Necora's Work in Progress

[Necora]

@Nilla Ok I think we are talking in different languages here, I was looking at raw trade value you were talking (i think) about actual production numbers. Either way, let's go a different route. I was looking through @RedKetchup 's work in progress and the discussion on his fodder chain. It seems a consensus for secondary or tertiary production buildings to result in a total food production of between 400 and 700 units per person in the chain, is that reasonable? If so, then my raw numbers are good, but perhaps production output can be sped up a bit.

Take a 11x11 tile corn field. That corn field will produce, with an educated worker, 847 units of corn (121 total tiles, divided by 4 for the amount of tiles 'harvested' to produce 1 bundle of corn, 28 units of corn for 1 bundle... all vanilla numbers). Now the egg hutch will take that 847 units of corn and produce 1,270 eggs, at a rate of 1.5 eggs per 1 corn. 2 workers make this chain, which results in 1,270 eggs/ 2 or 625.25 units of food per worker. That is pretty reasonable no?

The only thing stopping you getting this many eggs per year is the time it takes the hutch to work, which I think is where this needs to be sped up, perhaps not to those lofty heights afterall any un-used corn for the chickens is still eaten or used somewhere else.

You say chickens don't eat much, well a hen only lays 1 egg a day, or doesn't at all, and needs what, 1/2 pound of feed a day? For a 2 ounce egg? That is at least double the feed than for egg out, on a day that a hen lays. More if you factor in the days they don't lay. I was looking into getting chickens a while ago but they were not economical for me at the moment, maybe in a few years.

The problem with value of food, is I believe it is only for trade. If I increase the value to 10, it is still 1 portion of food when consumed. I don't mind making milk and eggs have a value of 2 for better trade options, but any more and it doesn't seem to make sense. Keeping numbers low and increasing value means you are still stuck with bad food output, and I only trade food to get rid of it when I have too much later in the game.

I'm not sure about nomads, I assumed all town halls would attract them as I've not changed anything from vanilla apart from model and stuff, but perhaps I am missing something.

@RedKetchup the coloured houses just came out so nice! And the maritimes is a very colourful place, so while these buildings are not running with the theme of the other mods, I wanted to get as much colour as possible.

[Nilla]

Take a 11x11 tile corn field. That corn field will produce, with an educated worker, 847 units of corn (121 total tiles, divided by 4 for the amount of tiles 'harvested' to produce 1 bundle of corn, 28 units of corn for 1 bundle... all vanilla numbers). Now the egg hutch will take that 847 units of corn and produce 1,270 eggs, at a rate of 1.5 eggs per 1 corn. 2 workers make this chain, which results in 1,270 eggs/ 2 or 625.25 units of food per worker. That is pretty reasonable no?

Absolutely reasonable. In my way of calculating, it would mean that the egg farmer alone, would make 1270 eggs-847corn=423 food each year. But the problem is; at your example the egg farmer didn't produce close to 1270 each year. As you say, to get there, you'll need to increase the production rate, a lot.

[The Pilgrim]

@Nilla I think your math is a little off. 1270-847 isn't 423 food produced, it 423 food profit.  Just because it uses 847 corn to get there it isn't subtracted from the total output. The total of 1270 is still edible.

[Tom Sawyer]

I think it is exactly what Nilla means. The farmer on the field produces 800, the farmer at the chicken hutch produces 400 and both together produce 1200 food. Sorry but I would not say that it is reasonable. Its so much from this tiny box on a 1x1 where I can imagine maximum 4 hens or so, just to be there. But for 1200 units of eggs in a year there have to be 100 chickens in this box. So to say ghosted chickens and if something is created from ghosted things it becomes unreasonable, at least for me.

I thought that to feed the animals with a crop is a good idea but it did not solve the problem. The chicken hutch still produces 400 units of eggs on 1 tile while in a pasture it needs 200 tiles. There is only a turnover of food added but nothing changed at the problem. And I have no clue how to solve it without making it useless because of the full-time worker at this hutch who cannot do something else and who needs a minimum of 200 or 300 food profit to make sense. The object is just too small. I see only two options. Remove it or keep it with a useful amount of created food and accept that it is not reasonable.

