I think using an RNG to determine whether or not each voxel provides resources when it’s mined would encourage strip mining.
There’s absolutely no reason to put any more thought into mining than digging to the bottom and mining out everything in sight if the only factors are depth and skill. That’s not really rewarding those who work hard, but more creating a foregone conclusion that as you mine, you’ll be able to amass all the resources you want without any trouble.
With ores etc. being physically represented within the world, the element of chance depends more on the player’s planning of their mines, rather than random chance that we have no control over.
Considering the recent reveal of the Blacksmith as of now, it feels like larger, more regionalized deposits of ore would work well for the system. if a single piece of ore doesn’t have too much value, according to the current recipes, then having larger veins mined overtime would make more sense–otherwise, you’ll be running around the gameplay area forever trying to just make simple decorative recipes like iron gates.
It also gives a huge reason to have trading soon! If you settle in an area rich with iron, but no gold or copper (for various recipes still unrevealed), having a periodic trader at least through the current notification system for events would allow the player to compensate for the missing resources.
Sorry for the late response, was otherwise disposed.
I agree that there could be very many instances of this simple idea being used oddly; however, I say this from a design perspective that speaks to the limits of the code and the current technology employed for the game system.
One can use such a system (as in having nodes present in the world randomly generated) and reach resource exhaustion far more easily then the RNG system. Unless the game intends to be infinite within the confines of the players system specifications (ie huge hard drive arrays); then the use of a physically present node method would create dead zones no longer viable for resource acquisition.
With node placement, adding new resources to the game literally means expanding the capacity of the players system to allow for more game space. So when the last gem is fitted and the last bar of Iron just became a lantern, the world will be void of new resources. There currently is no recovery method for extracting resources from items created.
With the RNG system, unless you mine out every block in the game world to the unmineable ‘bottom of the world’ there would be resource potential. Strip mining is a potential use of the system, however; the player must then continue their game with the consequences of that choice.
In the end it is a battle over taste IMHO. I prefer not to waste code resources for the idea of one small groups thought on resource potentialities, and create an envelope I could use to expand the playability of the game. For me adding new RNG variance is better than forcing my users to get larger hard drives, or what ever resource would be needed to continue playing.
To give a gameplay specific example, my last run I decided to dig into the mountains, and by the time i had dug out a decent area, I had more ore than I could possibly need - enough to outfit my half dozen footmen with steel twice over. Now granted, that may have been generosity on the part of the RNG gods, but it’s still consistent with my other experiences with mining.
There are two ways to counter this - the first is to add in tons and tons of metal items, but at some point you’ll inevitably end up making stuff for the sole purpose of using resources. The other option is to decrease the chances of receiving the ores; this is where the strip mining comes into play, when it takes so long to find ore that mass excavation is the only viable way of obtaining the resources you need. It also makes sense from an efficiency standpoint - why would you mine out a 4 * 100 mine shaft, and have your hearthlings walking back and forth over 100 cells, when you can just mine out a 20 * 20 area, and minimise the distance traveled?
I’m not sure what you are getting at here, because there are no consequences to strip mining.
Another thing to consider, in regards to finite resources, is the trade system. There are a number of infinite resources, and using those to trade for finite resources in the late game is not only viable, but also makes sense in terms of gameplay - if resources were always readily available, there’d be no challenge to obtaining them, which doesn’t really lend itself to a continuing challenge. You’ll eventually find yourself with all the resources you could ever possibly want, leaving the only real option for keeping the challenge up to have ever increasing waves of enemies, at which point the game devolves into a tower defence.
while some people might not care, i for one, hate having big ugly mined out areas in games. im the type of person who likes to conserve as much of the natural terrain as possible, however some people dont care about natural terrain and will just mine out the entire mountain without caring.
That would depend on how/where you do it. Obviously it would look horrible in/around your town, and especially if it was just a giant hole in the ground, but if you dug it a ways off from the town, and made it look like a proper quarry, you could make something nice out of it.
Aside from that, there are no gameplay penalties involved.
[quote=“Atreyu, post:26, topic:9474”]
Aside from that, there are no gameplay penalties involved.
[/quote]well… i beg to differ, though its no too much of a problem, when i dig/build/chop/etc. far from my town the game either slows down or my hearthlings dont ever gather the stuff. so in some ways that is a penalty…
IF, and only IF they decided to do regions, where you could setup multiple towns and outposts, I would love to see this. You could have Central as your capital, a huge city with 50+ Hearthlings on the coast, then have these small mining towns or lumber towns like you said, all supplying it.
It may just be me, as I’m not a HUGE fan of magic, but I think this could work with the style that the game is, but at the same time, it feels like it could be the same spam tactic that the random chance from dirt would be. Just my 2C.
But how would that quality effect anything? Would a high quality ore block equal 2 low quality, and how would that work for the smith?
