a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Cogito wrote:It is interesting to consider how the in-game characters view their relative intelligence, even more so knowing that none of them have figured out how to use both their hands at the same time.
If you think supremacy has anything to do with actual ability you've already bought into the lie.
It's more that I imagine these characters are barely even aware of each other, let alone aare of each other's relative intelligence. They haven't even realised they can use both hands at once.
I'm not going to repsond to every point you're making, because I find these discussion drift far too quickly to trying to explain why your nitpicking is misdirected at best. I disagree with every point you made, as they all continue to argue from a position where the character is somehow meant to be important.
I'll address one of them, just to give a flavour for why I disagree with these points you're making, but then I'll move on to your last paragraph because I think you are maybe getting close to a cogent argument, even though I don't think it's valid in any way.
Cogito wrote:You are describing characteristics of *players* not characters.
I talked about pip drain rate. And number of pips gained from foods. And number of pips in old age. All of those apply to the character. They don't apply to the player who doesn't have pips in real life. Also, you should know that if one leaves their computer screen before their character is dead, the character can live to 60 if others feed it (and don't kill it/subject it to a wild animal attack). Why? Because pips apply to the character, not the player who left. So, I was describing characteristics of characters.
I had originally quoted what you talked about, but to avoid confusion I'll go through them one by one to show that they are characteristics of the player not the character (where here the character is the crying baby born naked into the world).
Spoonwood: "Also, all foods for all generations where 1 pip during one day this winter as I understand it."
This one is related to neither the player nor the character. First of all anything that is a oneoff is irrelevant, but even if it was it applies to all characters and all players equally, so has nothing to do with the *relative* chance of a character overcoming an obstacle. Nothing about your character makes you more or less likely to overcome the challenge of surviving.
Spoonwood: "The pip drain rate has changed, and is different for new accounts than older accounts."
This is a characteristic of the player, not the character. That is, new *players* have this feature; it is nothing to do with the character.
Spoonwood: "Furthermore, genetic score changes the maximum amount of pips one can have at the end of a life."
Gene score is a characteristic of the player, not the character.
You go on in this post to say the character can live to 60 "If others feed it" ie if you are playing with other players who kepp you alive! You are making my argument for me!! It is the players who keep the character alive, and always has been. A simple experiment proves the point: get born into the world and do nothing - the character will die, unless some other player stops them from dying.
Sidenote, but can you please stop taking common phrases so literally as to render them absurd, it makes communicating really hard. Everyone knows that every character dies in this game, so everyone knows that when someone says "survive" or "isn't killed" or "doesn't die" they mean "dies of old age". You do it for a few things ("families cannot survive because they eventually die when the server resets!", "an ad once said you can have babies but if you're born a boy you can't!", "it's called one *hour* one life, not 57 minutes one life") and it never improves communication, nor makes things clearer, nor makes your argument better.
Cogito wrote:These points don't relate to your thesis at all
The concept of "Nintendo Hard" is inappropriate for this game. "Nintendo Hard" is inconsistent with one hour one life (Jason saying otherwise shows that he is not consistent). No exceptions to that. The game should be one hour one life for the average new player who tries to have such and doesn't get impeded by other players. The game is NOT 30 minutes one life. The game is NOT 20 minutes one life. The game should not be some Nintendo Hard "5 minutes one life" game, as it isn't advertised that way, and "Nintendo Hard" games have multiple lives anyways. They also are the exact same replicas of themselves over and over again, and this game has more varying conditions. The game shouldn't be 57 minutes one life. The game should be one hour one life.
This isn't a game where every life lasts for an hour. It just isn't, and no word posturing on your behalf will change that.
Your argument here seems to be:
1. This is a game where every life should be 1 hour long.
2. If the Eve portions of the game are Nintendo Hard, some lifes will necessarily be shorter than 1 hour.
3. Therefore the Eve portions of the game should not be Nintendo Hard.
The problem with this argument is that no one (barely anyone?) agrees that every life should be 1 hour long.
The problem with this discussion (this whole thread) is that you are trying to use the above argument to convince people that every life should be 1 hour long. This is failing because you already assume that every life should be 1 hour long in the argument; you are begging the question. Oh and no one agrees that every life should be 1 hour long.
