that food could benefit (regens faster the better food you've been eating) - although I'm sure stamina was suggested quite a lot on the old suggestion forum.  TFC2 now though, right?

0-5 SCALE

But ok, so 0-5 preference for each base food.  How is this conveyed to the player?  A verbal description, or actual number?   Do they have to try the food at least once?  Do they get a text echo on the screen?  That seems like it would get super-annoying.  Separate inventory tab that lists all the food they've tried, and how they feel about each one?  Or maybe it's just a tooltip.  They wouldn't have to actually try the food for a tooltip, but they'd have to have it in hand, which is probably good enough, and probably simplifies coding vs tracking if they've tried each food.  But really, this suggestion is just numbered taste, simplified to a much smaller scale, but over all food items.  And I'm not seeing how the cooking skill plays into this early part.

 

Skill could still play a part in food prep though, which is probably more logical to most people anyway.  Either a hard limit on what dishes you can make at what skill level, or a minigame that gets easier with higher skill.   The overall dish taste could be averaged over the ingredients, or take the higher (most liked), or use a grand total of all ingredients.   A grand total might allow for more flexibility.  For instance the player's skill could add a bit to the total when making the dish.   There could also be spices, and maybe the player has a preferred spice which can add to the total. 

 

There's more complexity that could be added, though I'm not sure if that's desired.  The player could move beyond salads and sandwiches, to making actual meals - fry eggs, fry bacon, make pancakes, combine them on a plate.  Spit-roast you have to baste every so often.  Stew where you add certain ingredients at certain times.  That sort of thing.  Fast-spoiling but highly beneficial.  Is it desired to have new process blocks and tools, like an oven (there could be a really fun wood stove GUI), cauldron, or frying pans?  Tea/coffee?  It does seem like the limitation is largely benefits.  To have very much complexity and/or greater difficulty, the benefits need to increase commensurately. 

BENEFITS

So what is out list of benefits currently?

-  Speed - certain dishes are eaten instantly, as opposed to bite-by-bite

-  Satiation - extra hunger bars filled beyond what the base ingredients would use

-  Nutrition - more complex dishes fill a little bit of all nutrition, even if they don't in fact contain those specific food groups

-  Delayed regeneration - per op, delayed health regeneration that kicks in if the player is damaged within a certain time period

 

Those could be mix-and-matched to a degree.  I'm not sure how far you could take it without getting op, or too complex.  But certainly more than two dishes I would think.  Mix in spoilage time and there could be more powerful/complex dishes that spoil faster.  Some that are filling, keep well, but don't provide satiation, etc.   I would think we'd want to avoid too many magical effects from food.  The "well-fed" bonus does seem like it could be compelling, if it increases player walking-speed/carry-weight/mining-speed (mostly mining speed imho).  

If a stamina bar were added, it could be another significant benefit (plus alcohol, tea, and coffee could affect it directly).  I've also been preparing a stat point suggestion for a new thread, though I probably won't have time to post it this weekend (out of town), and that could be tied in as well (may as well stop me here if you don't want to read that).

Overall I'm curious if the desire is mainly to clarify the system but keep it about at the complexity level it's at now in terms of items involved, or to expand the skill into a more complex thing, with process blocks of its own, closer to a full-on trade (though I doubt it'll ever really reach that status).

This raises a lot of questions for me.  But to start:

STACKING

Food stacking rather than weight sounds ok to me.  I'd assume that one food unit would equal about 5oz of the current system, so any harvesting/butchering bonuses would simply result in more individual food items of that type.  Seems totally fine to me.

DECAY

So using an ark-style decay system (I've never played Ark), how will the stacking work when you have a stack that's decayed partially, and you add a fresh food?  Does it do a weighted average?  This would be like Don't Starve, which I have played. At low stacks, you can effectively 'refresh' your existing food with new food by averaging.  But there's a tipping point where adding fresh to too big a decayed stack basically results in mostly losing freshness, because it's a weighted average.  I think it'd work.  I never really minded the food management system as it was, but then, I stuck with mild climates and just harvested food as needed, so it was never a problem for me.   Presumably the decay timer would still be paused on smp servers, if the player doesn't log in for X hours.

