Good Trade-Offs for Less Oceans

[Kanasuke]

When they implement map customization, I want to try a map with smaller oceans. Meaning landmasses are closer together and easier to find. 

 

But doing so would reduce the difficulty by much, since more land-based resources would be more easily accessible from base.

 

So I've been thinking of good trade-offs I could implement (via mods or ingame) that would help recreate a similar level of difficulty:

• Go hungry 50% faster (or food decays faster)
• Boat sails lose durability much faster.
• Islands are smaller.
• You get wet faster and more easily while sailing.
• More dangers while out at sea.
• Islands have less resources.
• A stamina bar. You can only sail a certain amount per day before taking sanity damage.

 

Or any other ideas.

[Talavaj]

The large oceans don't make the game difficult, just boring to navigate.

[AnonymousKoala]

The large oceans don't make the game difficult, just boring to navigate.

Not as boring as much as..well, being the point.

Isnt that the point of Shipwrecked? Sailing being the main new mechanic.

[mitboy]

The large oceans don't make the game difficult, just boring to navigate.

Actually, they do. You have less time to prepare for sesons\hounds\giants. Same as traveling in RoG to get resources

[grekon]

Bigger ocean means more stuff can be put there. I would rather see more resources in the ocean rather than making the map smaller for nothing.

 

Also there aren't that many good trade offs with reducing the water area. If you then put different limitations to sailing then you will just make people stay on the land. It's already happening, people making bases and staying on one island.

 

Instead of trying to remove the waters think of a way to make them more interesting. Don't look at it as if it was RoG.

[Mday]

Also there aren't that many good trade offs with reducing the water area. If you then put different limitations to sailing then you will just make people stay on the land. It's already happening, people making bases and staying on one island.

I make base and stay on one island because once I have everything discovered there aren't much point sailing around. Same thing happens in ROG/DST. When a game is 200 days old and most available base structure are build, there just aren't that much point getting out of my base.

[Talavaj]

Not as boring as much as..well, being the point.

Isnt that the point of Shipwrecked? Sailing being the main new mechanic.

What is "Sailing" ?

Sailing isn't a thing, it is just walking with a sprite of boat underneath your feet.

Walking across a whole lot of empty space, sea is just a huge turf of nothing with a fancier texture.

 

The only thing that is unique to the sea is trawling and that alone doesn't justify it being so big, and pointless.

[AnonymousKoala]

What is "Sailing" ?

Sailing isn't a thing, it is just walking with a sprite of boat underneath your feet.

Walking across a whole lot of empty space, sea is just a huge turf of nothing with a fancier texture.

 

The only thing that is unique to the sea is trawling and that alone doesn't justify it being so big, and pointless.

It is early access.

At the point we're in now I think its safe the assume the sea will feel different eventually. 

[Lacost]

Sailing = time wasting

 

As previous stated sailing is tremendously reducing your working time, leaving you more unprepared for following seasons. Luckily (if intentionally or not) the hurricane season is a joke on terms of preparation-difficulty if we leave the bugged hail aside.

 

Exploring = fun thing to do

 

I may be the only one on this forum but I really like reading the ocean levels and detect new islands. However once you have discovered them, there is hardly any purpose for you to come back and far away islands are just too hard to reach for hardly any profit.

 

 

SW is doing a pretty fine job for the current map design, allowing you to build a super-island with all resources you will ever need. There are only a few landlocked resources you can't move, like reeds. If it would be more RoG style with beefalo landlocked on savannah, hounds in deserts, hunting parties in the middle of nowhere ....., you would just spent your days sailing around between your islands but not making any progress.

 

This is good and bad at the same time because new islands are practically meaningless to you.

 

So my suggestion would be to not randomize the island placement. I would make a central and concentrated archipelago which allows you to have more non removeable recources on different islands/biomes close to each other.

 

Outside of the archipelago there should be a lot of open space between the islands but them being bigger and more meaningful. The idea is to locate just enough items on the starting islands that you can just survive all seasons but not anything more. For the real powerful stuff (cutlass supreme, bee hives, dumbrella, packim baggings) you have to venture out and explore the seas.

 

 

This way you would still have exploring as a major point in the game but can reduce usless sailing between your islands to a minimum.