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I would actually enjoy a 'creative mode' that is roughly identical to the current game but without death. It would be a different game, and I don't know which of these two games I would prefer. In any case, the *name of the game* is irrelevant when talking about mechanics like this, as they are completely up to the game creator and they have not formed a contract with anyone on the basis of the title of the game, that would be absurd.
Jason, please add stapler to the game so we can staple bread to the trees.
Cogito wrote:One of what games?
It accurately gets classified as one of the games which are role-playing games.
Cogito wrote:You didn't engage with what I wrote at all.
I would think that making clothing is like 'purchasing gear' in other role-playing games, since money in games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior can get obtained by killing enemies, and often such is or can be larger a matter of time played and knowledge of game mechanics.
Cogtio wrote:I said "RPGs in general", as a clarification of the typical types of games where "a character has skills".
You said "or where you can purchase better gear, things like that". I view making clothing for oneself in OHOL as similar.
Cogito wrote:Games where the character is long lived, and their chance of beating any given challenge is highly dependent on their skills, not just the player's ability to complete the challenge.
I would argue that there exist role playing games that don't take much skill. The original Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. EarthBound (which is a brilliant game).
I don't get why you keep engaging with the wrong minutiae in every post, but once again you are not engaging with what I wrote.
When I mentioned RPG it was ONLY as an example of the kinds of games where your character gains skills. I do not care if you or anyone else classifies OHOL as an RPG, with respect to this discussion, because the important characteristic is: "A game where the player character gains skills over time, and those skills change what the character is able to accomplish". OHOL is NOT one of those kinds of games.
My guess, reading from another thread, is that you take implications of the form "A implies B" to be equivalent to "B implies A", which doesn't hold in general and makes it hard to have a discussion with you. For example in this discussion I used RGPs as an example category of games where the characters tend to 'gain skills' and level up. In response to this you have argued that OHOL is an RPG, but you have not argued that characters in OHOL gain skills and level up. The two ideas are not equivalent, so proving one does not prove the other.
I then go on to further clarify the types of games I am talking about, and you counter with RPGs that are different to that kind of game. Who cares if there are RPGs that don't require skill? We are discussing OHOL and it clearly does require skill.
Cogito wrote:In OHOL you don't level up your character, and you can't buy items for your character.
But you can change your character's temperature which changed the pip drain rate which makes starvation less likely.
Yes. This is a skill that a player can learn that helps them keep their character alive. It has nothing to do with the character.
Cogito wrote:OHOL is a game where the player's skill, the skill (and temperament) of the player's around them, and the actions of the players who lived before them, are solely responsible for the character not dying.
So there has existed spawning from a single spot. I watched on Twitch the day in 2019 when everyone spawned as an Eve around a single spot. I don't think what you've claimed here holds true for that day.
Even if that were true, who cares? What happened one day in 2019 has no bearing on how the game is today, nor does it have any relation whatsover to this conversation.
Just to refute your point anyway, that is the exact kind of situation where experienced, skilled, and co-operative players would be capable of surviving and those who are not would die.
Also, all foods for all generations where 1 pip during one day this winter as I understand it. The pip drain rate has changed, and is different for new accounts than older accounts. Furthermore, genetic score changes the maximum amount of pips one can have at the end of a life. So, I don't think what you've claimed there accurate.
You are describing characteristics of *players* not characters.
I am more than happy to expand my list to be "the age of the player's account, the player's skill, the skill (and temperament) of the player's around them, and the actions of the players who lived before them" - it still has nothing to do with the character.
By the way, this nitpicking only weakens your position. These points don't relate to your thesis at all, in fact I don't even know what your thesis is. Case in point:
Cogito wrote:All of this to say, what on earth does the lived experience of our one-handed characters have to do with Ninendo Hard?
OHOL characters do have two hands, as can get seen when they walk sometimes, the back arm will swing out. Sometimes they use the left hand, and sometimes they use the right hand. They just can't use two hands simultaneously.
