A Question of Motivation Relating to Trade

[Treyflix 277]

I'm not suggesting we burn ssp, I'm not saying it's unneccesary, I'm really not saying anything about it, but SMP is priority according to bioxx even.

I'm not putting down ssp I'm defending not making smp worse for it's sake.

So all the sudden NOT adding a feature is harming it? Bullshit! I'm defending SSP because a feature might harm it that does not need to be added to improve SMP. There is a million things to be done that could improve SMP WITHOUT harming SSP! And yeh you have the facts twisted to the point where you think harming SSP will help SMP!

[Draco18s 46]

Another thing is that SSP pockets are far too big at this point whereas these pockets are too small for SMP. Also I urge that you read my last post as it will prevent from a five-man server from being impossible.

Responding to this, as it's very true.

I have a nice, happy, single player world going. Have a fair abundance of resources (even if my sluices are super super slow, compared to what I think is intended, given the SMP world I poked at the other day).

The SMP world I started up to show a few friends?

We can't find a single ore vein of any material anyfreakingwhere. Hell, we had a hard time finding the small rocks that litter the surface (I shit you not, there were NONE in the nearby spawn area). The sluices were pretty productive though. Friend went for dinner and I fed the sluices (as to not get ahead of him, as I already knew a lot). When he came back we had 56 small nuggets of sphalerite. I accidentally destroyed 40 of them when I went to r-click a sluice and r-clicked some sand, destroying the block I was standing on and also breaking the sluices. Sluices don't drop their contents when destoyed.

No matter, we continued on (and ended up duplicating some zinc bars! Guess karma wins out)

Went a diggin'

Pro-pick did, eventually, pick up traces of lignite, and we did find a huge pocket of jet, but other than that? Nada. Never even found the lignite before we grew frustrated, enabled creative mode and blew a crater to bedrock with TNT. In the resulting debris, there was exactly zero metal ore.

Then, having Computer Craft enabled (it was the only mod of the ones my friend liked that was compatible with TFC) we spawned in several miner turtles and told them to bore to the center of the world bedrock.

No ore.

Spawned more turtles.

Dug more holes.

Pro-picked the entire area of revealed stone layers.

Nothing of interest.

Last thing I did was to tell four turtles to mine out the 100x100 area surrounding the location of the sluices. World isn't running at current, but so far they've dug down about 20 blocks. Pro-picking the bottom (which would see down to 35) finds nothing.

Nothing of interest.

Nothing at all in a 100x100x35 block area surrounding spawn.

If I let those turtles run another couple of hours I'll eventually have dug out the entire zone that the sluices should be pulling from to generate ore nuggets. I'm not expecting to find anything.

[Jed1314 420]

Responding to this, as it's very true.

I have a nice, happy, single player world going. Have a fair abundance of resources (even if my sluices are super super slow, compared to what I think is intended, given the SMP world I poked at the other day).

The SMP world I started up to show a few friends?

We can't find a single ore vein of any material anyfreakingwhere. Hell, we had a hard time finding the small rocks that litter the surface (I shit you not, there were NONE in the nearby spawn area). The sluices were pretty productive though. Friend went for dinner and I fed the sluices (as to not get ahead of him, as I already knew a lot). When he came back we had 56 small nuggets of sphalerite. I accidentally destroyed 40 of them when I went to r-click a sluice and r-clicked some sand, destroying the block I was standing on and also breaking the sluices. Sluices don't drop their contents when destoyed.

No matter, we continued on (and ended up duplicating some zinc bars! Guess karma wins out)

Went a diggin'

Pro-pick did, eventually, pick up traces of lignite, and we did find a huge pocket of jet, but other than that? Nada. Never even found the lignite before we grew frustrated, enabled creative mode and blew a crater to bedrock with TNT. In the resulting debris, there was exactly zero metal ore.

Then, having Computer Craft enabled (it was the only mod of the ones my friend liked that was compatible with TFC) we spawned in several miner turtles and told them to bore to the center of the world bedrock.

No ore.

Spawned more turtles.

Dug more holes.

Pro-picked the entire area of revealed stone layers.

Nothing of interest.

Last thing I did was to tell four turtles to mine out the 100x100 area surrounding the location of the sluices. World isn't running at current, but so far they've dug down about 20 blocks. Pro-picking the bottom (which would see down to 35) finds nothing.

Nothing of interest.

Nothing at all in a 100x100x35 block area surrounding spawn.

If I let those turtles run another couple of hours I'll eventually have dug out the entire zone that the sluices should be pulling from to generate ore nuggets. I'm not expecting to find anything.

There has to be ore in the radius around the sluices or they wouldn't have given you anything ?

[xud9dab2 2]

There has to be ore in the radius around the sluices or they wouldn't have given you anything ?

