Weight, movement and terrain cost - too much of a chore

[antimonycup]

I have over 300 hours in the game and I love many aspects of it, but movement, terrain cost and weight management are REALLY an annoying chore, even more so now with all the little weather changes I think. Especially the difference between weight allowance when on land and weight allowance on your raft/boat/ship.

Build a good ship? Travel far and carry a lot, but go with too small a party and the moment you step back on land near your village you find out you can't carry the weight of all the loot you brought back (and found on the water) AND your ship. Ok, leave the ship on the beach, it's only two hexes to your village. Spend a few turns getting your stuff back in order and *POOF* your ship (Darkwood + Grandgem) disappeared off the map. Ok... Reload a few turns back (which I can because I tediously save every turn, boy would a quick save function be a blessing, right?) to when I left the ship on the beach, walk into the village with the ship's crew that's about to 'die' from low morale or sanity I don't remember, and take the other half of the villagers out to immediately get the ship. Four should be enough right? Be quick about it now. And then they can't cross the river all of a sudden and I don't know why. All this not because there was an event or fight or interaction but just because of a very finicky and punishing carry weight system.

So please PLEASE, either make ships weightless, or better yet make it so that a party can always move one hex regardless of terrain or weight limits. Semi-realistic seeming physics *sounds* nice, but the system you've devised absolutely nets more frustration than it does that 'realistic' vibe, imo. Especially when you like to make the Other Ring *before* making a village, you're constantly dropping piles of stuff on the map and are micro managing your weight every turn, but also when you do have a village and can only send out small parties because you don't want to leave it under-manned, all this weight management is seriously off-putting.

[redwitch]

I agree, weight constraints are just too strict and very annoying, you have to constantly check what you can carry, in a game in which gathering stuff is so central to the gameplay it can get really tedious. Building a town may help, but you have to find an appropriate location first. I tried playing the nomad way last time, but the weight limits together with the inability to find new recruits made the game a chore to play. There are other interconnected problems too, Thea is kind of barter economy, so you can't get rid of your stuff by selling it, you have either to barter it for something else which does not always help with your weight problem or just throw it away.
Additionally the item weight assigned to items does not make sense at all, a ring weighing more than a piece of armor?
A few idea to solve the problem might be:
1) add to the game some kind of transport means like carts and make them easier to get, there are already horses but they are hard to find
2) introduce a general currency so you can sell your staff
3) reconsider the weight assigned to items, jewelry should not weigh so much
4) add some warning to the UI to avoid gathering stuff that overburdens you and limit your movement range
5) have a way to build some storage place other than the town

[Hruuthgar]

I always play with the "easiest" encumberance setting, it helps a lot. No need to litter the landscape with sandstone all the time.

Different kinds of boat stack, try to make the lightest and cheapest combination of ships possible to travel thorugh seas.

[redwitch]

Originally posted by Hruuthgar:

I always play with the "easiest" encumberance setting, it helps a lot. No need to litter the landscape with sandstone all the time.

I don't think "cheating" should be the only way to solve the problem, just give the player options to solve it by himself in gameplay

[mk11]

Introduce a "Store" building that you can build anywhere on the map that can hold any amount of goods and the goods are protected from loss. Possibly have some events that can threaten the goods in stores. Could then be used to provide a safe spot to leave ones boat.

If desired, could restrict the number of stores so only have one per island.

[Morgawr]

The village is supposed to be your store - especially the 2nd one

[alan]

Before though, there was little point in spending research on food, now the extra 2 mvmt points become worth while, and the weight of cooked food vs raw food is significant.

Better balance. I like it.

[ᴅᴀʀᴋ]

Never had such problems, playing on 250%, just drop all mats that you dont need - all stones, almost all metals, cook tons of different food - and you good to go with 5 chars. Find Dryad wood - build 2nd ship from it - not that heavy and can lift alot for average group. In later game - build 2nd ship with gem bone(dont remember the name) - 15 moves and 9k weight, enough for 14 chars group with tons of loot.

[XenoReaver]

Exactly how much are you trying to carry that you have constant moving difficulties? Because it honestly sounds like you're trying to carry everything Thea throws at you. Know the limits of your carry capacity, trade off those you don't need (and it's very unlikely you need everything), get rid of those that weigh a lot, heck do anything just don't carry it.

My dad has this issue in many games because he doesn't know when to trade or dump items he doesn't need. He keeps pretty much everything because it's valuable, he might need it later etc etc. Any excuse he can not to lose most items.

