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Commiellama2
12th January 2016, 01:21
I rarely consider changing configs as I usually like to play things how they were meant to be played, but there's something I'm not sure on myself:

Do we want to keep limits on panning or sluicing per chunk in the new servers?

The limits don't necessarily make it more challenging or believable, but it seems a bit inconvenient that people can't pan at the town's river (or whatever random water may be near spawn) because someone else panned there. Sand will still be consumed and pans will still break.

I also don't want to make it too easy because earning progression is rewarding!

Thoughts?

Rainnmannx
12th January 2016, 04:24
Wouldn't mind it myself, sand and gravel are finite chunk wise.
Maybe tweak the ore chance to make it a little harder since you don't have to move possible?
Would take in consideration the possibility for automating sluices and possible loads they pose.
Generally i only do this to start off to get a few tools going before mining, and with copper pretty easy to find, would believe not to many would be doing it after a bit.
Could be good for a town that gets a lot of new people on a regular basis.

Jiro_89
12th January 2016, 06:53
I don't like the idea of infinite panning considering many other resources in the game are finite and when they're mined they're gone. But I do think the limit can be increased to accommodate larger towns with newer people joining in. How about 10 times more per plot meaning that instead of 30 iterations of panning, you get 300. That should prevent people from all doing the same spot forever, but still give plenty of area available for panning in a relatively close area since a larger town would take up more area anyway. Panning isn't a good solution long term and it will still be finite so it should prevent people from abusing it. Thoughts?

InsaneJ
12th January 2016, 10:17
I'm not saying no to the idea. Just sharing my thoughts.

Which servers are you thinking about?

From what I've read panning is the worst way to gather metals. It's slow and takes a relatively large effort compared to finding a vein and mining it. Do we want to change this balance?

As far as I know it works on a per chunk basis so if one chunk is exhausted you can move 16 blocks and try again. Given that there is more water than land I don't think there will be a shortage of places to pan.

Because of this it makes no sense to me to bump the limit for the premium servers since they have huge worlds. Maybe if the freebie server gets overcrowded it would make sense. But with 20.000 x 20.000 that's not likely to happen soon. I think we'll have moved on to TFC 3 (three!) before that map is empty.

If you need help imagining how big the freebie world is going to be, just check Dynmap. On my screen(2560x1600), zooming out as much as possible, I can just fit 20.000 blocks horizontally. It's a large world and even on the current map only a tiny portion of 20.000 x 20.000 around spawn has been actually used. Just because people claimed land doesn't mean they've exhausted everything near there. Most towns barely scratch the surface. Even though people seem to think that towns exhaust all resources within thousands of blocks for some strange reason.

If a town has exhausted a river, shouldn't they move out to another? People can teleport on the freebie and regular servers if it's too much trouble to walk.

Jiro_89
12th January 2016, 12:02
So long as the chunks have a limit, I seriously doubt it would cause a change to the balance of panning versus mining. There is way too little ore coming from chunks to compare to a single vein, even a poor vein. People have made default 30 pans per chunk work on all the HappyDigger servers so far so if we don't change it it's not a big deal. I'm viewing this as more of a quality of life that isn't game changing, but if people want it grueling I don't mind either way. Default or increased, the important part is that it isn't limitless.

Heptagon_ru
12th January 2016, 12:28
I don't understand the main reason to allow this. To help newcomers to start copper age by letting to goldpan near Spawn any time?
Even if this will be allowed, there will be shortage of rocks, clay and sand/gravel very soon. And when you go to find them, you find new chunks for goldpanning.

Any other case seems to avoid the problem.
For a town there is no need to allow goldpanning in the same chunk for each member - only the first member needs to enter copper age by goldpanning, all others can process the ore he got from mining using his "goldpanned" pickaxe.

Or the reason is to allow "automated" ore generation by sluices? I have never used them and do not understand what they are for. As I remember, they have a limit, give poor output. The only usage can be for scanning for deep veins presence, but again, it will be hard to find that vein later, it's easier to run with a propick.

Benanov
12th January 2016, 17:44
Or the reason is to allow "automated" ore generation by sluices? I have never used them and do not understand what they are for. As I remember, they have a limit, give poor output. The only usage can be for scanning for deep veins presence, but again, it will be hard to find that vein later, it's easier to run with a propick.

