[Water] and the use of it

that would basically “kill” rayyas children from a gameplay perspective

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Why? There are little ponds scatter in the desert biome. Furthermore, I deliberately wrote about wells in my OP, in order to assure Rayyas’ Children their source of water.

No, it would make rayya’s playstyle fundamentally different from ascendancy. Currently, the desert is just a flat area to build. Put up a few walls and you have an area where you don’t have to worry about anything. Being required to either settle near water, have a hearthling constantly work with a well to generate water or buy it from traders would add a big difference between ascendancy (water is easy, hills are annoying) and rayya (land is flat, plants and water are hard). This would create a completely different gamstyle between the races, and could plobably differentiate between races even more when the northern alliance comes around (water is easy, plantable land is hard, temperature?).

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But what is the problem with that. I believe the devs never meant the different nations to be the ‘same game in different scenery’. It is good if the different nations are played somewhat differently, and since rayya’s children are a trading based town, it might fit in really well.
We see evidence of the difference between playstyles in the different job hierarchies between the two nations, and in a recent stream the devs mentioned that they where thinking to make the job hierarchy different for NA as well.

Water could be a good push to set up a trading economy, where-as now you can kind-of get by without trading, and you might not discover that trading is an integral part of gameplay unless you know about RC lore. All in all, I do not see problems with it.

Or rayya’s children start with a wetstone. I suggested this elsewhere and it depends on if the wetstone is supposed to be an actual item in the world. Even if it’s rare (like not super rare, just top-level-crafter-takes-a-long-time-to-make-rare) then anyone would be crazy to make a new settlement in the dessert without one.

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If a wetstone would be part of the settler’s starting equipment, we would need multiple “tiers” of wetstone for this.
One “god tier” that can not be purchased/crafted, but is used in map creation in order to set up rivers and ponds. This one would create unlimited amounts of water per tick.

The “minor wetstone” would just create limited units of water per tick. It could provide water for the basic needs, but further settlement growth would rely on additional water sources: natural ponds, wells (which shouldn’t provide unlimited water either) or traded water.

Without such a restriction, the rarety of water and the consequential gameplay would just evaporate … like water in the desert.

Edit: maybe a “well” should be equivalent to a “minor wetstone”. Dig a hole and place it in there, create a nice little fountain and gather the water in a ditch around it - it’s up to your creativity and taste. The functionality is all the same: it provides a certain and limited amount of water per time.
If you want more than this, purchase additional wetstones from traders (for a very high price) or create a new one with the powers of the (hopfully upcoming) geomancer or elemental magician.

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you think you killed the sea horse? HA! consider the sea horse was already well dead. not just mostly dead.

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Yeah … I know. After creating my OP, I decided to actually use the search tool and “google” for water-related posts. I did find … some.

Anyway, most of them were old and usually, forum moderators are quit sensible regarding thread necroing. So I thought, a fresh one wouldn’t harm and things like the new weather system, biomes and wetstones do affect the topic. (See the interesting debate about Rayya’s Children! :slight_smile:)
Sometimes it is good to bring things back to the table. And if it is just to show that there is still interest in the topic.

By the way, your quoted posts make things look worse than they actually are. :wink:
Not all of them are related to water. (Unless you miss-quoted.)

no they are all related to water. and there is more. the reason it looks so bad is that water only recently got an update but suggestions have been made since the beginning about water so there is quite a backlog of ideas. I already bumped some of these, hopefully newer players will read through and talk about it some more. maybe inspire someone to mod more water things.

Just a small thought for water in the dessert. Trees with deep roots and big trunks that work as natural pumps and water reserves. Install a tap on the side and you have an infinite water source, though it refills slowly so you will need more than one to keep a town going.

All that sounds interesting. Is it fun though? I’d rather see drinks be something that adds to moral, like meed from honey. Optional but not mandatory for survival. Really not much into cooking and seeing a bunch of extra ingredients to deal with. Could just be me though.

Edit: Forgot my manners. Welcome to the discussion.

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thats a mod tho?

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This is really the cruicial question here, isn’t it?

Personally, I like game mechanics that add new gameplay to the game. Just doubling up existing mechanics ("and “reskinning” them) doesn’t do this. I agree that new brewing recieps for the cook might be too similar to food. I still like them, as they somehow compelte the whole ‘drinking’ feature. But I like your proposal that they add to the Hearthling’s moral rather than their health in order to set them appart from food. (I still think that this should only apply to processed breweries, though. The lack of any liquid (even pure water) should definitely affect health.)

Planning your settlement layout and adding irrigation canals in order to water your fields, however, does change how the game playes imo. As I wrote above: I like, when previously mere “visual stuff” (beauty buildings) are backed up by game mechanics supporting them. I feel rewarded, if a settlement “works” - so yes, this would be fun for me.

