I do agree that using a bucket to make an infinite water source is silly. I suppose code could keep tracks of which water blocks were placed by a player and then not make them infinite. I suppose you could also make emptying a bucket onto the ground meant the water runs off or is absorbed. I'd pair that with making the bucket something you could place on the ground. Then I'd like 1 bucket (5 gallon) hold 20 jars (1 quart) worth of water.
But I'm a fan of containers being refilled by natural water sources, so reusing jars and things are cool to me. I don't mind the dew collector, though it isn't a very realistic implementation. I've not come to the conclusion what is it useless. Its accessories are expensive and not very realistic. I mean there's a 55 gallon drum depicted there, so it should hold 55*4=220 jars worth of water. It would take a lot of rain to fill it and you'd be boiling it to kill the mosquitoes.
I can't really get behind making a dew collector spit out mineral water, which to me in this game is the truly potable water. I think that should require more, like a chemistry set, to make.
I'm not sure if maybe you haven't been following the discussions about dew collectors requiring jars or not. Here's what we have in 2.6 (not 2.5 or earlier, where dew collectors were useful):
Getting murky water...
Option 1:
- Wait to get enough magazines to build a dew collector.
- Find and spend all the resources required to build a dew collector.
- Optionally, find and spend the resources required to buy or craft the mods for the dew collector.
- Find or craft 9 (or maybe it's 18 with the dew collector mod that doubles output?) empty jars and put them into the dew collector.
- Wait X time until you have all the water produced.
- Collect the water.
- OUTPUT: Limited to 18 max per dew collector if using a mod that doubles output.
Option 2:
- Find or craft empty jars.
- Go to any water source and fill all the jars very quickly.
- OUTPUT: Limited only by inventory space and number of empty jars.
Getting clean water...
Option 1:
- If you used the mod to get clean water, then you already have it. OUTPUT: 18 max per dew collector.
- Otherwise...
- Build a campfire for very cheap right on day 1.
- Find, buy, or craft a pot. You'll need to do this eventually regardless of how you get water.
- Gather fuel for the campfire and put it into the campfire.
- Start boiling the water.
- OUTPUT: 60 per campfire, but you only get 18 max murky water per dew collector to use when boiling the water.
Option 2:
- Build a campfire for very cheap right on day 1.
- Find, buy, or craft a pot. You'll need to do this eventually regardless of how you get water.
- Gather fuel for the campfire and put it into the campfire.
- Start boiling the water.
- OUTPUT: 60 per campfire, limited only by the number of murky water you fill at the water source.
So, getting murky water is simpler and faster without a dew collector. Getting clean water with a dew collector just removes the boiling step, but it takes much longer than not using the dew collectors. You need 3 dew collectors to get as much water as a single campfire... and it's not even really as much, but it's close. Dew collectors are slower, as mentioned, even if you don't need to boil the water. Dew collectors cost more resources to use than a campfire. There isn't a fuel requirement (other than jars), but fuel isn't hard to come by and the cost (time) to gather the fuel resources will remain cheaper than the cost (time) to gather everything you need to make enough dew collectors (and mods) to equal what you can do with the campfires for most of the game. You will already have campfires for cooking, so you don't need to build anything that you're not already using and it's faster and cheaper.
Now, if you look at dew collectors in 2.5 or earlier, where jars weren't required, then dew collectors
were useful. You could set them and forget them and just gather water whenever you wanted. Entirely passive. But now, you have to actively find or craft jars to refill the dew collectors regularly just to get more water and for what? A slower method of filling those jars when you can just take the jars and fill them in seconds instead of however long it takes to fill them in a dew collector? It just isn't useful now, but it was before.
At this point, it's an aesthetic thing, but that's about it. Some will keep using it just for immersion or because they don't want to fill water at a water source (which is odd, since those who wanted jars supposedly wanted to fill them at a water source), but they basically broke dew collectors. As I said, many (most?) of those who wanted empty jars were saying they wanted to get water from a water source. So they shouldn't care about dew collectors if they are using a water source instead. And those who didn't want jars and wanted to use dew collectors as an alternative way to get water no longer can do so without using jars unless they mod that requirement out of the game, as I plan to do. Who did they really make happy with the change? Those who wanted empty jars to be immersive but didn't want to gather water from a water source, which is far faster? How many of those people are there?
