A18.1 (b6) Changes: Mining iron ore yields iron?!?

[PPanda0421]

Hate to tell you it does, as the raw iron takes 5s to smelt, and iron is 1s per piece. 5 iron is 5 seconds same as the raw iron that gives 5 in the forge. Its simple math people come on, it takes the same time to smelt 1200 raw iron as it does 6000 scrap iron. 1200x5=6000, 6000x1=6000. Raw iron also stacks to 1200, which when smelted is 6000 iron, which if you notice the iron stacks to 6000 too! so its the same. So there is no loss of mining yeild or time or iron in forge.

 

Even though the numbers are the same it just doesn't feel right. Perhaps raw iron from iron ore blocks is too engrained in our minds (since it's been that way for a very long time) that this change will take time to get used to for long time players. As a builder/miner I can get a sense of satisfaction of getting raw iron. Can't explain it. Getting iron from furniture, cars, metal fences, etc doesn't seem to excite me for some reason.

 

They probably made this change for performance reasons and won't admit it. Perhaps the way they implemented certain things is not highly optimized and it is too late to undo all those changes. I mean why change now all of a sudden? They should have made this change at the initial release of A18 since we know it is a completely new beast altogether. Timing is everything.

 

A reasonable explanation would have been good as well instead of referring to previous implementations as 'legacy nonsense.'

 

Looks like this 'feature' is here to stay so just have to live with it I guess.

[tricorius]

The problem for 'us' - since I am the miner for 9 of us is this... "Everyone" in our group wants iron or steel... With the 5 iron in forge for 1 red iron ore dug up ratio, before it was fine; at times everyone would have to wait their turn... Now, if I smelt this 'new iron' I see the forge ticking the iron down 1 at a time for a 1:1 ratio of "Iron in the forge..." That means I'll have to dump more time into mining for the group... How much more time?!? 4 times as much time since 'we're' not getting that old 5:1 ratio... <- Time! If that ratio is still was still in place then its not a problem but it isn't; its ticking down at a 1:1 ratio for every second. Just as the old 'black iron' used to.

 

I’m pretty sure raw iron ore used to take 5 seconds to make that 5 ore (5:1 ratio) so it was still 1 iron per second. So it should mathematically be the same.

 

Regardless, the great news is that everyone can contribute iron now.

 

My response would be...”you all want guns and ammo, I expect more iron in the crate next to the forge than I alone am mining up.”

[PPanda0421]

Wrong, Raw iron stacks are 1200, which is 6000 iron. Iron stacks are 6000. its the same, they also kept the ratio the same, motherload 5 gives 42 raw iron which is 210 iron smelted. in a18.1 b6 motherload 5 gives 210 iron, so there is 0 actual iron loss, just a removal of a near pointless extra step. Which brings it in line either every other mineable material.

 

If by extra step you're talking about melting the raw iron in the forge then consider melting iron in the forge an extra step as well. You need the forge to make anything useful like iron/steel arrowheads, iron/steel ingots, rebar frames, etc. So placing raw iron in the forge is no different than placing iron in the forge. If you need iron immediately you can always scrap the raw iron (I guess this is the extra step?)

 

Sure there quite a few recipes that use iron but when you progress in the game you'll be using more of its processed version (ingots) than iron itself (except for possibly junk turret ammo if you go that route).

 

So the removal of this 'pointless extra step' is not noticeable.

[Scyris]

Even though the numbers are the same it just doesn't feel right. Perhaps raw iron from iron ore blocks is too engrained in our minds (since it's been that way for a very long time) that this change will take time to get used to for long time players. As a builder/miner I can get a sense of satisfaction of getting raw iron. Can't explain it. Getting iron from furniture, cars, metal fences, etc doesn't seem to excite me for some reason.

 

They probably made this change for performance reasons and won't admit it. Perhaps the way they implemented certain things is not highly optimized and it is too late to undo all those changes. I mean why change now all of a sudden? They should have made this change at the initial release of A18 since we know it is a completely new beast altogether. Timing is everything.

