EVERGLADES: bugs and suggestions

News, discussions and gossip around WOK SPECIES.

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Dameon
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Post by Dameon » Mon Mar 29, 2004 7:13 pm

All right, a few more hunting observations. Clearly, plants the same color as your species only fill to half saturation. I am a red wolf. I can't eat grey or black plants (assuming I could find any) and I can't eat white plants with BS2. Hunting red plants is extremely inefficient. Yeah, I could change my species color, but that takes about the same amount of time as moving, so it doesn't save any time overall.

Anyway, all I can eat are blue plants (which I've yet to find) or yellow or green ones. That's not a lot of options, it gives me a less than 50% chance of finding plants I can eat efficiently when changing squares. The best solution to this problem would be spying; but spying trashes your instinct! The steps that have been taken are good so far, but the instinct loss for spying really needs to go. If I let my instinct drop, my attack drops, and I hunt less efficiently. I really cannot afford to blow 5% of instinct every time I want to spy in a direction.

If I could spy without lowering my instinct and thus my hunting efficiency, then I could find out where edible plants are, and not be taking a crapshoot every time I move. Right now spying as an option is simply not all that useful. Yes, movement costs are reduced but not so much that players can afford to spend two steps moving into a square and hope it has the right color plant.
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Post by Undertaker » Mon Mar 29, 2004 7:58 pm

Dameon wrote: I also have yet to have anybody respond to my query as to if there are any BS2 plants out there at all. unnessecarily.
Yes, they were either in H3 or G4 can't remember.
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Post by Dameon » Mon Mar 29, 2004 8:08 pm

Yeah I have had that happen when I lose 0% instinct for spying an empty square, but sometimes I DO lose 4% instinct, and I cannot for the life of me understand why. Is there supposed to be some sort of consistency to this? And I think the color of plants you cannot eat should be standardized; otherwise it'd be hardly fair for a species to lose the ability to eat, say, blue plants when those are the only BS2 ones (when they can be found). Anyway the lack of BS2 is only for Everglades, as I understand the refersh bug is being worked on as we speak. :D
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Post by Mullog » Mon Mar 29, 2004 8:29 pm

I just counted the plants in the map, and 24(%) of the squares have plants with body size 2 or greater. So you should be able to find some soon!


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Post by gm_al » Mon Mar 29, 2004 8:54 pm

Some clarification for the "whiners delegation" (you know who you are)

* just because you are a BS2 doesnt mean you cant eat any BS1 anymore.... true it gives less saturation, but it might still be well enough to keep your stomach warm
* the bigger you get the more your list of incompatible food will grow
* plants of the same color as yourself give only reduced saturation
* switching color is an EASY and CHEAP method to adapt to the plant colors you are able to find
* quicker movement now helps a lot when it comes to feeding

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Post by Dameon » Mon Mar 29, 2004 9:28 pm

OK, so 24% of BS2-4 plants. That means, if those are divided evenly, there is a grand total of 8% of the squares with BS2, which means I have a less than one in ten chance of moving to one. That's pretty low, eh? With the saturation/movement rates better than they were, it's quite possible to eat BS1 plants for a while, so it's not as huge of a deal as it was, but the point is it is very difficult to find BS2 plants without a viable spy option that doesn't cause you to lose instinct. I'm still not clear on when a spy option does and does not cause instinct loss, some clarification would be nice. 8)

I will say that I have no intention of EVER going to BS3 (and thus, BP3, due to the risk). I doubt BS1 plants are going to cut it at BS3, meaning that I'd have to find BS2 and BS3 squares, which are only a total of 16% of the entire map. That's very chancy- unless, of course, the saturation for eating other species has gone up.
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Post by Dameon » Mon Mar 29, 2004 10:30 pm

One more thing, this time, about instinct. Everybody knows that instinct is quite important, as Al said, it is comprable to EFF in WOK 4/5. Why then, do you suppose the average instinct in Everglades is only 61% (as of this posting)? It's simple; it's because instinct is too difficult to maintain. The spying problems tie in with this, but the base issue is that it simply takes too long to recover instinct. Spending five turns to recover 4% instinct only results in a net gain of a little under 3% instinct; that's not very reasonable. I would suggest either changing it so it only takes, say, 3 turns to regain 4% instinct, or possibly so it still takes 5 turns to regain instinct, but you regain maybe 6% instead of just 4%. Or, only have species lose 1% instinct every two steps, instead of every step.

