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[Yanlin]

Make a compromise. Random range stat. Like 2-5 or 10-25

Besides. A player run wiki will soon take over. You know what happened to Wurm? The developers decided, "let's let the playerbase explore the world themselves. After all, the storyline says it's a new and unknown land filled with mystery and giant spiders. They will eventually make a wiki accurate enough."

Needless to say, it was a huge success.

[Tahin]

Wurm... Please don't remind me of the spider rape. Please don't.

Back on topic:
I'd rather just have it tell you, "Boosts attack power a little," or, "Slows unit a lot."

Even random stats feels too metagamey for me.

Of course, there will be a wiki at some point, but the less information supplied, the better.

[Yanlin]

Spider rape? Pfft. Wood craps is the true nightmare. I had so much of that stuff that I could probably burn it until the next server reset.

Anyway...

I do agree that no concrete numbers should be shown. Maybe a stat bar or something. But not with pips. Just a smooth bar.

[Asehujiko]

Make 2 versions. One with public stats that run for 5 decimals and one with hidden stats, tweaked slightly to avoid copy pasting of info.

So "Iron longsword" can translate to either:
16.15628*skill+813.26119 damage against unarmored targets with a size modifier of -1.2684*(size+3) against units larger then (own size-14.13536)+skill*0.93612
or
"does less damage then a claymore but more then a shortsword"

[qwertyuiopas]

No, the solution is to use 20 digit numbers with infinite precision so that few players even care. Even better, invent your own number system, and stuff.

Or how about base 3.5?

That way the users will be forced to use the other version.

[Tahin]

The problem with giving concrete numbers is that sooner or later someone will start a wiki and post "If you recruit peasants and give them steel shortswords and mithril armor you'll have the best unit in the game." Within a month everyone would be using peasants with steel longswords and mithril armor.

If we keep all the stats hidden, people will be forced to make their own decisions on what is "the best" and there will be some actual variety. Then again, a "best combo" would still probably be found eventually, but not as quickly and it wouldn't be as easily trusted.

Spider rape? Pfft. Wood craps is the true nightmare. I had so much of that stuff that I could probably burn it until the next server reset.

Oh, you don't even know.

One day, I died somehow and had to get back to my "home" which wasn't yet officially a town and thus I couldn't respawn there. The trek from Newtown was a little over a half hour. My character was completely useless at combat. I didn't have a decent source of food outside of the settlement I was trying to get to, so I was starving and thus even slower and weaker than usual. I died at least 20 times to spiders along the way.

I now refuse to play any game that doesn't have permadeath or doesn't let you reload.

[Cheeetar]

So, how is the progress going along with this game?

[Vactor]

Alrighty I'm home again.

I've been putting my attention towards crafting, resources and tools while I was out of town.

As it stands my plan is to have the quality of a product determined by four things.  The quality of the resources used to make it, the skill of the crafting citizen, the quality of the tools used, and the magical enhancing of the player's avatar.

My hope is that this will work in such a way that it is relatively easy to create low quality products, but that a genuine effort is required to make the highest grade equipment.  Part of this will be the idea that you use the smithing hammer you have to make higher quality smithing hammers, that allow you to make even higher quality tools, and products. 

The math behind this is going to use the resource attributes as a base value, with tools, skill, and enhancement acting as modifiers.  This will ensure that the maximum end quality will be limited by the resource being used.

A secondary element I want to use is the concept of selection.  The idea is that you have, for instance, a grove of trees.  You have three ways you can harvest these trees.  You can take only the best trees, which gives you resources with slightly better stats than the grove is listed at.  You can take a random sampling of trees, giving you a resource with stats matching the grove's listing.  Or you can take only the worst trees, giving you a resource with stats slightly inferior to the grove's listed stats.  If you are taking the best, the stats of the grove as a whole gradually decline, if you are taking the worst, they increase.  This would be applied to any renewable resource, (i.e. reproducing)  including plants and animals.  This concept may also be applied in some way to the civilizations on your airland as well, but I haven't fleshed that out fully.

