Electricity: Don't Starve Together needs a big reworking?

[Pop Guy]

Now that Winona has been modified, they have added something that I never thought I would see in the game: electricity.
This thing should be exploited better given the enormous potential, and not be reduced to two objects (among other things quite controversial)
I believe that things like electric cables, batteries and gears should be more exploited in scientific levels: the machines should now be all metal, mechanical and require energy from generators. Electricity pylon could be introduced to propagate energy over long distances, street lamps with day / night sensors, mechanical traps such as circular saws, walls that rise and fall thanks to mechanisms, drones that automatically collect resources, trolleys for fast transport of players and resources on powered rails... in short, the potential of something like electricity is truly immeasurable, my heart cries to see it "wasted" for two things with Winona.
You could add uranium to the subsoil as a new material, to power a single nuclear generator to provide constant light, heat and power to the machines!
You could insert the Hamlet's furnace, make it electric and use the iron bars to create better tools and armor.
In short, if I were in the Klei I would revolutionize the game. This would be an update that would dramatically change the way you play and would return so many users!

And for those who want to say that all this would not be in line with the game... not even the multiplayer had to be, not even the merchants.
For a survival that then, from description, it should be full of SCIENCE... well, electricity, gears, automation should be like "the cheese on maccheroni" to say the Italian.
Long life to Klei.

[TheKingofSquirrels]

Something that is a bit of an issue, is that there's already a lot of devices in the game that use electricity. So the moment you start adding electricity as an element outside of a Winona perk, you start to question why some things need powering and some things don't.

Bringing in electricity also means bringing in lights...You can't really have one without the other. While I think it would be awesome to have wired lighting and be able to light up your entire base at a flick of a switch, it would be too OP and you'd loose that whole "hanging by the campfire at night" routine that is pretty iconic to Don't Starve.

Having that said though, maybe Don't Starve needs some sort of Red Stone equivalent and its tone would even fit well with going down a more steam punky direction.

[Tapirus]

1 hour ago, TheKingofSquirrels said:

Something that is a bit of an issue, is that there's already a lot of devices in the game that use electricity. So the moment you start adding electricity as an element outside of a Winona perk, you start to question why some things need powering and some things don't.

Exactly. For example, Ice Flingomatic (structure with Electrical Doodads).

Flingomatic needs fuel, so, the question:

¿Would players enjoy the EXTRA needing of electricity to make it work now, along with the fuel?

Or others, like Alchemy Engine:

No electricity = No access to crafting recipes

[S19TealPenguin]

Maybe you could make wires with Nightmare fuel, gold, and grass? You need one wire for every tile to link up your machines. In winter and spring, the ground is too cold/wet, so you need to makes poles to elevate the wires.

[Pop Guy]

26 minutes ago, TheKingofSquirrels said:

Something that is a bit of an issue, is that there's already a lot of devices in the game that use electricity. So the moment you start adding electricity as an element outside of a Winona perk, you start to question why some things need powering and some things don't.

Bringing in electricity also means bringing in lights...You can't really have one with the other. While I think it would be awesome to have wired lighting and be able to light up your entire base at a flick of a switch, it would be too OP and you'd loose that whole "hanging by the campfire at night" routine that is pretty iconic to Don't Starve.

Having that said though, maybe Don't Starve needs some sort of Red Stone equivalent and its tone would even fit well with going down a more steam punky direction.

First of all, if indeed this great update, "Electricity, the sun of the future" will arrive, all scientific equipment should be changed and require cables, gears and especially energy to function. So also the alchemical engine, the fridge, the sprinklers, and so on. The lightning rods would be very useful, because when struck by lightning they could be connected to a battery to recharge it with energy.
So you should make the gears and cables much more common. In reality they are already, but only in the most advanced phases of the game. Perhaps they could be made constructible by inserting materials with iron, copper and rubber. We are sincere, we all want new materials.
Yes, it is something that would change the game DRASTICALLY in all its phases, but updates in theory are also this, not just the outline of something that ends up interested after two days (coff coff, year of the pig, coff coff)