 

A reasonable explanation would have been good as well instead of referring to previous implementations as 'legacy nonsense.'

 

Looks like this 'feature' is here to stay so just have to live with it I guess.

 

I have 3286 hours in 7dtd been around since a9-10. Took me all of 30 seconds to get used to it. Then I relized how much more streamlined and better it was. I've been around a while, I actually felt it odd that raw iron stuck around for so long after how the rest of the ore's were. I guess its more a mental thing than anything else and I am just more adaptable and open to changes.

[Scyris]

If by extra step you're talking about melting the raw iron in the forge then consider melting iron in the forge an extra step as well. You need the forge to make anything useful like iron/steel arrowheads, iron/steel ingots, rebar frames, etc. So placing raw iron in the forge is no different than placing iron in the forge. If you need iron immediately you can always scrap the raw iron (I guess this is the extra step?)

 

Sure there quite a few recipes that use iron but when you progress in the game you'll be using more of its processed version (ingots) than iron itself (except for possibly junk turret ammo if you go that route).

 

So the removal of this 'pointless extra step' is not noticeable.

 

Say you wanna upgrade your base, it takes iron to do so, you have raw iron, you can scrap it taking a bunch of time and losing 25% of the value of it, or put it in the forge spending a ton of time to melt it down then have the forge spit it back out which takes even more time. Or you can have it how a18.1 b6 is, and just get the base iron from iron ore nodes which you can then use right away to upgrade the base or to melt down. Thats the pointless extra step I was talking about. The time wasted to scrap or smelt and have the forge puke the iron back out so you don't take a loss. Sure you could do it in a workbench the scrapping thing, but its still going to waste time you could be using to upgrade it and doing other things.

[Hectorb911]

legacy means something from the past.

[PPanda0421]

I have 3286 hours in 7dtd been around since a9-10. Took me all of 30 seconds to get used to it. Then I relized how much more streamlined and better it was. I've been around a while, I actually felt it odd that raw iron stuck around for so long after how the rest of the ore's were. I guess its more a mental thing than anything else and I am just more adaptable and open to changes.

 

I have been around since A10 and have over 2500 hours myself. Haha more adaptable and open to changes? I doubt it. Everyone has their own preferences and I'm sure that in some of your over 2.2K posts you've complained about certain features...

[Scyris]

I have been around since A10 and have over 2500 hours myself. Haha more adaptable and open to changes? I doubt it. Everyone has their own preferences and I'm sure that in some of your over 2.2K posts you've complained about certain features...

 

Oh I have believe me, there is some stuff in this game I just find overly stupid, but I eventually shut up about it and learn to live with it when its not being changed. That said the new microsplat map in a18 needs to be optimzed, as it causes every one of my fps issues, when I use a patch to shut that microsplat map off, my fps is a solid 60 everywhere, so its for sure the culprit here. I also feel getting rid of learn by doing was a stupid move, I'll admit it needed sime tweaks like maybe not having overall craft quality be dictated by it. Should just exist for weapons, mining tools, athletics and maybe constuction, with perk unlocks being based on having levels of the related skill. You have 60 in mining tools, this lets you get miner 69'er level 4, which lets you craft tier 4 or 5 tools, as well as the bonus to block damage. its Basically A18 minus the stupid stat locks like str, int etc.

 

Darkness Falls a mod I love uses that approach above for learn by doing, while crafting stuff, is partially level locked (though not high levels). It also has a class system and each class has unique things only they can make.

[Gamida]

Motherlode 4 gives 180 iron as reported earlier in the thread.

 

From me hitting things

Motherlode 5 gives 210 iron

Motherlode 5 gives 100 Lead

and I think it gives 100 each of coal and nitrate. Havent mined those for a week or so.

 

Previous carry lvl of Iron was 1200 = 6000 scrap

 

That is true...forgot that.

 

Wrong, Raw iron stacks are 1200, which is 6000 iron. Iron stacks are 6000. its the same, they also kept the ratio the same, motherload 5 gives 42 raw iron which is 210 iron smelted. in a18.1 b6 motherload 5 gives 210 iron, so there is 0 actual iron loss, just a removal of a near pointless extra step. Which brings it in line either every other mineable material.