I threw together a few notes of how the resource/crafting system might work, working the way up from having nothing but bare hands to having tools.  q1 and q2 are used simply to show a difference in quality reflective of having tools that are of a type that provide better bonuses. (a pole and a stone point utilize a greater portion of their materials properties than a stick and sharpened stone do.):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Non-Toolbased Gathering:

Foraging = q1 plant
Scavenging = q1 carcass
Downed Wood = q1 wood
Picking Rock = q1 stone


Non-Toolbased Resource Processing:

q1 plant + q1 stone = q1 food + q1 seed
q1 carcass + q1 wood = q1 food + q1 bone
q1 wood = q1 straight sticks
q1 stone = q1 sharpened stone


Non-Toolbased ToolMaking:

q1 straight sticks + q1 sharpened stone:

q1 spear
q1 axe
q1 knife
q1 pick
q1 hoe
q1 hammer


Basic Building:

q1 wood + q1 stone:

q1 buildings



Toolbased Gathering:

Cultivating(tool:hoe, site:field + q1 seed) = q2 plant
Hunting(tool:spear) = q2 carcass
WoodCutting(tool:axe) = q2 wood
Quarrying(tool:pick) = q2 stone
Mining(tool:pick) = q2 ore


Toolbased Resource Processing:
BoneCarving(tool:knife)bone = needle, hook, dagger
Milling(tool:millstone)seed = flour
WoodCarving(tool:knife)wood = handle, pole,
Butchering(tool:knife)carcass = food + bone + leather + sinew
StoneFinishing(tool:hammer)stone = stone block, stone point

Toolbased ToolMaking:
pole + stone point = q2 spear
handle + stone point = q2 axe
handle + stone point = q2 pick
pole + sinew = q1 bow
pole + sinew + hook = q1 rod
leather + sinew(tool:needle) = q1 sling

I'm hoping I'm describing this all effectively, if not, rest assured it makes sense to me.

[qwertyuiopas]

What about allowing the player to directly influence the growth of such material sources, inflicting a slight penalty somewhere(such as anything from simply reducing what else they can do, or draining the quality or resources elsewhere) and with the outcome being based on the current elemental standing of the player(natural mage will be much more able to improve the quality of a forest, in a shorter time, and with lower costs/side effects)?

[wallish]

Resource Stuff

That's awesome!  It also encourages players to get along in non-military ways, which is what I wish more games would do.

Now there is an actual incentive for the strong military player to protect and work with the weaker player that is really good at crafting.

[PTTG??]

Sounds great! About the Art resources: I have a small set of tile models for you, but before I put more together we should see if you can import my files. I can send you 3do files, and Wings3D can convert them into the file type you where using. Should I send you a few samples?

[Vactor]

That'd be great, if you want to either upload them somewhere, or email them to me I'll send you a PM with my email address.  I should have a chance to check them out when I get home from work.

[Little]

Do we need a background, like a great spell destroyed the land and sent pieces whirrling through the air, and the magicians steadied the pieces and evacuated to them?

[Yanlin]

Yes. We need a backstory.

[Ivefan]

A secondary element I want to use is the concept of selection.  The idea is that you have, for instance, a grove of trees.  You have three ways you can harvest these trees.  You can take only the best trees, which gives you resources with slightly better stats than the grove is listed at.  You can take a random sampling of trees, giving you a resource with stats matching the grove's listing.  Or you can take only the worst trees, giving you a resource with stats slightly inferior to the grove's listed stats.  If you are taking the best, the stats of the grove as a whole gradually decline, if you are taking the worst, they increase.  This would be applied to any renewable resource, (i.e. reproducing)  including plants and animals.  This concept may also be applied in some way to the civilizations on your airland as well, but I haven't fleshed that out fully.

Consider letting the player set growth policies and magical alotment.
Setting the quality to high would make the available trees for harvest increase slowly to represent the unsatisfactory trees being weeded out as they grow and magical alotment would allow the foresters to either increase the speed of growth at the cost of quality or make magical adjustments to trees to increase their qualities.