Yes, electricity would certainly come to allow absurd things, like lighting the whole base with a single button but... why not? Let me explain: let's try to depict a game through a line where the fulcrum revolves around technological development.
Currently, Don't Starve is a line that at one point interrupts. You end up doing the same things you did on day 1 every day, only now you're wearing a Tam or 'Shanter and you've got a walking stick. All right.
With electricity (and automatism) the game would become a hyperbole: at the beginning everything is slow, not very productive and manual ... and then from the middle of the game an "explosion of intelligence", an exponential progress of all production cycles which leads you to constantly renew your way to get resources, the focus of the game.
So at day 100 you do not do the things of day 1 anymore: at day 100 you look pleased at your machines that do 10 times better than what you did before. Only now you have spent the previous 99 days with the goal of automating, 
and not killing the bosses of the game dozens of times.
And yes, the red stone was the great success of Minecraft. By now all the series that still exist on the basic game survive only for that. Because automating puts your creativity, your intelligence into play. From a purpose. And from enormous satisfaction. In a game where the protagonist is a scientist then...

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

I don't think it should go down the route of steam punk, but clockwork punk is a definite fit, I mean we have clockworks with gears already. Some electrical elements could work as well, since we have frazzled wires as an item, single player has some more electrical trinkets and some structures are already in design something you would consider electrical, namely the alchemy engine, ice flingomatic and the ice box. It's a big nerf to require generators or lightning energy from the lightning rod to power those three, but it would certainly make the game a tad bit more interesting (may be the flingomatic could have the option of using electricity or general fuel, that would mean a buff for it). Heck, may be even have wooden wind turbines that could generate electricity normally, and more so when it's snowing may be, or during a summer sandstorm in one of the deserts. Doodads are looking like good power fuels for generators right now, to be fair.

[Szczuku]

No. Dst doesn't need to copy oni

[Pop Guy]

30 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

No. Dst doesn't need to copy oni

 

Many Don't Starve mechanical are common to all survival games. Indeed, in some ways Don't Starve is even much simpler than many others: it presents only three parameters, of which only one with variations depending on whether it is high or low, sanity (both hunger and life are instead statistics that remain sent: you can have 1 of hunger like 150 and 1 of life as 200, your character will not have any kind of difference in the way you play, except for some special characters that offer a slightly more complicated and stratified experience).
There is really nothing "original" in the basic mechanics of Don't Starve.
What makes it unique is the atmosphere a bit gothic, a bit lovecraftian, a little Victorian, a bit to Tim Burton, an explosive mix that only Klei can give you.
The fact that it has an isometric perspective, the voices of the characters played by instruments, the presence of all sorts of strange creatures... is the art of the game that makes it special, NOT the mechanics.
So why can not Don't Starve exponentially increase the things that could be built? This thing would remove the "atmosphere" of the game? I do not believe. On the contrary, it would only give new tools to increase their longevity and have a lot more fun.

[CaptainChaotica]

(Heh.  Every time I see someone here write "oni", my brain does not first go to "Oxygen Not Included", but instead to AN Oni, as in, the ogre-like creature of Japanese mythology.  And THEN my brain goes "Oh, wait."   : P)

I think...electricity is a very cool and interesting new concept to play with but it should be played with...cautiously.  Both for atmospheric and game-balance reasons.  Atmospheric? 

Well, I'm thinking the EARLY days of electricity, when people were just starting to get it into their homes and cars needed to be cranked up in order to run, would still fit DST's time...style.  And of course, a radio would be allowed, 'cos Voxola...no further than that, though.  I don't wanna see (except in mods; I can't stop you crazy modders out there.  NO ONE CAN!) computers* or (shudders) smartphones.  But _early_ electricity was an interesting time period in real life history, and the aesthetic from back then would still fit Don't Starve.