 

Was already corrected and admitted earlier...

[PPanda0421]

Say you wanna upgrade your base, it takes iron to do so, you have raw iron, you can scrap it taking a bunch of time and losing 25% of the value of it, or put it in the forge spending a ton of time to melt it down then have the forge spit it back out which takes even more time. Or you can have it how a18.1 b6 is, and just get the base iron from iron ore nodes which you can then use right away to upgrade the base or to melt down. Thats the pointless extra step I was talking about. The time wasted to scrap or smelt and have the forge puke the iron back out so you don't take a loss. Sure you could do it in a workbench the scrapping thing, but its still going to waste time you could be using to upgrade it and doing other things.

 

So the extra step for you is convert raw to iron without loss and not spending too much time in the forge. What you're describing seems like early game stuff. At mid to end game I guarantee you you'll be melting the majority of that iron in the forge to make rebar frames, iron/steel ingots, iron bars etc, iron spikes, etc. Unless you RP and don't use iron/steel ingots nor upgrade your blocks to reinforced concrete?

 

Waste time? Again you talk as if you only have 1 forge. By mid game/late you should be having 5-20 forges running at the same time so there is no 'wasting' time.

[Jedo]

Yeah its the icons, NOT the absurdly high textures terrain or the constant addition of new assets for pois. Its the icons. WHICH they INCREASED in size to boot. So either they have NO idea how to optimize or theyre selling you a bridge for 25 bucks. Take your pick.

 

So glad we got rid of that ONE icon so all thise people can play smoothly again.

What an ignorant response. You know that they were cleaning up the menus ("wood furniture block") to make them less laggy. This aligns wholly with that. I said before that just one would not make a difference, but the bulk of them together does make a difference. If they already are doing that, which useless icons/items should not be included in the optimization? This ONE icon? Why? What makes it special? Nothing.

 

How about since you can make crushed sand from stone, and therefore nothing but stone is used when making cement and nothing but stone is used for making concrete, then we can skip several steps and just give concrete when mining stone.

Edit: Oh crap, forgot about clay. We can get rid of that too. Nobody will notice, just like the dirt.

 

But to answer your question, it's quite easy.

Mining shale gives you gas.

So do breakfast burritos, but we don't have those.

This is the sort of nonsensical, butthurt logic that is annoying. It has been shown that the raw iron was a pointless extra step, one that was literally proportional in every way to its outcome. Furthermore, the raw iron was useless for anything else (unlike stone, shale, etc.). Get over it.

[Damocles]

Iron directly from mining?

Someone is seriously bored in gamedesign...

How about a gun powder boulder?

[OzHawkeye]

Iron directly from mining?

Someone is seriously bored in gamedesign...

How about a gun powder boulder?

 

False comparison is false. Gun powder isn't a naturally occurring element in 7Days.

 

You should have asked for a Nitrate Boulder and a Coal Boulder first, and then we would have pointed out that both Nitrate and Coal already align, and have for a while, to the new paradigm for Iron.

[Damocles]

False comparison is false. Gun powder isn't a naturally occurring element in 7Days.

 

You should have asked for a Nitrate Boulder and a Coal Boulder first, and then we would have pointed out that both Nitrate and Coal already align, and have for a while, to the new paradigm for Iron.

Its not a false comparison. Every layman knows that iron and gunpowder are processed goods and dont occur in nature. There is even a whole age named after the ability to finally process and use iron.

Coal is obviously directly mineable. Nitrate and lead are not everyday things, no problem to abstract here.

 

Making things illogical just to simplify some task is not adding to the gameplay here. There are lots of other crafting processes that should rather be simplified. Like making concrete or flagstone blocks.

