remove rope from log wall recipe

[cephalo]

Rope is hard to come by, and is crucial for carrying logs. When you are building log walls, it is too easy to accidently consume them if your ripped sheets get low or are in the wrong container. I've done this twice already and it's extremely aggravating to suddenly quadruple the amount of hauling that needs to be done because you lost your ropes. Can I get them back if I destroy the wall?

 

When you build log walls you need lots of logs, that means ropes. It's a dangerous combination.

[Kirrus]

I don't think removing rope entirely from the requirements to build log walls'll be suitable, it's already fairly easy to build them, don't want to make it too easy! Maybe recovering some after destroying the wall might work better

[cephalo]

Let me clarify what I mean. Log walls require logs and either of ripped sheets, twine, or rope.

 

Ripped sheets are practically free. You never want to build a log wall with anything else. Ropes are rare. You never want to build a log wall with ropes. Twine is an acceptable alternative to ripped sheets because they aren't required to be in your inventory when working with logs. Rope however, is necessary to haul logs efficiently, so they are always in your inventory when making a log wall, putting them at great risk of being consumed.

 

The issue is that the user interface is tricking the player into making a potentially catastrophic decision. Going back into town for more ropes is life threatening, but the alternative is to haul logs one by one, which is four times the amount of the players real life time. It presents a 'quality of life' problem for the user.

 

Here's how it went down:

 

I chopped my trees, made log bundles to move the logs to the construction area, dropped the logs where the walls will be placed. Selected the 'build' context menu to build a log wall. Since my materials are all accessible, I can build 3 wall sections from the same standing location. When finished building 3 walls. Ropes are gone! I could swear I had plenty of ripped sheets in my inventory but they might have been in my backpack. I'm not sure exactly why the ropes were consumed but they were.

 

My suggestion is to remove 'ropes' specifically from the options to make a log wall. Ripped sheets and twine should stay in the recipe. An alternative would be to allow ripped sheets to make log bundles, but that suggestion makes ropes useless.

[Kirrus]

Removing ropes entirely; that'll be an almost certain 'No'. You *should* be able to make log walls with ropes, removing that option to stop players from making mistakes isn't in scope of PZ. PZ's aim is to *let* players make mistakes, in fact a mistake is mostly what kills players. The game is trying very hard to kill you.

 

Saying that, tweaking how it works to help stop it being frustrating might certainly be useful, maybe the log wall constructed with ropes having a different look to those constructed with ripped sheets, so at least you can see you're making a mistake actively, or some sort of UI hint showing rope use vs ripped sheet use.

[cephalo]

I'm sure you want player mistakes to be related to the zombie apocalypse, and not to the games interface. This is an interface issue. You have to capture the users intent.

 

A survivor might make too much noise and die from it, but he's not going to absent mindedly make things out of materials he needs for other things.

[Kirrus]

See my final paragraph.

 

Edit: a lot of this comes down to polishing and balancing, the game's UI is known to need a bit of TLC, but it's currently a lower priority than other tasks on the todo list. I'm not saying it's not something that doesn't need fixing, but outright removing part of a recipe isn't on the cards, since if it were we'd quickly get asked why you can't make log walls with rope

[cephalo]

Well... why can't I drag logs around with sheets? 

[Pwnlord]

Well... why can't I drag logs around with sheets? 

Man's got a point. There should be no reason you can't drag logs with Sheet Ropes.

[Kirrus]

Sheet ropes are weaker? I'm just playing devils' advocate now, that's a good idea!

[Blasted_Taco]

I see the problem and i agree.

 

Not exactly with removing the ropes, but with choosing what item you want to use when crafting something.

 

I cant count the times when i chose some pants in a zombie body to rip them for sheets and end up naked myself for some reason, it would be better if somehow we could chose what materials to use.

[Gaffa Tape Warrior]

Agree to disagree.

[Kirrus]

Agree to disagree.

 

I'm not sure we need to, unless you disagree with a point here? I think a consensus has been reached in this suggestion

[valhalla_bound]

Being able to make rope from foraged materials would be awesome. I'm not a huge fan of 3 sheetropes = 1 rope in hydrocraft.

Well I am. It's easy and free. But it's not realistic.