PC A18 Tips/Mechanics I've Missed

[180Shauny]

Hi All,

I don't get much time to play so even less time to experiment with new stuff. I'm guessing there's several new things for A18 I've missed and hoping you can fill me in.

Couple of things I've found:

Chopping tree stumps yields honey which is extremely useful early game without antibiotics.

Digging the blue pallets gives cobblestone and cement (A17 feature I know)

There must be so much more that would be good to know, post it up!

 

[Ghostlight]

Using a pick on wall radiators in houses now gives a Radiator which smelts to a lot of Brass. Dukes can also be smelted now for Brass.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

structural integrity is gone.

Well... every material has the same value and its only like 7-8 blocks.

So building awesome huge houses by starting with steel, going to the lighter blocks over time wont work anymore.

You can smelt coins 1:1 for brass, making it the most abundant ressource together with iron.

Tier IV quests are the best. Take only as long as I-IV (mostly) and give rewards close to T V.

Junk turrets are awesome in the beginning. Low ammo cost and high CC.

Finishing a ressource gives a final boost again when finishing it. So always finish the ressource.

 

[theFlu]

structural integrity is gone. Well... every material has the same value and its only like 7-8 blocks.

So building awesome huge houses by starting with steel, going to the lighter blocks over time wont work anymore.

Gone? What patch are you referring to? 18.2 b5 seems to be pretty close to previous, wood has about 8, stone about 12 and iron about 16 blocks of horisontal support within their type, and at least the tooltips still reflect the old system where irons are a lot heavier than woods..?

Sure the SI code has changed, so a 16 iron horisontal break is different than before and I don't know how complete the code is, I just slapped way too much weight on a single support pillar - iron core, 4x iron surrounding it, something like 120 stone (which it should roughly hold) and about 50 wood frames on top of that (none of which is should not hold anymore). When it finally collapsed, three stone blocks ended up levitating.. sounds about business as usual

 

[Viktoriusiii]

Gone? What patch are you referring to? 18.2 b5 seems to be pretty close to previous, wood has about 8, stone about 12 and iron about 16 blocks of horisontal support within their type, and at least the tooltips still reflect the old system where irons are a lot heavier than woods..?
Sure the SI code has changed, so a 16 iron horisontal break is different than before and I don't know how complete the code is, I just slapped way too much weight on a single support pillar - iron core, 4x iron surrounding it, something like 120 stone (which it should roughly hold) and about 50 wood frames on top of that (none of which is should not hold anymore). When it finally collapsed, three stone blocks ended up levitating.. sounds about business as usual

Pretty sure 18.0 & 18.1 (haven't played .2)

because when i tested it, every block was 8 blocks and the 9th fell down.

Wood, iron, rebar, concrete, reinforced concrete, steel...

in >=A17 this was not the case.

 

[theFlu]

Pretty sure 18.0 & 18.1 (haven't played .2)because when i tested it, every block was 8 blocks and the 9th fell down.

Wood, iron, rebar, concrete, reinforced concrete, steel...

in >=A17 this was not the case.

Huh. Maybe a work in progress issue then, seems fine(ish) now. Give it another go when you get to 18.2

 

[ginc]

Pretty sure 18.0 & 18.1 (haven't played .2)because when i tested it, every block was 8 blocks and the 9th fell down.

Wood, iron, rebar, concrete, reinforced concrete, steel...

in >=A17 this was not the case.

I was messing around with Creative mode a few days ago just to test SI, built a pillar of Iron blocks and was able to attach 16 blocks to one face. Seems to be working fine.

Its worth noting that if the supported blocks have multiple materials, they're all treated like they have the mass of the heaviest block. Basically, you can't attach 14 Iron blocks onto an Iron support block, and then add 10 more Wood blocks on to that. Anything after the second wood block will fall

 

[theFlu]

Its worth noting that if the supported blocks have multiple materials, they're all treated like they have the mass of the heaviest block. Basically, you can't attach 14 Iron blocks onto an Iron support block, and then add 10 more Wood blocks on to that. Anything after the second wood block will fall

That's an approximation; a decent rule of thumb, but not correct.

On any face, you can attach a line of maximum of 15 blocks, the 16th will drop (taking the 15th along in the current iteration). This is a limit in the engine, essentially outside of weight calculations.