IIRC a 100×100×60 radius, centred at the taller half of the sluice block. It's entirely possible that there was a giant Zinc vein just slightly left of that humongous crater, hidden by a rock. Unless I'm missing something, finding ore is a matter of determining it exists via sluices, getting enough for a pickaxe and than digging randomly and hoping you find something before the pickaxe breaks. A propick certainly helps, but not enough.

[ECC 508]

'There has to be ore in the radius around the sluices or they wouldn't have given you anything ?'

I believe the point was that Ore generation being made up of several choices would benefit users far more then one mandatory default that is so random it is capable of entirely breaking a game for players such as him and his friends.

lets try to not get off topic

[Draco18s 46]

There has to be ore in the radius around the sluices or they wouldn't have given you anything ?

Ended up excavating the area with MC Edit fill/replace. There was a small cluster of sphalerite (~60 blocks) within the sluice area, down at y=110 to 115. The only other "ore" all the way down to bed rock was olivine (like a thousand blocks) and jet (500ish). Never found the limonite (was probably destoyed by the TNT, but given it's size ("traces")....)

I believe the point was that Ore generation being made up of several choices would benefit users far more then one mandatory default that is so random it is capable of entirely breaking a game for players such as him and his friends.

Yeah, more or less. Ore is so uncommon it's frustrating.

[renadi 258]

So all the sudden NOT adding a feature is harming it? Bullshit! I'm defending SSP because a feature might harm it that does not need to be added to improve SMP. There is a million things to be done that could improve SMP WITHOUT harming SSP! And yeh you have the facts twisted to the point where you think harming SSP will help SMP!

Again, Not saying doing anything at all to ssp, never once ever. Are you replying to the right post?

[Treyflix 277]

Again, Not saying doing anything at all to ssp, never once ever. Are you replying to the right post?

Well properly it should have been to your first post, not second. Ulf said it better then I did though. So, just ignore me haha

[Scooterdanny 285]

Concerning the topic of the thread, currently with ore generation as it is (less surface area of ore than vanilla greatly, slightly smaller total ore) villages can somewhat easily sustain themselves in most locations with mines, If there were a config for generation, i would like to see something that would exacerbate this change, and make finding ore veins supply an entire server just about, so that trading is unnecessary, if it is a generation code/mode (like flatland in vanilla) then server owners could have interesting dynamics, like farming communes, and large miner towns. So much much larger veins, with a very reduced occurance rate.

snip

If you are going to write a rant, please either/both put it in spoilers, or not double space it lol.

[Draco18s 46]

So I recently ran across a talk regarding trade, wealth, and productivity the other day.

Went something like this:

"Adam can make an axe in 4 hours, and a spear in 3 hours. John can make an axe in 2 hours and a spear in 3 hours. So John doesn't need Adam at all. Buf if Adam makes two spears, and John makes two axes and then they trade, they both save an hour of work." Followed by continued specialization, each getting better and faster at one task, and trading for the things they cannot make.

That is the essence of an economy.

Currently in Minecraft this balance doesn't exist. Economy isn't about "I have access to X natural resource, I'll trade for your Y natural resource." That's a part of it, yes. But in Minecraft it breaks down because some tasks are so easy and/or trivial as to be valueless in trade (cough, farming) not to mention that anyone can make stone tools in under 8 seconds, and that these tools are "good enough" for most tasks.

(Even in vanilla minecraft I don't upgrade any tool above "stone" except for my pickaxe)

So while some materials are hard to get ahold of, because they are so rare (cough, nickel), there's nothing a non-miner could provide in return for a single bar the miner could not get on his own in 5 minutes or less (wood? nope, takes 15 seconds. Crops? Nope, that's simply a 15 second job followed by a 72 hour wait on growth, he can go mining while he waits. Smithing? Takes a minute, tops, and he'd likely be just as good at it as the blacksmith...and he wouldn't have to trade in order to get materials to experiment with).

TL;DR:

Mineral scarcity does not motivate trade. Specialization of skills does.

Sidenote:

How long would you need to work at today's pay rate in order to afford 1 hour of reading light in the evening?

0.5 seconds

How long would someone in 1950 have to work for the same?

8 seconds.

1900?

15 minutes.

1800?

6 hours. Most people in 1800 could not afford candles.

[dat594 11]

I thing different ore gen would be great for ssp and smp.

1 it would spread towns out even if it did not cause trade it would influence it and strengthen it(walking is annoying) this would make overlaping towns less of a problem (it happens all the time in the tekkit server I play on(tekkitcraft.com come join )

2 its more realistic for those who want realism

[Draco18s 46]

Here's a question:

Who in their right mind, with access to iron, trade for copper?