The experience of OHOL characters, having one hour one life experiences, is not compatible with "Nintnedo Hard". If one has a "one hour one life" experience, then that life wasn't "Nintendo Hard", or at least no one that I know of beats any "Nintendo Hard" game after one hour of gameplay. If one has a "Nintendo Hard" experience, then they didn't have a one hour one life experience, they died earlier, and didn't survive one hour of gameplay, meaning that they didn't have gameplay for one hour and one life.
You are saying that the one hour life of a character has nothing to do with Nintendo Hard. I agree. Nintendo Hard is only even about the players and their skills.
Given that it is about players and their skills this whole discussion is ridiculous. Players play multiple lives, for more than an hour, and while you might not like the concept of Nintendo Hard this fixation on the characters and their one hour lives has nothing to do with it.
Cogito wrote:The specific character you play is important in games where the character has skills (RPGs in general), or where you can purchase better gear, things like that. OHOL is not one of those games.
Clothing is gear in OHOL and what clothing gets handed down to you from your mother or caretaker can sometimes get improved on. Specifically, clothing can get improved upon with respect to how many items you can carry (apron is better than sealskin in this respect), or how much insulation clothing provides (sealskin is better than an apron in this respect). Also, if you go on Twitch, OHOL gets explicitly classified as an RPG... see here: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/On … One%20Life I agree with that. Players play *the role* of parents or family members. Players change their behavior to fulfill a social role. For example, consider a woman who was farming, and then stops or doesn't farm more or as much, because of her baby. That player is role-playing.
Also, there's people playing the leader and follower roles.
So, I simply disagree. OHOL is one of those games.
One of what games?
You didn't engage with what I wrote at all.
I said "RPGs in general", as a clarification of the typical types of games where "a character has skills". You can 'role-play' in a trucking simulator, but that has nothing to do with what I am talking about. In case you need it clarified further, I was referencing games in the tradition of Dungeons and Dragons, such as the Boulder's Gate series. Games where the character is long lived, and their chance of beating any given challenge is highly dependent on their skills, not just the player's ability to complete the challenge.
In OHOL you don't level up your character, and you can't buy items for your character. You are born naked and crying with the exacty same skills every single time. I pointed out the things that can set you up better to "beat the challenge" (in this case "don't die"): who you are playing with and what already exists where you are born. That is what I meant by your birthright -
In OHOL the 'birthright' of a character is also important, but that is a function of the players you are playing with, or that built the town you are living in, not a function of the characters around you.
Your character is irrelevant to those things. If you have a good mother, ancestors, strangers, your character is less likely to die. If a player made clothes that your character now wears, your character is less likely to die. If you make clothes for your character, that is you the player helping your character to not die.
OHOL is a game where the player's skill, the skill (and temperament) of the player's around them, and the actions of the players who lived before them, are solely responsible for the character not dying. Throw in a little luck and RNG for good measure.
All of this to say, what on earth does the lived experience of our one-handed characters have to do with Ninendo Hard?
An observation, Spoonwood, after reading a few of your recent threads.
You seem intent on trying to view the game from the perspective of the characters we play.
In this thread you talk about how an individual character has no progression, because they die and you can't progress past death.
While that is an interesting thing to think about, particularly in a game so focused around the complete life of each character (One Hour One Life after all), it doesn't make any sense when talking about Nintendo Hard.
Nintendo Hard is all about the players.
There may be a way for you to bridge the argument, but I don't think there is. In OHOL, like all games, the player isn't the character; they control the character. Nintendo Hard is all about the player learning how to control the character well enough to beat the challenges the character faces in the game, and specifically when those challenges are purposefully made hard for experienced players to beat.
The way you know that the two concept are not linked (the experience of the character vs the experience of the player) is that the specific character being played is not relevant to how likely they are to beat the challenge. Of course, the type of character being played changes strategies required, and some types of character may be harder to play then others. In OHOL the 'birthright' of a character is also important, but that is a function of the players you are playing with, or that built the town you are living in, not a function of the characters around you.
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The specific character you play is important in games where the character has skills (RPGs in general), or where you can purchase better gear, things like that. OHOL is not one of those games.
