Resource Balance
JosephTheGreat
Join Date: 2016-04-12 Member: 215692Members
Join Date: 2016-04-12 Member: 215692Members
Hello everyone, I have been following this forums since H2O update but never posted anything. But today I wanted to talk about problems I have with current resource placement. This is purely subjective, not everyone will agree, however I believe you will understand what I mean here. For the start, I want to apologize for my English if something is not correct since it is not my primary language.
Through my life, mostly my childhood I always thought about creating my RPG or Strategy game. And as you all know those type of games require everything to be rightly balanced (resources, items, crafting, building, ...), so I spent a lot of time creating my shops with item stats and similar stuff so you can say I am kinda trained for the things I am about to talk:
Problems:
Firstly, I want to talk about Sandstone Outcrop. It seems that in the latest update there is increased amount of Gold that drops, it's like 50-50 Silver-Gold ratio (why?). From my experience, before this latest Precursor update, Sandstone used to yield more Silver than Gold (75-25).
Secondly, thing about Diamond and Lithium. There is certainly too much Diamonds in the game world. It is used in like 1-2 crafting recipes? Problem I have here is with pure placement of Diamond and Shale and Basalt Outcrops.
All this combined results in a huge amount of Gold stacking up in storage units. From Basalt we get Diamonds and Gold in (25-75) ratio. For every 4 Basalt Outcrops broken, we roughly get 1 diamond and 2-3 gold, in my opinion Basalt Outcrop should be removed and replaced with Sandstone and Limestone. And Shale outcrop should not drop Diamonds.
How would I solve those problems:
I would set Sandstone to 80-20 ratio in favor of Silver. Since diamonds are barely used, I would remove them from Shale outcrop, leaving them only in Obsidian outcrop. I will also remove all raw diamonds from Underwater Floating Islands biome and every other biome and place them in certain spots in caves in quantity of 1 to 3. An example would be a cave on border of Mushroom Forest biome and Koosh biome with underground volcano as well as many other cave locations. I think this would force players to explore caves more and game in general. I would reduce the number of raw lithium placed in Mushroom Forest biome and other locations so that Shale Outcrop gains some importance. So getting lithium would be combination of reduced amount of raw lithium and Shale outcrops. Silver purely from Sandstone. Diamonds from hidden caves and Obsidian Outcrop. And at last, famous Gold would be a little bit from Sandstone and mostly from Shale Outcrop, because I believe that gold in general should be harder to obtain. Basalt would be completely ditched from the game and replaced with Limestone and Sandstone, so that when we build our base for example in Grand Reef biome we have enough titanium, copper and silver to build our bases. And in the end, even after all of this, if one of above resources ends up filling lockers a bit more than the other, I would just put that specific resource in more recipes, for example Copper or Gold when crafting Computer Chips because it makes sense. I think Uraninite Crystals are okay, maybe could be placed a bit deeper..
I hope i wrote everything I had on my mind...
I also hope all this makes sense because if i try to get Lithium or Diamond from Shale i get some Gold, if i try to get Diamond from Basalt i get a lot of Gold, and now I get same amount of Gold and silver from Sandstone. Gold everywhere, and we need like 25-30 pieces to build everything.
After breaking 15 Sandstone Outcrops:
So, do you think these problems exist and how would you solve them or I am just insane?
Through my life, mostly my childhood I always thought about creating my RPG or Strategy game. And as you all know those type of games require everything to be rightly balanced (resources, items, crafting, building, ...), so I spent a lot of time creating my shops with item stats and similar stuff so you can say I am kinda trained for the things I am about to talk:
Problems:
Firstly, I want to talk about Sandstone Outcrop. It seems that in the latest update there is increased amount of Gold that drops, it's like 50-50 Silver-Gold ratio (why?). From my experience, before this latest Precursor update, Sandstone used to yield more Silver than Gold (75-25).
Secondly, thing about Diamond and Lithium. There is certainly too much Diamonds in the game world. It is used in like 1-2 crafting recipes? Problem I have here is with pure placement of Diamond and Shale and Basalt Outcrops.
All this combined results in a huge amount of Gold stacking up in storage units. From Basalt we get Diamonds and Gold in (25-75) ratio. For every 4 Basalt Outcrops broken, we roughly get 1 diamond and 2-3 gold, in my opinion Basalt Outcrop should be removed and replaced with Sandstone and Limestone. And Shale outcrop should not drop Diamonds.