Once that question has a satisfactory response, trade will not exist. No one is going to willingly give up a higher teir resource for a lower teir. And due to the highly linear nature of the teirs...

[Najual 46]

This has happened many times in many other games... large differences in gameplay between single and multiplayer, or between PVP and non PVP, causes people to lose their shit and post long rants in forums about how sick and wrong it is and you can't do that because I paid good (time, money, addiction) for this and you're RUINING MY GAME.

It should be obvious by now that this is a hardcore mod. Hard. Not easy. "...most certainly making the game more difficult (but hopefully also more rewarding)." Does that really need explaining?

If the upcoming world gen changes make the mod more vast and challenging, so be it. Bioxx should not have to split his coding time between creating his vision for his mod and catering to people who want their SSP/creative experience to be easier. Jed1314 has already conceded that perhaps there should be two methods of terrain gen, which is very generous. Personally I think there should be one, and make it realistic. If the differences between SSP and SMP are too drastic, you end up with even more clueless, whiny, spoiled kids on SMP servers, which turns off both SSP and SMP players.

Who in their right mind, with access to iron, trade for copper?

Anyone who doesn't have the lower tier metals/anvils required to advance to iron. On DHB, which I've been playing for a week or so, there is a fair amount of trade in stacks of charcoal for ingots and tools. Anyone can make charcoal with stone tools and trees, but some people can't seem to find enough tin or copper to make bronze. That's with the current proliferation of tier 0/1 ores in surface layers. Perhaps it's more a matter of diligence to find them for yourself. But putting large distances between ore veins will certainly encourage trade. And territorial disputes.

[Jed1314 420]

Here's a question:

Who in their right mind, with access to iron, trade for copper?

Once that question has a satisfactory response, trade will not exist. No one is going to willingly give up a higher teir resource for a lower teir. And due to the highly linear nature of the teirs...

What if they only have a copper anvil and can't find any more copper ?

I acknowledge what you are saying about skills, and that needs to change too.

You are treating these trades as if it would be individuals trading. Usually it is factions who trade on servers. So, a purely mineral trade based economy could still function.

Also, copper/iron trade, what about the late game alloys that need bronze ?

[Najual 46]

You are treating these trades as if it would be individuals trading. Usually it is factions who trade on servers. So, a purely mineral trade based economy could still function.

Somewhat in Draco's defense, his point is that if an individual (or an entire faction) already has iron/steel anvils and tools to mine out more iron, they wouldn't need lower tier metals. Until, of course, they want to advance to black steel and don't have enough bronze, as you pointed out.

Also keep in mind that individuals or factions may claim rights to an ore vein and be stingy with it... not letting everyone in their own town or village have free access to it. It's still a limited and valuable resource. Tools wear out. Anvils get stolen, or blown up by creepers, or any number of other setbacks, forcing players with lots of iron ore to start from stone tools again. That's the harsh 'reality' of it. So I agree with you, all of these things would necessitate trade.

[Najual 46]

As a side note, all of this assumes that players are finding and trading various resources legitimately. Rarity and distance encourages trade but also motivates douchebags to cheat. If anything is going to break the mod and ruin trade, it's that.

[Scooterdanny 285]

Bah, i wish we could get orebfuscator, cheating at this mod is like killing a boxing champion with a nuclear warhead. What's the point? or if mario got a jet pack.

[Najual 46]

Bah, i wish we could get orebfuscator, cheating at this mod is like killing a boxing champion with a nuclear warhead. What's the point? or if mario got a jet pack.

I realize there are a lot of loopholes that need to be closed. Duping exploits, chunk errors, etc. It's beta. But yeah, there's really no way to stop some forms of cheating. sdbayham is doing his best to code new Forge server mods and he's also been very involved in DHB to track down thieves and griefers. Currently (48g) one of the biggest problems I see is duping or xraying nickel, which is supposed to be extremely rare, yet some players seem to have a lot of it. There also happens to be a lot of gabbro in the right layers in that world gen, but how do you prove they found it legitimately, or that they didn't?

As I mentioned earlier, charcoal is being used as a standard of currency to trade for more common metals. Yes anyone can make it, but it takes a lot of time and attention and some ppl would rather be doing other things. It has value to both newer players and older or more established ones. Trade on that scale isn't really affected by someone casually sporting red and blue steel, and they're not spreading it all over the server either because they think it's a status symbol. So I'm not saying it's a critical issue right now, but it will be.

What happens when tin and copper become prohibitively difficult to get server wide? Or when PVP comes into play and top tier armor/weapons make some players nearly unstoppable? Cheat happens.

So I think exploits need to be looked at very closely and stopped or reduced as much as possible if trade is going to be viable on a grand scale. Otherwise all these great ideas could be trashed on any server by a few or even one kid for teh lulz.