Things get even more interesting, if a game challenge is involved - and if this challenge changes, how different “races” or biomes are played. If water wouldn’t be ubiquitous, but sparse (like in the dessert biome), getting access to it (by trading or by digging wells with slowly dripping wetstones), if this sparse water would have to be distributed among all those thursty consumers (Hearthlings, animals, fields) overcomming this challenges would be extremely rewarding for me - so yes, therefore a fun experience.

Additionally, I like when multiple game elements are interlinked. Farming and the landscape (bodies of water or the lack of them), the weather system (rain, heat), wellbeing and trade, …

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you all forget something really important:
wells are made up off stone
masons are a “high tier” profession
without wells you are extremly limited in your “settlement locations”

while the idea of waterdependency might sound good… stonehearth isnt the game for that (as the devs told us again and again that this is not a banished 2.0)

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A well ist just a hole in the ground and some mounting to keep it stable. Stone is optional and just a matter of durability - it could be wood just as well.

And your second argument - we have food and Hearthlings need to eat or they will die.
How is water different?

Additionally and again: The more interlinked specific game mechanics are to each other, the more consistent and interesting a game is (IMO. Always IMO, of course! :slight_smile: ).
Bodies of water are there, but they currently have no purpose.
It is raining, but other than making some Hearthlings happy or sad, it has no purpose.
People build beautiful canal systems and waterfalls, but other than looking pretty (for the player, not the Hearthlings), they have no purpose.

it’s not about making Hearthstone into a Banished clone.
It’s about meaningful decisions, interesting challenges and correlated game mechanics - and those are important in ANY game.

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This is the crux of it!

If water mechanics tie into other mechanics, not always as essential parts of the game but giving players a lot of opportunity to play with different combinations, then it will be fun. If they’re just a “chore”, they won’t be fun. Finding a balance which makes water important without making it too important/overbearing on the player’s attention is the key here, but I think you’re already heading in the right direction @Deggial.

For example, perhaps there are some plants which satisfy a part of the hearthlings’ water needs? That would reduce the stress of providing water for the town if the player is already focusing on farming and cooking; so they don’t need to spend a lot of effort on wells and water carriers… but at the same time, a little bit of effort digging irrigation canals could allow them to improve their farm yields. It would make sense if the RC had more access to these plants (e.g. gourds and cacti), whereas the Ascendancy have less of them/less access (corn perhaps? Of course they have berries too… they provide a good “rough and ready” early-game solution, although the player would probably need more than just berry bushes in the late game) because the Ascendancy are used to the idea of using abundant local freshwater whereas the RC are used to the idea that they have to provide their own.

One other thing I’ve brought up in other threads about water is the idea of using it in “public amenities” – e.g. bathhouses – to promote hearthling wellbeing. Such structures will require advanced engineering (at the very least they’ll need aqueducts and high-level crafts like mason and weaver items, probably pumps as well), and provide the town with a boost across most or all of the population (depending on access to the bathhouse), so it’s more of a late-game “quality of life” project rather than part of the bare essentials of starting out. But it’s the kind of project which brings together elements from across the game, and gives the player a sense of achievement at having this advanced structure which only the most developed towns can support.

Once again, it’s all about tying everything together. If water feels like it belongs, it will be fun; if it feels like it’s just poured in to make everything a bit prettier then it won’t be much fun except where it’s just conveniently in the background. At the very least, there should be some tangible benefit to learning how to move water around and use it in construction; even if it’s just a defensive bonus such as enemies being unable to attack while they’re swimming, or a boost to growth speed for any plant growing near water, or something simple like that.

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First time lurker here.
I´m bumping this thread, because the water element is pretty much the one thing that has kept me from truly enjoying this game (and I´ve been following it for about four years probably). Water being nothing but eye-candy totally destroyed the immersion experience for me!

I just read about the game being “finished” and it was a huge disappointment for me, since they cut out all kind usage for the water.

There is the Cafe mod that includes the need to drink, and that is good. But not enough. Is there any mods that plans to include

  1. irrigation (a necessity in desert environments, and maybe giving a boost otherwise, or if the summer is exceptionally dry & hot) and
  2. fishing (perfect for the first source of food along with forageing, also a wonderfully cosy thing, building a little bridge and having some hearthlings sit there chatting with their fishing rods…

Yep, thats all folks!

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Or, well, a third thing: boats. Necessary to reach and colonize parts away from water, also perfaps there might be patches of fish away from shore that can be reached this way.

BrunoSupremo created the Archipelago mod with includes a fishing job class.

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I haven’t looked into it, but it should be possible to mod in farms consuming nearby water like drystones do and growing in proportion to the water consumed (obviously with a limit on how much they consume, and a minimum growth value so you don’t need irrigation for areas where it’s difficult/impossible to have it, but it will always help). I expect we’ll see a farming mod do that in the not too distant future.

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