Planks first toughts

[weylin 36]

stone is connected to it self amorphously (when it's actually stone and not a mineral) and therefore can be chiseled any which way you choose, but as wood is attached in fibres, chiseling it is much more difficult unless you go with the grain of the wood and makes it much more fragile, so no, it would not make more sense.

I didn't actually mean chiseling wood, I meant having planks be 2 pixels thick, which it seems they are now that I see the screen shots.

I'm assuming that they would get that width through the use of a saw.

[renadi 258]

I assume the blank block will vanish shortly, as it seems to be counter to the whole idea of loose planks.

[stringburka 72]

I assume the blank block will vanish shortly, as it seems to be counter to the whole idea of loose planks.

Can they remove it easily though, without having to change a whole lot of things otherwise?

But if they do, I REALLY hope they change the size of the loose planks! Having to spend a whole log to get a thin, thin layer of planks seems very counterintuitive (or nearly three logs if using an axe).

[weylin 36]

How about a distinction between different types of planks? Being able to cut and recombine them... sorta like red power microblocks, maybe? Not exactly the same, though, I'm sure you could work out specifics.

[Woodledude 6]

How about a distinction between different types of planks? Being able to cut and recombine them... sorta like red power microblocks, maybe? Not exactly the same, though, I'm sure you could work out specifics.

I like the idea, but no recombining. Measure twice, cut once, like a real carpenter. If you cut twice and it's still too short, it's time to get a new plank- and be more careful with it.

Also, speaking of real carpenters, nails would be cool, now I think it. But they would be IMPOSSIBLE to implement to any effective or useful or even reasonable degree, so nevermind.

[DrkBlack 1]

Well, i like how it currently is. I can't really complain about it being 1/8 of a surface, because it would cause too much trouble when placing them. Also if you are going to detail your house, burrow (or pit whatever) with single planks than you should be in a point where you have an axe and a tree farm. I think the current placement method is really under estimated.

[yubyub96 68]

Well, i like how it currently is. I can't really complain about it being 1/8 of a surface, because it would cause too much trouble when placing them. Also if you are going to detail your house, burrow (or pit whatever) with single planks than you should be in a point where you have an axe and a tree farm. I think the current placement method is really under estimated.

Well they are better for the aesthetics, but the thing is that the plankblocks are going to be removed(dont quote me on that , pure speculation) and having planks that are 1x1x8 is a horrible thing to make shelters with, it will take so much trees and so much time that it will take away all the believability TFC has now.

[stringburka 72]

If people still want the 2x2x16 block, why not make the stick item placeable as a 2x2x16? Doesn't need to be wood-type based, one color is enough. And then let the planks be 4x4x16 or 4x8x16 or something like that?

[Woodledude 6]

I believe someone else said that there was very good reasoning behind removing different stick types for all the different trees, which has been implemented and was subsequently removed, apparently, although I'd like to get a link to that post to see if their claim holds water, and if the logic behind that decision still applies in our current situation. That being said, I don't distrust the reasoning behind the decision or the person making that claim, I'd just like to see it with my own eyes.

[Hyena Grin 92]

Conservation of mass is important, I think. Obviously converting logs to planks will include waste, and currently you get 8 planks out of a log (with a saw), so I think it's reasonable to assume that 12 planks will create a full block. Just make a block 3 planks wide and 4 planks thick. This will also mean that even a stone axe can convert a single log into one block's worth of thin floor/wall. While a saw could create two blocks-worth, plus change.

Anyway I love the idea, but my hope was that building with planks would make it more efficient to build wooden structures, and right now it doesn't feel that way. I still feel tempted to use old wood recipes to craft half-blocks.

4 planks to make a block, multiplied by 3, so 12 planks to make 6 wooden floor tiles. That seems much more efficient than the current 8 planks per tile. Of course you might very well get rid of plank blocks altogether, I have no idea. But either way, it could use a balance pass. It should be easy to use wood to build basic structures once you have a saw, like really easy. Right now you just need to pick a few rocks up off the ground to build a wall, while wood, a much more common and versatile building material, is extremely inefficient.

[renadi 258]

I don't think we have to worry about conservation of any easily renewable resources, I understand how non renewable resources not being 1:1 would lead to entropy and be undesirable, wood in the long run is much easier.

And, at some point at least, the rocks we gather from the ground aren't going to be whole cobblestone.

One of the main things Dunk has implied when I've talked about survival being too easy is we will have to dig out our shelters before we actually have the capability to build anything, which for a survival experience makes a lot of sense.

[Hyena Grin 92]

I agree that it's easier with wood, which is why I agreed that some waste would make sense. I actually suggested a loss ratio of 8/12 (one third loss) with saws and 3/12 (three quarters loss) with axes, which I think is plenty restrictive. The key to the change is that you could convert one log into one tile's worth of flooring or wall using an axe. I think that's critical. You shouldn't need to use half a tree to build one tile of wall. However the current waste ratio is pretty abysmal, you are throwing away the vast majority of the log. I also agree that survival mode could be harder, but I don't think this is the way to make it harder. Once you reach saws, wooden structures really should not be especially time consuming. It should be far easier than using stone, because, y'know.. that is why the vast majority of structures are and have been made out of wood ever since the advent of metal tools.

With the new stone axe you are already wasting 10% of your logs, and if one log = 3 planks, and you need 8 planks minimum to build a single, basic floor or wall tile, then there is basically no reason to use wood to build with in the early game, which is silly. You would be wasting wood hand over fist just to build a tiny wall. You would need to chop down half a forest just to construct a simple hut. I am all for making the game more challenging, but I think there are better ways to do that then to make building with wood undesirably costly. Especially given that we need so much wood already for charcoal - given the choice between extremely expensive wooden structures at the expense of charcoal, or using ridiculously efficient stone, I can't see why anyone would use wood for anything other than purely aesthetic reasons. I'd rather if stone was the more difficult to process material.

Wood is an incredibly efficient building material in real life, it's the first building material anyone would use if they were going to start building in the wilderness. Also you have to consider that in Minecraft everything is scaled; a day is much, much shorter than in real life, time to chop trees/wood is scaled down, for plants/trees to grow is scaled down, etc. Which also means the resources gained need to be scaled up to compensate. A day's worth of wood harvesting is already not especially productive unless you are lucky and have piles of willows. It is very time consuming to create charcoal and by the time you're done you'll have cleared a rather large chunk of forest, and must wait for it to regrow.

Just make plank floors/walls less desirable by making them more vulnerable to creeper explosions. Make them weak and unsalvagable. But don't make them scarce, otherwise they won't get used in a sensible way.

Edited 21 Dec 2012 by Hyena Grin