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Garis

Using Skill Dependency Networks in Village Design

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I spend a lot of time thinking about village designs, road designs, and minimizing transportation.  To me, a well built community (whether it be a single village or an alliance of specialists) is an interconnected machine for processing raw materials into finished products.  In the past I've worked with a "hub and spoke" design, with one central warehouse where I keep ALL THE THINGS.


 


But, I'm beginning to branch out from that and explore the possibility of creating lots of little specialized buildings for iteratively processing materials.  So, for example, instead of hanging out in my warehouse and grinding fletching, I'll have a quaint little fletchery overlooking the sea, and it'll be periodically supplied with everything required to just focus on fletching.  I personally find this idea very charming, as it would allow me to have a friend who's an excellent fletcher come stay with me for a while and give them access to that building without putting them in my central warehouse where every single thing I own is stored.


 


I'm using some network graphing software to research skill dependency networks in order to plan an effective building layout.  I thought I'd share a snapshot of that research.  It is by no means exhaustive, but I thought it looked kind of cool and you guys might find it interesting.


 


R1uGZ4n.png


 


The "alchemist" and "apothecary" roles are obviously the same skill set, but it made for a much cleaner graph if I separated them into two locations and roles based on which materials they were working with.  I'd probably make two small little workshops for those different roles on either end of the village center.


 


The red colored nodes all make things that a hunter/soldier would use.  And obviously all of the gatherers need their own tools, but I didn't want to clutter up the graph with back edges.


 


The grey boxes are locations for intermediate storage.  I also added these to clean up and simplify edges around certain nodes such as the blacksmith and alchemist.


 


As a final note, brewing is the ultimate pinnacle of technology, it would seem.  I had a good hearty laugh when I saw this.


 


EDIT: Cleaned up some edges that made no sense, like mason to alchemist.


Edited by Garis
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Why complicate what isn't complicated. You just created an extremely elaborate solution to a really simple problem. What you did is actually increasing your transportation needs.


And your final note is simply because of how you created the flowchart. It would be shipbuilding since it requires, smithing, carpentry, farming, tailor and digging.


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What, no stablemaster?


 


And who's breeding and training the guard hell hounds?


 


All deeds should have a double-fenced border filled with hell hounds.


 


You'd also need a catapult master to fling corpses into the "moat" 


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That's pretty cool :)

Kane, I think you're missing the point ;) And while Brewing certainly doesn't have so many routes in to it as shipbuilding, the number of steps up along any one of those routes is the longest - hence it being the pinnacle of technology - which I too was amused by :D

 

Looks like stablemaster would come under farmer as that includes butchering.

 

Taming (what you'd call it I don't know - Zookeeper?) would come off Kitchen I guess...

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Who's being rude?  I'm playing along.... 


 


And brewing IS a technological pinnacle.. think about it.. not only do you have to master several plant species, but also do microbiology without microscopes AND keep a specific set of conditions so your booze doesn't turn to vinegar instead.


 


Granted, it's not that complicated in Wurm but still, it's made me wonder about the irl benefits of using maple syrup as the sugary agent to ferment stuff.


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i guess im missing the point too but all this makes me think of is how sad it is that you think the point of villages and alliances is to just sell,sell,sell!!


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Why complicate what isn't complicated.

 

Haha, why not?  I "won" wurm when I had a 1x1 house with a bed, a well, and a fishing pole.  Everything else is for glory.

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Who's being rude?

I can't speak for Othob, but I assumed he was referring to Kane. I took your comments to be jokey and amusing and I reckon he probably did too.

 

i guess im missing the point too but all this makes me think of is how sad it is that you think the point of villages and alliances is to just sell,sell,sell!!

The irony here is that you're the one who has linked it to selling. Garis didn't mention selling anywhere.

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i guess im missing the point too but all this makes me think of is how sad it is that you think the point of villages and alliances is to just sell,sell,sell!!

 

Why sad??

 

Sell Sell Sell can also be a playstyle some people like to live in Wurm... What's wrong with that? 

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On the basis of Village design, it is a nice one, with various buildings dedicated to various purposes. Not unusual. To fill the stated purpose of efficiency for creation associated with skills, not so much. Most efficient way is to have all materials within one building and use all the different skills working within it.


 


If one has a deed with a number of villagers within it, this could be a nice alternative to give them some less crowded and peaceful spaces to work within. That then would be the best benefit that I would gather from this setup. Otherwise on my single person deeds I work and live out of one building, with the others all being unnecessary other than for show to fill up empty design spaces. Maybe one warehouse to store excess materials would be actually needed as well.


 


=Ayes=


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I personally tend to have you giant building with everything lumped in there, but like the idea of different buildings for different things.  I wonder if some type of skill specific building enchant would entice more of us to specialize our buildings and make for more immersive and diverse towns.  Or skill specific workbenches even, limited to one per building.


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I've always gone with a small house and cram everything into that building. The one big drawback is you can't let anyone inside it.