Personally, I’d like to see this implemented but in a different way. Have it that anyone can mine anything, but the lower their mining level is, the greater their chance of destroying the ore is. So like a basic worker would have a 70% chance of destroying a jem when they attempt to mine it, but a level 6 Miner would only have a 5% chance. Anybody can swing an axe, but only trained professionals can swing it all night (yeah!) in the correct way to prevent the ore / gem from damaging.
One such consequence to over-mining an area, or mining too deeply (if they go the root of higher quality ores/gems etc at lower depths) would be similar to the balrog in Lord of the rings. That was “awoken” due to the dwarves mining too deeply.
Having random cave systems etc with unsavoury creatures etc would add the potential to releasing said creatures upon you city from the depths, or angering a giant creature (I.e. The cthulu from the original game trailer).
This system was used in dwarf fortress and worked really well. Your carefully planned impenetrable (from the outside) fortress could end up becoming a dragons lair full of burnt corpses due to you releasing it from some huge underground cave.
Whatever happens, it’s going to be epic
Currently, it seems like the random chance for ore with general mining is a bit too powerful–it’s likely to allow for more crafting of items at this point in development, but in the future I see this needing to be nerfed in order to actually put some varying worth and rarity of different metals and substances. Personally, I don’t mind the idea of nodes, so long as each provides only one type of metal (or a combination of maybe a “valuable” ore, like gold, and a “junk” one, such as tin, copper, or coal). Like the random chance, though, the chance to find one (and especially get good materials from it) will need to be very uncommon and not be enough to fuel your entire economy’s needs.
[quote=“8BitCrab, post:25, topic:9474”]
im the type of person who likes to conserve as much of the natural terrain as possible
[/quote] I am 100% with you in this regard.
When it comes to mining in games, I thought I would enjoy Minecraft’s approach, but strip mining is unfortunately the most efficient practice with this approach to resource gathering. It was a mind-numbing grind, which burned me out on wanting to keep playing pretty quickly, AND it ruined the terrain around me, so that once I had stacks of resources, I had to run dozens of chunks away just to find fresh terrain to build a base on.
Honestly, I would seriously consider Runescape’s approach to mining for Stonehearth. I know, I know; plenty of you probably just fell out of your chairs because I would even mention such a shameless sell-out and money sink to its player base, but hear me out. If Stonehearth introduced randomly generated cave systems, we could have everything people are asking to see already, including underground biomes, dungeons, even boss lairs - all without the tedious and terrain-killing mining system we see now. And if we treated resource gathering more like RS, we could have mining as a class that you level up, with resource nodes throughout these cave systems that refresh over time. I could then build my town at or near the cave’s entrance, create a party of warriors and one or two high level miners, and have quite the satisfying experience killing mobs and gathering fresh resources from the same area over and over again every few in-game day cycles.
No wasted terrain, no mind-numbing strip mining, better gameplay experience.
I would venture that as the game approaches completion and there is more things to do in the game world, including recovering from attack and other such fun things, we may be more capable of arguing the nature of the RNG vs seeded resources.
I see your points assume some kind of high RNG with near certainty of acquiring resources from each block mined. This is a common fallacy. Over the time we test the build and before the game is released a simple balancing pass will alleviate the presence of too much of any resource the game has to offer.
For instance, RNG and Seeding has near to the same values in the long run; each have values that can be modified and ‘tweaked’ to allow for the world to have resources appropriate for their value range. It is more to the methodology and the foreseeable future with regards to the footprint of the program and AI. Albeit the seeding occurs at world generation it still requires that data to be stored in a location.
Under the most deplorable circumstances that data can then be easily filtered into an x-ray type program or any number of hack-tools that can easily exploit the system. Not to mention strip mining would be necessary to unearth the scattered wealth below. As far as the consequences go, it is a taste vs application argument. Simple really and besides the point of the RNG vs Seeding argument entirely. That is unless aesthetics is more important than function.
As far as resources being infinitely available, I would venture that is a misconception on your part. Even if you mine ever block in the game world and have nothing but the un-mine-able base level, there are still needs and consumption in the game mechanic alone. We are in a very pre-mature alpha stage and arguing the mechanics like they are game breaking at this stage is a bit off.
I do enjoy the pendulum arguments from time to time, yet I am hesitant to think that seeding would be a additive feature for this current game. At the very least that is my opinion, much like your’s yet with a little less doom and gloom to detract from logic and reason.
Not at all. I actually covered both sides, but to summarise:
Too high a chance means mining - in the sense of working specifically to find ores - becomes irrelevant, all you need to do is dig out a room underground, and you’re set.
On the other hand, too low a chance means tactics like strip mining are necessary to actually progress, not just exploitation of the system.
That’s entirely true, but we’re discussing the gameplay means by which we arrive at the end result, not the results themselves.