It is interesting to consider how the in-game characters view their relative intelligence, even more so knowing that none of them have figured out how to use both their hands at the same time.
I'm going to try and avoid replying in-line, as the posts get hard to read, but will try and summarise the big points I think you are making and my thoughts on them. Quotes for context.
the idea of 'player progression' across multiple lives doesn't make sense for a one hour one life game. Why? Because it's a one life game. Specifically, it's a one life game in terms of survival.
You seem to be coming from the position that we should focus on the life of a single character. Why?
In many games it's common to die repeatedly, respawning into the world and continuing what you were doing (Team Fortress). In others you play in rounds, and if you die you are reborn next round (Counter Strike). This is why I said "People play this game, and people play more than one life." This is the argument for why I think your position is wrong - I'm focusing on the people playing, the character is merely an extension of them.
Even though it is possible for the character in OHOL to progress - growing up, gathering equipment, etc - it is a different kind of progress to what I have been talking about. Assuming we care about the people actually playing the game, we should focus on how they actually play the game - and for me that means talking about my experience playing and the experience I've seen of streamers.
If I die to an inattentive mother I click 'Get Reborn' and I am straight back into the game. My character is dead, but I the player continue.
If I cross paths with a wolf and bleed out I click 'Get Reborn' and I am straight back into the game. My character is dead, but I think to myself "be more careful in the future".
If I get born into an Eve town, running out of water and food, I run around like crazy trying to get water hauled in from the swamp while we upgrade the well. If I starve to death I click 'Get Reborn', cautiously optimistic that I left the town better able to survive then if I hadn't been there. My character is dead, but my impact in the town remains.
Sure, my character is dead and they are just a pile of bones, but so what? I play on, hopefully able to achieve something. Quite a few of your points hark back to this focus on a single life, but as players of the game we observe the characters and the world they live in. We tell the stories of lives lived, of memorable deaths, of families and towns spreading across the map. The game is far more than the life of a single character.
You correctly point out that Death is not the only motivator (you mention crafting in particular); I was being a little too dramatic when I said (paraphrasing) "[If it was easy to surive] there would be no need to play. There would be no achievement."
Death does not have to be the only motivator, but I think it is a good one.
You talk about how a survival game is not about dying, and you're right - it's about avoiding death. All survival games are about avoiding death, that's what surviving is. This one is unique in that no matter how good you are, you can only survive for one hour at a time, but it's still about avoiding death. Death is implicit the moment you talk about survival.
Now, I think you have good points about 'Nintendo Hard', and I think there are bad kinds of Death as well, that serve only to demotivate. As you say "the pressure of resources running out can and does *demotivate* crafting".
For Death to be a good motivator it needs to be clear what actions I (the player!) can take to avoid Death, in this and future lives. OHOL is sometimes good at this, but often not. The fix is to make it easier to know how to not die in the future, not to remove Death.
For example, if I step on a wolf it's pretty easy to learn "Don't step on wolves in the future". If I've watched some streams, or played a bit, I might even know that I can be healed if there are pads, needle, and thread around. The first is easy to learn the second less so, but it's not too obtuse. I'm presented a challenge and can learn how to overcome it.
New players starving to death while surrounded by food is not a good motivator, because it's really hard to learn what you can eat (at least historically, I think it's getting a bit better), and hard to learn how YUMing has a large impact on how sated you are.
Even worse is when unsuspecting players find themselves beset by bears. In that moment there is near no agency at all, and there is real frustration at dying 'for no reason'.
Slight tangent, but this is the same reason the destruction of engines in a box is so painful - it's easy for someone else to destroy it and hard for me to stop them. We've devised strategies to protect the engines, but the whole mechanic is frustrating because it leaves players powerless.
Back to 'Nintendo Hard'.
Eves are a fun part of the game, and I wish more people were able to experience it (though I also love big cities). Part of why they are so fun is precisely that it is so hard to survive - it is easy to die, or if not you for your family to die. It's a tough challenge, and beating it (you and your family surviving) is extremely rewarding. Making surviving easier necessarily reduces the accomplishment.
