Saws

I can't speak for everyone, but I personally didn't respond to that directly because I feel it is a series of compromises that do not address my personal concerns, at least.

Also, I generally refrain from comment on ideas that involve considerable effort on the part of the development team, with only "maybes" as to whether they'll end up any good.

Remember that the team is hoping to finish this game at some point, and not continue development until they're in the grave. You'll notice that suggestions from me always involve tweaking already existent constants or removing things altogether, or both, but not implement new, untested items and moves. The game is highly difficult to balance already; adding more of these gadgets is literally adding more variables to the balance equation and further complicating it, while doing possibly little or nothing to approach balance.

More specifically on topic, take the saws out and replace them with not saws!

 

It's a rare occasion when stripping out an established mechanic or feature is good, if you don't replace it with something else. Sure, we could take out saws and buff the speed that builders gather wood at. But in return it'd simplify the game unnecessarily. We could strip out everything till we reach the game's barebones, but all depth would be lost and re-playability of the game would shrink.

We already have numerous counters against saws. Their killing ability isn't the issue, and those counters could always be buffed. We don't have a counter against wood farming, though. If one was implemented, there would be zero issues - there are very little at the moment.

The other problem is door spam, which is too effective for its price. It can't be effectively countered by what we have now without buffing the counters to havens, so I suggested a way to tackle it mechanic-wise. You can't pass through stone or wood blocks, meaning that doors could only be used for what they are intended to, acting as doors in a doorway.

See, we don't need to remove saws to achieve balance. Little tweaks will do. Don't make a mountain of a molehill.

 

Very well said! However, I am not sure I agree with you in this circumstance. Your point does assume that said established mechanic is a good one, which is what is at issue here--the disagreement about whether saws are a good established mechanic. Imagine if @Geti decided to really start hitting the sauce one day and added automated laser turrets into the game. Once its in vanilla for enough time to be an "established mechanic", it does not follow that said mechanic is good for the game or at all fair or fun.

This is the sort of thing I am referring to regarding the complication of the balance equation. Sure, removing things always simplifies the balancing, but in this case, I doubt they'd be sorely missed, especially if normal wood harvesting were less tedious. There are a number of issues with the saw, as I mentioned above, and tackling and testing each in turn to save an item that doesn't even fit the game's setting seems a little much, at least to me.

Agreed, door spam is one of the worst side effects of the huge wood abundance. However, I feel that the cost of doors is appropriate if wood harvesting were not so far out of conrol, and adding special logic to make door placement limited is a needlessly complex fix to a problem that can be much more easily resolved by limiting the rate of wood accrual.

Personally, I think the saws are one of the big contributors to stalemates, as people never run out of stuff to patch the holes in their forts. They can get a whole fort's worth of wood in like 10 seconds or less if the saw's already set up. Even if you double or triple that time of harvesting with a saw, or halve the amount gathered as suggested by others, its still a bit fast.

Personally, I think that the trees are a little on the short side, and making the trees taller to contain more wood wouldn't be a bad way to go in increasing the availability of wood, assuming saws were taken out. It would also add to the scenery and marginally help archers, too!

I'm certainly not picking a fight, @Monsteri . Your post is very thoughtful and doesn't involve adding any cumbersome new mechanics that will keep Geti up at night, which is more than I can say for most.

 

Question. Why a grinder...? Seems a bit stupid.

And also... about your claim about it being redundant... how is it redundant...? Drills and saws both are different but also the same... they both mine the resources we need (Wood and stone) as well as kill people... nothing is redundant... just means the builder has another weapon to attack players with... o wo

I stand by my claim of a hand saw... getting tired of dying to saws and also tired of watching noobs fall on em every single time and disabling them... :I

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 3, 2013, Original Post Date: Dec 3, 2013 ---

Now.... I agree with everything you just said... but the main purpose of saws and drills in general is to speed up builds. If we didnt have items to speed up collecting... then there would be issues with making buildings rapidly... this is a fast pace game, and drills/saws are needed to make it fast pace. Without these things, builders would be the most needed resource.... why?

Walls. Dem walls need climbing... sometimes that wall is too high so a knight would need to bomb jump, but what if he cant get all the way over... then he'd need a builder to either cut through, or dig under the thing... those kinda tactics normally end with death... or success... depends on the enemy and how good they react.

Plus... Clockwork. That explains how the items in the game work... simple as balls clockwork. :D
And also... realism isn't suppose to exist in games... dont put logic in here, irl logic I mean... xD

 

I daresay that if people are falling on your saws then you've done a poor job of placing them, especially if they keep doing it.