 

I agree with Micmastadon, that it will change the preservation dynamic.   Right now I favor settling in mild climates around 7k latitudes, and just leaving the food in the ground continually, and harvesting it whenever I need it.  Avoid having to deal with preservation at all, really.  The new system sounds like it might make that non-workable, depending on how long the decay timers actually are.  5 minutes sounds rather too short to me.  But, depending on what the goals are for cooking and the food system in general, maybe that's where you want to go.  If there were ways for the player to process raw food into forms that are more durable - hard tack, biscuits, etc, that would be fine I think.  Pickling could remain the ultimate preservation, but effectively non-transportable, while certain food preparation methods could add greatly to durability (at the sacrifice of satiation and regen mechanic).  So with a few different prep methods, the player can choose whether they're preparing for battle, preparing for a long trip, or something else.  I think that would be good.

TASTE

Now as for taste, I don't think it's necessary to toss that baby out just yet.  I think perhaps one of the major problems with the TFC1 taste system is that the taste profiles are relative to the player, and the way it was described was not really good.  It could be confusing when a food said "not sweet" and yet, you know that food adds sweetness, either through pure logic (it's a pile of sugar) or because your sandwich is very sweet, yet none of the individual ingredients indicate any sweetness.   This is confusing.   

 

I think it would have been better if "not X" had LITERALLY meant it had 0 of that flavor.  For TFC2 I think we should have more descriptors - barely, hardly, kind of, somewhat, fairly, rather, very, extremely, ridiculously, absurdly.  That's 10 right there.  So associate those to the various 10ths of flavor scale (I'm not sure how far the actual numbers go).   The player could have half as many descriptors to start with (but anything above 0 still gets a descriptor), then the full 10, then actual numbers at intervals of 5 or whatever, and finally exact numbers.  And then the key: the descriptors are the same for everyone, so that its logical to new players.   So 45 savory gives the same descriptor for everyone.   I think just having a uniform descriptor system might help a lot. 

 

Then, the player has to determine where on this uniform scale this particular character falls.  The way this is done could vary in a few ways.  It probably won't be as subtle and require as much experimentation as the TFC1 system, but it will still likely be more involved than just a preferred food system would be.  It could be as simple as the player, when they hold control over a food - where it right now shows the player's relative opinion of the flavor - it would instead have two components for each flavor.  First would be the absolute flavor area of the food.   Second would be what that player things of that flavor.  

 

So it might show saltiness as "Extremely".  That will be followed by one of a few player preferences for that point.  Perhaps "meh, ok, good, excellent! woah!, and yikes!   Or something like that.  The player knows that meh is far below preferred, ok is getting closer, good even closer, and excellent is almost exact.  woah is too high, and yikes is way too high.   So what you get is a uniform taste profile scale, and a uniform player preference scale.  And it's just a matter of aligning the two.   I think this would be easy for even new players to grasp.  If they still have trouble just make it explicit: "way too little" "not enough" good, excellent, "too much" and "way too much". 

PREFERRED FOOD

I think preferred food could also be a thing, providing a further satiation bonus for the player perhaps.  But my concern is, will the player have only 1, or a few?  Personally I'd junk any character that had fish as a preferred food (if it could be found out early on).  I was kind of hoping that maybe in TFC2 crops would have a more geographically varied distribution, since it will have distinct whole-island climates with different weather and everything.  If I had one preferred food in the tropics, and I didn't want to be there, it'd be a bit disappointing.  Though not the end of the world.   It might also be rolled into the prepped food, as a sort of further tier above task. 

I'll probably post more thoughts at a later date.  But these are my immediate thoughts.

To have specialization we would need to have that same richness for other areas of the game.

Well, yes, my op pointed out I was assuming that there would actually be some other 'classes' eventually, which I probably should have said 'trades'.  But magic at least has it's own thread.  It seems likely it might end up in the game.  If there could be a few branches of magic, they could be mutually exclusive.  But even if there is only ever one magic path, and smithing, it'd still be good to make it hard/impossible to do both, I think.  And by hard/impossible I mean you can maybe do the lower levels of both with one character, but with difficulty, but the higher tier benefits are impossible to have both of in one character.

In this context I was trying to use 'trade' or 'class' to mean a system which takes a lot of time investment from the player, down a defined progression, and hopefully involving some actual skill, as opposed to simply grinding up a skill bar.  So ya, smithing is currently the only one.  People can say that they're a miner or farmer, but really those don't take a lot of time, or any skill.  Both have an associated skill, but the benefits are minimal, and not particularly exciting.

