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- - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-02 15:49
Hi there!

I had two very long train rides and therefore lots of time to think about OpenClonk ;)

My first attempt was to draft a concept concerning production / settlement buildings but I got stuck in the thinking about resources. Though I have some ideas about buildings, I was not able to write them down yet because before I could start that, I wanted to summarise the current available resources; my starting basis for building that should do something with that stuff.
I then had some ideas of how raw and refined material could - theoretically - work together.

These are my thoughts:



I started with a list of all materials and then added some of my own which I thought fit well. Before going on I will give you the explanation of the new mats:



I do not mean to violate you all with my hand writing, so I will copy everything. I just wanted to show how my concepting process works ;)

Corn / Grain
Introducing this new plant will give us the opportunity to integrate a food production line into the game. So far, food production in Clonk started with "buy flour from the knight's pack". This reduced the production of bread more or less to a mini game without any purpose. But I always saw the strong will to fully implement a useful way of producing food.
Corn (or Grain) grows wildly like trees but more rarely. It grows in small little bushes and I do not think we need widespread fields. A player may arrange several bushes in a row if he or she wants to. The point here is "rarely". To bring your production forward you have to cultivate the corn. This is easy because harvesting one plant will give you two sacks of seeds (it has not to be sacks, but could be one big corn or an ear (Ähre for Germans), it does not matter).
You may then sow the ond and keep the other. Producing one sack of flour may consume two sacks of seed, so you can either fully harvest a wild bush of corn or cultivate at least one of the sacks to keep a plant.
Pouring water on the plants will fasten the growth. The plants consume the pixels via growing faster. However, fully submerged they will not grow. The importent thing is that you do not necissarily need water for it may not be available in every scenario (and it should not).

Ore (gold)
This goes together with the metal ore. The material itself looks the same but the metal ore has a greyish shimmer while the gold ore has a yellow / golden one. Thus you can draw one layer of ore with different content and it will be distinguishable by the shimmering.
The usage of the gold ore is trivial - refine it in a foundry (or anything alike we want to have) and you will get a gold bar. The gold bar then may be sold. The idea behind this is that gold is a horrible cash cow. Blow up and be rich. By including this intermediate stage we force the player to put some effort into making money. He has to keep his fuel supply running.
The 'pure' gold material from old Clonk may then be abandoned.

Fungus / Mushrooms
Again a plant - or maybe two.
The mushroom is known from the fantasy pack. The new thing is that it grows like trees and is not there from the beginning and never reappears. Unlikte trees, mushrooms grow aboveground and underground. Unlike from fantasy it could not be a 'just walk by to pick up' object but needs harvesting as well.
The little mushroom has two possible functions: food and magic ingredient. We may also want to introduce a bigger version of the mushroom (this just could be a 'normal' mushroom growing big) which lignifies. Thus providing wood for underground scenarios / caves.

Moss
I was really into plants...
Moss grows exclusively underground, close to water (it does not need to draw a line of sight to the water but just having it at hand is enough). You may harvest the moss thus acquiring a chunk of wet moss (it is always wet when fresh). You may eat it right then, though it tastes very disgusting, it is a source of energy for the body.
You can also store it somewhere (even having it lying around) to dry it so long there is no water nearby (otherwise it sucks moisture from the air!). Dried moss is not edible anymore but is a nice source of fuel for any kind of burning purpose.
Carry it close to water (or throw it in the water), to moisture it again. Because the plant is very resistant, drying does not kill it. So it may regrow after some time when left alone next to water (and underground). It is also 'edible' again.

That's for the new materials. The old ones are best-known. I had some basic thoughts about refining (trees into wood and ore into metal if it is metal ore). I categorised the materials in six categories: Construction, Fuel, Explosives, Magic, Food, Cash.
This was just to lay ground for the upcoming thinking about possible buildings. The closing thoughts on the first page are:
- You need all materials from the Construction category for a basic settlement scenario. These are Rock, Wood and Metal
- To give the player the possibility to use tricks of the other categories, you need to provide him or her at least with one material of that category, except those I marked to be supporters (Oil in Explosives and water in Food)
- But you do not need to provide every material of a category. One will give the player all the basic stuff in that category. With some tricks in concepting the production lines we may even give the player some (costly) options to fully substitute a material for a missing one

I will end this post now and split the topic for clear arrangement. Next posts will be about tools and energy.
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Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-02 16:22 Edited 2011-05-02 16:24

> Corn / Grain


Well, the problem is what it should be good for. If we're going for actual farming, we are talking quite a lot of time investment. That must have powerful end results in order to be worth it. Otherwise it won't be compatible to other game elements and will end up as a mini-game again. Just healing Clonks probably won't cut it...