 


In the villages I have been in where there was a public specialized building it was almost more of a hassle for the villagers. Everyone ended up wanting to craft in their houses and not the public buildings. I'm guessing the problem was securing tools and sharing grinding materials.


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The diasdvantage I see with having lots of small seperate buildings is that it's harder to have large numbers of BSB's for QL sorting in every building - though you could sort wood QL's by wood type in one BSB if you have enough tree types and time around you :)


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I like it. I find it more interesting to see wurm put into a flow chart like that as well. Very nice, though I would add a line from foundry, alchemist, and lumber to mason because of some mason items taking base metals, mixed metals, and woods.


 


Very cool.


Edited by Ruger

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My last village on deli was like this, where each craft had its own room or building associated with it. Though we did have one central storage area to keep all bulk items such as rock shards, dirt, bricks, mortar, logs and building materials, every craft such as smithing, carpentry, masonry, leather working, etc... had its own station where items/tools and storage were organized specifically for that craft.


 


At my new place on Xanadu, I have decided to separate the bulk even more so that bricks and mortar have its own building, logs has its own, dirt has its own etc. 


 


I find that this type of set up leads to better organization of materials and most importantly, finished products. If I am looking for a completed set of studded leather armour, I will know to find it in the leather working shop. While this may not be the most efficient in terms of travel time, I find it results in a more organized overall village layout and, for some reason, makes the village feel more real and immersive.


 


One thing I notice in your diagram is that you have a separate building/areas for saw mill and lumber yard. I would probably suggest that these two be combined. The lumberjack will drop crates of logs into this area and someone working on planking or making shafts etc can just stand there, grab logs and put the finished products into bsbs to be stored. The coaler would go there to get the logs for piles and all the high ql logs would be stored in the carpentry shop. Just a thought :)


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My last village on deli was like this, where each craft had its own room or building associated with it. Though we did have one central storage area to keep all bulk items such as rock shards, dirt, bricks, mortar, logs and building materials, every craft such as smithing, carpentry, masonry, leather working, etc... had its own station where items/tools and storage were organized specifically for that craft.

 

At my new place on Xanadu, I have decided to separate the bulk even more so that bricks and mortar have its own building, logs has its own, dirt has its own etc. 

 

I find that this type of set up leads to better organization of materials and most importantly, finished products. If I am looking for a completed set of studded leather armour, I will know to find it in the leather working shop. While this may not be the most efficient in terms of travel time, I find it results in a more organized overall village layout and, for some reason, makes the village feel more real and immersive.

 

One thing I notice in your diagram is that you have a separate building/areas for saw mill and lumber yard. I would probably suggest that these two be combined.

 

This is all extremely good feedback!  My news deed's sort of long and narrow (14x48) and on a really steep hillside, so there's a lot of difficult travel time from one side to the next.  I'm getting ground down to a nub hauling the cart up and down the mountain to pick up raw materials, so initially situating the raw material storage facilities as close as possible to the construction sites seems like it'd have the biggest reduction in overall transportation time until I'm done landscaping.  What I've been doing, with the single storage area down by my cottage, is just killing me.

 

I'd love to come visit your village sometime and have a look at the layout :)

 

I like it. I find it more interesting to see wurm put into a flow chart like that as well. Very nice, though I would add a line from foundry, alchemist, and lumber to mason because of some mason items taking base metals, mixed metals, and woods.

 

Very cool.

 

I initially had all of the different tool type dependencies mapped as well, but the graph basically turns into a giant blob with everything connected to the poor blacksmith, armorer, etc.  So I pruned back and marked all of the "equipment builders" red, and focused on the flow of raw materials to more refined materials, and I just assume that everyone needs stuff from the blacksmith, carpenter, etc.   Basically any node marked in red is an "outfitter" that make the tools, weapons, armor, etc.  I really appreciate your feedback, Ruger!

 

 

The diasdvantage I see with having lots of small seperate buildings is that it's harder to have large numbers of BSB's for QL sorting in every building - though you could sort wood QL's by wood type in one BSB if you have enough tree types and time around you :)

 

I think this is a very salient point.  Although I know it's "suboptimal", having a bin of "meh" quality crafting materials (such as different plank and shaft types for a fine carpenter shop) to use for item creation, and then high quality materials (logs in this case) for imping would probably suffice.  I do like the idea of separating quality by wood type, though--very clever :D

 

In the villages I have been in where there was a public specialized building it was almost more of a hassle for the villagers. Everyone ended up wanting to craft in their houses and not the public buildings. I'm guessing the problem was securing tools and sharing grinding materials.

 

You raise an excellent point.  This is especially true when players are first getting started.  Back in my first village that's exactly what happened, too.  Then, one by one, players stopped logging in, and I had a deed full of abandoned personal houses that I was paying upkeep for.  These days, I vastly prefer alliances of smaller deed owners than a shared village.

