growing rates and harvesting rates

[Solfius]

Here's a thought I had, with regards to finite resources.

Each resource has a growing rate, and it grows that much in grams per day.

say potatoes grow at a rate of 1000g a day, over 3 days 3000g of potatoes would grow. That would be stored as the amount of that resource in a location.

then we have a harvesting rate, which is the amount we the characters gather per day.

which for potatoes would be 800g with no tools.

Manure, cultivating/farming the land, and other similar processes would increase the growing rate.

tools like the harvestor and dungfork would increase the harvesting rate.

The crucial bit is that when the amount of resource in a location runs out then you have to wait until it grows back before you can harvest some more.

That would work well with growing resources, like plants and living things. I don't know about things like minerals though.

[Meh]

food...

What if the maximum amount of poatoes in a location represents the normal harvesting rate. Whittling away as the maximum number makes gathering potatoes slowly decrease instead of coming to a sudden stop.

minerals...

For the metals there could be a finite source that is not replenished daily. It could be replenished from being discovered while doing something else like wood gathering or stone gathering.

The stones should be fairly unlimited however if you quarry too much it should create a quarry pit which for all intensive purposes looks like a room but takes the stone or limestone resource with it from the general location so that you have to go into the quarry to get stone. Quarries should not be able to become lockable.

Metal drilling could have a similiar "quarry" effect on metals and create mines. Mines can be locked.

[Solfius]

the gathering rate could be a % of the amount of potatoes there are in the location, so we get the steady decrease.

[boomhaeur]

What if you allowed characters to "plant" crops. Crops could be kept back as "seeds" - amount of seed produced by each crop can be adjusted (i.e. each apple could have seeds for 10 more apples).

Characters would keep a portion of their crops for replanting. Then have the food grow on a time scale.

Over harvest and you'll slowly run out of food. Underplant and you'll soon run out of crop. Maintain the right balance and you can create a constant stream of food for your community. Additionally you can have accelrators such as manure for growth and dung fork for harvesting.

Likewise characters could get food from another community and begin their own croplands.

[new.vogue.nightmare]

minerals don't usually run out in a region unless there is extensive exploitation...although they would be harder to get. I like the mine/quarry idea.

[boomhaeur]

With minerals it would be interesting if there were a "surface layer" that was easy to attain but easily overmined and in order to go deeper more extensive tools would be required.

Essentially like in RL where you can pick up rocks and stone that are on the ground but once you get down to bedrock, finger nails and elbow grease just aren't gonna cut it.

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

that could also introduce the possiblity of sub-surface deposits of minerals and would bring in other possible project's like geological survey's to find out just what really is in a location. you never know your poor town could be sitting on the mother of all bauxite deposits

[west]

for what that's worth *rolls eyes*

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

agreed but if wear was introduced to tools then maybe we could start making alumni tools instead of iron.they'd do the same job but wear out faster since they are softer.i have char's collecting things that i haven't even seen a single use for but they are there so why not collect em. like what is copper used for i haven't seen anything yet ?

[kroner]

yeah, i think tool deterioration is really important. also i think it would be better is some mineral could only be mined with tools. or at least only very very slowly without, like 5g a day, but increase by 10 times with simple tools.