Item Decay

[kroner]

Alright, I've been a big proponent of item deterioration for a while so I started a topic dedicated to discuss the specifics of how it could be implemented. I don't really want this to become a debate over whether it should be implemented or not. That can be done in another thread. This thread is for laying out a plan. Also up for discussion are tools out of alternate materials that decay at different rates.

[David]

Just brainstorming...

Decay can be attached to the age of an object.

Decay can be attached to the number of uses.

An Object can be repaired if the materials on hand, but gradually permenantly degrades.

Food rots, yielding seeds for green houses.

Shields Break if hit several times.

Weapons jam after several uses and have to be fixed which could be very time consuming... this is along the same vein of decay, but can be fully remedied and not neccesarily with resources but with time and possibly tools.

Tools decay slower than weapons.

Weapons rust from lack of use as well..., perhaps a polish and clean option could be implemented. heh

hmm... that's all for now

(seems like whenever there is a decay topic it slides off the front page lol)

[kroner]

So here's my plan.
Decay: Tools machines and weapons have a durability percentage which starts at 100% when built. maybe there would be a new button for an info page for this stuff. after each hour used (or after each use for weapons), the durability percentage goes down by a set amount depending on the item. the effectiveness of the item is proportional to it's durability percentage. (maybe rounded up to the nearest 5% so that every project isn't 98% finished after the apportioned amount of time)

Repair: A repair project can be starteed on any damaged item by the person who's inventory it's in (or by anyone for machines). The amount of resources and time required to fix it is half the amount it was to build it times the percentage of damage it's taken. so a sabre at 50% durability requires 25g of steel to fix. (this amount would be rounded down to the nearest gram so a hematite drill at 95% wouldn't require any diamond at all to fix.) I don't sure if a tool should be usable while there is a repair project going on, because otherwise they would really pile up in the projects page. Only machines could be used while being repaired because anyone could start the repair project and that would sabotoge the machine otherwise.

Yeah so those are my thoughts on the matter.

[kroner]

oh yeah and maybe decay would slowly happen automatically over time also. i like that idea.

[Sho]

If repair costs are rounded down, there might be a problem. If you repair at 99%, you might not have to pay any resources at all. For example, if a sabre gets repaired every other day when it's at 99%, it would never cost anything and would only take 1 turn. Perhaps repair should take more time, like a minimum time of 1 day or something. Since most characters would be concerned primarily with the resource cost, this would mean that repairing a tool or machine would still be better than making a new one.

[kroner]

yeah i thought that might be a problem. but there is a minimum length on all projects of one hour, so if you wanted to repair your sabre like that it would take an hour each time. plus if it decayed 2% each hit it would alwasy take steel to repair. so maybe the decay percentages could be set to avoid that or maybe the round down part is a bad idea....

[David]

..and the distinction can be made between perma-decay and repairable decay...

[new.vogue.nightmare]

If repair costs are rounded down, there might be a problem. If you repair at 99%, you might not have to pay any resources at all. For example, if a sabre gets repaired every other day when it's at 99%, it would never cost anything and would only take 1 turn. Perhaps repair should take more time, like a minimum time of 1 day or something. Since most characters would be concerned primarily with the resource cost, this would mean that repairing a tool or machine would still be better than making a new one.

Well, it is true that if you take special care of your things they can last a long time...consider this a good cleaning, sharpening and polishing for the sabre, and a readjustment of parts for the machines.

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

if you repaired a machine everytime it dropped to 99% you could write it off as running maintenance but i think something has to be brought in so that if something is at or below 50% it can only be repaired to say 95% so as to represent the fact that something so badly damaged can't be returned to absolute pristine condition.and as to machines being fixed while being used you'd have to put in a chance that the person repairing the machine could take large amount's of damage cause it's not gunna be a safe job sticking your hand into the middle of a running machine is it

[Solfius]

Lets see, durability could relate to how fast a material degrades.

so durability could be a figure per hour, that figure could be doubled when the item is in use. For weapons they take damage when used, rather than on the hour.

I think a "health" score is good, and when it reaches 0 it breaks up. Effectiveness of the tool could be reduced by 1% for ever 2% health lost. Can't quite explain why I feel that is better, other than a 1:1 ratio seems pretty fast to me.

[David]

What about weapons jamming regularly, or dull... they decay as tools do, but also jam... maybe machinery should jam too... basic tools shouldn't jam or dull though, some of the more advanced ones possibly.

[creepyguyinblack]

Well there could be two durability ratings for each object. One would be the current durability as others have described, whihc should have a certain % chance of dropping a certain amount with each use (for weapons) or hour/day of use for tools/machines and this one could be repaired, up to the second durability value, which is the maximum durability. Have this value able to retain decimals and go down at 1/10 the rate of the first durability rating, and also have it round up to the nearest whole number when doing calculations for its effectiveness, so that a sabre at 99.1% will still function fine, but after that, another drop and it would be slightly imperfect for ever and continue to get worse gradually, no matter how much you repaired it.

The main problem with this system, is objects are still treated as copies of the entry in the database, rather than individual objects, though they do have individual object #s, as reflected by keys. I am not a programmer, but I think changing this will be quite a task.

[kroner]

i guess the objects could still be copies of one single entry, but each object number would need the stats connected to it, so i guess that's a problem. then when an item was used the system would have to look up the object number and modify the properties it gets from the object entry in the database to figure out how much is done on the project or whatever.

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

the other big problem i can see with attaching lot's of data to all object's in the game is the one of bandwidth. but maye i shouldn't of brought this since we are trying to get this idea in but just maybe the programming dept have looked at similiar idea's and it's not feasable with the current bandwidth and machinery to keep the game running fast enough to stop too many complaint's *shrugs*

[rklenseth]

Moved to Implemented forum.