> The idea behind this is that gold is a horrible cash cow. Blow up and be rich.


Is that a bad thing? I don't think we should put too much effort into forcing complexity into everything. We could go the "gold statue" way: Make gold bars have quite a bit more worth. I actually like the proposal for giving the foundry more stuff to do alone.

> Fungus / Mushrooms


Hm, we already have crystals for the "magic" part, and I doubt we'd want to drop it. And the food thing is already weak enough as it is, we don't need another resource filling that role.

> Moss


Hard-to-aquire fuel? Hm. It would have to burn for a long time to make it worth all that drying...
Parent - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-02 16:45

> That must have powerful end results in order to be worth it.


That's right. The idea of 'having just food to heal' does not kick in. It may be in scenarios where constant energy loss is a problem (e.g. there are hazardous materials like radiation or bad magic).
Food may also be a part of the goal ("Feed your people and provide them with a shelter" or so).
Of course there is the arbitrary way of introducing hunger...
Last but not least food may be a way of making money.

> Is that a bad thing? I don't think we should put too much effort into forcing complexity into everything.


Yes, you're right on that. It is just that I always disliked the concept of "mine this and you get everything". We can of course design both ways and let the scenario designer make the decision. I just liked the idea of having shiny ore ;)

> Hm, we already have crystals for the "magic" part, and I doubt we'd want to drop it


I just thought about a substitute for crystals. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to have all materials in every scenario. So the designer can either go with crystal or with mushrooms getting more or less (with slight differences) the same effect. Of course we may want to have some of the most powerful magic items to need both, crystals and mushrooms.

> Hard-to-aquire fuel? Hm. It would have to burn for a long time to make it worth all that drying...


Hmm. I thought it to be more of an easy-to-acquire fuel because you just have to harvest it and have it lie around for a minute or so. There may be no coal available and wood is quite hard to get (because you need a sawmill and energy - leaving out the saw idea).
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Parent - By Mafi [de] Date 2011-05-02 19:38
I've got an idea that i didn't saw in clonk yet: vitality.  It's hunger without it's annoying parts.
Every clonk has a vitality number. The bigger this number the better: the clonk builds faster, climbs faster, fights much better. By doing this activities the vitality slowly decreases  down to some min value but by eating you increase vitality (of course there should also be a max value).
- It doesn't decrease by standing around so a guard can just eat his food when he is under the max vitality.
- Jump hight is not affected so you can always come back to your food store.
- It's not only a time gain in settlements but also strategic part of races (climb speed) and melees (fighting power).
Parent - - By Ringwaul [ca] Date 2011-05-02 19:44

>Just healing Clonks probably won't cut it...


Would work well with NPC clonks as upkeep; clonk leaves his jobsite every so often to grab some lunch.

I can't really remember the consensus of NPC clonks in settlement mode, though; but I think this would work well together.
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Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-02 20:45

>I can't really remember the consensus of NPC clonks in settlement mode, though; but I think this would work well together.


The consensus was that the NPC Clonks will usually jump into the deepest pit they can find and then the game is not about doing what you want to do but about trying to get your NPC Clonks unstuck.
Parent - By Newton [mx] Date 2011-05-02 23:02

>> Moss
>Hard-to-aquire fuel? Hm. It would have to burn for a long time to make it worth all that drying...


Hmm, I thought of it being sustainable (replicates). But Clonkonaut didnt mention that I think.
Parent - - By Newton [mx] Date 2011-05-02 22:59 Edited 2011-05-03 16:40
Most of what you wrote is not really new, just a nice summary of what there is. Even the wheat/mushrooms are not really new.