 

I would contend that if you are using drills to do your stone harvesting, you're either already hopelessly losing, or wasting resources; stone harvests are halved when drilling. Also, the rate of resource accumulation can be tremendously easily tweaked if removal of items makes it too slow (which I doubt, to be honest); you're literally changing an integer constant, most likely.

For purposes of this discussion, the fast paced wood harvesting is exactly the source of the door hells we're seeking to eliminate or minimize, so "good riddance", I say.

I guess I am missing what this has to do with the rate of harvesting. A builder can get the 50 wood he needs for ladder spam over a wall in short order with normal wood chopping, so this seems a moot point to me. Please elaborate if I am misunderstanding you.

Are you telling me that a spring is responsible for powering a mill saw and a masonry drill? What, pray tell, is this spring made of that it can be small enough to fit in such a device and hold enough tension to chop logs into lumber and mince humans in an instant? Also, have you seen clockworks before? In a clock tower, the entire building is full of giant iron gears simply to spin a few large clock hands, which is a damn sight different than powering a saw blade of high and variable resistance.

I did qualify my statement about the realism by stating that the devs are free to bend the rules for the setting if they want, within reason. However, as soon as you introduce the technology of a powered spinning rod, you've essentially allowed nearly all modern mechanics to be possible. There's no reason why you'd put such a spinning rod in a mill saw, and then not use the same technology to make an engine, a tank, a race car, a pneumatic press, or any number of other modern marvels that would totally break the game's fundamentals and its verisimilitude. Why wouldn't a tank be built in a war if the technology allowed?

 

Think of it like a catapult... just a constantly spinning catapult. o -o

 

You could always make wooden doors cost 50 wood. I mean, stone doors already do, and wood's even easier to make than stone. Why not make wooden doors just cost more, seriously? Try it out on a balance server mang.

 

Just ignore Sirpixelot. He's a moron with ADHD.

 

Don't nerf the saw. I've never really seen a game won by one team having a lot of extra wood. If one team has a lot of wood they may build a large structure out of wood but a fire arrow or two will take care of that. As for door spam, buff fire. I would love to see more fire in the game.

 

While water does put out fire, nobody ever puts out fires that start. Literally, ever. Therefore I think fire should consume and spread in seconds instead of a delayed burn that we have now.

That, or maybe water should be more readily available. Perhaps a pumping station that can be built on wood and automatically puts out fires that start, but needs to be refilled everytime it activates? Then buckets could be used to refill it, I guess.

But seriously, this discussion is about saws and not fire, so let's focus on that.

 

wow that cancer tower is brutal. Again buff fire. Make it more an unstoppable force and less of "oh dang, that archer burned my castle a little"

 

So builders need the advantage the saw gives them because their buildings are already houses of cards and saws give far too much wood making builders over powered?

 

Not at all, not at all! I am saying the saw is not a well thought out item, and leads to stalemates and game conditions that are simply no fun. Sure, the saw is a builder item, and removing it can be construed as a nerf to builders, but that is not the point I am making. Allow me to reference my first comment in this thread:

I'm saying you can't take a weak class and simply slap in a cheap move or item and call it balanced now. The class is still weak, unless using that cheap move/item, at which point he becomes too good at the specific niche that move/item fills, solving nothing.

I must say I certainly appreciate your enthusiasm for your point and also that you're not getting all spazzy and vitriolic about it, though. I think most threads would have resorted to name-calling by now.

Jerk :)

 

Fatty, so moderation in everything then? eg: Cut the saws wood collection in half but increase the rate at which you can gather wood normally or something. Dang you logical answers I prefer flame wars over absolutes.

 

Actually I was on the "take the saws out totally" team, but close enough!

 

And I believe they should stay. Why was there not a poll put up on this thread?

 

While I agree that door spam is a serious problem, I don't think I like this solution so much. I "get" what it does, but it's not very intuitive, and it limits doors to being only 2 wide (There are many cases where 3 wide or 4 wide is ideal).

I honestly think you should try making a really, really simple change before implementing something that drastic. Try just increasing the cost of wood doors to 50. After all, stone doors, which are made of a material that's difficult to find cost more, and wood is way more plentiful and easier to spam, so why would wood doors be cheaper than their stone counterparts?

Keep in mind that increasing their cost by 20 wood means that five wooden doors now cost 100 wood more than it currently does, at 250 wood, instead of the current 150 wood.

 

Wood farm destruction is kind of a non factor since getting to an enemy's wood farm requires you to circumvent all the wood spam which is the difficulty in the first place. Glad you're addressing the issue though and requiring doors to be built next to solid blocks would be a good move.

The door idea was previously suggested here if you'd like to see a bit more discussion on the subject.