9 hours ago, Skaarphy said:What I find so absurd it is that it becomes a non-issue very early in the game. For my current playthrough that happened on day 3 or 4, where I knew that I'd have to go out of my way to make water become a problem again. Currently, on day 8, I have about 30 drinking water, 15 recipe drinks, 20 murky water, and about 15 glue and 25 duct tape. All with one upgraded dew collector and routinely checking toilets, coffee machines, etc. I didn't even go out of my way with questing and looting. Just started tier 3 jobs.
Well, you are actually still looting toilets and keeping the water you find. Did you do that in mid- and late-game in A19 or A20? At least we didn't. Which means, at least for my group, that water in loot has more value now, even after day 3 or 4. But it is a solved problem.
But it is the 3-4 days you are complaining about. Though for novice players that might be more days, and for co-op games it might be more effort. My co-op group needs about 10-12 collectors (without mods) to be in a good spot and while we don't have actual problems with that, we need to collect a lot of polymers and craft duct tape for that.
9 hours ago, Skaarphy said:As for late game, glue is free, isn't it? You have so much resources that expending some of that on more dew collectors barely puts a dent in it. And then it's just a matter of spending a few seconds every once in a while to reap your rewards. And, the way I see it, that's how it should be. You cannot struggle forever to get that @%$#ing glue. It's not "How to Get Glue - The Game".
Oh sure, but it still is something you have to built and (like a farm for food) reap once in a while. That simply makes water/glue/duct tape you find in loot something you might keep because it may be even less effort than the small grind of going through all the dew collectors.
Also you have to consider that players who have a higher and constant use of duct tape, AGI players relying on explosive arrows, need a lot more water than everyone else. For them water is a valuable resource even into late game. The grind for them has to be acceptably low which means for everyone else the grind is very very low.
On 7/31/2024 at 11:24 AM, Skaarphy said:How about this for an alternative: Water gathered from bodies of water can give you radiation poisoning, either by a build-up or by a percentage chance. You can find - and later craft - anti-radiation chems that will turn that water into murky water.
Alternatively, drinking it can make you become infected. Again, with some form of remedy that can be found or crafted and removes that possibility.
Or, just make it undrinkable because lethal (eg.: by radiation poisoning, with no remedy), and only usable for making glue and sham sandwiches and the like. Would that really be so problematic? Oh no, I have all the water I need to make glue! The horror!
And even if that is seriously undesired - because not being able to make as much glue as you want in the first few days is just vital for the game - just make bones more scarce, or the recipe more expensive, bone-wise. Which coincidentally would also upgrade the value of super corn?
Lets talk about the alternative you proposed: I would consider a resource to a recipe that is practically unlimited a useless "grind" resource for that recipe. Maybe more realistic, but a game designer would either remove that resource or change it to being limited. And even worse for a central product like duct tape. So I would count that as a slight negative and assume your alternative is WITH the change in the last paragraph included as a minimum for acceptance.
Positive is the immersion aspect. It is not realistic, but it works well as "movie grade science". And yes, super corn would be more valuable. If I forgot some other positive aspect please add to this list.
One thing that is a bit worse than the current method is that there is no need for the player to balance out his scarce water between food and glue production. For glue production he has rather unlimited amounts of water, the limit is bones. So all his clean water can be put into food producion.
Also the only source of water until you find or can craft anti-rad chems would be loot. Which is rather random and a problem for novice and co-op players. I have seen many posts of novice players having problems finding water, and drinking water from a lake is a safety net. Even veteran players, either in co-op games or games with loot percentage turned down have used that safety net. Well, that safety net is not absolutely necessary, one could simply say that bad luck means you die (or probably die as rad poisioning is a much larger danger/penalty than dysentery). Or give the trader clean water to sell at high prices (which would not help novice players in most cases, they won't have many dukes either). So in general I would say the current solution balances different players and game modes a bit better than your solution.
Generally yes, your solution is a valid solution. Assuming the developers thought about a similar scheme they probably have applied different values to the advantages and disadvantages of those schemes and came to a different conclusion than you. I could have lived with both solutions. But since I value the immersion effect of being able to get water from a lake to nearly zero I would probably be leaning to the current solution because of the way water is a balancing act between food/water and glue and because dew collectors are another workstation and a more creative approach than your solution. I would really really prefer it if zombies were actually targetting workstations standing around so you had to protect them.