>The material itself looks the same but the metal ore has a greyish shimmer while the gold ore has a yellow / golden one


Like it. Other kind of ores could be displayed this way too.

>Moss


Also like that. I think there could be more things like that.

-----------

Many materials in Clonk I find outright boring. Actually, most of them are much too easy to mine and dont require any further procession. I have a few ideas regarding that:

Oil -> X
get rid of oil (there is no oil currently in OC btw). Its much too easy to mine and it has no other use other than fuel. Instead, Lava can be used as a fuel too - at least lava is a little bit more dangerous to mine :-)

Coal
make coal only mineable by pickaxe (or explosions). Because anyway: Have you ever tried to use a shovel in a coal mine?

Crystal -> ...
no classic crystal: has currently no use and a magic pack could introduce much more interesting materials (and plants) which serve as source of magic. E.g. kinds of moss/mushrooms, specially processed fruits or other materials, object-crystals (like stalagtites on the ground and so on), "magic" fountains or places (where one has to put X to make it mana-y), or "dangerous" materials which hurt the clonks that come too near... etc...

Sulphur -> Firestone
get rid of sulphur. You just dig out one mine and you got Teraflints up your ass! Lets make it a bit more interesting. I had the following idea: Introduce a new material, lets call it firestone for now. It is reddish in color and appears rocky, perhaps with the slightest glitter of lava. You can mine it with the pickaxe (slow) which will give you firestones (like the ones we have). Out of firestones, one can create (almost everything else explosive. If the firestone material is blasted, the material converts slowly into lava as fast as oil would burn way (with some cool visual effects like small explosions, gushing flames etc.). Eventually (after some time), the material converts back into firestone. However if that (kind of) lava is then put into water, small chunks of (floating?) firestone come out.

This would basically eliminate most boring materials (sulphur, crystal, oil, ~coal)
Parent - By Newton [de] Date 2011-05-10 21:35
Parent - - By Maikel Date 2011-05-03 15:54
I do like the gold ore idea, makes it much more challenging to produce sufficient amounts of wealth.

Something I always found miraculous in Clonk was how windmills and balloons were always constructed out of wood and metal. So maybe we can also consider besides growing grain, growing cotton. Which can be turned into fabric(construction material for windmill, balloon, etc.) and ropes(balloon, grappler, whatever more). It may just behave similar to grain, a problem with this approach, however, is that these objects are not easily accessible in the early parts of a round. On the other hand the issue with the windmill being to easy, might be resolved through this initial expense.
Parent - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-03 16:25
I do like that idea.
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Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-03 18:51
If we have moss, we can as well use that for the ropes! :)
Parent - - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2011-05-04 07:32 Edited 2011-05-04 07:36
Gold does not come in ORE naturally (it is found as nuggets).

I can't allow you to leave it EVEN for the sake of gameplay :-)

P.S. A compromise: gold nuggets should be processed to the gold bars in foundry to become money
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Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-04 09:15

> Gold does not come in ORE naturally (it is found as nuggets).


Well, no, that's not true. And I have no idea how you got this belief. A quick google search for "gold ore" delivers you all the following pictures of it:
Google images

Here is the Wikipedia article about Gold Mining - I don't want to write it off, so read it yourself. Your impression may derive from the "Placer mining" methods, but today's gold production is based on hard rock mining. But by no means you dig in the ground and just hit into a big nugget of gold. No.
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Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-04 13:20
Parent - - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2011-05-04 14:36
Well, yes... My bad. The reason for my statement was a "distinction" in terminologies.

I got used to the ore being an oxide of the metal that I completely forgot that not every ore is actualy oxide.
In nature gold indeed can be rarely found in the form of sulfides (ore) but it is not that common. Usually gold comes as a mixture with other metals like copper, nickel, lead, silver and so. Technically speaking: gold is a part of other metal's ore.

To finally make the point, I should add that there IS such thing as a Gold Oxide (most common is Au2O3) but it can only be produced artificially and is not something commonly found in nature.

