a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I'd rather burn witches. We already have the witch mask in game and evil magic would certainly explain the sudden appearance of the Rift and all the wells going dry.
http://lexx.thebruce.net/poem/monty.html
"She turned me into a newt!"
I mean either or both would be great. We need old timey capital punishment for an old timey game lol.
I don't know how it would work, but I think it would be fun to hang criminals in a town square lol
The idea is that as soon as Jason has all the stats he needs to balance the game, the rift will be gone.
So we just give them to him.
Lol
Pemmican
Man I just had some tasty jerky. It was GOOD!
WE NEED JERKY!!!
Ever had bear jerky? Buffalo jerky? Or just plain ol' beef jerky? It's good stuff!!!
Ya salt it, and dry it over a low fire for a few days, and enjoy! More uses for salt, and good uses for bear amd cow carcasses. I mean REALISTICALLY, these folks wouldn't be letting all that yummy meat go to waste! No way! That wouldn't make any sense at all!
If you want realism, then at least give the opportunity to use the meat available. And even the hides!
Why can't they just be category of skills? You've gained the Forge skill! and it includes all the forging tools. It's REALLY annoying that every little step is it's own tool.
This makes much more sense, and is able to be expanded greatly, once you make your way back to upgrading the tech tree. The current system will not be friendly to an upgraded tech tree I don't think, unless the plan is to keep upping the amount of tool slots.
People learn skills for jobs.
When I learned to weld, there were a set of tools I became familiar with
When I did finish carpentry, there was a set of tools I became familiar with.
When I moved to HVAC, there was a set of tools I became familiar with.
This makes more sense, and would be able to be expanded upon in the future in a more efficient and simpler manner.
You could limit a person to one to three skillsets in a life depending on genetic fitness.
Please think about it.
Tempted wrote:A simple fix that would maybe be worth looking into would be an infinite or near infinite map without an ever expanding eve spiral, except every once in awhile. Some resources deplete while others, when handled properly, would regenerate. You would have an ever expanding starting area that would likely just keep getting bigger as people joined. Some resources you would have to travel for after they were depleted, but with the cartography update, it wouldnt be impossible to find your way back to civilization. Maybe a choice to be born in the main starting area, or eve out in the middle of nowhere? I don't know.
well that's the main thing with this idea
if each city is a separate "rift" with a centred map, it can go infinitely, it's just a filler anyway, unlikely that people gather everything around itthe entering point is still close to center, which is a bit of warp of the map, it wouldn't be perfect representation but close enough
i mean you can technically lock off some map parts and they won't be seen so they regenerate but it isn't jasons intention, he wants resources to run out, kinda 99% sure that people prefer renewable resources even if it requires work, perfect cycles, maybe longer processing but not this gathering and running out type of game
if the world map is separate from town maps, you can have towns close but still enough place for each
also, have them flexible from the centre outside based on populationfor 1 person load 50x50 of it, for more can be more area
I mean that is sorta magic or high tech, we could have star gates to dump you on random locations or between each other. Pseudo eves would be possible by going into virgin lands.
too many eves are bad, eve tokens would be best so people can play Eve any time if they deserve it. Some limitation so won't be too many families but if let's say there are 3 families, would allow one person to be Eve, it would require 3 long lives to earn a token or weekly one. People always abused suicide to enforce themselves to be Eve and ruin others eve runs when they suicide. People who could be a good eve had to choose not to as we were spread too thin. Basically you need like 12 players constantly for a family. That means that only 1 of 12 people should be Eve and makes sense that either equally give chance or based on skill. I talked in other topics that we rather have allied races or teams/countries that allow multiple allied families within a team so you could have your own name still belong to the same tribe. Then the tribes can go to war to each other.
We saw that we got too many shitty camps and those don't deserve to take from space. That might be subjective, but most people don't like bad camps, not necessarily want t make their own but to join a decent setup. If the world map is separate, you can be close to each other, fill all gaps, go back to old spots, if those spots aren't filled then no one cares about them, so can be purged and rewritten. Basically like defragmentation of a hard drive. Your camp doesn't have a location until becomes a city if you reach a certain tech level gets to the map on a random spot. Failed camps are the reason we can't pack a spiral nicely.