[R0bb0b]

It's quite simple really. It's the last and now only resource that requires an extra transformation layer, and I would imagine that developers have been bitching about it for some time now, wondering why the hell they have to maintain this extra transformation stage just for Iron. It can be difficult to maintain a single chunk of non-dynamic code (by definition, a control structure, that may have been considered dynamic at one time, maintained to service only one single scenario is no longer dynamic), especially if the code base isn't optimized to begin with. It also doesn't help that the only purpose of iron ore was to be transformed to iron. Some developer saw an opportunity to throw a pain in the ass piece of code in the wood chipper and took advantage of it. It was optimized out. That's the reason.

[Sjustus548]

I don't quite understand why people are upset with this change. Instead of collecting iron ore that you have to burn down you just collect generic iron that you can collect from many different sources. No it isn't as realistic as having to collect ore but that's nothing to get too worked up about. Is anyone complaining that we don't have to collect logs, then turn those logs in to planks or sticks depending on what we need to use them for? No it has been changed to just getting generic "wood" now and it is a much better change in my opinion. People getting upset about the change seems more like a case of people just not liking change in general.

[Morloc]

It's not bad to have some elements of your game be asymmetrical. In fact, it's probably a good thing. Keeps things interesting. We could of course go with Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange which are gathered from similarly colored lumps each found in a different biome....(wait, are there still five biomes?...perhaps they can simplify that a bit. I mean, what's the point of burnt woods anyway?).

 

After that's mopped up, please change the ammo system to be like in Mass Effect (2?) where all ammunition was completely fungible. What's the point of hauling around 6 or 7 different ammunition types.

 

And while you're at it, for the love of humanity, please eliminated 12? different types of canned foods. There should only be "Canned Food" period. That's surely increase performance to the point where we could add a few more zombies.

 

 

 

-Morloc

[Reth]

It's quite simple really. It's the last and now only resource that requires an extra transformation layer, and I would imagine that developers have been bitching about it for some time now, wondering why the hell they have to maintain this extra transformation stage just for Iron. It can be difficult to maintain a single chunk of non-dynamic code (by definition, a control structure, that may have been considered dynamic at one time, maintained to service only one single scenario is no longer dynamic), especially if the code base isn't optimized to begin with. It also doesn't help that the only purpose of iron ore was to be transformed to iron. Some developer saw an opportunity to throw a pain in the ass piece of code in the wood chipper and took advantage of it. It was optimized out. That's the reason.

 

Yes, let's throw some buzzwords at people, shall we? For as long as there is a concept of "transformation" in the game, and there has to be for crafting to exist, that "extra transformation layer" is simply a few extra lines in a config file and nothing else. If they used special code just for iron processing, then it was poorly written to begin with.

[guardianangelmp]

I don't quite understand why people are upset with this change. Instead of collecting iron ore that you have to burn down you just collect generic iron that you can collect from many different sources. No it isn't as realistic as having to collect ore but that's nothing to get too worked up about. Is anyone complaining that we don't have to collect logs, then turn those logs in to planks or sticks depending on what we need to use them for? No it has been changed to just getting generic "wood" now and it is a much better change in my opinion. People getting upset about the change seems more like a case of people just not liking change in general.

 

People are upset because it is part of the slow march towards watered down, simplified, bland gameplay. It's these little changes that happen constantly that change a game from one that has some complexity in its gameplay to one that only requires an IQ of 5 to complete.

 

Of course it's "simpler" to have processed iron come from the ground, but it would also be simpler to have gun powder and cement come from rocks so you don't have to process them. Also, wouldn't it be simpler to just get all the loot from appliances and cars by searching them instead of having to wrench them?

 

Hell, instead of having to harvest anything we could just interact with the item or object and get all the product. Could have character stat or mod to replace the tools...simpler than just standing there swinging the tool, they wouldn't have to have the animation in the game....IT WOULD DO WONDERS FOR GAME PERFORMANCE!

[Sjustus548]

People are upset because it is part of the slow march towards watered down, simplified, bland gameplay. It's these little changes that happen constantly that change a game from one that has some complexity in its gameplay to one that only requires an IQ of 5 to complete.

 

Of course it's "simpler" to have processed iron come from the ground, but it would also be simpler to have gun powder and cement come from rocks so you don't have to process them. Also, wouldn't it be simpler to just get all the loot from appliances and cars by searching them instead of having to wrench them?