For new players in a 'Nintendo Hard' Eve spawn, death is not the end. Hopefully, for whatever brief period they were alive, they were able to learn something. Perhaps they managed to craft a sharp rock and find some food, dying just before they were able to get that wild carrot into their mouth. When they click 'Get Reborn' and fall crying onto the ground they are in a better position to survive then they were the previous life. As they keep learning survival skills, and start building persistent infrastructure (farms, kitchen, etc), their chances of survival will keep increasing.
One fateful day, many lives in the future, they will spawn as an Eve themselves. Surviving the hardest challenge the game has to throw at them they will revel in the birth and success of their family. I remember spending days looking back over my family tree after my first successful Eve. It was a sad day when the last of us died out, but it was vey satisfying to have lived as long as we did.
To summarise, Death is Good, keep the challenge but remove the frustration.
If the game was changed so that it was easy for a player just starting out to die from old age, it would be a worse game.
I'm going to go through your questions, which may have been rhetorical, and answer them one by one. I will however, change the question "being able to" to "being able to easily", as you will note that is what I put forth above.
So the average player being able to easily achieve a one hour one life the first time would be bad?
Yes.
Players being able to easily get things right the first time would be bad?
Yes.
When I was in high school some of my peers would say in a ridiculous voice "when are you going to do things right the first time?" But, it wasn't entirely a joke, because they also seemed to believe that ideally things would get done right the first time.
No, they were wondering why you weren't learning from your mistakes.
If you cut one piece of wood, and after cutting it realise you measured incorrectly and have to cut again, well you realised you made a mistake and cut it again.
If you cut 20 more pieces and every time have to recut them because you measure them incorrectly, you should be asking yourself "why can't I do this right the first time?"
Doing it wrong the first time is a learning oportunity; doing it wrong every time is being obtuse.
Why, oh why, oh why, should players do things wrong the first time and not live to 60?
Why would you play a survival game if there was no need to survive?
All I see in such a phrase is blind belief.
I'm not sure what belief is being believed, nor why it is blind.
Your intent here seems to be to remove any possibility of progression, on an individual basis, on a player community basis, and on town's basis.
What are you talking about progression for as if it's an applicable concept?
Well, what are you talking about? I can't believe that this (and other) conversations stem (purely) from some misplaced indignation that someone dared make a game with "One Hour" and "One Life" in the title where, lo and behold, every life doesn't always last for an hour.
I believe that you want the game to have a good vision (a good future to look forward to), and good gameplay, and I don't know why you are taking this position so strongly.
This is a survival game, and a crafting game, and a social game, and so much more. Each of these things are starkly marked by progression.
The pressures of survival are immense motivators in the game, and motivation is essential to meaningful gameplay.
If sitting naked in the grass eating berries all day was all that was required to survive there would be no need to discover new foods. There would be no need to craft clothes. There would be no need to build tools, buildings, farms, or roads. There would be no need for experimentation and theory crafting, trying to work out optimal play strategies.
There would be no need to play.
There would be no achievement.
I first learn how to survive, and in time learn how to easily survive. I learn how to help my children survive, and in time teach them how to easily survive. I learn how to help my town survive, and thrive, and enjoy the creativity that this game allows for when starvation has been cast aside.
To have progress, to have achievement, there needs to be something to overcome. In a survival game, that is death.
This game would be a worse game if death did not loom large for every player - though it would be a much better game if it were easier for players to learn how to not die so stupidly.
It's one life, not two lives or three lives, or four lives. The game has a death state. Players can "get reborn", but once they die, that character is dead. There isn't progression after death in the real world. One's character does not progress after death in OHOL, all that remains is a bunch of bones and historical information. So why are you talking about progression as if it's something that can exist?
This idea that characters die therefore there is no progress isn't a valid position to argue from.
This idea that there is only one life is not a valid position to argue from.
People play this game, and people play more than one life. People progress, learning new skills, refining existing skills, and developing new meta. The world progesses, resources are refined and infrastructure built. Progress of yourself, of the meta, and of the world make surviving easier, and this is a good thing.
I don't think I said anything about a town's basis. I think I was talking about individual players lives and that's it.
