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Croa

Sawmill

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I had an idea as I was cutting up tons and tons of planks for a house.  The idea is for a sawmill container that you can put in X logs and get Y planks and Y scrap back over a period of time.  I was thinking a starting point for balance could be 5 logs in and the corresponding number of planks and wood scrap over a 2 hour period.  Horribly slow compared to manually making planks so it shouldn't impact the bulk plank market, but a little bit of automation to free players up from having to grind a small number of planks.  If this were added, I'd build 5 or 6 of them and load up every night before logging off to keep my stock of planks up for smaller projects.  

 

The intent is not to eliminate the bulk planks market, or completely automate making planks, but to free players from small spurts of plank making so they can tend to other things and still make planks.  I would also suggest adding a proximity check so there has to be X number of tiles between each sawmill to avoid mega deeds covered in sawmills.

 

Just a thought, yay or nah as you see fit :)

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I would rather that, a sawmill would allow a player to produce boards in a more consistent and slightly faster method than to automate it completely.  Thus, the saw blade and associated building equipment, only help to determine speed and max quality of boards cut, and remove the "randoms".  As a trade off for using such a device the carpentry xp could be halved?

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-1  Although a nice idea in theory for a different game or a WU server, I think it would require a lot of dev time that can be spent elsewhere for real QoL issues we're having, it would be against the design philosophy of WO, and would start the trend of "if planks are automated, why can't X be automated?".

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as long as we have to fuel the sawmill with the souls of unborn children.... wait, that's illegal?

 

-1

Edited by Nomadikhan
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It doesn't get much faster (or easier) to cut high QL planks with Jake's saw and 98 carpentry skill.

 

I'm going to -1 this, because I can think of other skills that could stand improvement *cough* meditation...*cough*

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Personally I'm fine with automated mass production as long as it requires high level crafters to create and maintain.

 

In addition the finished product should be lower ql than what a player could craft by hand.

 

In fact here's a copypasta I use whenever this subject come up:

 

Any automation be it powered by wind, water, heat, or whatever should provide little, if any, skill gain to offset the increased ease of production. Tech levels are still pretty crude and quality control nonexistent, so even if the ql of the system parts (and the system as a whole) were created by a maxed out craftsman (would have to be highly skilled to begin with), the produced product would still be at a lower ql than what can be potentially created by hand.
 
Now Im not too crazy about having entire structure objects like a guard tower. Rather have such be more of a modification for existing player built structures, axles running through windows or specialized walls. Course there would be requirements: windmill blades would have to be placed high enough, waterwheels in submerged tiles, etc.
 
Each power source would contribute so much according to its type and ql. Gears and axles eating up the power by their respective ql, thus inefficiency. Of course, levers and pulleys. Players can then hook up any number of whatever is desired, limited by the total power.
 
This can consist of saws, mixers, grinders, bellows (for fires), and the sky is the limit. Players of the Dwarf Fortress game would be familar with this, the game pretty much nailed the crude mechanical concept.
 
Overall the construction should be made very resource and skill intensive. The relationship between power transfer and ql should be such that very high ql components are desired.
 
EDIT: Course this would probably require a whole new skill tree for mechanics. I cannot think of any existing main skill that would even come close. For assembling the final system that is. The individual components would come from various existing crafts.
 
EDIT EDIT: Oh yeah mechanic skillset should also include maintenance for replacing worn out components. Naturally the more the system is used, the faster stuff wears out. Lubricants would also be a heavy requirement.
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7 hours ago, Klaa said:

Personally I'm fine with automated mass production as long as it requires high level crafters to create and maintain.

 

In addition the finished product should be lower ql than what a player could craft by hand.

 

In fact here's a copypasta I use whenever this subject come up:

 

Any automation be it powered by wind, water, heat, or whatever should provide little, if any, skill gain to offset the increased ease of production. Tech levels are still pretty crude and quality control nonexistent, so even if the ql of the system parts (and the system as a whole) were created by a maxed out craftsman (would have to be highly skilled to begin with), the produced product would still be at a lower ql than what can be potentially created by hand.
 
Now Im not too crazy about having entire structure objects like a guard tower. Rather have such be more of a modification for existing player built structures, axles running through windows or specialized walls. Course there would be requirements: windmill blades would have to be placed high enough, waterwheels in submerged tiles, etc.
 
Each power source would contribute so much according to its type and ql. Gears and axles eating up the power by their respective ql, thus inefficiency. Of course, levers and pulleys. Players can then hook up any number of whatever is desired, limited by the total power.
 
This can consist of saws, mixers, grinders, bellows (for fires), and the sky is the limit. Players of the Dwarf Fortress game would be familar with this, the game pretty much nailed the crude mechanical concept.
 
Overall the construction should be made very resource and skill intensive. The relationship between power transfer and ql should be such that very high ql components are desired.
 
EDIT: Course this would probably require a whole new skill tree for mechanics. I cannot think of any existing main skill that would even come close. For assembling the final system that is. The individual components would come from various existing crafts.
 
EDIT EDIT: Oh yeah mechanic skillset should also include maintenance for replacing worn out components. Naturally the more the system is used, the faster stuff wears out. Lubricants would also be a heavy requirement.

 

I really like the concept of having crude mechanics.  Obviously there wouldn't be any skill gains associated, and in game terms, you would supply an input in a container that would be consumed over time and replaced with another item so it wouldn't be terribly hard to code.  We could even start out simple and have these construct that require player interaction.  

