On 9/24/2023 at 1:24 PM, zztong said:
You're correct in that my mod doesn't create long-term scarcity. I'm not sure how everyone else plays, but Dew Collectors didn't bring me long-term scarcity either. Water was effectively infinite when I played strictly Vanilla with Dew Collectors. Of course everyone plays differently, but I was overflowing with water at around the 3-4 Dew Collector point.
I'm not sure which recipes constitute "all demands." Because of that, I'm not really sure what the long-term scarcity is supposed to be. I see a lot of people complain about mass producing duct tape. I'm not that player. I usually have spare duct tape after the first week of play and needing to make 5-10 more of it wouldn't be a challenge with either water system.
I have no doubts my goals differ from TFP's goals. I'm happy to think more about it if perhaps you could tell me what recipe is supposed to be scarce in the middle to late game?
You might recall back in A20 when the water system was announced, I pushed back hard -- probably too hard. (Sorry.) These days I'm not pushing, just observing and discussing. Once I got to play A21 with the new system I realized the new system worked -- was playable -- but it still rubs me the wrong way. I'm completely cool with a local mod to fix it.
The thread moved along and Roland has clarified much, but I want to specifically answer the questions you posted here.
Your specific playstyle, whatever you do, is more efficient than mine. When I played a SP game in A21, I got hit a a bit too often on the first day and also got infected. That alone cost me a lot of time that you seem to have used to loot houses. If everything works the game is easy. For a beginner or someone who hasn't played many action-oriented games the combat isn't trivial. I did only get one trader-quest done at the first day, not because I was artificially limiting myself, but because I needed the first day to get to the trader, make that quests, loot some more kitchens for a pot and clear a POI for staying there that night.
Naturally I can only guess what the difference could be between our games, but my game happened to be one where I bought a few drinks at the trader, did quests and even though I had a dew collector, had not enough water for drinking AND glue production for the first week. Even after that it was not like I "swam" in water. I had built 4 dew collectors at the end of second or third week, but I wasn't collecting water from them every day but randomly when I remembered AND was at home.
And in 4 player multiplayer it was even more pronounced. Sure, we were fast in producing dew collectors, but we also were crafting a lot and needed to increase the number of dew collectors until we were satisfied to ~14. But we tend to overproduce, especially food.
Back to my single player game. Besides some of the food (blueberry pie, pumpkin pie in "late" early game) and red tea I needed water for crafting any iteration of pipe gun (2). When I found a mod recipe I could use that cost 5 glue at least (needs a workbench so that was a little later in early game). My cloth armor set needed at least 5 duct tape. The dew collectors itself needed 4 so in a way each dew collector needed 4 days to break even and 5 days (nearly a week) to actually gain me the first water!! The forge needed 3. I think I also needed to craft at least one wrench, so another 2. The clothing storage mods needed 1 each, the better one even 2. The bellows needs 5, not sure when I was able to craft that. I needed to craft a splint twice.
When I could finally craft the workbench (not sure when that was) with 5 duct tape, a lot of further recipes, like the storage pocket mods became available that needed water. At around that time I also needed to craft a few repair kits.
Yes, all of the above are one-time expenses. You either avoided crafting some of the above or you simply looted much faster than I did and found a lot of water. Don't expect everyone to have the same experience like you do. I can tell you that even an experienced player like me had water scarcity so I could not craft everything I wanted in the first week and maybe even further. And the game is surely balanced for a normal player or group of players less experienced than I am.
One BIG difference: Even in mid and maybe even late game jars of water I found in loot were (to me) often more worth than the slot they were occupying. I.e. I considered them an item of value. Now in earlier alphas I mostly threw away murky water or empty jars because those items were less important than one single inventory space. Because when I needed water I simply made a stack of 200 at once. Yes, you need sand for that, but at least in my games the sand for the water was a negligible amount that I often got on the side when doing some digging.
To sum it up: If you have no problem at all with getting water the first days, you probably are not a typical player. AND even you probably value a jar of water in loot more now than you did in A20.