I think I've covered it above, but a town's technology level, and level of infrastructure, has a profound impact on how likely someone is to survive, and this is a good thing.
Again, one life. One hour. One hour. One life. Not progression over many lives. Not two hours three lives. Not two hours four lives. Not five hours six lives. Not 30 minutes 6 lives. One hour one life. 1 hour 1 life.
If you truly believe this, why do you keep playing?
Why do you agitate for change in this game if there is no possibility of change, of progress, of a new and better played life?
The title of the game is one that, after pondering it for a moment, perfectly communicates the central idea that make this particular survival game different from all the others. It doesn't need to be anything more.
Sounds really great, perhaps even with a sound effect.
Among friends and family (who I play OHOL with) whenever food is discussed you are sure to here 'yum yum yum' mentioned more than once.
"Ooooh mushroom risotto, yum yum yum!"
If the game was changed so that it was easy for a player just starting out to die from old age, it would be a worse game.
Life should get easier the more skills you have, the more accumulated knowledge civilisation has (the meta), and the more infrastructure civilisation has (the town).
Your intent here seems to be to remove any possibility of progression, on an individual basis, on a player community basis, and on town's basis.
The game's name is One Hour One Life.
Spoon, you seem to be reading some sort of contract into the title of the game. I don't know why. As you say, it's the name of the game.
Jason has repeatedly stated that he doesn't expect people to always live to 60, or even that it should be easy to live to 60.
The game has death (from sources other than old age) in it.
This means that it is one hour, or one death, whichever comes first.
This is obvious to anyone who has any concept of one 'one life' means, and is reasonable to everyone, you included!
This weird, (incorrectly) legalistic interpretation of the title does nothing to advance the game (assuming that is your intent here).
It's another to set up a system where new players can't have a one hour one life experience, because a game designer has or had NO VISION of his players satisfying such a fundamental concept, and a philosophy of "Evolve or Die" which contradicts one hour one life for new players, again showing that no one hour one life vision exists for new players.
New players can, and have, had a one hour one life experience, but even if they couldn't there is no reasonable expectation that they should!
Living to 60 is a massive milestone for new players. I remember the feeling extremely well, it was so satisfying. THIS is the vision for a one hour life - a player and a civilisation that are capable of dying from old age.
It would make the game worse if it was changed so that every life *has* to be capable of living to 60. A mother having to choose between babies to keep is a situation that is meaningful - it shouldn't happen, but it is good that it can.
There are bigger issues for new players than 'not living to 60', and indeed I think half the battle is getting new players to a point where they *want* to live to 60. I suspect many stop playing before that point, becuase of other reasons.
they got less of a means to get many ropes
What's your reasoning behind expecting ropes to be harder to build?
I thought the only biome change was which specialty biomes spawn - grasslands (where milkweed spawns) still occur the exact same amount everywhere.
Note that the recent change that makes fences last for 2 hours (up from 1 hour) may impact this.
I think the answer to your question is that it hasn't become meta, and there are a few reasons it has not become meta.
Like almost all meta changes, there is inertia that makes it so existing strategies persist. Case in point: fields and fields of 3x3 of berry bushes. Even if a patch makes fencing the town an obviously optimal strategy, it will take time for it to become common.
Fences require maintenance. With the change to 2 hours decay from 1 hour this is less of an issue, but town encircling fences are big so maintaining them becomes difficult.
There is no well-established pattern for how large the fence should be, and where it should be placed. This means that placing the fence in the first place requires significant planning and understanding, so people won't even bother. For example, should iron mines be included? What if there are multiple iron mines very far out? Should I leave enough room for the smithy to expand? Where will future buildings be built?
Small property fences achieve a lot of the goals a large fence would achieve and are easier to plan, build and maintain; for example, securing valuable resources, and providing a safe place during a bear attack.
Fences introduce friction (even if has been improved) that make it less likely for your family to survive - as wandering members of other families are less able to help your town, and you are less able to visit another family who have a fenced town to gather required supplies.
My goal was to do a single playthrough of the game and mostly focus on crafting things I haven't a lot of practice with to the point where I can craft them extremely easily and habitually from memory off the top of my head.
