I have some suggestions for the Industrial update that was talked about. But to start I would like to suggest levels and skill trees.
Reason why i want skill trees is because the game gets easy too quickly. Once I acquire everything and survival is too easy, it might as well be creative mode from that point. Which is why i have these 2 suggestions.
3 main skills, and some skill trees for each skill. In multiplayer, this will encourage others to work together since you can't use all skills. And the option to have 2x to 10x more skillpoints be earned when you level up (Best for singleplayer but could be used for MP).
I think 1 person at max level should be able to max out 3 different skill trees from the sub group with default settings. (for example, 1 basic crafting, 1 final product crafting and 1 extra crafting (either basic or final) could be: Miner, Blacksmith, and Cook)
I can only think of 2 ways of levelling, each with their pros and cons:
- 3 Major skills, all others are minor. Only doing major skills will give you xp.
- Pro: You can't level up easily by doing things which are not part of your major skills. Also very customizable
- Con: You can level up minor skills.
- Workaround: Either make minor skills cost 2x more skillpoints than major skills or
- Disable minor skills after the 3 major skills have been chosen.
- You could do a reset and rechoose your major skills, but this would reset your level to 1 and skillpoints to 0.
- Choosing a profession and only having 3 skill trees to level up. All others do not show up and there is no way to level them up either. (This is my favorite)
- Pro: You can't level up easily by doing things which aren't part of your profession. You can't level up other skills.
- Con: Must rely on others.
- Workaround: Player starts with tier 1 skills on every tree. This makes it so that anyone can do every basic thing in the game, but to do more advanced things, they must decide.
Tier 4 stuff would rely on industrial, that's why i'm suggesting industrial too.
Also, Tier 4 could allow for automated crafting, but with some limitations and conditions.
Every industrial machine will require power and maintenance every once in a while (durability) or will break down.
For example, if machine required 64 Iron Ingots, 32 Copper, 32 iron rods, 24 gold rods, and 64 coal, and machine is 50% durability, must use 32 Iron Ingots to maintain/restore. If broken, use 64 Iron Ingots, and 16 Copper (penalty) to fix.
Industrial machine can make tier 4 stuff at NORMAL speed, tier 3 stuff at 2x speed, tier 2 stuff at 4x speed, and tier 1 stuff at 8x speed.
Also if one wanted, they could upgrade the industrial machine. This will not increase the speed, but rather the durability time.
Tier==========Resource Cost==========Maintenance Cost==========Durability Time
1 =============== 1x =================== 1x ================= 30 minutes (1x) 0.5 hours
2 ===========1 + 2 = 3x ================== 1.5x =============== 90 minutes (3x) 1.5 hours
3 =========== 3 + 5 = 8x ================= 2.5x =============== 150 minutes (5x) 2.5 hours
4 =========== 8 + 8 = 16x =============== 4x ================== 240 minutes (8x) 4 hours
- This raises a question: How do I obtain the tier 4 only resources?
- Answer: Each skill has its own industrial machine and once you obtain the last skill on a skill tree, you are able to craft that industrial machine specific to that skill.
- Crafting (This list is really long, so maybe clump some of them together?)
- Cook
- Tier 1: Very Basic cooked foods, and basic crafted ingredients such as: baked single ingredients such as baked potatoes, flour, bread, baked corn on the cob, Steak, jerky, pasta, etc.
- Tier 2: Simple meals and simple crafted ingredients such as: salads, different types of sauce, etc.
- Tier 3: Advanced meals and advanced crafted ingredients such as: goulash, meatloaf, cake, lasagna, fried chicken, cookies, etc.
- Tier 4: Canned food, Bologna, hot dogs, soda, etc. (Food Processor)
- Blacksmith
- Tier 1: Primitive (Wood, stone, and leather)
- Tier 2: Metal (Iron, Aluminum, Silver, any ore obtained above ground, etc.)
- Tier 3: Deep Metals and stuff (Gold, Mithril, sulfur, etc.)
- Tier 4: Advanced electric/electronic stuff (Electronic Workbench)
- Woodworker
- Tier 1: Primitive Sawbench, primitive workbench, Planks, beams, and basic Wooden blocks (cubes and stairs)
- Tier 2: Round beams and complex wooden blocks (Slanted/diagonal sides)
- Tier 3: Advanced wooden blocks (Curved blocks)
- Tier 4: Industrial Sawbench
- Tailor (Higher tiers make better clothing)
- Chair-maker. Basically furniture for houses. Tier 4 machine not automated, just faster crafting speed.
- Cook
- Agriculture and Terraforming (Each tier could allow the use for better tools) (Note: You will need to either trade with someone who is a blacksmith, or be a blacksmith too)
- Farmer: Digging, Tilling, Plowing, Planting, Harvesting, Animal Taming, Animal Husbandry, etc. Tier 4 could be farm tractors for plowing, planting, and harvesting, but is not automated and still requires power.
- These tractors could either be 2x wider, 4x wider, or even 8x wider than a hoe. And speed will be 2x faster no matter the width.
- Treecutter. Tier 4 could just be a chainsaw, which cuts the tree as fast as an axe in creative mode. Still requires fuel.
- Miner Tier 4 could be a drill (which we have now)
- Hunter
- Bow and Arrows
- Musket (Longer range, Longer reload)
- Pistol (shorter range, shorter reload)
- Sniper (Longer range, shorter reload)
- Farmer: Digging, Tilling, Plowing, Planting, Harvesting, Animal Taming, Animal Husbandry, etc. Tier 4 could be farm tractors for plowing, planting, and harvesting, but is not automated and still requires power.
- I was going to put in Architecture main tree, but I decided not to because it would make it very difficult to a point where it would feel grindy like Ark: SE and Rust.
Combat could be a skill, but I don't see why if we could just have better weapons and armor. So I don't really like combat as being a skill.
I was going to make a huge suggestion in regards to power, but i think thats been well discussed and this post is getting long. So I'll leave it in 1 sentence. Maybe a primitive/small solution could be wind turbines, or a small steam turbine that is fueled by coal or wood.
Been working on this suggestion for over 2 hours now. I most likely forgot a bunch of stuff as I was thinking and typing. If there are any questions or you would like to add to this, go right ahead.