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mossman

More nuances for the stone-age

11 posts in this topic

This is going to read like a bit of a wishlist but I would feel better for having my ideas voiced here, so here goes.

 

So right now the stone age isn't as interesting or nuanced as I think it could be.

 

Why not have the most basic weapon be a pointed stick?

We could sharpen our sticks by either scraping it with a stone or whittling it with a suitable tool. The latter should produce superior results than the former, but I'm not sure how it would be best to represent this in-game. This would of course be neccessary if stone tools were to be made less trivial to produce.

One could potentially improve on the pointed stick slightly by "fire-hardening" it, which involves lightly toasting the point over a flame. This would

 

Starting and maintaining your first fire should be a bit of a challenge. Anyone here ever seen the 1981 film "Quest for Fire"? As you can probably imagine the entire plot of that film revolves around the struggle to control fire by a group of early humans. It's not a trivial thing to do.

My idea would be to have a mechanic that made initially starting a fire difficult, so that it would incentivize keeping your current fire alive, either by way of a continuous merry blaze or a few embers smouldering in a gourd packed with straw (As is historically faithful).

 

Chipped (knapped) stone tools are only possible from rocks with conchoidal fracture (meaning they do not break into cleavage planes), such as quartzite, basalt, and significantly, obsidian and Chert AKA flint. Obtaining good quality stone tools should not be trivial either.

 

Another major pain pre-metal is inventory management, that being, there's no easy chest substitute other than clay vessels, which can be frustrating to manage in any quantity. As many others on this forum have suggested, some variation on a low-capacity container made from basketry would be believable.

A low-capacity ceramic equivalent to a barrel is also neccessary - mainly because treating leather and preserving food should be quite possible for those with stone tools. I should also note that just beating rawhides with a rock or other tool would not be totally ineffective at softening it.

 

On the topic of leather, the ability to craft basic clothing/armor out of rawhide would be quite believable.

This guy probably didn't have a copper saw and a nice tanning barrel - just some goat skins and maybe a stone cutting tool.

 

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Some very nice ideas, although I imagine some of them would be difficult to implement without unbalancing the game (e.g. we should have to work to some extent to acquire our first set of armour). Adding new features

to give stone-age players more assets to play with such as storage and easy tanning might be realistic in a way, but at the same time it removes the incentive to upgrade. To be fair, other features suggested here do balance this out however I, as a player, want the stone age to be an infuriating and primitive experience, which is why getting your first ingot is such a big deal.

 

I am not a developer, and my opinions do not in any way reflect those of the developers, but I am a very opinionated person and I believe that what the players want to see is what is important. Of course, if I am outvoted here then fair enough.

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I am fairly certain they were talking about furs at some point. Obviously, cured leather is stronger than natural hide, so using hides and furs as initial armor would help dampen a few blows. Somewhat weaker than leather, but doable a little easier and earlier. Also, I would imagine they were talking at one time about temperature and cold/hot weather survival as well. Hides and furs will likely be around at some point.As for food preservation, the primary and most basic is drying. Laying some berries in the sun to basically 'raisin up' could be done. Smoking meats would be an interesting method, using indirect, low burning smokey heat over night should dry out meat. Also, in cold areas in fall and winter, you can usually just hang certain foods outside.

 

Being able to place larger items in certain places would be nice. I would imagine wicker baskets roughly the size of barrels to be a useful small storage, maybe 6 or 8 slots with less size limits.

 

I would also, much later on as more important things are likely in line, cave painting, or using pigments and soft stones to mark on stone or harder material. This would be useful for navigation later on as well, but I already do something similar with chisels already.

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dyeing things with berries in a bucket of water instead of minerals, could be more accessible earlier in the game for vessels organisation. (by colours)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NrOM5lxzrFg/SoWxIWdlcRI/AAAAAAAABTY/SO9SrO1u1WE/s1600-h/blueberry+dye+in+jar.jpg

 

Actually the stone age is pretty short, get sticks, straws, clay and nuggets with gold paning, and here you go, your first pickaxe. Already in metal age, saw, and bye bye vessels, low storage, and stone age.