This is quite achievable on the public low-pop servers, for what it is worth.
In any case it's a valid way to play; I enjoy the unique crafting mechanics of this game and it's ok to practice them or even play them simply because you enjoy it.
Practicing being more efficient at smelting (for example) is both useful for when/if you play on bs2, and enjoyable as a 'speedrunning' style game on its own.
So no idea if this would help anyone, but I fixed this problem for a girl a few months back. Maybe it will help some of you guys too
Thanks, I saw that when you posted it.
There have been times when my dedicated GPU was not being used, but that just makes the game unplayable, rather than laggy.
It's playable with GPU in use, but the lagginess is super frustrating.
I like your analyses, and they are similar to work I've done before (posted in discord from memory), but I'd caution about the conclusions you draw.
Any comparison of strategies needs a basis on which to compare them; in OHOL strategies are typically compared based on how much water they use, for the same outcome. Kerosene cost can be used the same way, as can iron cost.
I think this is generally a good way to compare strategies, but it breaks down in a few ways that are important.
The key factor to a family's survival is a stable supply of all key resources: babies, food, water, and iron. If any of these four resources runs out the family is either dead or about to die unless drastic action is taken.
A food source that uses less water is good, but is useless if it can't feed the entire family. It is also useless if it exhausts the family's entire supply of iron.
The amount of the key resources available to a family fluctuates naturally over time, due to players online, exhaustion of wells and mines, and creation of technology that unlocks more resources like kerosene.
The value of investing in infrastructure is that it allows the family to weather (or avoid completely) shortages of resources.
If I have a modest sprinkler system set up, say 9 sprinklers, I only need 1 bowl of water, 2/24 kerosene, and some seeds to produce a huge amount of food - and I can do it all by myself in a matter of minutes.
This is the value of the sprinkler system.
If we are low on water, I can produce a lot of food until we manage to secure more water. If we are low on players, I can single-handedly produce a lot of food to get us through till more people are online. If we are low on iron, I can avoid using tools to grow food.
The investment cost is high, but the marginal cost to run the infrastructure is low - and this is extremely valuable.
It's hard to compare strategies directly on these factors, but I think as a start it is uesful to call-out the marginal costs vs the initial fixed costs, and to consider how the strategy responds if any key resource is restricted. Different strategies will be optimal in different situations.
I'd also like to point out that the diesel engines are not consumed, so it's even harder to account for their cost. Once you've used the sprinkler 24 times it becomes a normal diesel engine again. You still would rather have three engines available (one general purpose, one plough, one sprinkler) but if you didn't you can get the engine back if needed.
I still struggle with this, even after trying a lot of different options.
Unfortunately, there is not one clear and obvious idea to investigate - as Jason says there shouldn't be any problem running on a good graphics card!
I have a Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, which should be powerful enough (ha!) but it is running in an external GPU enclosure over thunderbolt 3, so perhaps that causes issues?
I have an i7-8550U processor with 16GB of ram, which again should be enough, but I have a filesystem monitoring job that I can't stop that spikes the CPU usage every half an hour or so, so perhaps that causes issues?
My suspicion is that the sprite drawing is hitting some edge case that makes the pixel copying slow for some reason, and that becomes extremely laggy when there are a lot of sprites to be drawn (in a town, or zoomed out).
Spoonwood wrote:NoTruePunk wrote:The "hot" processes are the piston blanks and rods which require hot steel. These don't stack and are trickier to handle than "cold" processes that just take normal steel.
I think piston blanks and steel rods stack these days, and that's what I recall seeing after some of the stacking updates. They didn't use to though. It's getting harder and harder to find a veteran I think who hasn't made this sort of mistake at one point in time I think. For example, Tarr recently said on the discord that sandals didn't decay. Though, they had gotten changed to decaying, if I recall correctly, this past April.
I might be wrong on the above easily, or misunderstood your intended meaning, of course.
The blanks and rods do stack, but not while they're hot. That's what's hard about it, the newcomen process is time sensitive and you've got to have the forge running too. When I prep for this I usually clear out as many empty tiles around the forge that I think I'll need, then fire the forge right before the newcomen, since the newcomen has a shorter run time.