You can not extract gold fromj the "gold ore" in a foundry. (You need to perform cyanide process at some special plant). That was the main argument I had (sorry for misunderstanding)
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Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-04 14:39
Well, of course ore contains a mixture of metals, but geez, we're still talking in the terms of a game. And just to keep it playable we will assume that there's such material like "gold ore" and that you can get the gold from the foundry. I really don't see what your point is.
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Parent - - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2011-05-04 14:57
My argument was not "conceptual" but rather "representational". (The most stupid part about it is that I did not want to argue or prove anything)

We already have "some" material which has its deposits lying underneath the earth. It can be blasted by explosives and delivered as a chunks to the home base. Then it can be processed in foundry to become a valuable resource. Your idea was to indroduce another "tier" of production process.

Compare the following:
Iron ore ---(blast)---> Ore chunks ---(smelt)---> Metal bars ---(build)---> Some edifice
Gold ore(pure gold) ---(blast)---> Ore chunks(gold nuggets) ---(smelt)---> Pure gold(gold bars) ---(sell)---> PROFIT!

You wanted to have this additional processing step to restrict gold ore chunks from being sold right away (as is) but ONLY after additional processing (refinement). I completely agree with this idea of yours (the only difference between your vision and my vision is the one depicted with small font :-).

So there is probably nothing left to discuss.

P.S. Sorry for being such a wimp
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Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-04 15:04
Okay, so if I get you right, you wanted to clear up the naming of all parts? So we don't have "ore chunks" or "gold ore chunks" but "gold nugget"?
That wouldn't be something I'd rail against ;)
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Parent - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2011-05-04 15:09
Exactly.

Thanks for understanding :-)
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Parent - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2011-05-04 08:08
I actually like the idea of having substitutes for almost every material. Thus you can do the same stuff different way. This will give player an interesting variety (richer gameplay) and will probably make reaching the scenario goal more like the art than just a boring routing (see below for explanation).

We have already had some discussions concerning this idea:

1. The idea of using different materials for the structural buildings. You can build them using:
- wood: fast to get but least robust and exposed to fire;
- stone: need explosives to get, much stronger, can not be incinerated;
- metal: need explosives to get ore, need foundry to procude, much stronger, not a subject to fire, (can be rusted ? / exposed to acid)
- concrete: very complex production line, very strong, not exposed to fire or rust (or acid)
- titanium :-) ...
... and so on

2. Fuel. The was alredy a nice variety of fuel materials in CR:
- wood (chop trees and burn them);
- coal (just dig it with the shovel);
- oil (use barrels to handle);
... and so on
If we continue the idea of using fuel as power, we must mention wind power (the cheapest but volatile way of getting powers) and think of some other power sources: lava? sun? water?
Having different power sources is cool - thus introducing moss is the right direction of thoughts

3. Explosives. One can use different materials to make (nearly) the same explosives. (Well, they would not be the same but they will explode anyway).
- flints: just dig them and use;
- sulhur: use to make complex explosives;
- gunpowder: the same;
- crystals: can be used as explosives as well
... and so on

What I'm trying to say is that we SHOULD NOT abandon any of the resources. Even if they serve only one particular purpose (like oil, coal or sulphur).

The main benefits of this approach are the following:
1. In scenarios where there are no resource of some kind (e.g. ore thus no metal) you can still use another material as a substitution (f.i., to make boats or blimps). With (maybe slight) effect on the performance/stability of the product
2. In (settlement) melees different materials introduce different strategies: use fast production lines to build primitive weapons/structures (e.g. make your towers out of wood) or use slow complex buildings (e.g. concrete bunker) to gain higher efficiency
3. It is realy cool to have lots of different materials/plants etc.
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- - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-02 16:02
Next part: Tools

I thought of some of the possible tools to introduce into the settlement. Since we stripped the Clonk of his digging ability it is but logic to rob some more skills.

This is the tool overview (ignore the energy stuff for now):



Sickle
This is to harvest corn, mushrooms and moss. No explanation needed.

Axe
This is to chop wood. Either tree or big mushrooms are suitable. No further explanation needed.

Pickaxe
This could be a cheap way to gather raw materials from the ground. The progress is slow so if there are some explosives available you are more likely to use them instead of the pickaxe. But at least you do not necissarily need explosives.

