What was the point of the water change?

[theFlu]

19 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

I do wonder what people with normal stack sizes do with engines.  I usually end up with 3-4 storage crates full of batteries by the end of a world, if I had to do that with engines as well it'd be crazy.

Well, I can't speak for the average population, but I only wrench cars if I specifically need engines. So I'll basically never have a surplus of more than a gen bank's full. In this version the fuel gains are even less than before, so even less reason to wrench any; just get some shale when you need it.

[Riamus]

26 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Well, I can't speak for the average population, but I only wrench cars if I specifically need engines. So I'll basically never have a surplus of more than a gen bank's full. In this version the fuel gains are even less than before, so even less reason to wrench any; just get some shale when you need it.

Shale works once you can use it.  Until then, if you want a motorized vehicle, you will need to wrench cars.  I have wrenched way more cars in A21 than in A20 because of this.  I have no real need for so many batteries and engines and radiators but I don't have much choice if I want gas before I can make my own.  And with the lower gas amounts from the cars, I have to wrench more.  I drive a LOT. 

 

But I don't worry about stack sizes.  They aren't really a big deal, though I don't see why they can't allow things like engines to stack.

 

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Spoken like a brute squad 😁. In any war information is one of the most valuable resources.

 

So when would you spend XP points as a new player?  Since you first have to read the descriptions to know where to put points and what you don't need at the moment? Wasted time to read? You read something and you get valuable information for that, right?

 

Similarily what about if you die of thirst on day 2 as a new player because you don't have a clue how to get water? Would it have been wasted time to read the journal entry then?

 

I am not saying someone should read through all of journal pages on night 1, but he has ample opportunity to be aware there is a sort of info system where he could look up stuff if something isn't clear to him, like where to find water or food.

 

Time is only wasted if after that time you are not better prepared fo whats coming. And getting the info about the water filter is surely worth more than the few hundred xp you get for shooting zombies from your hideout in that first night 😉

 

PS: Actually as a single player you can pause the game while reading such a page with ESC

IF the journal entries were better set up, I might agree.  But the setup of journals in this game as in most games is so poor that they aren't worth reading in most cases.  If you want to look up a specific thing, then it's okay... if that thing is unlocked.  But otherwise, journal entries are just a horrible UI format for information, imo.  And I still stand by having the tutorial focus on specific details and not have to craft a bunch of stuff (and it should be possible to disable it without loss of the perk points).  Tutorials shouldn't really be "go craft this.  now, go craft that.  next, craft this."  I know some other games do that too, but it is a bad design.  Tutorials should explain things to the player that they will need to know the first time they play the game.  Telling someone to craft and upgrade a block in the middle of nowhere without even mentioning that you can change the block shape or that you can use those blocks for building a base is pretty much useless.  Not having dew collectors mentioned in the tutorial is bad.  And so on.  In short, the tutorial is pointless and the journal is mostly useless and often missed and forgotten about by players long before there is something they can't figure out.

[theFlu]

13 minutes ago, Riamus said:

Shale works once you can use it.  Until then, if you want a motorized vehicle, you will need to wrench cars.

For me, for the couple A21 playthoughs, these have lined up pretty well. There was a few days when either chem station or the books were not available yet, so I wrenched about a dozen cars. But when I don't have the fuel, I'll Mega Crush back and forth, so it's barely an inconvenience for the few days ..

[Rotor]

16 minutes ago, Riamus said:

radiators

 

Are these still usable for brass?   'Cause the only reason i wrench cars.

[Riamus]

1 minute ago, Rotor said:

 

Are these still usable for brass?   'Cause the only reason i wrench cars.

Yes.  I use them for brass as well but I don't bother getting them often since they don't stack more than 5.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)

[theFlu]

46 minutes ago, Rotor said:

Are these still usable for brass? 

Yes, but so are dukes ...

[Vaeliorin]

2 hours ago, theFlu said:

Well, I can't speak for the average population, but I only wrench cars if I specifically need engines. So I'll basically never have a surplus of more than a gen bank's full. In this version the fuel gains are even less than before, so even less reason to wrench any; just get some shale when you need it.

I'm a weirdo.  I wrench a lot.  My last playthrough I had about 5k Mechanical and Electrical Parts, and over 30k gas.  I don't so much in the early game, but once I've got a decent wrench so it doesn't take me half an hour to wrench a single car, I pretty much wrench every car I see.