It would be nicer than current iteration I feel. The big thing lol is of course trying to make the game something people want to play more than once, which doesn't seem to be what the dev wants, at least it looks a lot like that when changes are made to limit the experience of players? Not sure why, but this idea would I think be awesome if we had, on average, a hundred players or more.
Currently it seems like there are attempts to "fix" things either with half of the information, or ignoring practicality in favor of the numbers? Doesn't take into account the actual, on the ground experience, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me
Just had an idea while writing to another topic.
Let me start off by my thoughts when started the game: the map is huge, wonder what is outside there? First, you had to learn how to survive alone, make a small farm, there was a time when I couldn't make my own bowls, but when had one, I could feed myself and 2-3 others.
Then got better and I could leave the town. Then I used fences and horses and went 2-3 biome away. Then I had lives when I didn't want to stay inside the camp, just grabbed a horse and went 2-300 tiles away. There are some veins, tarry spots, some interesting clusters of objects.
I was actually disappointed in the map, it's so huge but it's kinda pretty much the same. When the coordinates leaked out, sometimes I had a life where i just went around 1000 tiles then back or other places, made maps about cities, started roads.
But i realized that not worth going more than 2000 tiles and most people don't even go 100 tiles away. before the rift, we had 2 huge cities barely 600 tiles to each other diagonally yet no one wanted to make a road cause no one thought it matters.
Now we got the rift and some point of reference and we got some roads. But they only matter if it lasts long enough.So the map is just something Jason was bragging with, it really had no point being that big.
There are so many problems with the world which don't make sense:
-when the rift is too small, griefing can ruin the whole world
-when is too big the players won't be able to find other families
-when you stay home, you won't even see more than 80x80
-there is no point of exploring too far, you can't find any expensive resources, you rather make a camp near a mine and oil and that's it
-there is a soft cap on how much resources a town can take home before it's too far for transport
-arc is long and is boring for some
-arc is short and you lose your progressThe best city design i remember so far and got a picture of it is this:
https://i.imgur.com/zfPF4UP.jpg
we travelled a few thousand tiles to revive it over and oversimilar to san-cal which started out normally, was a crappy town with too many bushes and lot of grinding to make decent
then dodge born as my son and told him that itry to force the mosquitoes out
we filled all the jungle (still was medium temp) and locked them into a corner with bell bases
we made a nice berry farm with diagonal roads from a cistern, then people made a few rooms, then when we found it again we made more and more impressive structures, we always had the hope to rediscover itSo back to the title: Mount and Blade was a homemade game with a lot of bugs, after a few versions it became a very good game despite its basic world map. You had a tiny icon moving on a map, then when you had a fight, you entered a 3d world with good graphics or a town, or a castle etc.
We had all these ideas of islands, rivers, mountains and other stuff but it's so hard to find a golden number cause it really depends on the player base size and still, someone will be unhappy.
So my idea:
Separate map for city and world.
You could exit the city and travel on the world map, then the city would be a few tile size icon, clicking on it you could enter the internal map of it.
The internal map would be small, maybe 100x100 inner square, the outer square would be bigger(maybe even infinite), but you would arrive to the edge of inner square, which could be walled off so people can't enter without access.
each of those city maps would have a few biomes, an oil spot, a limit on wells maybe even on total resources, different seeds.
Maybe the eve would choose a centre and then it would be cropped around it.Once the family dies out, the map goes into the archive for a few days/weeks.
The external map would be different, all you do is travel anyway, maybe a higher zoom version of the normal map, for example 8x with lower resolution, shoving icons for strategic resources and city icons. (this kinda opposite to the previous, not sure if city and world map should be same)
https://i.imgur.com/0YvJoLq.pngOnce a family dies out, it goes to inactive and a time limit to use it, maybe each player who was inside that city would get a chance later to revive it, with some culling of resources but reset biomes.
The eve runs would be different, you would start on the world map then choose your inner square and settle until then you would have no kids, and you would ride a horse, maybe time limit to settle.
To be able to leave a city and go to the world map, you would need to have a horse.
You couldn't access resources on the world map, you would need to colonize/enter spots and send it home.I'm not sure on this part really can be anything depending on how this would be actually.