The exhaustion counter is much higher with a sluice, so you can run more gravel through it.

Heptagon_ru
12th January 2016, 18:32
The exhaustion counter is much higher with a sluice, so you can run more gravel through it.

Yes, but afaik it returns only ore nuggets (10 units), and atm each chunk gives 2.5 ore pieces in average (wiki (http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Sluice)). It takes a lot of gravel and time as I understand. And in the middle/end game players prefer rich ores, especially for iron, because it's boring to make blooms/pig iron using poor ore. Any copper mine will give much more ore then a sluice, and much quicker even with propick search.
I don't know this well, maybe the situatiom is drastically better.

So imho sluices and goldpanning things are useless even with increased counters.
It will be interesting to read about some real experience with them.

InsaneJ
12th January 2016, 22:26
I think that's something we need to know. Who would use gold panning or sluices for an extended period of material gathering on the new servers?

If I were to play some TFC again, I certainly wouldn't. I like digging way too much :)

DOM
12th January 2016, 23:44
I do not see a need for increasing the limit or removing it. In my latest playthroughs, (my twitch followers will know this well) I was very unsuccessfull in finding my first few pieces of copper, but that was easily solved by panning about 10 chunks on a beach. After that first ingot, all ores can be mined with the very first pickaxe that can then be shared with other players who dont have to go through the tedious process of leaving the stone age. The way that I reduce my need for copper is to make bronze tools which make my ores go further. With all that in mind, if there became a situation where an entire continent was mined out (this is highly unlikely), then I would remove/raise the limit or make a trader at spawn that trades renewable items for metals.

I believe that scarcity promotes community and creativity. Fellow min/maxers will attest to this.

Commiellama2
13th January 2016, 01:44
The thing I had in mind was a public sluice array for new people to throw their gravel into or a stone panning stream in a public town for new players to use without running far from the town. I remember having a series of wells in a desert on the B78 server but they got overworked pretty quickly by the first few players.

I wasn't thinking players would continually pan instead of mining, but it would provide somewhere local for many new players to get their first ingot or two.

Originally I was planning to set up a town to support new players to develop on their own, hence the panning, but I'm considering being more generous with my next town. I want an open public town, but if I supply chestfuls of pans, sticks, rocks, single players would literally take every single pan (and that was when they were unbreakable so people needed no more than 1) so if I had tools available people will most definitely join, take the tools and leave, which I want to avoid by making players self sufficient and providing knowledge and infrastructure instead. They did that with the whole communal wood supply and all the stone tools, so panning seems safer than giving people free metal tools

Jiro_89
14th January 2016, 23:40
I also play with a similar style, Commie, in that people in my towns do their own work, learn how to play, and don't get handouts. Perhaps that's why people don't last long in my towns :cool:

It sounds like the consensus don't want this changed from the default config though. Thank you for the suggestion. It opened up some interesting discussion on early game perspective from folks.

Heptagon_ru
15th January 2016, 12:46
... a public sluice array for new people ... in a public town ...

Now I get it, sounds pretty good.

I still can't form an opinion about this in general.

One danger I can see is some machinery using many sluices in parallel, with droppers and timers, to farm ore and gems.
Gems can be valuable for HC world for the teleports, but I suspect HC world will not get infinite sluces anyway.
Ore - for valuable metals, like nickel, it can be profitable, but it still requires a lot of work to setup, so probably a fair trade.

Another danger is the load on server, such sluice arrays with redstone support infrastructure could slow it down good.
Or even when each town has a couple of sluices. Probably many people would like to try sluices when hear they are infinite.

Probably an alternative for public town's public sluices could be a dropper with free poor ore, with a parallel secure despawn timer (dropper with sticks + pressure plate ). Like craftengineer did on B78 server for food distribution.
So a new player will have to spend about 30 minutes near it to get enough ore for an ingot :) Or reasonable 5-10 minutes for multiple droppers.
This will require constant effort from the town's mayor tho, to mine the poor ore and fill the droppers :( Or maybe it will be an another chance for socialization and teamwork - the new player will have to refill the ore he spent ...