I know the dev team has said this is not a problem, but the numbers speak for themselves. 61% average instinct is definetely not what we should be aiming for in the game. I'd say an average instinct of about 80 would be more in line with reality if it is as important to SP and EFF is to WOK 5 (and it is, just watch your stats change when your instinct drops if you don't believe me!) I will have spent this entire cycle moving, hunting, and maintaining instinct and fertility. That's 8 full hours when I gained a grand total of zero skill points. Without having to move to hunt, I still wouldn't have gained even half of enough SPs to buy a skill or get a mutation. SPs are the core of the game, they are what makes it fun- right now I still think we are too bogged down in the basics.
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Post by Underdog » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:03 pm

I made an argument something along those lines to Korexus this morning.
I thought it would make SOME sense to make the instinct gain attached to BP as your BP goes up you get and extra 1% for those 5 turns. I don't know if anything ever came of it but at least you would get 5% at BP2 6% at BP3 and so on.
I'm not sure if the idea got discussed because I had to leave for work shortly after the conversation started but if I remember right he said he would put it on his list of ideas to bring up.

I also mentioned something about making it easier to ensure you get the BP upgrade before the BS. maybe by making the BS upgrade cost 10 more points but since we are still in the beginning phases I don't know how that might affect things. We shall see.
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Post by Underdog » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:21 pm

OK guys I thought the rounding bug was gone but it has reappeared.

My events log says I am eating 75 and my saturation is going down by 76.
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Post by Egbert » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:28 pm

I hope the coders don't throw things at me for this one.....
:thoughts:

Is there a way that you can have the page refresh itself whenever there is a change? That way, I can leave it on my desktop, and keep an eye on things.
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Post by Underdog » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:35 pm

Oh I'm sorry I forgot to add:

Thanks for all the work you guys have done.







NOW, Get back to work and fix it better.
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Post by Dameon » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:39 pm

Hehe yeah you guys are awesome. Now, if you can make it so I can gain skill points AND keep my insinct high, I would love you forever. 8)
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Post by Allister Fiend » Tue Mar 30, 2004 12:13 am

It's doing that same thing as last night again.

Glad I have my saturation at 2437 right now, at least I won't starve for a while.

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Post by Allister Fiend » Tue Mar 30, 2004 12:28 am

Scratch that...it's 2738 now. :lol:

And it's still doing that thing...booooo...hissssss.... :cry:
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Post by Dameon » Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:18 am

It's baaaaack!

Could not execute query.
Query: INSERT INTO sp_orders(GameID, SpeciesID, OrderID, TurnCount, UseBankedTurns, OrderText, Extra) VALUES(5, 83, 2147483648, '5', 0, 'BUY_INSTINCT', '')
Error: Duplicate entry '2147483647' for key 1

I would like to say that if my species has to starve again tonight, I am done with this round of beta testing. I'm already down about 20-30 specimens from this bug last night, and if I lose an even greater number tonight (due to the new starvation rules), I just don't feel like playing anymore unless I can get a fresh restart. I really don't feel I'll be testing the engine much when I've lost over half (if not all, depending on how tough those new starvation rules are!) my original specimens to a bug.
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Post by Donut » Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:34 am

I really hate to say this but I think you guys want it too easy here. You want your mutations within days, you don't want to spend time keeping up instinct... the list I'm sure will continue. The way I see it, the movement was fine; after the change I got minimal bonus for having 2 legs, I'd rather have a high movement at the beginning and better bonus for legs. I think the instinct is fine. It's easy to keep it up and still have plenty of time to hunt/skill points/fertility/bank turns/spy/move... whatever. If I have to explain how I will, but I'd rather you guys figure it out. It worked fine for me, until Mullog came along, but that's another story. I do agree that the Instinct gain/loss for spying could be looked at, and that feeding is a bit difficult... but I in no way think that they NEED to be changed. This game has to be a challenge, not a walk in the park/Jungle.

It makes absolute sense that going to BS2 before you have a limb would be harmful. What animal can you think of is fat and has no legs/arms to support it. I also think that it'd be impossible for said animal to roam a jungle without legs...

Just my thoughts.

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Post by Allister Fiend » Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:10 am

Species: Zebra Color: Grey # specimens: 320 Banked Turns: 3 / 30
# arms: 0 # legs: 1 Body size: 1 Brain power: 2
Skill points: 14 Saturation level: 2834
Feeding type: Herbivore Pref. terrain: Plains
Instinct: 78% Fertility: 17% Attack rolls: from 0 to 10 Defense rolls: from 0 to 11
Learned skills:
No skills

Incompatible food:
Grey species

How does this look for me?
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Post by Allister Fiend » Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:21 am

It's working again, good job whoever fixed it!

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