Removing the conversion of sheet metal into nails.

[Silaros 4]

I have been giving this a fair bit of thought.

 

Pre 1.8.5 basically anything could be bought in quantities of nails on the server I was playing on. Since nails were hard to find in substantial bulk, and basically everyone wanted a large base to fit their stuff in, it was soon a currency. Not only did this mean that new players could safely (and sometimes not so safely) trade their nails in for some basic equipment, giving rise to some sort of fully player organised economy (or creative banditry). It also caused having walls up to be a very rewarding and difficult achievement. The current limiting factor I am experiencing on base construction in the current version is food and water, which are very easy to come by. This has caused me to be able to output large bases in under 10 hours of play. Current changes in (the truly magnificent) 1.8.7 involves getting fed and hydrated easier, which will further lower base building difficulty. I personally feel like bases should be much harder to construct, and I would love to see the nail economy make its return to raise the difficulty.

 

So I'm curious, what are your thoughts about balancing construction this way guys? Or do you have other ideas for balancing? Im also kind of curious whether some of you have experienced a similar formation of an economy or whether it was just a server specific anomaly at the time.

[Mingus 12]

As a player I would never go looking for individual nails to use while building. They may be useful for storage upgrades but when it comes to building fences/gates there's no reason why I would not go to train cars and pick up metal sheets.

 

Is there a tool requirement for this conversion? It seems to me like it would be something that would be fairly difficult to actually do.

[r4z0r49 4761]

i was planning for the wooden base systems to be a little more accessible to everyone but the metal versions coming in later (you have seen before we removed) to be much harder to build but be built to last most types of abuse.

 

that's one of the reasons we allow nails to be crafted.

[Mingus 12]

That makes sense, I had no idea that metal bases were in the works. 

[r4z0r49 4761]

Wooden = nails, Metal = screws and must be found.

[Silaros 4]

Interesting, the idea of giving players different available tiers of walls for different stages is an elegant solution indeed. Also good to hear the metal walls are making their return, the design had a nice apocalyps feel to it. Kudos!