If cities are 100x100 dots on the world map, then we could have a minigame of buying or occupy spots near us. Then we could have resources stacked to connect those spots like rails. The units would be put on a train with no item limit and sent back to city. Maybe it would require a lot of charcoal so you would need to fill it well to worth it, maybe it could have item limit of like 64, 128, or upgradeable by the town. You would need to send workers to a colony by train or horses.If the world map would be separate, we could have separate maps for each square which doesn't show real maps just a square for cities. Eves would need to choose a spot near each other(some limitation of how far, for example, an 8x8 board) enter the inner map, then choose a location on an infinite map, a private rift of sorts, that would recenter the map to it so the landing would always be close to the travellers.
travel between towns wouldn't be the same, I mean there is not much point anyway like I generally spend one life running around the rift, noting down where is what then just go there next time.
There are only a few reasons to explore, wars, boredom, joining another town to mix the population.
SO rather than running 15-20 minutes on a horse, you would travel instantly (or almost instantly like 20 sec per small square of 8x8) and pay the cost first. Maybe would start 1 minute each square then upgrades would decrease it, for example now we got 6 rails with one board and blade, it would need 17ish to go 100 tiles, so for that cost it would decrease the travel time. it's not fun sitting and waiting while our life passes by.For example, you would have a 8x8 map start of the week, a fog of war, eves choose a tile from 64, maybe some map generation differences, maybe some of them hidden for example this is heavily forested, this map has more ponds, this map has more animals.
Then players would need to pay scouts to scout their own map to see where cities are. Once you see a target on map you could travel there. Maybe you get there instantly but lose a year for each square (this would have the problem that traveling back you would be older than others born the same year or you could skip young ages so maybe decrease life expectancy or a waiting animation)
https://i.imgur.com/WpIYzMm.pngthe squares could have official names or player side names, so you could technically know where you were before related to other towns you know.
group travel: in case of war, families could send war parties who enter on another family map in a group and they can attack them (maybe some siege against fences?) probably they die or never return anyway so towns should only send out some part of the population to attack
similarly, some groups could join in peace to themsome other mechanics like radios would signal how big the population is on the square, airports would allow flight between sectors
next week the spiral would shift, old town locations get archived, you could still find them and repopulate if you are female (maybe minimum group would need one male and one female to travel to inactive un-scouted areas)
of course, accessing world map would require to pay off resources or tokens so you can't just hop around the map
server-side these maps would be archived and only accessed if an active player is inside them, maybe population limit to access more than the inner 50x50 or 100x100 so the town could be loaded anywhere just marked on the world map, so they would be virtually near each other but physically not connected like now, and even they would be close to each other, they would have plenty of space, also limitations on their own (one well, one oil). the world map could be accessed on sides of the town or in special buildings (train or airport).
While travelling the other map would load in. So you could go back to previous weeks maps if you want to. If a map wouldn't be accessed for a month it would be deleted (or moved to another server if that's possible)
So each family would have a mini rift on its own. During the eve window, people could choose same tile, then fight for control of it. The map would be player side and would only reveal locations where you been already and you rediscover it. Scouting would cost life points and time, also your maximum life expectancy would decrease by moving. Your maximum time you could travel would be half of your last life length rounded up to closest decimal like 10,20,30,40,50,60. So based on what travel methods you got, it would cost you 30,20,10,5 minutes of max-age (foot, horse, car,plane between locations, to have road you would need to connect centre to edge, to have horse bonus you would need to get a horse, car for car speed, train maybe, airport on both location for air travel, also a plane), you could access travel by entering a specific zone on the 100x100 edge/corner of current map. travel would be simulated as planes do it now, you enter one side, exit other by loading the map. Group travel would be via a queue, people enter a location, press join and ready then leave same time. Scouting could be spending life tokens and after a time you would get an update on your world map what is next to your tile. Eve spiral would return, filling empty dots on the map, but saving old spots if anyone wants to go back (maybe delayed each arc, so you could travel after 2 days when you got similar tech levels). Old and uninteresting places would be deleted. Scouting a place twice would show a preview of the square.
I'm just throwing ideas, sorry if it's random or hard to understand.
Not sure about others, I generally live a whole life in a small place, never going too far, so the map is the same when im born back there. Or I scout the whole rift. Or I move once to another town, it is not much exciting wandering around the map seeing some ruins and spots without water. The recent changes made the map similar to cheese, you got some greasy spots, and the rest are holes in the cheese, basically a filler, if there is no mine or oil, you can safely assume that no one ever gonna cut trees or move resources from there, not much purpose for roads you build for hours when the world resets so quick. I would skip out on the time i spend travelling between towns. And I don't see the point of these horse thieving one man raid teams or one man pseudo Eves changing locations. You can basically die and born back on the other place or you can mindlessly walk to top right or top left or any corner without knowing where you are, so towns which are on edge or corner are easy to find, the animal dodging is not really a challenge and neither eating some wild food to stay alive, and especially not the fact that you just wasting time wandering when you don't know what you are looking for, and without a well or multiple ponds there is no value in random locations so might as well consider each city a separate map and the between territories fillers.