[grammycat]

4 chickens laying an egg a day is 28 eggs a week which means 1456 eggs a year.  100 chickens would lay 700 eggs a week thus producing 36,400 eggs a year. The chicken coop looks reasonable to me, if anything it's low.
edited for punctuation.

[Tom Sawyer]

Grammy, "1 eggs" in banished is not a single egg. It's the amount of eggs laid by a chicken per month. So a chicken creates 12 units of eggs in a year and you need about 8 chickens to feed a citizen. That means 4 chickens in the box would create 48 eggs in a year. It's not enough to feed the full-time worker himself. So it's necessary to increase the production. With or without "food flow" by a crop does not really matter but it limits the possible cheat by spamming "ghosted chickens" and that's a nice effect of the fodder idea. I also think it's not a big problem to have it not reasonable. Other things are not logical too. More important is that it is not useless or even a loss of food.

[Necora]

  Who ever knew that chickens could cause so much discussion!

What I really wanted to do with the pine set and these small buildings is to create more of a 'back yard' or 'small homestead' theme to the game, which is something that Banished is missing. If we think of the general time period of the game, first colonies etc., then that was extremely prevalent over large scale farming operations like what the pastures etc. give. So a small back yard hutch or goat pen was what I was going for with this. It is hard to fit into the Banished mechanics. It is the same with the maple boiler, cider press, and whiskey still. It is nice to have them, but at the end of the day if they don't produce a better number of item (these are consumables) then it is not worth building them and wasting a bannie or two to run the chains.

@Tom Sawyer I know what you mean, which is why I initially kept the production time very slow at first, but it seems that then for 1 worker to produce only enough food as for himself it is really not worth while. That being said, a small hutch that produces 400 extra food than the crop input only really feeds 1 more family that what would have just eaten the corn, or a few of families if you count it in among the need for a balanced diet. While you are right that it is a lot for a 1x1 square, technically you have to also take into account the field what is needed to provide for it as well. With a 11x11 crop field it is in total 122 squares to get your 1200 eggs. I'm not sure how the pastures work, how many eggs does a pasture produce? Looking at the egg and livestock chicken template file it looks like 1 chicken drops 1 egg a month, so 12 a year. Eggs have a create of 6, so that is 72 eggs a year for a chicken. In a 120 square pasture (12x10) you get 20 chickens, so that is 1440 eggs a year... plus the chicken meat produced from the pasture which I am not sure how to calculate from the template files. Are these numbers correct? I see that the pasture has 22 chickens for 1400 eggs (plus however much chicken meat) compared to 4 for 1200 in the pens, but in terms of area needed and workers required the pasture is still more productive but only because it needs 1 worker while the hutch needs 2 (crop field and hutch). Also as per Grammycat's reasoning, that pasture is very under-powered (which is why I used the chicken plus mod for a while otherwise it wasn't worth having a chicken pasture as sheep and cows produced wool and leather making them more attractive to me).

While you could spam the map with hutches, you can't if you don't also have the fields of corn or the trade of corn to maintain them, and the cost of corn in producing that many domesticated animals to make them (it costs 800 corn in the form of 4 domesticated animals just to build one hutch). This one of the downsides of the CC small pens IMO, that once built, they are free for ever and produce a lot of milk/wool for nothing apart from 1 worker and 3x3 tiles.

I think the work needed by 2 workers is as valuable as the space required in tiles, after all, for a long time at the start of the game the number of citizens is going to be your biggest limiting factor in all production chains. Not to mention you also need the stables and corn fields to even build the hutches, along with the lumber resource to build the stables. I think a healthy output of eggs is a not bad considering the work that goes into producing them, all things included.



And another thing, @Tom Sawyer , @Nilla , @grammycat , @The Pilgrim , @RedKetchup and all else who have commented, I really appreciate the discussion and the input to make the chains as good as they can be, because I have very little experience on the balancing side of things. I only started doing this in December last year and it is the first time I have every modded for games, so I have a lot to learn about how it works and how to make things not only look good but also function well and not break the game or mess up other (better and more established) modders stuff.

[grammycat]

Thank you Tom Sawyer for the explanation, as much as I've played the game I did not know this.  Necora, I like the idea of homesteads and feel that there is enough overpowered things to compensate for a few underpowered ones.  You've become quite an accomplished modder in such a short amount of time!

