Now with the new 0.9 beta update out, I think its time to re-visit this topic since the changes in this update show we're heading in the right direction. I just would like to see a few changes. I ran some of this by Red but I want to also put this here incase anyone has some ideas to add on.
First, I love the primitive furnace. It's small and smelts just enough to get started and has a significant fuel inefficiency to add incentive to upgrade it asap! Also. we are now starting out with a stone axe. This is good. I also presume that ground scatter (sticks, stones, and bones) is still coming so we should eventually start barehanded and craft our first stone axe. Also, still no tool wear but I'd imagine that will now be coming soon. However, there's some significant gaps still in the progression. Here's my thoughts:
- Stone axe should have rapid wear time unlike Minecraft (which has little incentive to upgrade from stone pickaxes except for mining special blocks like redstone and diamon).
- Mining stone and ore with a stone axe should require more hits. It's basically as effective as the old iron pickaxe.
- Tool ccomponents were removed from the anvil temporarily as new component models are pending. Red mentioned some complaints about crafting being confusing due to the anvil being required (probably because its only used for repairs in Minecraft). Well, with the components gone, crafting an anvil no longer has incentive. You can now smelt a small batch of iron in the primitive smelter, craft a workbench, and immediately progress from stone to iron tools. For me, gathering my first batch of 24 iron was a significant milestone. Starting out with crappy stone and wood tools should make more incentive to make that anvil and upgrade to iron tools ASAP!
- The small and large furnaces should require iron parts. They're already modeled with iron doors on side. The fuel efficiency of these furnaces should be something you work towards achieving and adds further incentive to craft the anvil.
- The mithril ingredient for steel tools is probably temporary until a steel crafting method is added. In real life, steel is made by smelting iron and coal together. Given how deep mithril is, I feel like that's unreasonable of a requirement to make steel when it could easily be made with stuff found on the surface.
- Mithril for repeater bullet tips sounds cool. It's supposed to be a very hard substance in fantasy worlds so it should definately make a great addition to projectile weapons. It's hard and likely to easily pierce armor.
- add copper tipped bullets as well. They're softer but likely cheaper to make since we don't use much copper at present.
- We still need potassium nitrate added as well as bringing the sulfur closer to the surface. This will make gunpowder crafting feasible.
- Guns are too easy to aquire and should require a tier2 workstation (what I think of as a fabricator).
- Bullets (the ones made of iron anyways) are too easy to craft. They should require iron, gunpowder, and paper. This adds incentive to craft additioanl workstations such as the paper press and hopefully a mortar+pestle someday for making the gunpowder.
- I noticed that "arrows" require a rod to craft. This makes sense for crossbow ammo. Infact, the arrow should probably be re-named to "bolt" to distinguish it from regular arrows (made of wood and stone, and hopefully feathers someday) which is used on a normal bow
Well that's my thoughts on progression. Hopefully when steel crafting is made, the steel tools can be moved back to the workbench from the tier 2. Personally I see the tier 2 as more of a fabricator. You don't need a fabricator to make a steel pickaxe, just a steel making process. However, the new mining hammer fits perfectly into something you can craft on a fabricator.
I also want to say that the iron pickaxe, then steel pickaxe, then mining hammer seem to be set correct as far as mining efficiency goes. And the difference is a huge incentive to upgrade. I think the stone tools need to be adjusted a bit
Hold on, should be ready in a few minutes!
