PC Dew collector should use glass jars

[Kyoji]

That wasn’t part of the slippery slope. Everything in the game was aligned and consistent. All containers were abstracted and only existed when they were filled. I agree that in terms of a survival sim the abstraction of empty vessels was not a good immersive fit. But as a video game design it worked fine.

The slippery slope is now all the chain reaction demands by fans to keep pushing on jars since they are no longer consistent or work well with other aspects of the game. With 0% jar return the dew collectors just makes water but with 100% jar return it produces jars. So now that gets “fixed”. Next it will be jar producing stumps and next people will want to have empty containers for other things.

We’ve already witnessed that people who originally stated that all they wanted was jars returned were swiftly unsatisfied with jars being returned. They then wanted dew collectors changed to support the optional setting for jar return. That won’t be the end of it and TFP will probably continue to scope creep water.

The issue was taking something from the game that needed minor tweaks and they did a rework which was worse than the original for many. Keep in mind I don't really care about jars. The only value jars had was providing value to the water sources in the world which could have been fixed in other ways. I agree that you can never make people 100% happy and that the developers are now having to spend a lot of time fixing such a minor issue.

The issue isn't that we can't abstract jars, but that it was in the game and people remember. It wouldn't be an issue if it was never in the game.

They could make it so you can only fill jars one at a time. I'd 100% use the dew collector then, because it already annoys me how long it takes to fill jars, even when it's 10 at a time.

That would be nice. 10 at a time would be much. A single one with a 2 second animation time would be sufficient.

 

[Fun Pimple]

I don't think there is a big problem balancing those two methods. One can be used from day 1 and is almost free, the other needs money or resources for a dew collector upfront and recipe(s) to learn. Usually in a game the latter method would be the upgrade, for example better, cheaper, faster, more comfortable. How much it should be better is rather subjetive.
But in this case the first method will always have the advantage that it scales much better to mass production of water (it is dirt cheap to produce a lot of campfires with cooking pots). There must be an incentive large enough to entice players to produce dew collectors.

Why the intermediate step of purified water when the game already has pure mineral water that could be used for differentiation?

That's my point, there is no good incentive to craft dew collector, it's just a novelty now. The reason I brought up the idea of purified water because higher tier items like glue, antibiotics, and mineral water would require purified water, and only way to acquire purified water is by using a dew collector with filter add-on.

 

[Vaeliorin]

That would be terrible for glue production. Antibiotics and Mineral Water, whatever. But I often need to make glue before I can even make a dew collector, let alone the add-ons.

 

[ALEXZANDER]

That would be terrible for glue production. Antibiotics and Mineral Water, whatever. But I often need to make glue before I can even make a dew collector, let alone the add-ons.

The best solution would be to just reduce glue/duct tape grind for recipes

 

[Numberz]

Not a fan of jars but this seems to work to remove the empty jar requirement on the dew collectors. Should be a simple modlet.

On cntDewCollector in blocks.xml:

Change property FuelTypes from 1,1,drinkJarEmpty to 0,0,drinkJarEmpty
Change property FuelGridHeight from 2 to 0

 

[Riamus]

Not a fan of jars but this seems to work to remove the empty jar requirement on the dew collectors. Should be a simple modlet.

On cntDewCollector in blocks.xml:

Change property FuelTypes from 1,1,drinkJarEmpty to 0,0,drinkJarEmpty
Change property FuelGridHeight from 2 to 0

Thanks. I haven't downloaded 2.6, so I couldn't see how they had it in the XML. I figured it would be very easy to "fix" and I appreciate seeing how to do so.

 

[Motimus Prime]

Yes, and I have no problem standing by my opinion and letting people know it. I make it clear in discussions related to it, but I don't spam it all over the place, so I don't see it as a problem. Do you?


I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I gave a couple of scenarios. They aren't mutually exclusive. They are similar. They are just different scenarios. In each, you are not getting any real benefit from using a dew collector. Ignoring speed, you are still left with the question of why bother with a dew collector if you can do the same thing for fewer resources (not building them) and in a faster time (whether you care about the time or not) and with pretty much the same effort. Is there really any reason to use a dew collector if you can just fill the jars immediately at any water source? Sure, you have to boil the water, but if we're not talking about time, that's not exactly a big deal. And if we are talking about time, then that's still faster than the dew collectors. Dew collector = find or craft jars, insert jars, wait, collect jars of water. Campfire = find murky water and/or find or craft jars, fill jars with water as you're running around so they are already full of water or else fill them all at once at a nearby water source, start cooking water, wait, collect jars of water. Campfires are cheap and faster than a dew collector, especially if you have points in Master Chef. Dew collectors offer what that a campfire doesn't, besides aesthetics now? You do have to fill the jars, but that's easy and quick, especially if you do it while you're out doing stuff. You're already probably going to boil murky water that you find, so you're already going to be using the campfire for water. Why not just do all your water there?

In any case, we were talking about passive versus active. Dew collectors are no longer really passive since you have to continually refill them with empty jars.


This is basically the point... dew collectors really don't offer much over a campfire. Sure, people will have preferences, but there's no real benefit. If people are using a lot of water for glue or whatever else, then they'd be making 10-20 dew collectors or more just to handle it, and cost then becomes more significant in the resources needed. On the other hand, campfires are cheap and you're already going to have them because you're going to be cooking food. So you can choose to spend a lot more on dew collectors that don't offer much of any kind of benefit beyond not having to click to fill your stacks of jars, which can be done very quickly and easily.

Consider that you can click once per campfire after initially choosing the clean water and setting a number of water to boil to get it boiling. A campfire can be set to boil 100s of water at once and will continue where it left off when you collect the water that fills the 60 output without any other clicking until you either run out of fuel or finish all the water. Now, consider a dew collector. You can do 9 water (it was 6, but I think the patch notes said it was expanded to 9) per dew collector. You have to refill those with empty jars repeatedly and you can only get 9 at a time when collecting, compared to 60 at a time from a campfire. Even if you don't care about speed, think of what happens if you need 1000 water. If you have 20 dew collectors, that's 180 per 2-3 days. On the other hand, you can just fill the 1000 jars in a fairly short amount of time at a water source and then queue 10 campfires with 100 each and you'll have all 1000 in under a day (I don't have the exact speed, so maybe more than a day, but it depends on your Master Chef perk level). Either way, you'll have all 1000 you need in FAR less time. And when you're talking a difference of days, that's enough time to make it matter.


As I said, it's just how it feels and may not be the actual reason.


Considering both meganoth and Roland, who are both strong supporters of TFP and more often than not agree with what they do, or at least say they think it's not a bad option, are both saying that the dew collectors aren't worth much anymore... that is a good indication that there's something wrong with the approach taken.

Thank you for the thorough reply. I was not stating your stance on jars as a problem whatsoever. As you said, you don't spam it all over the place like some folks do with their opinions on certain topics. You share your opinion when and where appropriate, which is totally okay. I only referenced your well-known perspective on jars to attempt to alleviate redundancy, i.e. you do not need to tell me how much you don't like jars because I already know. Your posts and replies were not redundant, whether or not my acknowledgement of your position helped or not.

It seems that we simply differ in opinion. Perhaps I could explain my case a little better, but I am not sure to what end that would be, so I am happy to respectfully agree to disagree.