Saw
This could be a cheap way to gather wood from trees or mushrooms. If we want to abandon a whole sawmill building, the saw should be fast and cut a tree in whole at once. Otherwise this would be the slow & cheap version again. Wood is gained piece by piece (the trees may shrink like in the old 'Bayernwald' scenario - I will try and picture it for everyone not familiar with it later).

This post is a short one but a single topic. The next post will be about energy.
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Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-02 16:27

> Pickaxe


Well, we had another possible use for it earlier: Mine flintstone. Still a bit weak...

> Saw


Not sure. Do we really want to kill the "bring your trees to the sawmill" game element?
Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-02 16:50

> Well, we had another possible use for it earlier: Mine flintstone. Still a bit weak...


It's just meant to be the first-to-start-off-with thing. Slow and forgotten when you got the flintstone stuff... (which involves the production buildings).

> Not sure. Do we really want to kill the "bring your trees to the sawmill" game element?


To be honest: I don't want to. But I read somewhere the idea, I think, so I assimilated the idea. This could also be the start-off stuff like the pickaxe until you have the faster buildings.
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Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-02 17:25

> Slow and forgotten when you got the flintstone stuff...


So it's something we design to be used exclusively in the first 10 minutes of the game?

> This could also be the start-off stuff like the pickaxe until you have the faster buildings.


Well, the sawmill is already pretty weak in that it has only one function (yes, it can theoretically saw non-trees as well, but nobody uses that). Splitting that in half doesn't seem like a good idea...
Parent - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-02 17:39

> So it's something we design to be used exclusively in the first 10 minutes of the game?


I don't see why this may be bad but furthermore I think the pickaxe will remain a special purpose tool, like when you need only one or two chunks of a material and don't want to waste an explosive or for digging a tunnel through solid material.

> Well, the sawmill is already pretty weak in that it has only one function (yes, it can theoretically saw non-trees as well, but nobody uses that). Splitting that in half doesn't seem like a good idea...


Yeah, okay. The advantage of a sawmill would be that the whole tree is cut at once and not piece by piece. But I'm totally cool with dropping the saw and will not support it anymore so someone needs to jump in for this ;)
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Parent - By Matthias [de] Date 2011-05-02 19:28
Mining via pickaxe is much cheaper, of course. It also allows you to mine materials that would ignite or crumble when blown up ;)
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Parent - - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2011-05-04 08:22
... and you may have no explosives in some scenarios
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Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-04 13:25
If there is a scenario that needs objects or behavior that does not exist in the original package, the scenario usually ships it's own objects
Parent - By Newton [mx] Date 2011-05-02 23:11
We could also rob him off his sticking to walls and hangling ability and instead require him to build lassers and lines. Just an idea though. Regarding your ideas:

Yupp, totally agree. I like the saw, too. I am not sure though if the sawmill should be abandoned completely. hmm...
From the other power plants I only find the acid one interesting (as long as it consumes the acid) as well as the solar plant as long as it is required to point several "mirrors" onto that one station (otherwise it would be the most boring one IMO).
- - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-02 16:33
Last part: Energy

Energy is a tough resource. Needed in masses but fairly hard to produce. I will not go into how energy is transferred but the production. Again my draft:



First I thought about the classic ways of producing energy.

Windmill
The windmill was always the cheap one. Just plaster the landscape with windmills and it is fine. No problems unless there are some meteorites. The weakness was - well - its greatest weakness. So long until you spot a dot of sky underground then the weakness was gone. I remember some criticism on the windmill because of this cheap exploit. We may keep it or not or do some brainwork to restrain the windmill to the surface. For now I have nothing to say about it.

Steam engine
This is the old power plant in a new shiny steampunk version. Provide it with fuel (wood, coal, oil or dried moss) and it will produce energy. Fuel is more or less available unlimitedly. So this one is probably your main source of energy most of the time.

I now thought of some specialised power plants which are used whenever you happen to have the corresponding materials. The first two are then highly profitable (because the needed materials are rare), the last one is not for some reason.
To control the profit from one power plant we could rethink the whole "produce x amount of energy" concept and just limit the amount of supportable buildings. Like the steam engine may support three or two buildings (it is irrelevant whether they are active or not), the windmill just one or whatever. This is just a sidekick idea.