[Gizzabe]

I think the addition of a cart/wagon may be a decent idea. It could increase carry capacity at the cost of movement. Perhaps it could also raise the minimum movement speed to 4 or 5 (depending on materials used, I guess) so children can ride in the wagon instead of walking and holding everyone else back.

Could break immersion somewhat by having carts travelling over mountains and through forests but we already do that with our boats.

[Shaotian]

Originally posted by h8 u w8 4 me:

Never had such problems, playing on 250%, just drop all mats that you dont need - all stones, almost all metals, cook tons of different food - and you good to go with 5 chars. Find Dryad wood - build 2nd ship from it - not that heavy and can lift alot for average group. In later game - build 2nd ship with gem bone(dont remember the name) - 15 moves and 9k weight, enough for 14 chars group with tons of loot.

I agree with this, but it also is a good point that it's annoying to have to keep dropping all the random stuff you get after every event.

[ᴅᴀʀᴋ]

Originally posted by Shaotian:

Originally posted by h8 u w8 4 me:

Never had such problems, playing on 250%, just drop all mats that you dont need - all stones, almost all metals, cook tons of different food - and you good to go with 5 chars. Find Dryad wood - build 2nd ship from it - not that heavy and can lift alot for average group. In later game - build 2nd ship with gem bone(dont remember the name) - 15 moves and 9k weight, enough for 14 chars group with tons of loot.

I agree with this, but it also is a good point that it's annoying to have to keep dropping all the random stuff you get after every event.

Yeah, I told devs few times, that it would be great to have some kind of a filter, which mats group should drop emmidiately and dont pick at all, they told that with this update we wont need such thing...Im not sure what they meant, but nothing changed, still need to drop garbage every 3-5 turns

[redwitch]

the problem with this limits is that it somewhat contradicts a core gameplay mechanics: gathering stuff. The gameplay is mainly about gathering stuff, research is about unlocking nodes to able to gather more and better stuff, craft equipment and still more stuff from the stuff you gathered and so on, that's the main gameplay loop, the map is full of stuff available to collect. Then there are additionally tons of events which give you random loot with partly insane weight. On the other hand the game makes it really hard to manage all of that stuff because of those weight limits and too few ways to deal with it other than not collecting stuff in the first place or just drop them.
Just add some transport means as craftable equipment, this would greatly help managing this core aspect of the gameplay.

[alan]

Some event outcomes could give an option to refuse "gifts" which then could be either good, "I am in your debt", or bad " you refuse my gift, die scum".

[Thunderllama]

I think some of the weight problem in the game would be largely fixed if stone and metal were made to be the same weight as wood and/or leather.

Yes, the same volume of stone and metal weighs more, but you probably need much less to make goods (thinner metal for armor for example), meaning a smaller volume per unit collected, and therefore comparable weight. (Also, mithril is often portrayed as being as light as cotton.)

It feels bad then 2/5 of the goods you get are first to be dropped when you are overweight.

[aegis3d]

I'd say this is another thread with a very common theme in this game. The same things that add some decent difficulty to this game are also a bear to micromanage. For this one, weight limits make sense and would be fine if you didn't have to constantly go into a somewhat clunky menu and drop items all over the place... sometimes multiple times per turn. For food, cooking is important and would also be fine... if you didn't have to constantly go in and set up all the actions to make it. Even normal battles are fun, quick logic games... if the animations weren't so slow to place everything on the board and finally get to the battle.

I still like the game, and usually love micromanagement, but in this case there's very little reward for it. Streamlining these systems would be awesome, and would probably bring in a lot more players. Skipping frames in setting up normal battles would be awesome. The battles themselves are fine at high speed after you've seen them enough times, but waiting to set up the field is really slow. Some form of auto-cooking would be nice, or at least remembering the recipes you set up, and auto-populating those with the same characters you had there last time as soon as you camp.

For this, you could go a couple ways. The simple filter that was mentioned would be good. At a certain point in the game, there's basically no need for keeping any T1 material at all. Or, especially since stone is usually one of the biggest issues, let us craft more totems. Not for towns, but it could be a nice place for a set of events (just like certain terrains will trigger events, totem terrains would trigger its own set). Animals might wander by, definitely some demons, bandits might look for prey. Setting up camp there could give some minor bonuses, like +1 spirit restored/turn and rituals +10 or 20.