[theFlu]

8 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

I'm a weirdo.  I wrench a lot. 

Nothing wrong with that, but that kinda answers the "what do people with normal stack sizes do with... ?"; we .. don't

[Gaz]

In my opinion, the new water system has ruined the game. Finding new ways to drink water isn't fun, it's silly and tedious.

When in a survival situation you would hoard any materials that would be valuable to you, including something to drink out of.. you wouldn't drink out of a jar and then discard it after use, that's just daft. 

I want to be able to scoop up some murky water and go and boil it. Don't try and fix something that isn't broken

[doughphunghus]

On 7/22/2023 at 6:14 AM, Lamblaska said:

here... there's little logic on how things stack in this game. You can stack 125 murky waters but only 10 waters or teas or juices. You can carry 6K small rocks, but only 1 car battery for each slot. I don't understand the logic behind it.

Yeah, i agree. I don't know the true answer but i feel its something along the line of:

- batteries (and anything with a "quality" to them that degrades) cannot stack because the qualities of each item may be different. 
- 6k stacks for "mined resources" is probably because they want it to be "painless" to mine and carry it back, as well as pick up a stack and build a base/repair it. 
 

The 125 jars vs 10 water ... Im totally guessing here based on the above resource stacks possible logic: it was probably to make it as painless as possible to harvest water and bring it back to base.

 

there are some "weight" tags in the XML so maybe they had planned on making items have weight and the stacks were based on this some time ago? Like "yeah, if you're not careful you will have 6k rocks and its heavy but you can carry it"?

 

but then again, radiators, engines, clothing with no quality: then the logic makes no sense.  So the lat guess is: as the game versions evolved, no one want and cleaned up old "ideas" as stacking and weight considerations are too low on the priority list at the moment, so its all kinda bonkers right now... but its more of a minor inconvenience vs breaks game vs OP stacks?

[Lamblaska]

19 minutes ago, doughphunghus said:

Yeah, i agree. I don't know the true answer but i feel its something along the line of:

- batteries (and anything with a "quality" to them that degrades) cannot stack because the qualities of each item may be different. 
- 6k stacks for "mined resources" is probably because they want it to be "painless" to mine and carry it back, as well as pick up a stack and build a base/repair it. 
 

The 125 jars vs 10 water ... Im totally guessing here based on the above resource stacks possible logic: it was probably to make it as painless as possible to harvest water and bring it back to base.

 

there are some "weight" tags in the XML so maybe they had planned on making items have weight and the stacks were based on this some time ago? Like "yeah, if you're not careful you will have 6k rocks and its heavy but you can carry it"?

 

but then again, radiators, engines, clothing with no quality: then the logic makes no sense.  So the lat guess is: as the game versions evolved, no one want and cleaned up old "ideas" as stacking and weight considerations are too low on the priority list at the moment, so its all kinda bonkers right now... but its more of a minor inconvenience vs breaks game vs OP stacks?

Agreed. Items with durability and quality are unattackable. Engine is a outlier here, because it had levels in the past (I think). 

I also agreed that inventory management should be simple instead of complex. I believe you present players with hard choices and tradeoffs without worrying too much about weights and realism about stacks. I'm more curious about what was the logic behind it. 

The whole point was more... abstracting jars is something in line with so many already in place abstractions of the game.

[meganoth]

22 hours ago, Gaz said:

In my opinion, the new water system has ruined the game. Finding new ways to drink water isn't fun, it's silly and tedious.

When in a survival situation you would hoard any materials that would be valuable to you, including something to drink out of.. you wouldn't drink out of a jar and then discard it after use, that's just daft. 

I want to be able to scoop up some murky water and go and boil it. Don't try and fix something that isn't broken

 

You don't discard the jar. Whatever container you are using, you probably take it with you and fill it with water again. It just isn't simulated, exactly like the gas cans or the containers you store food into like meat stew (or did you think you were storing meat stew by itself, just filling the rather fluid stew into your backpack?)

 

[theFlu]

46 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Whatever container you are using, you probably take it with you and fill it with water again.

But only when staring at toilets. Of course.

[Vaeliorin]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

You don't discard the jar.

