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Preference for wool vs warm coat?

Started by salamander, May 28, 2014, 07:27:14 AM

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salamander

I was wondering if anyone might have an idea of the answer to this question: If both wool and warm coats are available in a town, do the townfolk preferentially go for the better coat, or just take what they come across first from inventory?

I'd like to start trading wool coats through the trading posts, but also have my townfolk clothed in the warm coats.  I'm trying to plan for the number of tailors I might eventually need and what type of coat they need to produce.

slink

With respect to tools, I have seen people taking iron tools when steel tools were available.  I don't know if that can be projected on to the situation with coats, since steel tools are no better for work than iron tools.  They just last longer.

rkelly17

My experience is that people take the better coats first, but that is with hide and warm or hide and wool, not wool and warm. But seriously, who wouldn't prefer a stylish leather jacket with a wool lining to some woven thing?

salamander

Quote from: slink on May 28, 2014, 07:47:19 AM
With respect to tools, I have seen people taking iron tools when steel tools were available.  I don't know if that can be projected on to the situation with coats, since steel tools are no better for work than iron tools.  They just last longer.

Thinking back to Luke's blog on crop rotation, and his reasons for putting it in, then taking it out, etc..., it seems like he's pretty serious about not having 'fluff' features in the game.  Since the game has both iron and steel tools, I'm assuming that Luke thinks that's an important distinction, and since he's The Creator (cue dramatic music), the townfolk might think so, too.  So, it seems reasonable that townfolk might not have a preference for either tool or coat type.

When you said folks were taking iron tool even when steel ones were available, do you remember if both types were in the same barn, or were both in inventory but in different places?

Quote from: rkelly17 on May 28, 2014, 08:06:05 AM
My experience is that people take the better coats first, but that is with hide and warm or hide and wool, not wool and warm. But seriously, who wouldn't prefer a stylish leather jacket with a wool lining to some woven thing?

I'm trying to figure out some way to see whether or not there's a preference.  I have a couple of ideas -- it just may take a while to try them out since I'm still in the process of building up a cattle herd for the leather, all the while struggling with food in the town.

And ... I had to laugh when I read the last part.  All this time when I thought of wool coats, it never occurred to me that they were woven.  I had this picture in my head of all these wooly townfolk wandering around with fleeces.  ::)

slink

@salamander : There were both, in some of the marketplaces, and both in the possession of people living around a marketplace which had both.  There were roughly twice as many iron tools and steel tools in the colony, and some marketplaces had no steel tools when I looked just now.  Most of the markets had roughly twice as many iron tools as steel tools.  Since there were about 960 colonists in the file that I opened, I did not count how many people had steel tools versus how many had iron tools.  It may be that the ones with iron tools just happened to need to replace theirs when there were no steel tools in their marketplace.  Steel tools were being imported rather than being manufactured in the colony, so those whose markets were furthest from the river would more often have no steel tools available to them.  This would argue that people can only draw from their own market, by the way.

salamander

Thanks.  As I said earlier, I'm thinking about some way to test this with my current colony.  But, as you pointed out, the difficulty is that the distribution of tools is likely to be uneven, and since one of the questions is whether folks will take what's closest vs. going farther to get something 'better', that could a real problem in looking at the results.

slink

What I did, one time when I was making both hide coats and warm coats, was have a standing order to accumulate 1000 hide coats in my trading post.  This effectively sucked all of the hide coats out of the colony.

salamander

That's similar to what I was thinking of -- store half of my current inventory of wool coats in trading posts, shift all the tailors over to warm coats until the two types in inventory are at the same number, and then shut the tailors down and see how the coats get taken from inventory.  Like you said, though, I think it would hard to interpret what happened without the two coat types being evenly distributed.  I may give it try anyway just to see what happens -- maybe it would work out well despite what I think would be a problem.

solarscreen

I make 5 to 10 years worth of wool coats, then switch to making warm coats.  Production drops off but the warm coats make the wool coat supply last longer and I don't think about coats for awhile.

You could buy wool and leather with the firewood economy and make warm coats and not need any sheep and cattle at all but then you are dependent on the traders bringing wool and leather. I have noticed once you become completely dependent on a certain supply, the traders seem to not have it for awhile...

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salamander

Quote from: solarscreen on May 29, 2014, 04:37:42 AM
I make 5 to 10 years worth of wool coats, then switch to making warm coats.  Production drops off ...

So ... it takes longer to make a warm coat than a wool coat?  I hadn't thought of that, but if that's so, it would make sense.

Quote from: solarscreen on May 29, 2014, 04:37:42 AM
You could buy wool and leather with the firewood economy and make warm coats and not need any sheep and cattle at all but then you are dependent on the traders bringing wool and leather. I have noticed once you become completely dependent on a certain supply, the traders seem to not have it for awhile...

Bringing in the wool, and now leather since I want to make warm coats, by trading was my original plan, and I'm going to try to work around to that eventually.  Unfortunately, at the moment I have some weird population control issues going on, so most of my buying power at the trading posts (which is mostly firewood based, with mushrooms and mutton occasionally being used) is going toward buying food.

rkelly17

In my experience warm coat production slows down because the supply of leather doesn't keep up with the supply of wool unless you have producing cow pastures or lots of hunting lodges. Those sheep get sheered every year and the production begins with the first sheep and can really add up. Leather is produced only when hunters or herders kill something.

nmid

When I was trying the same (trading out wool coats, using warm coats), I just set the trade ports to suck up more than I was producing.
The warm coats would be left in the markets/barns, while the wool coats would be generally taken up the dock workers.

The citizens only managed to get their hands on the occasional wool coat I guess..
Because I used to play in mass production mode, adequate warm coat used to buffer accumulate a lot.
It only made a difference in the starting couple of years, where every coat / every 5 coats made a difference.

salamander

Quote from: rkelly17 on May 29, 2014, 06:13:38 AM
In my experience warm coat production slows down because the supply of leather doesn't keep up with the supply of wool unless you have producing cow pastures or lots of hunting lodges. Those sheep get sheered every year and the production begins with the first sheep and can really add up. Leather is produced only when hunters or herders kill something.

At the moment I have no hunting lodges and one full-size cow pasture, so all my leather is coming from the pasture.  The amount of leather in inventory is on the rise, but I'm surprised at how slowly it seems to be increasing.  I now have a few cows in a new pasture to try to increase leather production, but I still think I may run into the supply problem you mentioned vs. wool if I try to switch over to warm coats for the town.  Time will tell.

feelotraveller

My experience with regards to your initial question is that citizens will take warm coats in preference to wool or hide coats.  But... they take whatever they can get from the location which they go to get their coat from.  So they will take a wool coat from a barn or marketplace only if there are no warm coats at that barn or marketplace.  I think that the type of coat available at a location is not a factor in them choosing to get a coat from that location.


salamander

@feelotraveller -- Thanks, that seems to be the take on things most have had.  As it turns out, my original plan of wearing warm coats and trading wool coats may have changed based on @nmid's comments in a thread on the SRS forum (http://shiningrocksoftware.com/forum/discussion/comment/22627#Comment_22627) in which it was pointed out that trading in wool coats, although still profitable, may not be as attractive an option with the increased storage in trading posts as it once was.