A simple fix that would maybe be worth looking into would be an infinite or near infinite map without an ever expanding eve spiral, except every once in awhile. Some resources deplete while others, when handled properly, would regenerate. You would have an ever expanding starting area that would likely just keep getting bigger as people joined. Some resources you would have to travel for after they were depleted, but with the cartography update, it wouldnt be impossible to find your way back to civilization. Maybe a choice to be born in the main starting area, or eve out in the middle of nowhere? I don't know.
Pls don't write in here anymore
OP is 13 with disabilities and understands now what's wrong about his post
Break the cycle, don't make excuses for why it continues on.
Kind of wish there was a bless system, for redemption, or that maybe gave some kind of reward built up that could help you spawn back into an area, extra pip time, starting with some kind of advantage, etc. Maybe some people that grief would try to do a better job to earn the reward it gives?
It's like tact is a lost art on everyone lol. So much salt from each side.
Thanks for the insight Dodge. Do you know if there is a fix that I can perform personally or is it something that would need to be fixed server side?
No. I haven't eaten any shrooms while playing on the server. I haven't even run across any. And it isn't exactly like being on shrooms, just similar as the items turn into other items.
Another example is that I had a pile of forged iron. When I played earlier, it was a full bucket, but when I interacted with the bucket, I ended up with a piece of iron, and the bucket morphed back into a pile of iron. I would place the piece of iron in my hand on another tile, and the pile would stay the same, but if I placed it back on the pile, it would turn all of the iron back into a bucket.
I thought someone had killed a mouflon I had in a pen because it wasn't there, but when I entered the pen, it materialized out of thin air.
A wolf was glitching out into a bear.
Just random weirdness.
It was small things until the update, but since the update, the bugs have become quite a bit more pronounced
I have been playing on server 7 for the past 2 weeks.
Up until the last update, there were a few rubber banding issues, (as well as fauna appearing in the wrong biomes) followed once by a popup that said "a wild bug has appeared" as I was stuck trying to take a berry from a bush.
I just played again earlier on the server, after the most recent update, and the town I have been building was, well, insane.
I had a live sheep stored sideways in a box that I picked up and took away.
I would pick up weird items that shouldn't be combined, like a chisel and a file.
Other items were completely different items than I remember them being the last time I played. Some of these items would revert back to the original once I interacted with them, others would turn into completely new items.
For example, I had a three sisters stew pot from last time that turned into a bowl. I took a bowl to it and was able to grab stew as the bowl on the ground turned back into a stew pot. I ate from the bowl in my hand, and when I placed it on the ground, it turned into a Gosling that I could no longer interact with.
It was similar to tripping on mushrooms, only without the mushrooms.
Just a heads up, I think the further the lowpop servers get from the latest update, the weirder, and sometimes more hilarious they become.
Hi, thank your for joining me today as I tell you of the tyrant who should be wiped from the history books but must be known for their crimes against children. I was born a girl who my mother named Bob Real. I was by the fire when a girl in a black hat picked me up. She asked why I had the name Bob when I was a girl. I told her in bb speak my ma was mean. She said for me not to worry an that she would raise me as her bb from then on an I could help her build the wall outside of town.
She took me outside an along the way I saw the grave of my big sister who had been murdered her name was Gordy Real. She was three when she was stabbed. I kept quiet I knew I had a bag with a tomato in it and I knew just one more minute till I was three. I knew I was in danger as she took me further out past a bow I know she used to shoot my sis as her grave had a arrow in it. She put me down an went to eat a pie she said her black hat ment she was the Mason Killer, I turned three an RAN!!!