 

[Volstag]

On 6/24/2023 at 11:51 PM, Riamus said:

Not having glass jars that were pretty pointless does not in any logical way connect the dots you're trying to connect.

 

100% agreed.  Amassing water in previous alphas was trivially easy.  The only bottle-neck was finding a cooking pot.  Once that was obtained, water was no longer a concern -- which, honestly, left me wondering: why even have the water/hydration system in the game?

 

To be fair though, I haven't really had an issue w/ water in A21 either.  It's a little more challenging at the beginning, but quickly circumvented.

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, Volstag said:

 

100% agreed.  Amassing water in previous alphas was trivially easy.  The only bottle-neck was finding a cooking pot.  Once that was obtained, water was no longer a concern -- which, honestly, left me wondering: why even have the water/hydration system in the game?

 

To be fair though, I haven't really had an issue w/ water in A21 either.  It's a little more challenging at the beginning, but quickly circumvented.

 

"Quickly circumvented" is by design. I.e. the developers said they want food and water only be a problem in early game

 

[vom]

On 7/26/2023 at 7:11 AM, meganoth said:

You don't discard the jar. Whatever container you are using, you probably take it with you and fill it with water again.

Then why can't we fill the jar with water?

That's like the most basic oldest aspect of human survival. Find some kind of container, and put water in it, so you can carry it with you.

[Stranded_Napkin]

Yeah, naw, I don't eat my jars in real life so I wasn't about to play that sh*t. I modded the jars back in before even starting A21. It still bugs me that you eat the container the stews and stuff are in. I like at least the food to make sense. Zombies can and should be the main "that's not actually real, ya know" thing in the game. Just because it's a game doesn't mean that nothing should make sense.

[EvilPolygons]

I've tried A21 without jars (vanilla) and with jars (via mods). What I've discovered is that I kinda dislike jars after all, lol.

 

BUT I also hate the fact that I can build a campfire right next to a lake and somehow cannot get any of that water into a pot for boiling. I'm not complaining about "realism" here. My complaint is that TFP went about the water rebalance in such a hamfisted and clumsy way. It feels like an artificially restrictive change made purely because they couldn't figure out a less over-engineered solution.

 

The absolute best solution I've found is Silver's water bucket mod. No, it doesn't bring jars back -- jars are unnecessary with this mod. It allows you to scoop murky water with a bucket from a POI and then boil the filled bucket on a campfire. 3 minutes of boiling produces 3 jars of clean water. The bucket mod is balanced, uses existing game assets and mechanics, and allows water collection without ruining the thirst mechanic during the early game. Scooping water slowly depletes the POI water source, boiling the water takes an appropriate amount of time + fuel, and buckets are non-stackable so water hoarding is vastly reduced compared to what was possible with glass jars.

 

I really don't understand why we ended up with dew collectors when instead the devs could have simply tweaked water buckets to do something that a bucket should be able to do; gather and transport water!

Edited July 28, 2023 by EvilPolygons (see edit history)

[meganoth]

9 hours ago, vom said:

Then why can't we fill the jar with water?

 

You can, from toilets, from water you find in kitchen cupboards, from dew collectors. Jars are just not shown as a separate item, like gas cans. What you collect is one quantity of water and you don't need to concern yourself with how that water is transported. 

 

Think about it, it was always illogical that there are jars of water in the toilets, but everyone accepted this as the truth. The best explanation to this must have always been that you have containers with you, jars for example or anything else, and you fill these containers from the toilet. 

 

If you are asking why you can't get water from lakes, that is the solution TFP came up with to make water a scarce resource even though lakes are everywhere. Think of the water as simply unusable and don't think any further. For what TFP wanted to achieve it was the easiest solution. Whether there are better solutions would have to be evaluated.

 

 

Edited July 28, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, EvilPolygons said:

I've tried A21 without jars (vanilla) and with jars (via mods). What I've discovered is that I kinda dislike jars after all, lol.

 

BUT I also hate the fact that I can build a campfire right next to a lake and somehow cannot get any of that water into a pot for boiling. I'm not complaining about "realism" here. My complaint is that TFP went about the water rebalance in such a hamfisted and clumsy way. It feels like an artificially restrictive change made purely because they couldn't figure out a less over-engineered solution.