[Necora]

@Tom Sawyer and @grammycat yeah I was wrong about how pastures work, I was treating them in the same way as other production buildings. I just ran a test pasture and my numbers in the last post were way off, pastures don't work as I thought they did. From a full 11x12 pasture I got only around 220 eggs and 72 chicken, which to me is really really low. 220 eggs a year from 20 hens? That is ridiculous.

I know you explained it in another post but I didn't quite understand how create could be different from the drop of one animal, now I get it.

[QueryEverything]

Who ever knew that chickens could cause so much discussion!

What I really wanted to do with the pine set and these small buildings is to create more of a 'back yard' or 'small homestead' theme to the game, which is something that Banished is missing. If we think of the general time period of the game, first colonies etc., then that was extremely prevalent over large scale farming operations like what the pastures etc. give. So a small back yard hutch or goat pen was what I was going for with this. It is hard to fit into the Banished mechanics. It is the same with the maple boiler, cider press, and whiskey still. It is nice to have them, but at the end of the day if they don't produce a better number of item (these are consumables) then it is not worth building them and wasting a bannie or two to run the chains.

--- (ed)

While you could spam the map with hutches, you can't if you don't also have the fields of corn or the trade of corn to maintain them, and the cost of corn in producing that many domesticated animals to make them (it costs 800 corn in the form of 4 domesticated animals just to build one hutch). This one of the downsides of the CC small pens IMO, that once built, they are free for ever and produce a lot of milk/wool for nothing apart from 1 worker and 3x3 tiles.

I think the work needed by 2 workers is as valuable as the space required in tiles, after all, for a long time at the start of the game the number of citizens is going to be your biggest limiting factor in all production chains. Not to mention you also need the stables and corn fields to even build the hutches, along with the lumber resource to build the stables. I think a healthy output of eggs is a not bad considering the work that goes into producing them, all things included.

As you know I am an avid advocate for the small home farm, little farmlets and self-sufficient regions, and I love these new additions.

I disagree (a little) with the idea that the CC pens are free forever, we still need the 1 bannie manning the pens, at 100 per yr (plus tools & clothing & a house & heating resources (at least 4 other people who need food for their part in the chain)), BUT for those of us unlucky to have few domesticated animals found, and no grain seeds at the start of the map, we need to trade to get those seeds, sometimes 3500-4000 food value, then we have to wait for the trader to come with the correct seed, then we need a farmer bannie x 3 (depending on the output of the harvest etc).  The setup means that the animal pens may take years to make good on the outlay (pardon the pun).
BUT - we're not talking about CC, haha, but I thought I'd leave my voiceprint behind here as well. 

I get that there are some players that want to play to realism, to the line of hard times, that they want to really push their game play, and I'm ok with that - but, I say, this is not a Sim.  This isn't a RW Simulation, it's not something that has been coded to allow any form of realism, in fact, it's designed to destroy a community, which is why there are so many "challenge" map ideas, to see if we can beat the game.  BUT - there are many players (me included), that don't want to be in a hyper real game, we want to play a game that will challenge us, but we can still grow in.

I think (in my own opinion), so what that the eggs may be on the high side - they are only a small value for trade, you are certainly not going to get rich from them, and when you do add them to recipes for omelettes, cakes etc, it requires a lot of resources to make the next item in the food chain, so you're constantly going to have to expand your resource buildings to keep up with that as well.

From an 'average joe' user, some of this 'weights & measures' becomes too much. 

This isn't a rant at anyone (and certainly not at @Necora ) I just felt like saying ...  it's only eggs .... (with a lot of words, sorry )
(and how I felt about the CC pens as it took me years in a recent map to be able to even build 1, let alone enough to make a break even point, ahahaaa)

[Nilla]

We certainly started a discussion with your eggs, @Necora ! 

First, (this seems to be some kind of mantra ): We all play Banished in different ways. I will say, it's impossible to create a mod, that suits every kind of player. A mod that everyone finds great. But it's not a bad thing. There are hundreds of mods out there, good mods for everyone. We can take our pick and chose the one we like. My "good ones" might no the the same "good ones" as @QueryEverything or @grammycat, (just to mention players that recently wrote here) but that's fine.

When I make my comments, of cause, it's from my point of view, based on my way of playing, my way of thinking. I'm well aware, that it's not the "absolute truth". And I'm not demanding, everything to be changed to fit me.