 

Let's take the sawmill for example.  We have a container where we can drop up to 10 logs, for example, and then activate the sawmill via right-click action.  After a 60 second timer (assuming full stamina and about 30-40 QL of the sawmill), one log is consumed and you get Log KG / 4 planks in the same container.  The benefit to players is that you can fit more logs in the sawmill than you can carry, and you don't have to have inventory space to hold the finish products.  If we add a rule  for only one sawmill in a 20 tile radius we can prevent players from mass building sawmills (not that it would be a huge benefit because you need a player action to process the log).  Plank QL would depend on sawmill QL and player skill when they activate it.

 

The game could add round saw blade as a crafting item, and the recipe for the small could be: small crate, round saw blade, 10 bricks, 10 mortar and require 45 masonry to start it.  It could be a subclass of the container with a special function added on to provide the processing of logs.  Another idea could be to add different wood products such as support beams, planks, and shafts to the sawmill as well, making it a combination of a saw, carving knife, and container.  It would have to be put on ground, and once placed, cannot be picked up again.  

 

I think the tech level in the game supports it as Wurm seems to have a similar tech level to games like Skyrim, and Skyrim has a sawmill in one of the villages.  It also ends a bit more high end crafting to the game, and makes creating planks for building projects a bit more efficient.

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My suggestion would be to have to have some kind of wheel to power saw, it can be powered either by horses or by water od built in shallow water, i first case you would hitch 2 horses in it and put grains ( only grains like wheat, oat etc, not grass or veggies) and while there is food horses would power the wheel. That wheel could be connected to sawmill, grindatone, anything on the tile next to it. Sawmill would have to be enchanted with courier though so spirits can operate it, and do ql control. It would be container where you put some amount of logs and slowly overtime get appropiate amount of planks, beams, shafts... if the player is logged while the process is going it can get small carp tick from time to time. Simillar mechanism already exists with stills and beverages so it won't break the game and opens so much options. Starting from different power sources, water (constant but slower), animals(faster but fueled by grains), wind( where speed would depend on the wind, gale would produce planks faster, while breeze even slower than water), we could have many attacments for it, sawmills, presses, grindstones, i think it would add much to the depth of game and qol and it wont break the game. Maybe even new skill like mechanics or enginnering for making those or using miscelanious items skill which is hard to get

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-1 I really dislike any automation.

 

This is already sufficiently covered by the crafting window IMO

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3 hours ago, Myriad said:

-1 I really dislike any automation.

 

This is already sufficiently covered by the crafting window IMO

If you dislike it, you don't have to use it, as long as it is balanced and doesn't give huge edge over manual making

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Wrong.  If we dislike it, it doesn't have to get implemented.  We're sorry that you are lazy.

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It's automation.. and when it comes to mass producing things... one item is never enough... that 1 sawmill with many nerfs .. turns into a "farm" with 50x/++ of these.. each using 5 logs, turning them into 30 planks; x50 of these.. -> 1500 planks in 2 hours... and you save ~1hour or more fatigue to spend on something else.. while getting 1.5silver in raw materials to sell, problem?

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i'm quite impartial to a sawmill, because it sure would make, making planks a lot less time consuming, but of course it would need to water driven or horse driven, because steam or powered wouldn't make sense. the first "actual" sawmill wasn't built until 1594

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I was going along with the suggestion until you said...

On 9/30/2016 at 8:04 AM, Croa said:

 If this were added, I'd build 5 or 6 of them and load up every night before logging off to keep my stock of planks up for smaller projects.  

 

If the limited capacity could be circumvented by building more of them...

 

Unless it had a massive radius. Like no other sawmills in a 50 tile radius. That should keep them down to one or two saw mills for most single person deeds.

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Allow only on deed, and one per deed, or dependand on deed size, limit amount of logs you can put in and there you go, distilling uses automation but it's incredibly slow, in fact distilled alchohols are ironicly one of the things that is not worth the effort to get. For me main point is fun with building such machines and mechanics, not lazy making planks for money. If it takes one month to make 1k planks with everyday reloading who cares about one lazy made silver to fund upkeep maybe

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If you were making 1 plank every 40minutes(1k/mo), why bother at all, good saw and skilled carpenter could do that in 2-3sec.. and takes ~1 hour to get that many planks, at probably better QL:huh:

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Because i like to build various stuff in Wurm which are semiclose to historical realism and that includes crude machinery, and not click like insane and make planks for profit all day. Even if you can make much larger amounts of planks with it, price will drop only thing that will be affected is the people making real money from making planks(i doubt that there are many of those). Either way i'm sure some balance can be found. But i don't understand why someone making real money from wurm needs to stop bringing new interesting mechanisms in wurm which are totaly ok with theme of the game. I'm all for both options to be balanced and to each has its own trade off . It's even more realistic to make planks from log using sawmill than manualy making planks with regular handsaw.

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9 hours ago, kochinac said:

Allow only on deed, and one per deed, or dependand on deed size, limit amount of logs you can put in and there you go, distilling uses automation but it's incredibly slow, in fact distilled alchohols are ironicly one of the things that is not worth the effort to get. For me main point is fun with building such machines and mechanics, not lazy making planks for money. If it takes one month to make 1k planks with everyday reloading who cares about one lazy made silver to fund upkeep maybe

 

While I respect where you are going on this, please... no arbitrary limits like 1 per toon, 1 per deed, or anything like that.  I do support some sort of limitation, but at the very least tie it to something within the game world, like steam power, wind power or having to be built on a water source.  

 

Now if we really wanted to get it going good.  Instead of making this a totally automated thing, why not make it a force multiplier?  so you can do a whole log in 30 seconds? or something along these lines?

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You already can.  Get 50 mind logic, click !> and then "create".  Done in 30 seconds.

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