 

The absolute best solution I've found is Silver's water bucket mod. No, it doesn't bring jars back -- jars are unnecessary with this mod. It allows you to scoop murky water with a bucket from a POI and then boil the filled bucket on a campfire. 3 minutes of boiling produces 3 jars of clean water. The bucket mod is balanced, uses existing game assets and mechanics, and allows water collection without ruining the thirst mechanic during the early game. Scooping water slowly depletes the POI water source, boiling the water takes an appropriate amount of time + fuel, and buckets are non-stackable so water hoarding is vastly reduced compared to what was possible with glass jars.

 

I really don't understand why we ended up with dew collectors when instead the devs could have simply tweaked water buckets to do something that a bucket should be able to do; gather and transport water!

 

Can you craft buckets from clay? Can you fill the bucket from a lake or swimming pool?

 

If your answer is yes to both you have the means to produce any amount of water you might need at the moment even on the first day. You need some more time and effort than in A20, but thats about it.

 

[EvilPolygons]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

Can you craft buckets from clay? Can you fill the bucket from a lake or swimming pool?

 

If your answer is yes to both you have the means to produce any amount of water you might need at the moment even on the first day. You need some more time and effort than in A20, but thats about it.

 

No. Buckets are crafted using forged iron bars, same as vanilla. In fact, it's the *exact* same iron water bucket that already exists in vanilla 7DTD. Silver merely modded it so that it can be placed on a campfire and its contents boiled.

Considering the rarity of finding buckets in loot or on traders in the very early game, the cost of crafting them, the time required to collect and boil water in them, AND the fact that buckets aren't stackable, this solution is much more well-balanced and less "gamey" than dew collectors, in my opinion. Plus, as I mentioned before, it's the same bucket from the base game. So if you continue to draw water from a swimming pool, it will eventually run out of water.

 

[Ramethzer0]

On 7/19/2023 at 4:05 PM, vom said:

Dying of thirst, not sure what to do. Doesn't seem to be any water on this map.

 

Have you tried.. Oh I dunno.. looting it out of the hundreds of POI's that are just readily available everywhere else?

You don't need a trader to exist.  Dirty water can be looted just about anywhere.

[meganoth]

On 7/28/2023 at 1:02 PM, EvilPolygons said:

No. Buckets are crafted using forged iron bars, same as vanilla. In fact, it's the *exact* same iron water bucket that already exists in vanilla 7DTD. Silver merely modded it so that it can be placed on a campfire and its contents boiled.

Considering the rarity of finding buckets in loot or on traders in the very early game, the cost of crafting them, the time required to collect and boil water in them, AND the fact that buckets aren't stackable, this solution is much more well-balanced and less "gamey" than dew collectors, in my opinion. Plus, as I mentioned before, it's the same bucket from the base game. So if you continue to draw water from a swimming pool, it will eventually run out of water.

 

 

I never saw a bucket in loot and ignored it in crafting in the last years, sorry for my ignorance there.

 

It would make the game more difficult in the beginnning as you practically were dependant on first creating a forge before you could start producing water. And then immediately (as the bucket is re-usable endlessly) your water problems are completely solved. Just build beside a lake or swimming pool, craft 1-4 buckets and any amount of water is producible in relatively short time. 2 buckets should be easy to produce even on day 2 or 3 and would generate nearly 5*3*2=30 jars of water in a single night in your base! Players investing in miner69er could produce even more buckets and make more water (another slight disadvantage of your idea).

 

Not saying your solution isn't a good one in many ways, it sure is less gamey for example. But it would be available later and has not the slow (depending on player) ramp up of water production that the dew collector solution has.

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

Given the design goal of making glue expensive; but to address the logical failing of lake water a little.

 

- Make the dew collectors into water purification stations; insert murky water, to slowly recover clean water.

- Add a new drinkable water "Boiled murky water", which is still murky water, but take away the health penalty and the sickness chance, leave the hydration at 10. It's drinkable mud, you don't want to make glue out of it without it failing due to the contaminants.

- Allow for a mechanic to pull murky in jars out of lakes (easiest solution: repurpose the current drinking with a "harvest a jar" like the "use to pickup plants" used to be.)

 

I still wouldn't be a fan, but it wouldn't drive me quite as bonkers ...