She chased me with a knife. She had a bb girl an it distracted her! She hesitated momentarily deciding whether or not to stab her bb or continue for me. So I changed directions while she wasnt looking. Assuming I would make the same mistake as my sister and head straight back to town, she lost me. I doubled back and found her bb an fed her bananas as we hid in the jungle from the killer.After a minute I filled my bag with all the bananas I could fit an we made a break for town running as fast as our lil legs could carry us!! As soon as we were inside our gates I screamed for help! I told them of Rihanna trying to kill us. The bb was named by her uncle. He named her Rachel. No one believed the trauma me and Rachel had survived. I warned the other moms to watch their bbs and be wary of Rihanna. A few said thx but none took action.
Finally when I was twenty after I had raised a few kids an told them my tale. I approached my mother again and asked her why she didn't believe me. Rachel came to my side and vouched for me staring her evil mother down as she called us evil griefers just trying to make her look bad. My mother seeing no reason to disbelieve me asked me to follow. She gave me her knife and said it was up to me. I went around town telling them I was going to kill the bb killer.
I struck, she was healed, she stabbed me, I was healed, it went on like this for awhile until I was finally able to convince her granddaughter that was healing her of her crimes. She took matters into her own hands as I held the pads hostage to end the evil witch once and for all. Now that she was dead our village had peace and kids stopped disappearing. Her crimes went down in the family tree for all to see. I only wish I could have gotten someone to believe me sooner. A few lives would have been spared.
RIP We remember the fallen:
http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5265080
http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5265039
http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=5265057
Yeah I think I've ran into that person a few times. A curse on their family
Got another horse and cart at my pen. The one for you has hitching post kit and shovel in cart. All you need is round stone and stakes, and you can make the hitching post in your town. Take it next time you pass through.
Yes, it might be interesting to add hungry work to other jobs, not to prevent griefing, but for thematic texture and to enhance the importance of a varied diet. For example, splitting big rocks, stacking blocks, building walls, etc.
Pine trees are the only non-hungry trees because they are softwood. This is not inconsistent, if you've ever chopped wood. Willow and cypress are not softwood. It's not about whether the trees are "useless" or not. It's about how hard they are to chop (cypress is technically softwood, as a conifer, but the wood is actually hard). Juniper is also a "hard" softwood.
The idea here is that for bulk lumber, you will seek out pine (which is what people do in real life for lumber). You will also, perhaps, farm pine for this purpose.
The only inconsistency is that you will mostly burn pine, which is NOT what people do in real life, due to its fast-burning nature, low energy content, and high soot level.
The realism seems arbitrary at times though. Maybe you're working on these things, I admit I have no idea.
Cows have been a source of meat and leather since prehistory. Not having those, or at least meat is odd. Storing 3 berries in basket, 6 berries in bowl, and then 3 bowls in basket is odd. Not being able to carry a baby in slings is odd.
I dont think the server resets, I think my town was gone because of the decay of if no one sees it, it slowly disappears. I'm just assuming this because there were a few piles of logs left around my old town and it has been around a week since I was born in the rift. I think the animals are in the wrong bioms because things didnt reset when jason revamped the bioms. So now the only way you would lose a town is if you ran into the not being born inside the rift for a week thing like I had going on. Still wish I knew why it happened and why all at once now I'm born in it again. Also the above is all just guesses so rebuild at your own risk I think I'm gonna give it a shot, lol
OK. Yeah I just played again and found my town. It was in good shape. So I think you're right. As long as you don't spawn outside rift for a bit, you should be good continuing working on a settlement. I hope lol. Maybe I'll run into you again sometime.
That was me that you were born to
It was like that last time with alot of animals in the wrong bioms. I went looking for my old town but everything was gone except some piles of logs. I started to rebuild a bit but didn't get far.
I had found two towns close to each other yesterday, one in mountain biome north, and one in green biome south. They were both messy, so I transferred a lot of stuff to south town and built a wooden post sheep pen, got a mouflon, cleaned up and organized, got another horse, built up stocks of different items that aren't supposed to decay, and was planning on making it as good as it was before I ended up in rift. I thought the low pop servers didn't reset, but it looks like they do, and it looks like there may be some coding issues with spawning.
I noticed the animals yesterday as well now that I think about it, just didn't really register I guess.
Welp, the low pop servers were fun for a bit, but looks like the parameters changed. I was really hoping to see how advanced a town I could create by myself or maybe one or two other people, but if it resets with bigserver2 everyday and has coding issues, I don't think itll be possible. I may try to see if I can find my town a few more times tonight, so may see you again possibly if you're playing. You were a good mom BTW, most people on those servers ignore you. Thanks for not doing that. I really appreciated it.
