Salt Flats/Custom Forage Seeder/SimDesert Object discussion

[Delirium]

To note; just because something doesn't pose a massive, instant-kill threat (i.e. mekillots) doesn't mean it won't create danger and difficulty.

A salter's day can easily be ruined by a lower-level threat even though they survive the encounter; salting should be dangerous but not necessarily suicide.

Imagine: finding the perfect salting spot, but being driven away from it by a few hungry whatchamacallits before you can get more than a few shovels worth of salt. Then you end up being unable to salt at the next spot because there's a mekillot lumbering close by. So by the time you get enough to cover the cost of water and stabling, it's already getting on dusk, and you've got to hurry inside.

[Beethoven]

Re: the risk vs. reward issue.

I think it's kind of a red herring. There are lots and lots of ways to get very well-rewarded (via lots of game coin) with little to no risk at all. Everyone starts out with seed money, and every crafter has access to start-up materials, and an NPC or two who is willing to buy finished goods. You don't have to leave the "safety" of your city/outpost to slowly amass a fortune, if that is truly your character's only goal in life and your only plan for your character to measure his "success" with (I would disagree that it's a measure of success but that's a philosophical issue, not a code issue).

If it's now incredibly dangerous for a grebber to greb, just to earn subsistance sids, then it should be monumentally dangerous for a clothworker to work cloth and earn thousands of sids in a relatively short period of time. It currently is not dangerous at all to get to that point. After that point it might become risky if you annoy the GMHs, but up until that point - no risk.

I disagree. Skilled labor should be less dangerous or taxing or whatever than unskilled labor that anyone regardless of guild and subguild can perform.

[WanderingOoze]

I've been chased and attacked by meks quite a bit. In groups and as a lone grabber. Still never died to one. Came very close once, but survived.

This is just an anecdotal evidence type post and doesn't add much I suppose. But, my point is... personally. I've never been a victim of this mek = instadeath phenomenon.

[Morrolan]

This is just an anecdotal evidence type post and doesn't add much I suppose. But, my point is... personally. I've never been a victim of this mek = instadeath phenomenon.

I had a character that was. But...it was also Internet Lag Day.

Code Select Expand

You run east.
You LAG.
Mantis-head.

[Rokal]

Skellebain is a day ruiner out on the salt flats.

[manonfire]

Idle thought re salt flats: You know what would be super cool?  I do!  There's some rooms in the desert -- certain dunes -- where you can 'see' things in all directions if you are standing on them.  I'm not sure what the code is there, but what if most of the rooms in the salt flats were made to be like this?

star dune, best dune

[Beethoven]

Biggest dune is best dune.

[Jingo]

I think they were probably talking to Jingo, who did kind of sort of imply the game would be better without mekillots.

I think they're cool thematically at least. But for a functional perspective see my previous posts.

[Jingo]

Skellebain is a day ruiner out on the salt flats.

This is an example of a function I like.

[Armaddict]

A salter's day can easily be ruined by a lower-level threat even though they survive the encounter; salting should be dangerous but not necessarily suicide.

...it -isn't- suicide.  It's in no way shape or form suicide right now.  It is not now 'You will have to run into mekillots to use salt deposits.'  It's nowhere near that degree.  As I said in my post, things are right now actually relatively easy.  The deposits are common and all over the place and SimDesert does not seem to put them closer to spawning places.

That's my entire point.  The discussion went to this place that said that it was now far too dangerous to salt, when the encounter that was discussed is still relatively rare.  Mekillots already -are- rare on the salt flats.  Mekillots already -are- relatively easy to avoid.  Yes, they can surprise you, it does happen, and it does make that sudden -shot- of adrenaline, but saying this needs to be toned down because the new way makes you go deeper into the flats is, to me, utter nonsense.

Danger is exactly that.  Danger.  More scorpion-like effects is not danger, it's a nuisance.  I imagine the number of deaths from scorpion-hood since they were added east of the city can be counted on two hands.  That's not dangerous.  If the point of the distribution was to make you journey deeper into the flats for greater reward, then making the deeper parts of the flats safer is counter-intuitive...IN PARTICULAR until we find some other danger to be had there.  As I noted in my posts, the only other real danger of going deeper into the flats is forgetting water and getting lost out there and exhausting your mount, or, if you are brand new out of chargen, the occasional scrab.  Hence why I presented an idea that is less dangerous than meks, but directly tied into salting, to encourage the same mentality that should be had for hunting, i.e. groups are good.