Ya, that's an option.  Honestly, I'm hoping that a lot of the animal and material situations in TFC2 are significantly different from TFC1, not to mention possibly new transport options, so I'm not super hung up on exact materials necessarily.   But in the current game animals are a big deal, and the ability to just carry them on your back to me devalues that significantly, if it can be done too cheaply.  I don't think it's too uncommon to have a saw by day 3, and to me that's a bit too easy.  Though limiting to babies does make it better, as the player only finds adult animals initially, so they'd at least have to find and tame a few enough for them to have babies, and then wait for them to be born.  I guess that's probably a pretty significant wait, so not as op as I'd initially thought.  Still, at best I'd still say just 1 lamb, and disallow calves.  Personally.

So if we had other trades where a player could evolve just the necessary to survive or go all the way up to rip all the benefits of the high skill.  

Well, I think that's kind of the default mode, isn't it?  Just have the trades and the player pursues any/all of them as far as they want?  I was assuming that's how it would probably be, unless plans were made otherwise.  

One of the places these thoughts come from, was watching Chilm's LP of the witchery mod for normal MC (an older LP, to be sure, but good).  It has all these interesting branches - witches, vampires, werewolves, necromancers - and he just basically goes through them each one by one and does them all with the same character.  It seems to me like the experiences are devalued when the player just tries and discards these roles like articles of clothing.  In the later roles he gets what should be pretty great powers, but basically they just get a shrug because he's already been more powerful in a previous role.  It seems to me the player's choices would be much more impactful if they had consequences and limitations. 

In a single player game, it could be motivation to retry the game more times, in more ways.   On large multiplayer servers, perhaps it could help create more tightly woven communities if one player cannot master all things.  Perhaps there is actually some benefit to having a person specialized differently than oneself, because they will in fact have a much easier time due to the way they built their character, or how the systems function.  Specialization that you yourself cannot gain, no matter how many hours you put in, because of how you built your own character, or how the systems work. 

i was originally going to pose this question, and also a proposal for how it could work, in one topic.  But it seemed like a rule 5 violation after I wrote it out.  So I thought I'd pose the general question first.

It's a good idea, though as others pointed out there's mods that have the same effect.  If such a thing were in TFC2, I'd advocate for the cage only holding chickens and piglets.  No lambs, no calves.  They're too big.  I'd also like the recipe more expensive, though I'm not sure what that would be. 

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and I'm interested in seeing what others think with regard to whether or not 'classes' would be a desireable thing for TFC2.  By classes, I mean arranging the game mechanics such that players are discouraged from pursuing multiple major occupations (smithing, magic, etc), not only due to the time involved, but due to in-game mechanical limitations.  I'm making a big assumption here that there will actually *be* multiple classes.  Maybe that won't even be true.  But I thought it would at least be worth raising the topic.

I feel like this would help solidify the notion of separate roles on multiplayer servers.  Right now, everyone more or less ends up the same I think; if they play long enough, they're expert smiths, or nothing (nothing that takes much time anyway).  Their respective smithing skills may end up different.  But everyone is a smith.  My concern is, once there are other big-time trades, will the player be able to be ALL of them?   I think by not allowing players to be everything, you bring replay value to the single player experience, and increase the value of teamwork on multiplayer servers, especially if some enemies are built such that they require, for instance, both mages and warriors to defeat reliably.

I don't think full-on compartmentalized D&D style classes is a good idea, but there's a few different ways to accomplish this notion without classes, including stat points, and trade friction, but they're kind of a separate topic, and more of a true suggestion, so I wanted to start a discussion topic first, and see if anyone else has any thoughts on this.  Would this improve the feel of the world, and increase the replayability of the mod?  Or would it frustrate players, who generally seem to like to be able to do any and everything with one character, from what I can tell? 

I think this is a good idea.  But 0-1 is trivial, since a block of clay mostly yields 1-2 pieces and you need 5 to make anything.   I think maybe if clay nodes spawned as normal in dry areas, but only actually placed a clay block if adjacent to a water block, that would provide a bare amount of clay, yet still keep the environs unattractive for permanent settlement. 

Of course, that's TFC1 thinking, and I sort of doubt even a seemingly minor thing like this will make it into TFC1 anymore.  TFC2, may have an entirely different generation method.  But in general I think it's a good idea to provide some minimal clay in dry areas.

To be clear then, I meant special in the effects, not the animation.  I think the OP was using "martial" in the true definition - pertaining to war and military things in general.  Not the pop culture sense of karate and the like.

I guess to me it would be entirely relevant and appropriate for TFC2, given that it will have a focus on progression through combat pacification of islands.  Why not make things a bit more interesting than hack-n-shoot? 

May be a little out of the tfc scope.

How would this be beyond the scope of TFC2?  Slowing movement based on encumbrance has already been proposed by Bioxx.  Neither the OP or I were suggesting changing animations.