These are the new plants:

Acid battery
The idea came from the potato battery: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_b5hcKABPlGI/TTJO7phdUQI/AAAAAAAAk_8/RnoCDsF_1-U/s1600/1-1610a.jpg
This power plant needs metal and acid. Because acid is rare and dangerous and metal is a refined resource the gain is bigger than with the steam engine. No sketch of its look available by now.

Solar power plant
This one is not that cheap as it sounds. To focus the sunlight you need a crystal on top of this one. Crystal is rare as well. The crystal burns out after some time. The plant needs a direct line of sight to the sky! If you cannot provide that or think this is too risky, you may construct some mirrors to redirect the light (see the lower right corner of my draft). With some of these you can even guide the light down into a cave.
The solar power plant has a little bonus I did not write down on the paper. You may use it as a laser cannon (thus consuming the crystal at once). This will fire a compressed sunbeam onto the targeted spot making everything idling around there burst into flames.

Hydro electric power plant
This is the one I am not sure about. It is obviously fueled by water power. It is a little wall which starts to produce energy if water touches either of the sides. The water dribbles out of the opposite side. You will need a big amount of water and a cave where this water might be stored after passing through your plant.
The tricky part is to prevent perpetuum mobiles by connecting a pump to the plant. Therefore the dribbling must be faster than the pump and it should not be possible to connect more than one pump to this one. This could be managed by just providing one building with this plant. But the careful chosen amount of produced energy may be too little to justify the effort.
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Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-02 17:31

> We may keep it or not or do some brainwork to restrain the windmill to the surface. For now I have nothing to say about it.


Are you kidding? There's probably no promotional screenshot of Clonk that doesn't show a windmill somewhere. Like hell we remove it :)

In my book, the main problem is not that windmills are too strong, but that other sources of energy are too weak. Pretty much anything that needs constant surveillance is probably unrealistic in typical Clonk gameplay.

Some other ideas:
* Monster generator (lure one into your settlement, then trap it to have a good energy resource!)
* Lava generator (build close to lava, cool it with water => sustainable energy!)

> and just limit the amount of supportable buildings.


+1
Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-02 17:44 Edited 2011-05-02 17:50

> There's probably no promotional screenshot of Clonk that doesn't show a windmill somewhere.


Hmmm :D

> Pretty much anything that needs constant surveillance is probably unrealistic in typical Clonk gameplay.


But on the other hand it is more challenging and adds a new task to the player. What is the purpose in energy consumption when it's just a 'construct another building, that does nothing' task?
And with the new transportation system it isn't even necessary to deliver the stuff inside the power plant but the plant may grab the needed mats on its own! (yes, I know what you will say about this :D)

The cheap way of discouraging windmills would be to disallow their construction in certain scenarios.

/e

By the way, I like your other ideas!
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Parent - - By Caesar [de] Date 2011-05-02 18:18

>The cheap way of discouraging windmills would be to disallow their construction in certain scenarios.


Some more interesting ways would be nearly no wind, cave background, magic aiming meteors (don't make it too obvious...)?
Parent - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-02 18:22
Finally the S2Meteor? ;)
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Parent - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-03 12:54

> But on the other hand it is more challenging and adds a new task to the player. What is the purpose in energy consumption when it's just a 'construct another building, that does nothing' task?


On the contrary, it does something very important: It constraints your base location choice. Especially if we severely limit the distance electricity can travel - which is kind-of where we are going with this. Want to have a windmill? Be prepared to wrestle with rain, meteorites and lightning, and a long walk to the mine. Want to use a lava/acid generator? Be very prepared for the next earthquake to kill your whole settlement.

> yes, I know what you will say about this :D


I am saying that this would take exactly that depth away.

> The cheap way of discouraging windmills would be to disallow their construction in certain scenarios.


