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EnTro

Metric vs imperial

62 posts in this topic

Well, it's just a computer game, nothing really matters. I'm sure the game will be just as awesome whether it measures in 'g'/'oz'/'lbs'/'bioxx-food-units' or 'garghls'.It's just that from a society POV I believe that phasing out the use of imperial units will happen and also should happen. The sooner, the better."The most logical explanation, however, just may be the failure of Congress to make the metric system mandatory in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and its territories. By making conversion voluntary in all major legislation since 1866, the U.S. has failed to restrict the use of traditional units in transactions that touch the daily lives of ordinary citizens. Until that mandate comes -- and it will likely come soon if the U.S. is to remain competitive with growing economic powers, such as China and India -- many Americans will continue to think in terms of inches and pounds instead of meters and kilograms."- http://science.howstuffworks.com/why-us-not-on-metric-system4.htm

I agree with you when you speak of lengths and degrees, However there is a usefulness in the Imperial weight system that may never stop being adopted. It has to do with the Force vs Mass issue when associating weights and it make a difference cause I don't like doing measurements in Newtons...  

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Personally I think it should be consistent, I should instantly be able to tell that 1X is [_] times larger then 1Y with X & Y being measures (Oz, Kg etcetera)

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Adopting the "idea's" of the imperial system for TFC could work. Like in the posted video. Take an arbitrary item/object, then multiply/divide it to make weights and lengths. Metric is based on properties that are not necessarily true in the Minecraft Universe. (That smooooth silicon ball for the kilogram is pretty neat though)For example. One Tree is 6 'blocks'. A sluice is a 1/3 tree (2 'blocks'). So you're building a road that's a half tree wide (3 blocks). Giving space to a player to build a house on is 3 by 4 trees and a plank (18x(24+1) blocks). :PI wont make any examples for weight. Given how much Bioxx has worked on the food system, he could probably make a decent estimate.

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So an arbitrary unit... why not the 'stack'? It's become a really common term of measurement in Minecraft everywhere. So a stack could be the base unit of weight, reliant on the amount of space it takes up in an inventory. A fully combined piece of meat is 'one stack' as no more meat can be combined to add to that inventory slot. For smaller measurements, 16 pearls make a stack, 4 nuggets make a pearl(64 gems thus make a stack). This also lends itself to volume conversion. 1 bucket of water has a weight of 1 stack. A full jug would also hold a 'stack' of water because it takes up a full slot(assuming the jug itself is weightless, this goes for the bucket also). By assigning the weight unit as a 'inventory space' unit rather than a force unit or mass unit we handily avoid the metric-imperial problem you guys have been discussing. 

 

I chose the nugget and pearl as smaller units because they're items anybody from minecraft, even new to TFC, would know as long as they know regular minecraft, and because they sound like things which you could reasonably name a weight after. Any better suggestions would be gladly appreciated, as well as any expanding on this idea.

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Well a stack itself is not a measurable item/object. A stack as a number is normally 64, but that is not always the case in TFC. You'd probably need to choose one common type. Like a Pile of Dirt. A Pile is the combined weight of a stack of dirt (It's a lot of weight though). Then choose an item that fits somewhat conveniently towards being half and a quarter that weight. I don't know these weights or the proper plural terms for these things.I'd probably say something like using a single Apple (, Stone, Log or Straw/Thatch) as a base unit of weight. However many ounces that is can be used to approximate a starting point. Then make plural terms for greater weights starting with a stack of apples, then things that are multiples of that amount.Things like Stone/Log/Thatch can double as units of length. A stone being 1/8th block. I'd assume an Apple is easiest to apply to Bioxx current system though.

A stone would be an easy way of relating to the 8th chislel system. A 5 stone thick slab is the same as 5/8. Asking someone to chisel the 3 stones off the edge of a block would be taking out the first 3 lines from the corner.

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Yeah, I thought about using stone, but i thought stone might get confused with the real world measurement used for human body weight

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I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the numerical weight measurement won't be applied to anything other than food. The reason it was put there in the first place was to circumvent items not stacking like in vanilla when they have different rot values, as well as a way to "cut out" the decayed part. If the decay is at 30%, and you cut it out with a knife, it's a lot easier to see that your 100 oz steak just turned into a 70 oz steak. That's really all you ever need to keep track of with these numbers anyways. Every food item goes up to 160 oz, your gut can hold 24 oz, and you can only eat a max of 5 oz of food at once. This is the same regardless of what you are eating (steak, carrots, apples, bread, cheese, etc).

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[Going a bit off topic] Would it be easier to code if all items were assigned weight instead of size?