But thinning out Meks without adding in something that is still -actually- dangerous is completely unnecessary, and another example of 'I hate dying in this game.  We should make it easier to not die.'  That is an argument I will usually stand against, unless it's a shitty code mechanic instead of a code mechanic that is present in almost every zone of the mud except for the ones that have been made 'safe'.

Hell.  If nothing else, get your salter coalition together to pool money and pay the Byn to search and destroy so that your coalition can go out and mass homicide the salt deposits.  Give people things to do instead of insisting that solo has to be completely manageable out there.

If it's now incredibly dangerous for a grebber to greb, just to earn subsistance sids, then it should be monumentally dangerous for a clothworker to work cloth and earn thousands of sids in a relatively short period of time.

As noted, the danger is actually far less certain than it's being made to sound.  It -is- greatly compounded if you decide to go deep-salting in a huge storm, but I don't consider that against logic, either.  It should be noted, though, that your comparison is to someone who actually buys materials and tests to find things that bring profit and spam sells to merchants.  They never leave the city.  If your basis of comparison is to make inside the city and outside the city of equal danger, then I think we need to go back to our drawing board.

[Delirium]

Oh, okay. You're still operating under the flawed assumption that I wanted to thin out or remove mekillots, which I don't want to do.

What I want to do is increase danger in the salt flats but make it of a more interesting sort than "more megabeasts" or "longer post-delay you can do nothing about".

My primary objection was to the idea of adding a longer post-delay to salting. My primary suggestion is to shift toward delays being a) able to be interrupted, and b) BEFORE the result of your action.

i.e.,

You begin grebbing.

<<loooooong delay that you can interrupt with OH SHIT FLEE if need be>>

You find a piece of salt and pick it up.

<<NO delay!>>

So I suppose you're conflating "nuisance" with "pointless" where I'm saying "nuisance" adds a complexity and danger level to the flats that are composed of more than a/b scenarios of life/death. Scenarios that make you move through the flats instead of camp in one spot and salt until you're rich, while keeping it as a viable role, if not nearly as simple and profitable.

Coding in salt-flat sickness is a great idea. So is the chance of spawning immature salt worms (that could possibly ruin the rest of the deposit, forcing you to move).

[BadSkeelz]

We could just raid people and make it more dangerous/interesting that way.

[Delirium]

Idle thought re salt flats: You know what would be super cool?  I do!  There's some rooms in the desert -- certain dunes -- where you can 'see' things in all directions if you are standing on them.  I'm not sure what the code is there, but what if most of the rooms in the salt flats were made to be like this?

star dune, best dune

Suggestion:

>watch all
You begin watching in all cardinal directions.

Does not include up, down, or out.

Invokes substantial penalty to watch, but results are size-based, so something mekillot or bahamet-sized would be impossible to miss.

[Armaddict]

Oh, okay. You're still operating under the flawed assumption that I wanted to thin out or remove mekillots, which I don't want to do.

You're correct, I used your post to respond to that because it kind of came in the middle of it.  Whoops.  But you did make a good springboard for my post and what I wanted to say!

So I suppose you're conflating "nuisance" with "pointless" where I'm saying "nuisance" adds a complexity and danger level to the flats that are composed of more than a/b scenarios of life/death. Scenarios that make you move through the flats instead of camp in one spot and salt until you're rich, while keeping it as a viable role, if not nearly as simple and profitable.

It isn't that nuisances don't have their place.  As I've said in other posts, sometimes 'nuisances' are meant for exactly that...the middle ground between easy and death.  However, my particular take on the change wasn't that they wanted people to make less money doing it (as filling it up with nuisances tends to do, at least for me), but they -did- want them to risk more for it (i.e. You're going to have to deal with more than scorpions and scrab).  This is probably purely a difference of opinion on what we want the end result to be.  For me, I'd like salting to be less of a solo activity, and still very profitable, but something that you'd actually see small groups and perhaps even middle-sized crews working on.

The change allowed it become viable for the solo salter to make a living, albeit not a great one, in the low-risk environment, while grouping up would lead to much greater profit.  But not grouping up was probably going to result in your death at some point.  Hence why I like the mekillots...but you do as well, so I won't go there again while quoting your post even though it's something to address in the thread.

We could just raid people and make it more dangerous/interesting that way.

Would love to.  I can only play one character at a time, though!