I doubt I've been cursed, I really haven't been playing much for months now. I logged into a low pop server and was actually some what enjoying my time there for the first time in for ever. Right after an update (the one that had the dug cactus bug) I was born outside the rift every time. Before I was born inside the rift in this server and able to return to my base and keep building it up. The reason I keep pressing the issue is because with out being born inside the rift there is not much point in me playing because I cant find my camp back. I was hoping Jason would reply with what changed or what is wrong and fix it but have had no luck.
I think I was just born to you in server 7. Another thing I just noticed is the fauna is all in the wrong areas. I walked south to verify rift after you dropped me off in that settlement, found it, walked back and made a BP and some clothes with stuff lying around then went to look for the town I built up, and ran into mosquitoes in prairie biome and died. I'm seeing wolves amd snakes in green biomes, mouflon in jungles, mosquitoes everywhere. All in wrong areas. It's weird, amd makes it dangerous lol.
If you can find my body quite a ways north of the settlement you dropped me in, I had a full set of clothes and BP when I died lol
I doubt I've been cursed, I really haven't been playing much for months now. I logged into a low pop server and was actually some what enjoying my time there for the first time in for ever. Right after an update (the one that had the dug cactus bug) I was born outside the rift every time. Before I was born inside the rift in this server and able to return to my base and keep building it up. The reason I keep pressing the issue is because with out being born inside the rift there is not much point in me playing because I cant find my camp back. I was hoping Jason would reply with what changed or what is wrong and fix it but have had no luck.
I played on server 7 for several consecutive lives recently and built a nice town. Had a horse, travelled very far, never encountered a rift. Last life there I accidentally starved at 58. Next time I logged in and each time since, I have been born inside the rift. Couldn't find the created town anywhere, and spent 4 lives covering the whole rift. So I guess I was having the same issue.
I wonder if the tech tree would have gotten updates over the past month if Jason didn't have to spend time figuring out ways to nerf griefing techniques?
DiscardedSlinky wrote:That's where our playstyles differ. I play the game to help my family and see them do well. I like solving problems. I'm just kind of tired of it ALWAYS being engines and oil. Everyone will learn everything else but refuse to learn engines and oil.
This is so true. Most of the villages I ever get spawned into are in need of either oil or diesel. If they have one of them it's usually an engine. There's not a lot who likes doing the oil grind. It's got so samey for me having to do that basically every time, that I sometimes can't be bothered and I just make new wells with roads instead.
What's difficult is finding someone who can continue your work on oil after your death if it's left incomplete. I find very few willing or able to, even when I ask the young people in the town center.
It's usually beneficial to set up a kiln and well as close to the spot as available before starting to drill so that you aren't walking half your life to get water and charcoal, because that gets old quick. Are water buckets containable in carts yet? Because that would help quite a bit. If not, maybe bucket lids would be a good addition lol
That's where our playstyles differ. I play the game to help my family and see them do well. I like solving problems. I'm just kind of tired of it ALWAYS being engines and oil. Everyone will learn everything else but refuse to learn engines and oil.
I think it's more about being intimidated by it maybe? You build it once or twice, and it isn't that difficult. But it is somewhat easy to make a mistake and piss someone off.
I had studied the guide on it enough that I felt comfortable enough to try the first time. I got a good ways into it, made one mistake, and got stabbed by someone who said I was griefing iron. Maybe I have some bad luck with lives in this game, or maybe I'm just really bad at it, but I seem to run into quite a lot of players with very little patience for mistakes. They happen. Hell I've watched a lot of Twisteds vids and I see him make mistakes all the time, but rarely see him get messed with for it. Needless to say, I didn't mess with it again for some time.
The hardest part concerning oil, at least to me, is finding it and then making enough pipe to hit without making someone mad that your using all that iron.
Also, when someone is building an engine, there is another person making stew, or pies, or hunting rabbits, tending sheep/cows, or mining ore so the person making the engine doesn't have to worry too much about the supplies needed, or starving, etc. (Still gotta worry about getting randomly shanked of course)
I definitely feel it would be less irritating if there was a constantly growing tech tree for sure, and would probably make building the engine, or getting oil, as well as other tedious, time-consuming jobs much less irritating as it would be a step in getting higher on the tree, instead of just making things a bit easier.