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Why use oz then? Just make it 64/64 or something, no unit is needed. I think that would make more sense to all players anyway. The use of the oz unit just sort of makes some confusion. Thinking about it, grams aren't any use either. If no cross conversion is needed then just counting it as a fraction of 64 works, and fits with hexadecimal too.

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Does it really matter?

I mean, whether we use oz, or grams, or bites, or nothing, or 160/160, 64/64 etc, it won't really make much difference, would it?

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I'm fine with units of measurement either way, as long as the values are realistic.

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Define 'realistic values'

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Define 'realistic values'

I'm not sure about a full definition but I don't think they shouldn't include wizards. :3

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Realistic in whatever the weight of a porkchop is or a handful of cherries.

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The numbers are realistic for the case of harvesting plants, but because you can bundle/combine items together in the crafting table for better inventory management, you can still carry around a cherry that's the size of a baby. Animals also drop as many of the full 160/160 oz pieces as possible, once again so you don't have to pick up a crapton of pieces and combine them before it floods your inventory.

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Funny that you mention that Kitty. In the beginning i found a cherry tree and stuffed my inventory full of cherries without realising i could combine them. I had inventory management problems from day 1 :D

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100 g   = hg    = 0.1 kg
1000 g = 10 hg  = 1 kg

 
 
g = Gram, base unit
hg = Hectogram, hundred grammes
kg = Kilogram, where kilo means thousands
 
So much more logical.

 

Posted Image

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hah, that's kind of funny Bioxx, I personally have no issue with length mass and volume in the metric base, but struggle with gauging a celsius temperature with my bare hands. I guess i'm the opposite of you here

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I don't get all this disappointment about imperial misures and metric ones.. I'm italian and here they use metric system, but that didn't give me any problem about dealing with ounces, i stay with bioxx and dunk size, oz is just fine as it is

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I am with SteAStro on this one... 

 

Aslong as Temperature stays in C° i am fine. :P

Decades of Pen & Paper really helps getting used to the imperial system... 

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Well as long as we don't have to convert anything I am fine with imperial, like who the hell knows how many feet there's in one ounce!?

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It's funny all of the arguments about how much better the Metric system is, as if that were actually relevant to the choice.

 

All this whining about how you can't understand Imperial because you have no familiarity with it should give you some appreciation of why the US and the other holdouts haven't yet switched to Metric: It's different.

 

Working with a system you're not familiar with is hard, and that's all there is to it. There is a cost to changing systems which most people simply avoid.  If you were starting from scratch with no investment of time or emotions, then of course you would choose metric.  But if you've already learned one way, then it will take an intentional and active effort to switch to the other.

 

Let your struggles with Pounds and Ounces, Furlongs and Fortnights instead give you sympathy with Americans who say that the metric system is "too hard" and "isn't intuitive".

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Global conversion to metric in the U.S. is more involved than changing Speed Limit signs. The cost of conversion is not in intelligence - it is in dollars. We do not live in an economic climate conducive to sinking enormous resources into changing a system that is functioning well enough for a system that is more logical. Stating reasons that suggest a U.S. stereotype of being backwards, archaic, and unintelligent (while downplaying the glaring reasons for hesitance toward change) is unproductive and offensive.

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Hey, I don't mean to stir up any thing here, but I feel i have to say that my own country [Canada] converted from imperial to metric about 40 years back... To be fair, we don't have nearly the population of the US now and even less back then, but the means to communicate and coordinate are so much more developed today than they were back then. All i mean to say is that it's certainly feasible for a nation to convert and easy enough on the society to adopt the new system. There's probably no better American analog than Canada as well, as we share the same language and the majority of our culture.

 

In the end, it's more a balance of costs. Converting the US to the metric system would be a (quite sizable) one-time cost. The cost globally of supporting two measurement systems, in terms of manufacturing compatible technologies and software is incredibly difficult to estimate with any degree of accuracy. Although most likely small in comparison to the total-conversion in a short time frame, it can be considered an annual global deficit that doesn't go away, it draws on the global economy continually. It would be hard to say with any certainty whether a conversion would pay for itself in the next 100 years, or even 150 years, but I'm quite sure America as a nation plans and hopes to be around for many, many times longer than that. It will pay for itself eventually, and in all likely hood, the cost of doing it will be long forgotten before such a time happens.

 

I think (and I'm just trying to be straightforward here), that it's the United States' propensity to think on shorter time frames, and along more instant-personal-gratification tracts that prevents the change from happening. To be honest, the number of times I see Americans talking about various ways to cheat their government or employers out of payment saddens me. I'm well aware that not all Americans are like this, many of them are hard workers who take pride in their accomplishments. I just feel that there are a fair too many of you who are just a tax on your economy, and for whom the "American Dream" is to be paid as much as possible for as little effort as possible.

 

Just an opinion from a spectator to the north.

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