Overpowered--well, that one speaks for itself.  I feel electricity should be a third tier of technology above the alchemy engine (the Ancient thingie and thulecite are more like higher tier _magic_**), and should be expensive to craft, so it can't run rampant.  However, (a) it should NOT waste gears--WXs already do that--and (b) a FREAKING OFF SWITCH does _not_ count as overpowered.  Come on.  Nobody makes machines like that yada yada.

Also having to constantly babysit ANYthing, including always refuelling a machine, is more annoying than challenging.  You can turn off fling-o's when you leave base to go wandering.  You should be able to turn off new electrical thingamabobs (of which I have twenty).  I feel the fuel for it should be renewable..but hard to get, or respawns slowly. But not "an idiot joined my base two game days ago and now I can't use any of my fancy stuff again, ever".   Also also, yes to the idea of being able to hook things up to the lightning rod...but of course that'd only be a _sometimes_ power source, which is how it'd be limited.

As for making the electricity now power things that, by all rights, should've had it before, well...the description says the fling-o-matic runs on "fire" (or anything you can make a fire with normally) and the fridge is an ICEBOX--meaning that if you must have it realistic, it should be required to have at least one chunk of ice in it at all times.  But long annoying cords would not be included necessary. 

...Notorious

*Unless we're talking, like, Babbage's original difference engine.  That'd be cool.

**Although, insert Arthur C. Clarke quote here.

[Maxposting]

On 10. 3. 2019 at 9:39 PM, Pop Guy said:

With electricity (and automatism) the game would become a hyperbole: at the beginning everything is slow, not very productive and manual ... and then from the middle of the game an "explosion of intelligence", an exponential progress of all production cycles which leads you to constantly renew your way to get resources, the focus of the game.
So at day 100 you do not do the things of day 1 anymore: at day 100 you look pleased at your machines that do 10 times better than what you did before. Only now you have spent the previous 99 days with the goal of automating, 
and not killing the bosses of the game dozens of times.
And yes, the red stone was the great success of Minecraft. By now all the series that still exist on the basic game survive only for that. Because automating puts your creativity, your intelligence into play. From a purpose. And from enormous satisfaction. In a game where the protagonist is a scientist then...

Go play Oxygen not Included.

[maradyne]

On 3/10/2019 at 2:28 PM, Tapirus said:

Exactly. For example, Ice Flingomatic (structure with Electrical Doodads).

I'd like an optional system, personally. The Ice Flingomatic is a good example.
It's clearly electrical, and powered by fire. Basically, there's a burning-based generator inside the thing already. If I can get familiar enough with the generator system, my quotes for the planned Internal Combustion Engine include a little quip about this, haha.

Rather than having to power it directly, it could optionally be hooked to an electrical system, allowing the player to power all of their Flingomatics/similar devices from a central generator, or group of them, as long as they're within infrastructure range.
A system that adds options to the game, rather than more tedium.

But yea leave crafting stations out of the system.

[Pop Guy]

17 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

(Heh.  Every time I see someone here write "oni", my brain does not first go to "Oxygen Not Included", but instead to AN Oni, as in, the ogre-like creature of Japanese mythology.  And THEN my brain goes "Oh, wait."   : P)

I think...electricity is a very cool and interesting new concept to play with but it should be played with...cautiously.  Both for atmospheric and game-balance reasons.  Atmospheric? 

Well, I'm thinking the EARLY days of electricity, when people were just starting to get it into their homes and cars needed to be cranked up in order to run, would still fit DST's time...style.  And of course, a radio would be allowed, 'cos Voxola...no further than that, though.  I don't wanna see (except in mods; I can't stop you crazy modders out there.  NO ONE CAN!) computers* or (shudders) smartphones.  But _early_ electricity was an interesting time period in real life history, and the aesthetic from back then would still fit Don't Starve.

Overpowered--well, that one speaks for itself.  I feel electricity should be a third tier of technology above the alchemy engine (the Ancient thingie and thulecite are more like higher tier _magic_**), and should be expensive to craft, so it can't run rampant.  However, (a) it should NOT waste gears--WXs already do that--and (b) a FREAKING OFF SWITCH does _not_ count as overpowered.  Come on.  Nobody makes machines like that yada yada.