 

by some points, adding a new mechanics of maintaining your first fire like mossman said, could add length for this period of the game. maybe until your wood became charcoal. and then your fire last longer and you can think about exploration and get some nuggets. but for this to work, we must find a more difficult way to START fire. because right now it's only demand 2 sticks and a log.

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I think that the length of the stone-age is good enough. If we want more realism or prolong the stone-age we would need the bone age before the stone-age, since bones where the one used to knap (the hardest material at his disposal at that point). As matter of fact, what it is called the stone age is a compressed version of the nomadic life (gathering) with the advance knowledge of agriculture (yes, it is advance for that time) and hunting. Prolonging the stone-age would mean to review how would be the "correct" (if any) way of moving through eras:

 

1 Gathering

2 Discovery of the bone and first tools made of bone (they probably obtained bones from corpses rather than hunting) 

3 Hunting / start of the stone-age

4 Agriculture

5 End of the stone-age / start of the metal-age.

 

But I fear that that would prolong in an unnecessary way the first few hours of the game and without real challenge (you want to settle as fast as possible to start moving into different things). The problem right now is to balance the metal age (I just started playing the game and I haven't had a single tool made from copper, because tools made from cooper are harder to make for me than bronze tools, since they require different quantities of metals making them easier to make). My problem right now is to move from the bronze era to the iron era. I just can't find graphite (yes, I mined in the the correct type of rock at y=60 as suggested and nothing, my black-bronze pike is almost breaking and I'm using correctly the pro-pick). I think that there should be different ways to obtain the same item because of different biomes.

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I must say that OP raises a few good points, especially about pre-tool weaponry and leather processing. I, myself was surprised in the past that sturdy branch or a heavy rock in hand doesn't provide me with even neglible attack bonus in comparison with slapping monsters with, say, bare hands or handful of soft fleece.

 

I am however not overly sure about making fire difficult. Not only is fire nearly completely necessary to survive even the very easrly game, ability to create it is used thorough the whole gameplay. Making it difficult, I am afraid, would only give raise to irritation rather than the challenge, as otherwise well-established, self-sufficient players would have to spend additional time whenever willing to lit one.

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The thing with fire is perspective of the period. Fire, is something that I feel is known to the player. Although, real serious pre-fire survival could be done in some way... "Unlocking fire" is an interesting concept.

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But how would you prevent it? The major block that prevented humanity from discovering fire was not a lack of tools but a lack of knowledge. Now that we live in the present, people know how to create fire and so there is no lack of knowledge. Creating an artificial block to prevent fire from being achieved early on just feels annoying.

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My problem right now is to move from the bronze era to the iron era. I just can't find graphite (yes, I mined in the the correct type of rock at y=60 as suggested and nothing, my black-bronze pike is almost breaking and I'm using correctly the pro-pick). I think that there should be different ways to obtain the same item because of different biomes.

 

1. You don't need graphite to get to the iron age, you just need enough bronze to make a bloomery and then you can have wrought iron. You need graphite/kaolinite to get to the steel age and make a blast furnace.

2. The y=60 thing was completely removed in build 78. Ore moves with the shape of the terrain, and can be found at any layer that it's correct rock type spawns at.

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2. The y=60 thing was completely removed in build 78. Ore moves with the shape of the terrain, and can be found at any layer that it's correct rock type spawns at.

That is nice, just it adds one question. Right now I'm the correct layer of rock type for graphite, what can I expect from this? can I expect to find graphite 100% of the time (just have to search) or that there is a chance to find graphite in that layer?

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That is nice, just it adds one question. Right now I'm the correct layer of rock type for graphite, what can I expect from this? can I expect to find graphite 100% of the time (just have to search) or that there is a chance to find graphite in that layer?

 

It just means that it is possible that graphite can spawn there. There is no guarantee. You can use TFCOres.cfg in your config file to see how common it is, and tweak the rarity if you please.

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