From the CR point of view, I'm not sure I would want to play that. I toyed with the thought for Sunshine, but decided against it. Coal plants are just to much hassle.
Parent - - By MimmoO Date 2011-05-02 18:10

>Acid battery


I really like this, its new and combines two materials that otherwise probably would never interact. Though it would need to be very efficient, since its a lot of work to gather materials for it: metal costs fuel and ore, acid is dangerous - you could simply but the fuel for the metal into the steam engine. One solution would be to make the metal last long, and only to be renewed every few units of acid.

>Solar power plant


Reminds me of the Solar power plant of the clonk-mars project. I liked the idea there and think it would be a great addition. I especially like the ideas of having mirrors reflect the sunlight. It would also give a different purpose to the crystal other than magic.

>Hydro electric power plant


I dont really know about this one. It's a nice idea, but i doubt it will work out.

>Steam engine
>Windmill


totally agree with your opinions and ideas there.

If anyone had the good old Clonk-power -> Energy-idea, i generally dislike the idea to trade clonks against energy.
Parent - By AlteredARMOR [ua] Date 2011-05-04 08:32

> i generally dislike the idea to trade clonks against energy.


Yeah... It is very inhumanely...
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Parent - - By Matthias [de] Date 2011-05-02 19:36
Windmills can be "weakend" by applying some real-world constraints to them: They get inefficient when there is
- a wall
- another windmill
in a 5 times rotor-size distance. So wind parks would need quite some free space.
Also, wind could blow stronger only in greater heights. That's probably something we'd want to leave to the scenario designer, though.
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Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-03 13:01 Edited 2011-05-03 13:03

> Also, wind could blow stronger only in greater heights. That's probably something we'd want to leave to the scenario designer, though.


Wouldn't be too hard to make it general. Wind blows always horizontally, and the less resistance it has, the more effective it is. The windmill could slowly test all angles to its left and right, and the more sky it finds, the better it works. Solid-masks should probably stop it completely.

This would mean that you can't completely wall it off, but you can give your wind park a roof.

> - another windmill


I know that's no actual argument, but that's unrealistic from a physical point of view :)
Parent - By Matthias [de] Date 2011-05-03 18:14
Sounds like it's worth a try.

>> - another windmill
>  I know that's no actual argument, but that's unrealistic from a physical point of view :)


Well, assuming a 2D-world, it isn't unrealistic at all - the windmills are all lined up there :P
In real life, wind speed indeed decreases behind a first windmill, also, there are turbulences. Those cause the wind to not hit the next rotors straight on, which further lowers the efficiency of other windmills "in line" to that first one. Mechanical parts might also be worn off faster because of that effect.
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- - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-05-17 09:19
Okay, I wanted to sum up some of the ideas which emerged in this thread:

Peter asked, of what use food is:
I will answer in my own words:
1. Food heals the eating Clonk. This is an old idea. The "magic" healing via the home base in exchange with money has to be turned off to make the effort of producing food reasonable. But even this does not push the whole idea since in an average settlement scenario you will probably one bread or so per hour. This use of food comes more or less as a gimmick.
2. We have to think of new gains from food. Producing food may be a scenario goal. I don't think the original objects have to provide exhaustive ideas. Drop the goal and let the developers later decide in which way they want to make the production of food interesting. In respect of the different complexities of production not every piece of food should be of the same worth. Since bread is the most complex product I described it should give the most food points (or whatever).
3. Food may conquer any form of hunger or vitality loss of the Clonk. I just drop Mafi's idea and furthermore assume that everyone is familiar with the mechanism of hunger in preceding titles.

Newton came up with the following changes to existing materials:
Oil should be removed since it's only good for cash and fuel. Newton suggested to use lava for fuel instead.
Coal should be hard. To mine it use the pickaxe or explosives.
Remove Crystal. Think of other magic materials (interesting materials & plants).
Remove Sulphur. Introduce a "Firestone" material instead. See Newton's post for further details.

Maikel came up with the following:
According to the corn idea, introduce cotton. Cotton will provide the player with cloth (new construction material).

AlteredARMOR remarked that a "gold ore chunk" should be called nugget.

Peter suggested two more types of power plants:
Monster generator, which needs a trapped monster to run.
Lava generator, uses lava to run, cools with water.

Matthias made some suggestion to discourage windmills.