Also having to constantly babysit ANYthing, including always refuelling a machine, is more annoying than challenging.  You can turn off fling-o's when you leave base to go wandering.  You should be able to turn off new electrical thingamabobs (of which I have twenty).  I feel the fuel for it should be renewable..but hard to get, or respawns slowly. But not "an idiot joined my base two game days ago and now I can't use any of my fancy stuff again, ever".   Also also, yes to the idea of being able to hook things up to the lightning rod...but of course that'd only be a _sometimes_ power source, which is how it'd be limited.

As for making the electricity now power things that, by all rights, should've had it before, well...the description says the fling-o-matic runs on "fire" (or anything you can make a fire with normally) and the fridge is an ICEBOX--meaning that if you must have it realistic, it should be required to have at least one chunk of ice in it at all times.  But long annoying cords would not be included necessary. 

...Notorious

*Unless we're talking, like, Babbage's original difference engine.  That'd be cool.

**Although, insert Arthur C. Clarke quote here.

It is a good idea to insert a third level of science (as it was originally!)
Electricity lends itself well as very advanced mechanics, and precisely because it would allow some processes to be automated (the collection of certain materials, the transport of certain resources, etc.) it would be perfect for the mega-bases that veterans like to build so much.
Surely inserting systems to have a more compact and easily organized inventory would be great, as well as new defensive traps to make the bases safe. This could even transform the game, from day 250 onwards, into a sort of "defense of the base" where immense hordes of "super dogs" arrive to be rejected precisely with the most advanced traps. Of course, we should be very careful to balance them so that they cannot be used against bosses in an excessive way (like the catapults of a certain character...)
However, electricity is a very versatile element and can be developed in so many ways!

Ps: And then I want to say... how beautiful would "Tesla" themed skins be? Thrilling! :'D  

[Pop Guy]

2 hours ago, lifetheuniverse said:

I'd like an optional system, personally. The Ice Flingomatic is a good example.
It's clearly electrical, and powered by fire. Basically, there's a burning-based generator inside the thing already. If I can get familiar enough with the generator system, my quotes for the planned Internal Combustion Engine include a little quip about this, haha.

Rather than having to power it directly, it could optionally be hooked to an electrical system, allowing the player to power all of their Flingomatics/similar devices from a central generator, or group of them, as long as they're within infrastructure range.
A system that adds options to the game, rather than more tedium.

But yea leave crafting stations out of the system.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with feeding even some construction stations: with the prototype system it does not often need a station to be used... But it is not necessary to do what I think 100%, I would already be very happy if, as you say, you could feed the whole base from a single point. Like the energetic heart, which you can connect to the structures to avoid having to feed them manually.
I already imagine the quotes of the characters:
Wilson: "Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything in energy I can transform"
Willow: "The strangest fire I've ever seen is stirred inside!"
Wolfgang: "Wolgang's whiskers quiver in contact with this strange electronic fluid"
Wendy: "The love that moves the sun and the other stars..." (Quote from the last stanza of "Divina Commedia", by Dante Alighieri)
Wx-78: "MY SOUL"
Wickerbottom: "An electron current generator, fundamental particles that orbit around the nucleons within the atoms"
Woodie: "Lucy, do you think I can give you life now?" (Lucy: "YES... IT CAN... DO!!!")
Wes: "..."
Maxwell: "It gives off a beautiful light. Almost as beautiful as you, Charlie" (Charlie: "Hypocrite ...")
Wigfrid: "Thor's lightning is in my hands! The gods are always praised!"
Webber: "We recreated one of Dad's machines! I'm sure he would be proud of us!"
Winona: "It's time to start working with the help of the machines. The assembly line starts!"

 

I like to fantasize, yes: 'D

5 hours ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

Go play Oxygen not Included.

I would like to wait for it to come out of early access earlier, also because I have read that they are changing a lot with the latest updates. I will certainly try it soon