How would I solve those problems:
I would set Sandstone to 80-20 ratio in favor of Silver. Since diamonds are barely used, I would remove them from Shale outcrop, leaving them only in Obsidian outcrop. I will also remove all raw diamonds from Underwater Floating Islands biome and every other biome and place them in certain spots in caves in quantity of 1 to 3. An example would be a cave on border of Mushroom Forest biome and Koosh biome with underground volcano as well as many other cave locations. I think this would force players to explore caves more and game in general. I would reduce the number of raw lithium placed in Mushroom Forest biome and other locations so that Shale Outcrop gains some importance. So getting lithium would be combination of reduced amount of raw lithium and Shale outcrops. Silver purely from Sandstone. Diamonds from hidden caves and Obsidian Outcrop. And at last, famous Gold would be a little bit from Sandstone and mostly from Shale Outcrop, because I believe that gold in general should be harder to obtain. Basalt would be completely ditched from the game and replaced with Limestone and Sandstone, so that when we build our base for example in Grand Reef biome we have enough titanium, copper and silver to build our bases. And in the end, even after all of this, if one of above resources ends up filling lockers a bit more than the other, I would just put that specific resource in more recipes, for example Copper or Gold when crafting Computer Chips because it makes sense. I think Uraninite Crystals are okay, maybe could be placed a bit deeper..
I hope i wrote everything I had on my mind...
I also hope all this makes sense because if i try to get Lithium or Diamond from Shale i get some Gold, if i try to get Diamond from Basalt i get a lot of Gold, and now I get same amount of Gold and silver from Sandstone. Gold everywhere, and we need like 25-30 pieces to build everything.
After breaking 15 Sandstone Outcrops:
So, do you think these problems exist and how would you solve them or I am just insane?
Comments
Diamond seems like something that definitely should be removed from the Underwater Islands. But I would keep the raw diamonds on the Mountain's Island, because the chances of new players finding those Mushroom Forest cave systems on their own is unlikely, but every new player will find the Mountain Island now that the Sunbeam is implemented.
I think gold should be taken out of Shale for sure, but in my opinion, Shale should be removed altogether. I find it having little use when I can find all the resources Shale gives in different, safer places.
Basalt in my opinion doesn't need any changes. It's the only outcrop I want to get gold from, and if I'm looking for something else in Basalt, I'm happy to get a little gold along the way.
And finally, how on 4546B did you find 15 sandstone nodes?! I have trouble finding five!
As for diamonds i kinda agree about new players having trouble finding out how to get Diamonds.
About Shale and Basalt, one way or the other works, i believe one of those should be taken out and then balanced.
I find most of my Silver that I will need in that geyser/volcano somewhere north in safe shallows that is connected with cave system to a Kelp Forest biome, there is plenty..
Thanks for reply btw!
Personally i like having the ''higher'' tier resources rarer. Gold is one example of it. Its used mainly to make Adv. wiring kits which is part of the higher-end tier of the game. For this reason it should most definitely be harder to obtain than it is now. Currently, Gold is found in abundance almost everywhere which is wrong imo. I'd leave Gold in Basalt crops and move ALL those basalt crops to lower than 300m (which you need either a tier 2 depth upgrade for the 'Moth or a Cyclops or the PRAWN to reach em) and then make Sandstones 75% Silver /15% Gold / 10% Diamond.
Silver has always been the ''harder'' ore to find. It is used in a few recipes but those few recipes are used alot troughout the game (Computer chips comes to mind specifically) Sandstones are harder to find than Limestones which is in my opinion perfectly fine. One can find alot of sandstones in the game once they know where to look, which requires exploration of every lil nooks 'n crannies of the map. Plus, later on when the PRAWN is obtained it can be gotten in truckloads from the big silver chunks.
Copper is the first thing you find in the game alongside raw Titanium. Personally i have 0 problems finding Copper , theres alot of Limestones everywhere, specifically in the Shallows Biome. Those huge coral tubes/caves have tons of them
Lead is fine in limestones altho id make it more rarer than it is now (15% maybe? early game we dont need it that much, just for making a rad suit if someone miss it at Lifepod 6) Then late game you can get loads of them with the PRAWN
Lithium is used alot, specifically for reinforcement panels and Plasteel Ingots. Its found also in a few biomes currently and in masses. I'd simply reduce the numbers found in every biomes theres some maybe? Finding them only in Shale isnt such a bad idea either but i would then make Shale Lithium only or Shale being 80% Lithium / 20% Diamond or something.