You modders are very resourceful and talented in creating new and beautiful buildings. Your idea of a small scale family farming is great @Necora. It brings something new into this game. That's enough for many players. But I'm sorry to say, not for me. I like a building/set of buildings to make sense. What do I mean?

I don't mean realistic sense. If a Banished hen produces 10 or 2000 units eggs each year, doesn't matter, neither do the amount of grain it needs. Banished doesn't count in kilos, pounds or number of eggs. 1 unit is more like an undefined sized basket full of eggs or bag of grain. If this was the only food available; one person could survive one year from 100 of these baskets/bags.   

What I mean with making sense is:
- an average Banished food producer should prodcue 400 - 500 food/worker each year. If the production site needs an input, it means it ought to produce 400-500 + the value of the needed rawmaterial.
- it should produce a bit less, if it's cheap, small or have no input
- it should produce a bit more, if it needs a lot of space, is expensive or have a complicated production chain

This could also be applied to other products: an average production in trade value of 400-500 each year. (of cause the value of the raw material must be counded in)
- chosen export goods could be higher, as well as products from complicated chains
- some steps in  production chains could be lower and the total chain counted together, but each step should give some profit, otherwise stingy people like me, would buy the rawmaterial/intermediate product, instead of producing it.

Not every vanilla building fit into this, some are low (why do you think I never build any vanilla chicken pastures or stonecutter?) , others too high (woodchopper and brewer) but most of the buildings are well in this range.

And @Necora you´re doing fine as a new modder. If you want to improve your balancing, I think it would be good, if you followed some "guidlines", like these I mentioned above. Not neccessarily the same. Make your own. But if the production always fit into your way of making sense, I think your mods would be "good ones" for most players.

[brads3]

<<<<throws sheets of paper into the wind .bangs head on wall.
  where did i place all those notes on the farmstead idea?? that was the basics behind it. to have the output numbers controlled by the modder. but a realistic home and pasture idea where a family worked together to do all these small projects but with less workers also. gives the varied items and diet but balanced for 1 or 2 families. and without needing 1 worker for each food.
    historically a family would be larger and work together. in banished you have 2 adults and several children. the dad would farm and take care of livestock but also hunt and fix tools,cut firewood. mom and the daughters would tend to chickens and gardens but also pick apples and berries nearby. plus they would process  food and make or repair clothing. the game doesn't allow a bani to have multiple jobs without lots of micro managing.
   a homstead could have a small chicken coop and goat with a small pasture for beef or sheep. gardens,an apple or pear tree, and some fruit or berry bushes. the family can process cheese,butter,and still cut up the venison  or some turkeys. and since it can function with only 2 adults the output numbers can be balanced between the 4 food groups and still produce enough tools,clothing and firewood to support the house. a way to solve both issues. if each homestead produces 26% more than it needs ,then you have some trade value or food to support some mining or other town growth as well.

[Tom Sawyer]

I think this early game farmstead or "Adam and Eve gaming" works very well with the game mechanic and is one of the funniest way to play Banished. Of course only with a lot of micromanagement but that's the fun and without would be just boring. The cool thing for this kind of game is the flexible job system in Banished. A citizen can do all over a year... plant trees in a new orchard, chop firewood in winter, gather some berries or hunt a deer in the forest, forge a tool in a smithy and then carry resources to a barn or build a house and later harvest the field. Most buildings and functions support this kind of game. A pen or hutch using the production function is one of the few objects which do not work for a farmstead. Because it needs a full-time worker the whole year for some food and does not allow micromanagement. A small pasture with a few chickens works better. You can run it without a worker but they still lay eggs and people pick them up. Perfect farmstead simulation.

[Necora]

Not to feel left out from the fantastic developments @RedKetchup has made with trees, I decided to re-visit some trees from the Pine Set and make them look, well, more like trees. I've completely changed the method I was using to make them, to a much less complex but more time consuming way, with better results.

Pic 1 - New Spruce trees with variants.

Pic 2 - New White Pine trees.

Pic 3 - Both.

[QueryEverything]

I have much tree envy ...
Also, my preferred start map (currently) is the CC Pines, Very Large map on Mild.
I'm such a tree hippy