Dew Collectors are useless....

[Blackstone30]

Why is actually the Dew Collector so useless in my eyes....It doesnt matter if its green, blue or purple....you always get just 3 dew every day. And you even get more dew when you run around and gather ressources. And i am not gonna place 10 or more dew collectors on my ground just to get 30 dew...which are like 3 Water.....

[Blackstone30]

Well the idea truely is that Sandrock is a City in the desert but so far in the story it never really matters if a bridge got destroyed or the whole watertower itself...you could always buy water.
And then again i ask myself...When i am a Builder...why cant i build in the later part of the Story my own water drill?
Guess its quite like a spoiler but once you repair the windmill behind your yard...there could be a pipe system...bringing your workplace your own water supply.
Or like Jfoytek said...make the rarity of dew collectors more resonable. I Agree on that.

[JVC]

The water shortage is the reason the town hasn't succeeded in fighting back the desert after the miners ruined the ecology a few decades earlier. But Sandrock is located on top of a buried mega city. Who knows where that city got its water from 300 years ago.

[Ivara Ara]

They do become rather useless when you can sell a few things during a good market high price, then just buy tons of water when it is low and then just be stocked on water for god knows how long.

[Twisted Balls]

Just pay your daily visit to water shop and buy the first round.
For me, it usually last 2 days or a bit more depending on stuff I make.
But yeah need better drew collectors for sure.

[Bobucles]

I'm a bit surprised that the Builder's industry uses drinking water. What a waste of A tier water in a game about conserving water! There is a second class of water known as "grey water". Grey water isn't safe to drink but it's perfectly fine for industrial use. Stuff like the water from washing your hands or washed from a storm gutter (not that Sandrock has storms) is perfectly good for quenching steel and cleaning sand from dirty rubble.

There is also a crappier(literally) class of water known as "black water", but that's difficult to use even in industry. It'd take some heavy water processing to bring it up to grey tier, maybe the help of a few old age relics to restore it to drinking level.

Dew collectors are a pretty cute way for squeezing a few drops out of the air. But if the builder wants industrial levels of undesirable cheap water, it would make sense to start grabbing all the waste water that no one else knows what to do with.

[Trent]

They are kinda weak for the space they take up. I have three of them and they barely make a dent in my water consumption.

Buying water works with the setting but its a chore. I suggest they let us pay to have water delivered to our doors the same way scrap can be delivered.

[Kishero]

One idea might be to have dew collectors buff other collectors near them?

but yeah early on they take up too much room that you need for workbenches and cost resources you wont have easy access too, you wont have the water con upgrades so they are barely worth it.

Later on you can buy out the water shop on one commission and laugh all the way to the bank, so again they are not worth it.

This is wasted design space, that is to say the effort of adding them is wasted if all they generate in the end is disappointment.

Ofc the devs are stuck, if dew collectors are useful, then the question becomes 'why is not every flat roof in sandrock, and every bit of waste ground between the station and main street not tiled in them?

If they aren't the question is on the PC side, why bother with them at all?

One solution would be to add them much later (which means they can be good/expensive and not over power things) but significantly better and more useful. They could come at a point where yeah all they are doing is saving you a walk to the water store, but be honest that's the other side of town, so it could be worth it.

[Dex]

Escrito originalmente por Kishero:

One idea might be to have dew collectors buff other collectors near them?

but yeah early on they take up too much room that you need for workbenches and cost resources you wont have easy access too, you wont have the water con upgrades so they are barely worth it.

Later on you can buy out the water shop on one commission and laugh all the way to the bank, so again they are not worth it.

This is wasted design space, that is to say the effort of adding them is wasted if all they generate in the end is disappointment.

Ofc the devs are stuck, if dew collectors are useful, then the question becomes 'why is not every flat roof in sandrock, and every bit of waste ground between the station and main street not tiled in them?

If they aren't the question is on the PC side, why bother with them at all?

One solution would be to add them much later (which means they can be good/expensive and not over power things) but significantly better and more useful. They could come at a point where yeah all they are doing is saving you a walk to the water store, but be honest that's the other side of town, so it could be worth it.

hmm, building on that idea, I wonder if having them passively water the crops wouldn't be a bad idea? Say you need two dew collectors to water a single plot or two? I'm not sure, but it could give an actual gameplay purpose other than "it's the desert, we need to conserve water"

[Falaris]

Dew collectors are available for a couple of disks at the start of the game. There are no other prerequisites. They take really basic resources to make, and not that many of them. They are one of the cheapest machines you can make. Two days of effort and you can have six of them easy; the real cost of them is the space they take.

They provide a constant, free, source of resources for the rest of the game with an absolutely minimal investment.

If you want better dew collection, these really are too early, too cheap, for that to be all that reasonable. Making a row of them at the back of your property - say, six of them - provides 20 water units daily (with skill) which is enough to run two machines constantly. That's not bad.

That does not mean there couldn't be better dew collectors later, though.

What I would like to see is dew collection depend more on the season and weather.

[Falaris]

Escrito originalmente por Boblawblah:

hmm, building on that idea, I wonder if having them passively water the crops wouldn't be a bad idea? Say you need two dew collectors to water a single plot or two? I'm not sure, but it could give an actual gameplay purpose other than "it's the desert, we need to conserve water"

Dew collectors you find in real life today has that exact purpose, so it's not far fetched at all.

The main thought - trading space for water economy - would make sense. if you had a 'mini-greenhouse' that also acted as a dew collector. (You have those RL) that would make sense. They prevent water evaporating from the plants/soil in a dry environment, and collect and use moisture from the air to supplement it.

You would take 2 or 4 squares to keep one farm square watered permanently. (That being one of the 2 or 4 squares.).

Then again - the Mayor is out of town looking for ways to improve desert farming. Wouldnt' be surprised if something like this is planned already.

[wyrdplace]

Real dew collectors in the desert can collect up to 3 cups a day (according to Google), though I gather it's more typical for them to gather half that. So I guess the ones in the game are about right. But really, there does seem to be little point to them, when you can just go chop down a handful of bushes to get the same amount.

As others mentioned, I'd like to see more done with the water conservation idea. It doesn't seem right that I don't have to have a water flask on me and drink during the day to keep my stamina up or something like that.

[The Yeen Queen]

Escrito originalmente por Kishero:

I'd like to see better dew catchers

I mean, really, it's a desert. How much dew to you expect to be able to catch? It's not exactly a humid climate...

[The Yeen Queen]

Escrito originalmente por wyrdplace:

Real dew collectors in the desert can collect up to 3 cups a day (according to Google), though I gather it's more typical for them to gather half that. So I guess the ones in the game are about right. But really, there does seem to be little point to them, when you can just go chop down a handful of bushes to get the same amount.

*Shrug* I mean, passive collection on top of that can't hurt, right?

[Estellese]

I just built like, 6-8 of them? I forget, in an open space I had very early on. Wasn't very difficult. Since then I've not needed to buy any water. These farming quests are putting a strain on my water, and I'm needing to go collect some myself to keep up. But at the next expansion (the 3k one) I will add 2-3 more and then should be fine to keep my stuff running and my ten plants. It's crowded, but meh.

As far as I am concerned, they are an early game method of saving money. Later when money isn't an issue then I will probably ditch them to make the yard look pretty, but for now I am happy to not need to buy water and to not need to worry about it unless I am farming.

[Bobucles]

It's a bit surprising that the builder uses outdoor farming in a climate where water is so precious. A greenhouse makes tons of sense in Sandrock, both to protect fragile crops against dust storms and to preserve water. Even the city farm is a greenhouse.