Diamonds are used in only 2 recipes (laser cutter and diamond blade) id remove all raw diamonds found and keep them only as drops from basalt 25%/Sandstones 10% maybe. Laser cutter is pretty useful tho as its needed in almost every bigger wrecks/Aurora, but you only need 1-2-3 in the whole game right now really.
Of course all number are debatable. Bottom line is, pretty much everyone agrees that higher-end tier resources needs to be rarer than lower end resources, thats just common sense really
My own thoughts on rebalancing are more along the following lines:
Probably a rare-ish but not infrequent bug or something.
Then I want my bug back!
Althought I am surprised people even managed to play this game with a 25/75 silver/gold ratio. That's, like, no silver at all!
Lead is used for the Nuclear Reactor and Reactor Rods in addition to the Radiation suit, but still a low rate on Limestone Outcrops is all that is needed.
Apparently Barnacles on Reefbacks only carry Silver and Copper so that is another source for Silver and they are easier to find than Sandstone Outcrops.
Gah, forgot about the hardened knife! Haven't made one for many playthroughs what with the eternal knife bug still being a thing. I hope that one gets mended some time soon. Lead I'd like to see become an ingredient in the biohazard trash can and perhaps that lead lockers can become a thing to store uranium.
Barnacles have a poor silver ratio in my experience. They're great for copper, but midgame sea treaders' basalt is a better resource.
Nonsense! I always find more silver than gold in sandstone before the ratio was changed.
That would annoy the piss out of me. We need SO MUCH lithium as-is. Just to build your prawn and cyclops and max out your pressure compensators on all vehicles currently requires about 30 lithium to manufacture all the plasteel required. And that's not including any base hall reinforcement you might want to build.
It's either redo the system and have things "grow" as they are(as in copper nodes, lead nodes, titanium nodes, silver nodes etc) or make resources respawn after in-game month or so. Currently lead, quartz, lithium and uranite get devoured fast by people that build far and wide.
There should definitely not be 3 kind of outcrops that yield Gold, much less with that high of a probabilty of dropping it. So first of all limit Gold to a single kind of outcrop with basalt being the best candidate in my opinion as of now there isn't very much use for Gold but enough use to have a high probability (75/25 or better against Diamond) of it dropping in one single kind of hard(er) to reach outcrop. None of the stuff you can build with Gold or advanced wiring kits is highly necessarry in early game, not even the propulsion cannon. I personally didn't need it to find my way around the Aurora.
Silver should be much easier to acquire, as it is in the current game's state essential for almost everything. So turn up the probability of it dropping from sandstone (maybe also replace the Gold in sandstone with Lead; something like 75-80% Silver/20-25% Lead) and maybe even give it a low probability of dropping from limestone. Another thing I thought of is, to make Silver from table coral samples as it description reads, quote: "Contains trace precious metals used in computer fabrication." Having a way of extracting it from the corals would be worth a thougt. Maybe implementing a chemistry station, build with glass and titanium as well as maybe a computerchip for a centrifuge, and using either acid mushrooms (though their high count would make it to easy) or gas pods (which at least are a small threat) as acid source to get rid of the corals organic material. But of course getting one Silver from one table coral would be overkill due to the abundance of table corals. I'd say at least 10 units of table coral and 2 units of gas pods would be necessary for one unit of Silver. This way storage would also be a hinderance in acquiring it to fast.
Finding Diamond should also be much harder and not necessary for the Laser Cutter as it is to essential in exploring wreckage. I would suggest renaming the Laser Cutter into Plasma Cutter to have an excuse for not using a Diamond as there is no need to redirect and focus light in these things and instead use an advanced wiring kit and copper. Locations for Diamonds should be in very deep sea as Diamonds are created under high pressure and temperature and also be used for advanced pressure compensators and maybe high tier base reinforcement.
Next thing, Magnesium. Its a bummer that it only has one use. IRL Magnesium is actually used in underwater torches so maybe swap the crashfish powder in flares for Magnesium. Risking your life against crashfish for some portable light? Doesn't seem worth to me.
And the last thing, I would like to adress, is, that pure Lithium doesn't make any sense. From the little that I remember from my 3 months of studying chemistry is, that elemental Lithium as well as any other alkali metal is EXTREMELY reactive to water, oxidises in a matter of seconds when coming in contact with it and also just never appears naturally in its elemental form. I would suggest to replace it with Wolfram (aka Tungsten) which is much harder than even Titanium, highly resistent to corrosion and heat as well as better at protecting against radiation than Lead (in case radiation becomes more important in lategame again) and nearly as hard as Diamond when in carbide-form, though very heavy. Just wanted to mention that Lithium doesn't make much sense im terms of physical and chemical properties. Finding traces of Lithium-salts in the salt deposit would make more sense than finding it the way it is present in the game right now. I don't want to sound aggressive or offensive but please know your science if you make a Sci-Fi game with chemical elements based on real life. I tend to formulate my sentences in an aggressive manner when poor logic is at place. Just a bad habit of mine.