[Nergal]

Just to address a few of the concerns posted here:
- Mekillots are related to, but entirely separate from salt foraging as a coded and scripted mechanism and will be handled separately.
- There's no plan to change the delay on digging from patches (which is the same as mining and using material deposits in general - about 3 seconds).
- This most likely has nothing to do with any experienced lag. The script takes less than a second to go through every room in the game - we're talking about an area that perhaps comprises 2-3% of the game's rooms, if that.
- Risk vs. reward: Grebbing is inherently dangerous, crafting within the walls is not. While there are no plans for this to change, it is possible crafting will rely more on grebbers in the future.
- Tweaks and adjustments are still being made on spawn rates on the patches. They are not meant to be common or spawn on the outermost edges of the Salt Flats.

[Dresan]

In terms of risk vs reward:

This mostly hurts assassins who:

1. Don't roll a crafter sub-guild
2. Don't join a clan
3. Do the above+ are elves

Most other classes eventually find other ways of making decent coin that don't require spending all day foraging anyways. Slightly less so for warriors but going a bit farther is less of an issue thanks to shields.  I think people that roll these classes, will have to consider other modest options for a while such as foraging clay. And of course eventually just kill someone just to steal the boots off their corpse.

Coincidentally killing someone just so you can pay your rent is a damn good reason for murder.

[BadSkeelz]

In terms of risk vs reward:

This mostly hurts assassins who:

1. Don't roll a crafter sub-guild
2. Don't join a clan
3. Do the above+ are elves

Most other classes eventually find other ways of making decent coin that don't require spending all day foraging anyways. Slightly less so for warriors but going a bit farther is less of an issue thanks to shields.  I think people that roll these classes, will have to consider other modest options for a while such as foraging clay. And of course eventually just kill someone just to steal the boots off their corpse.

Coincidentally killing someone just so you can pay your rent is a damn good reason for murder.

Just putting this out here: the Salt Yards sit on some rather long and comparatively empty (of soldiers) roads.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Disregard.

[Dar]

I wonder if it's possible to create a command that will hint on big sized creatures in diagonal rooms.

something like

survey

There is something huge nearby/far/very far from you. It doesnt 'have' to tell which direction if it's hard to code, although that would be nice. Even just general linear direction would be nice. But just the mere fact that there is a presence in 'some' direction is enough for the PCs to get wise and grow at the very least alert. That's the biggest thing about Mekillots/Bahamet that I dont like. They are not entities that you can possibly fail to see and walk right into.

[bardlyone]

- This most likely has nothing to do with any experienced lag. The script takes less than a second to go through every room in the game - we're talking about an area that perhaps comprises 2-3% of the game's rooms, if that.

I more meant that with the timing of the implementation and the new nightly lag spikes, something -already- in the game, that may not be present outside the live game port, might be messing with something in the script funny somehow, or causing some other unforseen issue.

Then again, I'm no coder, and the timing could just be coincidence. Who knows? (probs the coders,   )

[Clavis]

I would love staff to post up some numbers on how many people died to whatever.

carru = 12379
tok 2388
raider = 9088
whatever, whatever

cause I personally have come across more carru'd, tok'd, yompar'd, random hidden npc then I've seen met/mek stomped.

As for having to go deeper into the salt to go forage, I hate the idea, I like all being comfy safe knowing that I can run from my salting spot to the gates, on my speedy mount/boots. yet if I need to I'll be out there, getting ready to outrun a mek.

lag sucks yeah I know lost several toons do to it fighting things that people laugh at. If your basing not liking this do solely upon the fact a met can kill you in one/two/three hits I'm sorry whats the difference between getting reel locked every bloody round by gith/carru/uber tok/raptor/tarantula/beetle? in the end the outcome is the same, your rolling up a new toon.

[Yam]

bet all carru

[nauta]

My money's on twitchy.

[Norcal]

bet all carru

This will work if we only are counting tribals

[Riev]

As for having to go deeper into the salt to go forage, I hate the idea, I like all being comfy safe knowing that I can run from my salting spot to the gates, on my speedy mount/boots. yet if I need to I'll be out there, getting ready to outrun a mek.

Which you still can do. They didn't say "no more foraging unless deep in salt". They said if you go to the edges, there will be less variety and less chance at a fortune being made.

I highly suggest finding a friend, or hiring someone to keep an eye on you if you want to go deeper in. Maybe it'll be worth the cost, if you can find yourself a nice little spot that doesn't seem too busy,