You should test that, because I think they stack hot if they stack cold (can't recall off the top of my head about these).
Cogito wrote:Spoonwood wrote:Estimated bucket loss is 123 buckets of water if installing the engine after the deep well phase, when the family would have run a charcoal pump. 156 buckets of water if managing to install the engine after a shallow well dries up.
Doing something like changing to a diesel water pump and leaving kerosene as quickly as possible, is extremely far away from players having the ability to rebuild "civilization" from scratch in a multiplayer context, if you ask me.
Out of interest, what resources are *saved* by skipping those phases?
I assume it's a decent amount of charcoal and rubber?
41 estimated uses of a charcoal pump. https://onetech.info/2220-Dry-Newcomen-Pump Each use of a charcoal pump requires a single rubber tire and basket of charcoal (and a bucket of water, but you make more water, so this detail loses relevance here). So, 41 rubber tires and charcoal estimated. 41 hatchet or axe uses, possibly a little more if a rubber oven is used to cook some rubber (a specialty rubber oven is much better for organizational purposes in my experience... if you played in Cooler family, there was a second oven by the nearby desert where I had left buckets of latex at for cooking rubber). 4 rubber tires from a bucket, so that's 11 buckets of latex, 11 bowls of palm oil, and 11 bowls of sulfur no longer needed, in addition to 11 bowls of water no longer needed to cook the rubber... I should have subtracted 1.1 buckets of water from the numbers above. Also, there's the potential time savings for obtaining those resources, and fewer buckets tied up by latex I guess.
For a family that is post-kerosene, the time savings from *not* using charcoal and rubber is significant.
If we have a reliable source of kerosene, a diesel well is both faster and more secure than using rubber and charcoal, and it frees any rubber and charcoal we have for vehicles and steel production.
In general play, I would only expect this situation to come up when a family emigrates, or inherits a lot of supplies from a dead family. Personally, if I have the engine and the kerosene (and am likely to get more), I think I would go for the diesel well simply because it simplifies the process so much, and the chance of the family dying out is lower.
Estimated bucket loss is 123 buckets of water if installing the engine after the deep well phase, when the family would have run a charcoal pump. 156 buckets of water if managing to install the engine after a shallow well dries up.
Doing something like changing to a diesel water pump and leaving kerosene as quickly as possible, is extremely far away from players having the ability to rebuild "civilization" from scratch in a multiplayer context, if you ask me.
Out of interest, what resources are *saved* by skipping those phases?
I assume it's a decent amount of charcoal and rubber?
If you have access to abundant kerosene it may make sense to 'lose' that 123-156 buckets of water in order to avoid the extra work required to get it, or to remove reliance on other families for rubber (for example).
Spent some dozen or so minutes collecting a ton of kindling for the ovens and smithy, only to come back from a trip to see the piles I had made were spread out and on fire. Watch out for that one
There is a small chance they were making a lot of soup or stew, but I haven't seen fields of stew in-game since the yum updates.
I mostly just enjoy getting stuff done, but there is room for silliness and ritual and drama in all things.
My favourite thing to do, if tending sheep for some reason, is to take a rope and lead a sheep to one of the kitchen, the nursery, or (most often) the well.
I then do a speech about how we are offering this sheep so that we may never go hungry/we have lots of babies/the well never goes dry. It's fun, if a bit melodramatic.
Oh, and then I kill it.
Language learning stops at age six.
Ah, I thought it was much older for some reason.
Seems like the travelling tutor is the way to go, but it is only valuable if the two families live long enough to make learning the language worth the time taken.
Cogito wrote:Spoonwood wrote:What are you talking about? Browns can't learn to speak the black language and the ginger language so far I know.
You can still learn other languages, it's just harder because people don't tend to be around other languages long enough, and then pass their learned language down to their kids.
I think, homelands keep that from happening, don't they?
That's right - a girl has to travel to another town and experience the language, then head home to have babies, who also need to do this pilgrimage. Do this for a few generations and you can learn the language.
Alternatively, it may be possible for a traveller to go and speak in another town, so that *that* family picks up the language of the traveller, but not sure if that works.