I hope this hits the main topics of this thread. I conclude hereby that the criticism of the initial ideas was restrained. I will continue with a second thread in a short time which will base on the results of this one.
Reply
Parent - - By Newton [de] Date 2011-05-17 09:57
Good writeup. One or two suggestions about the windmills remark of Matthias:

1. if there is a sustainable source of fuel like moss, cotton?? or some weird game mechanic of (slowly) producing infinite amounts of lava (with firestone material?), non-windmill power will be much more attractive to use.
2. if the steam engine (power plant) only uses that much fuel than it needs to, thus not wastes one whole coal just for a short elevator ride (and if the player trusts the power plant to behave like this) and/or the excess energy can be stored for later usage, it also gets more attractive
3. consider to just make the wind generator produce less energy so it is required to build more of them (and you may not build them too close together like Matthi suggested) and/or need an accumulator to slowly save up energy to later spend it on the construction of many explosives in the chemical lab.
Parent - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-17 12:24
If we limit the distance electricity can travel we are changing the equation quite a bit already. As I said earlier - while in CR you might place a windmill out in the open and rebuild it once in a while, now you'd have to build everything outside and risk loosing precious parts of your industry to meteorites.

Also note that this might even take a bit of the sting out of "high-maintenance" power generators, as now if you lose power you won't have to walk for long to fix the problem.
Parent - By Caesar [de] Date 2011-05-17 12:10
I accidentally read these two sentences sequentially:

> But even this does not push the whole [food] idea
> Monster generator, which needs a trapped monster to run.


If you just found a monster egg and placed in the generator, will that monster need food to grow up and to work?
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-17 12:12 Edited 2011-05-17 12:15

> The "magic" healing via the home base in exchange with money has to be turned off to make the effort of producing food reasonable.


Still not really convinced...
1. Healing is something you often need spontaneously - it getting bound to one of the potentially slowest production processes in the game seems like a bad fit.
2. Making it a scenario goal is just akin of bringing the old boring "produce X of stuff" back: There's no use for castles? Let's just make building them the goal of the scenario! That's just cheap.
3. Hunger mechanics are something we'll probably only bother with for the more hardcore settlement games, so having food just for that purpose still seems like putting it in a corner.

> According to the corn idea, introduce cotton. Cotton will provide the player with cloth (new construction material).


That's the idea I like best so far: Have it as a part of the higher-tier weapon production. Airships, grapple hooks, windmills (?) - all the stuff you want the player to not have access to immediately.

> Remove oil, cystal and sulphur


Uh, what? If that's seriously something Newton wants to push, he'll have to explain it better. Personally, he pretty much lost me completely at "oil is too easy to mine".
Parent - - By Caesar [de] Date 2011-05-17 12:20 Edited 2012-01-03 19:21
Oil is to easy to mine. You need a pump, one barrel at your base, two pipes and you're done nearly done. Just dig to the oil now. Nothing exploding, no consistent need of transportation (half way hacking lorries up slopes, throwing the objects up something like large stairs, letting your objects slide down slopes to span horizontal distances to the elevator, etc.). The variety of efficient techniques you can use to mine solid/chunked materials is just outreaching the one for liquid materials by far.
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-17 13:33

>Oil is to easy to mine. You need a pump, one barrel at your base, two pipes and you're done nearly done.


As far as I know we don't even have a pump, barrel and base yet! Oh, and pipes!
Don't mistake ClonkRage for OpenClonk!
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-17 13:37

>1. Healing is something you often need spontaneously - it getting bound to one of the potentially slowest production processes in the game seems like a bad fit.


While I did not decide whether I like food (for healing), I'd say that you only need it spontaneously if you did not prepare for it. For example: Don't go on dangerous adventure when you either have no food or no money to buy food.
On the other hand we WANT the player to go on dangerous adventures, because that's fun.
So, I am pretty undecided yet.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-17 13:45
PS: And if you do not use food for healing: How do you heal?
A healing aura in your base does not really provide you with the spontaneous healing you want :)

EDIT: money would work, of course. But then every scenario would have to provide gold or money to the player. And until now hardcore settlement scenarios did not have to do that
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