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What I ended up doing was building a thin donut building with 8 small 2x1 bays/stalls open to the interior. Each majot craft has one area associated with it. So when you look across my courtyard (the interior is gardens with a token and rare fountain in the center) you see a little forge area over there and across the way is a tailoring area aand over there is a kitchen next to a shrine etc.


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Side detail:


 


Ores, dirt, and rock shards: 853 per BSB, 300 per large crate.  BSB kinda wins out for long term storage, but if you expect to move any of it (namely shards and dirt), might as well leave them in named crates.  Ores you can just store by the million in a if you smelt them first.


 


Smaller stuff like cotton, wemp, seeds, etc.... yes, bin all the way no arguments there.


 


LOGS:  Crates, crates crates crates always crates.  Not only does it make sorting easier, can be picked up more easily for when you do have to move them, but you fit way more per 20 planks of storage used than any bsb.


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Side detail:

 

Ores, dirt, and rock shards: 853 per BSB, 300 per large crate.  BSB kinda wins out for long term storage, but if you expect to move any of it (namely shards and dirt), might as well leave them in named crates.  Ores you can just store by the million in a if you smelt them first.

 

Smaller stuff like cotton, wemp, seeds, etc.... yes, bin all the way no arguments there.

 

LOGS:  Crates, crates crates crates always crates.  Not only does it make sorting easier, can be picked up more easily for when you do have to move them, but you fit way more per 20 planks of storage used than any bsb.

 

Logs in crates is the way to go, since they hold more than bsb's. I Separate them by ql (not by type cause inside the crate it does this for you). For imping stuff in the carpentry room I would have a crate for each ql range: 70ql, 80ql, 90ql, 93ql, 94ql, 95ql (which is the highest i have now). All the lower stuff goes in a separate building as bulk for planks. As well, I would have a bsb (or two) that I name "wood stuff" next to the bulkl crates to put planks, shafts, handles, arrow shafts, etc. cause usually you want thousands of each ready to go.

 

Crates are also great for shards and dirt even though each holds less than a bsb. I think the limit is 15 crates can fit on a tile, so a 2x3 house can hold 27k dirt on each floor for example. I usually will only use bsb's for these if I plan on never moving them again, which is never the case for dirt. For shards, though I will use bsb's if I know I am going to make them into bricks.

 

In my smithery, I have 16 bsb's all lined up and labelled by quality. 10ql, 20ql ...etc....70ql, 80ql, 90ql, then 93ql, 94ql, 95ql, ... 98ql, 99ql. These are mostly used to separate lumps of every metal though the 93+ is mostly for iron.

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The Wurm Academy on Pristine has a very attractive and visually appealing crafting area. It consists of a number of small buildings (2x2 or 2x3?) arranged in a square configuration connected by iron fencing between their exterior walls with a small courtyard within the center. The inside walls are open arches in most sections, so you can easily view the insides of each with their contents displayed. Each building is dedicated to a particular crafting environment.


 


I may be a bit off on the layout but when I saw its design some time ago I was very impressed with the quaint design, as well as the perceived functionality of it. With gated access I assumed keys could be given out to those allowed to use the area, after which they could be put on the house writs. Not really sure about the details though, since I was never part of this Village but just enjoyed watching their progress there over the years by dropping by.


 


=Ayes=


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LOGS:  Crates, crates crates crates always crates.  Not only does it make sorting easier, can be picked up more easily for when you do have to move them, but you fit way more per 20 planks of storage used than any bsb.

 

Logs in crates is the way to go, since they hold more than bsb's... Crates are also great for shards and dirt even though each holds less than a bsb. I

 

I have to disagree with crates if you are not using the mats regularly. Unless I am wrong, items stored in crates disappear faster than BSB's. Example I have 300 dirt in one crate, 2 or 3 weeks later I go to use that dirt and there is only 285 and then another couple of weeks later 244.  

 

To the OP: I like your idea, I am working on separate crafting buildings myself so I don't have a ton of unused buildings. Mine just isn't elaborate as yours. 

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I find the chart very cool, but unless I am mistaken, you have omited the leatherworking profession.


 


LW is a very complex profession because if one wanted to be completely self-sufficient at it, one would have to pay attention to five skills:


 


Hunting - to kill the animals needed to produce hides


Butchering - to butcher those animals to get high ql hides


Firemaking - to make decent ql ash


Natural Substances - to make decent ql lye to turn the hides into leather


Leatherworking - to work with that leather to produce goods


 


One could add to it tree cutting as well, as good quality wood is needed to produce good kindling, and this would raise the chain to 6, but I didn't include it in the above, as your graph seems to centre around activities that are done on deed in special areas.


 


In real life, the above was often separated into separate professions. Hunters brought the goods, tanners created the leathers and leatherworkers put them to work. In Wurm, however, that is hard to reproduce, but it does happen as well. Still, most leatherworkers are self sufficient.


Edited by Valdor

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I find the chart very cool, but unless I am mistaken, you have omited the leatherworking profession.

It's a purplish box, just under Tailor ;)

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