 

Hell, instead of having to harvest anything we could just interact with the item or object and get all the product. Could have character stat or mod to replace the tools...simpler than just standing there swinging the tool, they wouldn't have to have the animation in the game....IT WOULD DO WONDERS FOR GAME PERFORMANCE!

 

Yeah that seems a little over the top of an argument for such a small change. There needs to be a certain amount of simplicity when it comes to games like this. Otherwise it would start to be a little too much complexity. Why are you okay with being able to use processed iron that you get from cars in construction? Shouldn't you be forced to smelt down all the iron that you find and have to use different molds to create different items to be used in different crafts? Why can you use wood straight from a tree and turn it in to furniture without having to process it first? Why do most the bullets use the same tip and casing even though they are different calibers? Simple, it's because having to do all that stuff would just be tedious and would inevitably take away from the game. However it is you justify it to yourself that you don't have to process all this other stuff to use it just think about it the same way with iron.

[Kattla]

False comparison is false. Gun powder isn't a naturally occurring element in 7Days.

 

You should have asked for a Nitrate Boulder and a Coal Boulder first, and then we would have pointed out that both Nitrate and Coal already align, and have for a while, to the new paradigm for Iron.

 

We already have those... Those surface blocks that marks the ore veins. Well, not really ore anymore either.

[Kattla]

I'm not much of a fan of conspiracy theories, but it's hard not to see a pattern emerge, especially when MM has in the past made statements about how the terrain and the voxels get in the way of speedy development and his design ideas.

 

Step 1: Remove caves.

Step 2: Add digging zombies back in so that less people build underground.

Step 3: Simplify mining so that it is uninteresting and people spend less time doing it.

Step 4: Remove destructible terrain, nobody needs it now anyway. Increase surface nodes.

Step 5: Remove voxels, because Fallout.

 

It's also hard not to see a pattern when the exact same thing has happened and is happening to random world generation. If change is gradual enough, the backlash is much less. Less people notice or become comfortable with the new product.

 

Perhaps step 4 ain't too many years away , like modular buildings and landclaim block to autolevel the ground before building. Modular building simular to what is in subnautica, nms and breathedge. Hmmm.. Have they published their roadmap yet?

[HungryZombie]

Even though the numbers are the same it just doesn't feel right. Perhaps raw iron from iron ore blocks is too engrained in our minds (since it's been that way for a very long time) that this change will take time to get used to for long time players. As a builder/miner I can get a sense of satisfaction of getting raw iron. Can't explain it. Getting iron from furniture, cars, metal fences, etc doesn't seem to excite me for some reason.

 

They probably made this change for performance reasons and won't admit it. Perhaps the way they implemented certain things is not highly optimized and it is too late to undo all those changes. I mean why change now all of a sudden? They should have made this change at the initial release of A18 since we know it is a completely new beast altogether. Timing is everything.

 

A reasonable explanation would have been good as well instead of referring to previous implementations as 'legacy nonsense.'

 

Looks like this 'feature' is here to stay so just have to live with it I guess.

 

Come on dude, you throw out numbers to prove your point, then you're proven wrong, then throw up your hands and say "Well it just feels wrong" Don't you think you are just being a tad unreasonable at this point?

[Gazz]

As for "legacy nonsense" - I'm sorry but that's the technical term. =P

[Roland]

As for "legacy nonsense" - I'm sorry but that's the technical term. =P

Technical terms never last today. Someone eventually decides it is either offensive or doesn’t fully encapsulate the full meaning that a new term supposedly can.

 

The question is whether this game needs to be like Space Engineers or Empyrion by making raw resources unusable until refined or processed somehow. My feeling is that most would say no. I personally like that particular sharp stick but then I would have made it so that raw iron wouldn’t even be able to be scrapped in the backpack. I would force the player to process it through the forge before being able to take it as scrap or of course turn it into forged iron. And I would bring all the other mined resources into alignment with that.

 

But such a design sounds more extreme that what we have so it also sounds more like the subject of a mod.