Also while it feels like you get a lot of gold, you don't actually. You don't use it early on at all, all of gold uses are on late upgrades mostly things that require advanced wiring kit and some other upgrades for vehicles. Now if power transmitters weren't as "lame" as they are there would be another plausible use for it. Point being you are not getting more gold then silver not from sandstone, it is in fact 50/50 you just need a ton of silver early on and for base building. Gold on the other hand accumulates for a long time and there are indeed two nodes that have it for no good reason. Limestone pda entry still doesn't even mention that it has lead. Anyway...
Also since you went into "know your chemistry", mountains are usually dead volcano's... pretty logical place to have them. I was going to write a lot but considering even by our current standards assload of plasma types, I'm just going to say it's bloody CONDUCTIVE and you are under WATER on alien planet where you don't know what you are cutting and in what environment. Sure id be easy to take into account the situation and use the right way of forming whatitscalled the reaction point of setting gas into plasma, but there is no universal way, some will screw electronics some will do other bad things.
I also can understand your argument against the Plasma Cutter I brought up, but I just wanted to make my argument for making Diamonds rarer, and thus more valuable, a bit more comprehensible and didn't know exactely how they work. But if we want to get really nit-picky we could argue that making a Fabricator or Habitat Builder that manipulates matter on atomic level by only using electronics and some metals makes even less sense than a Plasma Cutter that works just fine underwater. In the end it's all just Sci-fi so taking advantage of the unknown is forgivable. But I digress. Another good use for Diamonds after the game further develops could be to implement special deep sea seabases. There is no reason for them being unaffected by higher water pressure, when vehicles are affected by it. Bases should actually be more affected by the pressure because they are stationary. Or maybe I'm wrong about this, too, I don't know. I'm neither a submarine engineer nor the architect of Bioshock's City of Rapture. This way having a bigger access to Diamonds could be legitimate.
And maybe it really just feels like an abundance of gold but having 2 wall lockers full of this stuff makes me think its more than just a feeling. Or maybe we just get this weird feeling because we grew up in a world of videogames where gold's rarity and value is considered higher than that of silver, thus screwing with conventions our brain learned over years. These conventions also make me think that Diamonds should be rarer than they are right now. I'm certain you are familiar with the value sequence, right? copper < silver < gold < platin < diamond ? This or any variation of it is pretty much the standard for every game that doesn't bother to think of an original currency.
But I'm happy that we at least agree in there being to many nodes containing gold with the limited use it has right now. I also dont know much about the industrial use of gold other than as an overpriced conductor so I have no idea what recipes should be added to counter this issue. And I am quite certain about what I said about Lithium and Tungsten. Ever since Terraria implemented Tungsten as a low tier ore that can be melted with just a fricking stone furnace, whereas I already knew before, that that is utter bullcrap (no way you can reach more than 3400°C in a simple stone furnace, powered by coal) I'm sorta obsessed with this stuff.
Hardened blade is not essential. It just allows you more uses before the blade breaks down, but with the eternal knife bug still active that's irrelevant. I personally would like for UWE to just kick out knives breaking entirely in favor of having to resharpen it. The current system is a sibling of batteries needing to be replaced from before recharging them was a thing, so it makes sense to update knife uses accordingly. It takes away diamond as a periodic "necessity", but the loss is really not significant.
After some google search you seem to be right about the Lithium quarz, so I would consider some tweaking on Lithium's description is advised.
I'm also a fan of the resharpening of knifes. One would assume that a space traveling society, capable of creating artificial gravity, should also be capable to build a knife that doesn't completely lose its structual integrity upon collecting plant samples and killing some crab-sized parasites, moreso one forged from titanium.
And I dont blame you for being to realistically minded, you are not alone in that aspect as you can see in my previous sentence.
Ultimately all we can do is make suggestions on improvements or game content we would like to see.
As long as it all works, and is enjoyable to play, realism can take a backseat to some of these things. I'm pretty sure a lot of realism fans would love having Nitrogen Narcosis fully implemented as close as possibly can, but would that be enjoyable for most other people? Probably not. It'd be realistic, but it wouldn't be too fun.