On an iron face (300 carry), you can attach up to 15 iron blocks (300/20). The 16th would be too much weight, but it also violates the above limitation, so only the last two seem to fall. IF you place the last three (not two, that causes a fall of the two only) on top of one another, the weight will be too much and the whole 16 block line will fall.

On a stone face, you can attach 120 weight. Stone has a mass of 10, so that's 12 stone blocks. Wood weighs 5, but the wood faces can only carry 40, making 8 the longest for wood.

A stone face could carry 8 stones (80) + 8 wood (40). It just runs into the first limitation, 15 of the algorithm. but 8+7 is already way more than the stone would carry stones.

You can also repeat the stack of three experiment at the end of the wood line; only the wood falls. Can't exactly say why, "first breaking face" I suppose.

Tested this all while writing this, in A18.2 b5.

EDIT: Adding frames on the stone portion of the 8+7 test above, it seems the stone allows for an extra wood frame before collapse.. rounding errors or whatnot....

EDIT2: Apparently the 15th block in a line will fall if you step on it. Don't design with more than 14 without testing...

 

[ginc]

Interesting, didn't know about the engine limit of 15. I could have sworn that some of the bridges in Navezgane have gaps longer than 30 blocks between supports - they use special blocks with increased carrying capacity and/or reduced mass.

Then again, those bridge supports aren't supporting a line of blocks on each face, they're supporting a platform.

 

[theFlu]

The bridges.. yeah. They also used to collapse or drop single blocks when walked upon. And not of the trap floor type Not sure of their current state, I think they've been updated, but they used to be pretty wonky.

Essentially any POI can defy the physics freely, they're just loaded in as is. Only upon updates in their environment are SI calculations invoked - and the subsequent collapses..

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Bridge blocks can carry more, but are creative mode only. The 15 block face limit is an engine issue yes. Has been there at least since 16 when I started.

 

[Limdood]

1. It is utterly not worth it to carry, scrap, or collect anything made of brass anymore. Nothing you can loot or salvage or carry is as efficient as dukes for stacking and smelting, so just smelt those.

2. Items, especially high quality items at full repair sell for far more with a mod or two in them than they do unmodded. As in, they sell for a higher amount than selling the item and the mod separately. They often sell for enough higher that it's worth BUYING mods to put into items to sell them. (example, a Q6 magnum I had sold for 1760. I bought a 2x scope from the trader for 240 and put it in the magnum, which now sold for 2288). Use this to get a tidy profit from useless, extra, or unneeded mods.

3. loot respawn has a tricky trigger. It measures days from the last time that chunk was updated. If you walk past loot containers often, they'll never refill with loot. You can get around this by "seeding" the container. an opened container that has any item(s) in it will not reset it's countdown. You will need to manually keep track of the time, and when the loot respawn timer is done, removing the items in it will make it an "untouched" container again. For example:

3a)loot respawn is 15 days. Day 3, you loot a bookstore. You empty the whole place out, leaving each container empty. On day 12, whoops! you wander past the bookstore. Now it won't restock until day 27...lets hope you don't wander past it again before then! (or that someone else doesn't...if you're on a MP server).

3b)loot respawn is 15 days. Day 3, you loot a bookstore. You empty the whole place out, but this time, you leave behind a feather, or a piece of paper, or dirt, or a plant fiber...anything...in each bookshelf. Now the timer ticks down whether you wander by or not. You could even make that bookstore your base as long as you leave the bookshelves alone. On day 19 (just to be safe), you go to the bookshelves and take out the item. close the inventory, and presto! now the bookshelves are restocked with new schematics, magazines, and paper. When you're done looting them, you can put the item back in, and wait another 15 (+1 if you want to be safe...if you open it early, the timer probably resets) days for even more stuff. Just make sure you keep track of which day you're supposed to open them up!

 

[Grolbu]

3b)loot respawn is 15 days. Day 3, you loot a bookstore. You empty the whole place out, but this time, you leave behind a feather, or a piece of paper, or dirt, or a plant fiber...anything...in each bookshelf. Now the timer ticks down whether you wander by or not.

OMG how do people work these things out ??? I'm absolutely doing this in my single player game, and putting some signs outside to tell me when to loot again. Will be a good reminder of what I've looted and not looted too.

My own tip and I don't know how old it is but discovering it was a game changer for me - when you have picked a stack up from your inventory or a chest or whatever, you can right click to drop one item from it. So if you have a huge stack of something in a chest and you only need 1 of them grab the stack, RIGHT click over a free slot in your backpack, then put the stack back in the chest.