Colonizing the New World (Open to all) (OOC)

[thinkslogically]

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Agreed. We need to get on top of our food problem

[Quarg]

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Duck

[thinkslogically]

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He's a witch!!

[Quarg]

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He's a witch!!

Huh? No I'm not Taylor Swift...

[thinkslogically]

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That was a dubious Monty Python joke from The Holy Grail about how witches weigh the same as a duck. Given the time period, and your introduction and IC parentage, I thought it was appropriate

[BadgeAddict]

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@Badge: would it be unreasonable to say that the guys I have on lumbercutting each season would do so while also clearing land for more construction? Or would that take more work? Also as said below and just so you know, again altering my distribution of workers a bit.

@Gathers: Sorry, I blanked on the fact that you had crafted more, allowing for more fishers... I'll adjust my action again to put some more on fishing, but in the long run fishing is much less efficient than farming, so there should only be a limited number on the people fishing, regardless.

Also kind of disagree with that construction isn't important..? Certainly getting some food is, but we've got nearly half our population dedicated to hopefully gaining some skill and consecutively taking care off that- Each building finished is essentially a permanent upgrade, in the meantime, which will help in the long run.

@Thinks: Cargo manifest does say 7 piglets died

Mort: Clearing the land is included with cutting down the trees (Clearing some of the biggest brush and de-stumping)

[M0rtimer]

Did something go horribly wrong in the matrix..?

edit: It did, but I fixed it.

[Theis2]

Yup spoil and quote tags out of order, I fixed it

[Quarg]

Well, I could show up as the last survivor of the lost Third Cabot expedition that vanished in 1501...

[BadgeAddict]

^Mort, you're trying to use 100 plebs, but you only have 90 to work with.

[BadgeAddict]

Oh, you weren't just making this guy up...don't worry..I'm determining how to add you in.

[M0rtimer]

Oh right, people have the gall to go ahead and die on Groff's watch... I'll go edit the post again.

edit: done.

[Quarg]

Oh, you weren't just making this guy up...don't worry..I'm determining how to add you in.

You mean Cabot? No...

And John Bates is a bit ahead of himself...

[GathersIngredients]

Should I move all the spoilered posts from the game thread over here, badge, or are you happy with them there?

I kept on posting there, because I still thought this was recruitment only, as it was moved and re-designated as OOC thread only recently.

[GathersIngredients]

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^Mort, you're trying to use 100 plebs, but you only have 90 to work with.

What are you saying, badge? That if our peasants die we don't get an equal amount zombie-NPC that work tirelessly 24/7 and don't need petty stuff like food, warmth and whatnot? What kind of crappy game is this, anyway? *ragequits*







PS: just joking! I hope it was clear without this note, but you never know with some people...

[BadgeAddict]

^If you want to take that task on yourself, have at it.

[M0rtimer]

This is your fault Gathers! You made me overfish!

On a serious note, I kind of doubt the capacity of 13 men to fish so much fish from the nearby ocean in one season that production is meaningfully impacted... But game mechanics I suppose. How long would we need to wait for things to recover? Could we find a new site? And probably not for this season, but if we were to construct fishing boats would that help?

[GathersIngredients]

We already have 4 row boats (just no oars... )

[thinkslogically]

Ok, so just to put this here for clarity:
Badge- what's happening to the wheat we've been planting I've been assuming it's been getting turned into flour and baked into flat bread (no yeast needed, it's literally flour and water), which is then edible and an efficient choice for food.

But if that's not the case, and we're only making flour or straight grain, it seems like we're wasting effort and resources with wheat when it's not actually very efficient as a foodstuff right now. So, can you please clarify what is happening with the wheat we're producing?

[BadgeAddict]

This is your fault Gathers! You made me overfish!

On a serious note, I kind of doubt the capacity of 13 men to fish so much fish from the nearby ocean in one season that production is meaningfully impacted... But game mechanics I suppose. How long would we need to wait for things to recover? Could we find a new site? And probably not for this season, but if we were to construct fishing boats would that help?

Keep in mind that 73 food = enough calories to feed 1 person, every day, for an entire 3 months. So in reality, they probably caught at minimum 500 to 1000 fish.

Ok, so just to put this here for clarity:
Badge- what's happening to the wheat we've been planting I've been assuming it's been getting turned into flour and baked into flat bread (no yeast needed, it's literally flour and water), which is then edible and an efficient choice for food.

But if that's not the case, and we're only making flour or straight grain, it seems like we're wasting effort and resources with wheat when it's not actually very efficient as a foodstuff right now. So, can you please clarify what is happening with the wheat we're producing?

Maybe I'm wrong in my assumption...I was running some numbers, perhaps stopping at the flour stage would be better than assuming making it into bread is more nutritious. That's what I have players for, to keep me in the right line of thinking.

The wheat you harvest is being turned into flour yes, but very inefficiently. If Wheat Flour is just as nutritious as Wheat bread, then I'll remove the Flour to Bread stage and fill it with this though instead.

If you took the time to make a mill-house (Actually using the grindstones), then you're grain to flour efficiency would raise and you would produce more. This was my attempt at making the math work.

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I'm more than willing to discuss my dice math with you and come up with something that is both fair and makes sense. This is partly why I've posted my spreadsheet so that I'm as open as possible with you, and you lot can keep me honest. This is my first game to roll dice...most of you might know that, but that also means I'm new to figuring out odds and such.

[thinkslogically]

Ok, cool. I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, it's just I don't want to accidentally starve us by misunderstanding something

I definitely don't think you should remove the flour to bread stage, in fact, I'd almost treat flour as an ingredient rather than a foodstuff directly, cos really, who eats flour? we should be able to ration flour to people to make their own bread I guess, and then once we get a bakery or whatever that'll all presumably become more efficient and stuff.

Making things more efficient as we develop makes perfect sense, like I say, I just didn't want to be misunderstanding our food situation.

[M0rtimer]

Question, though, with the whole production thing- Since there's three steps to making bread from wheat, does that mean that wheat is consecutively also three times as much work? Because in the end, the stats we should look at is not final resource/crop, but final resource/work spent. And if it takes three times as much work, oats etc would probably be better- But future upgrades could probably increase that rate, too to make what more appreciable...

[BadgeAddict]

So yeah, flour could be used directly as a food source..probably for gruel or something similar.

But yes, and also to answer Spiders question here (how to make better tools).
To make a better ToT, you need better ToT yourself. For spider to reach a better potential for tool making, making his own shop and forge and smelter and moreso "better equipment" will "upgrade" his ToT's to (+2) and so on.

I mean, you guys are colonists, you came with next to nothing and you only have what you've built. So, currently you're mortal and pestling all of your flour. With a proper building for grinding wheat, you'll produce more. Someone wanted to have a sawmill more than food...blame him.

@M0rt: right, so, currently, maybe wheat production doesn't make sense because your ability to use it to its best potential isn't ready, whereas you can use oats quite readily...or squash and beans and veggies, etc...are mostly used immediately after harvesting, the difference is that they go bad faster and provide less food.

It really is up to you about what you plant etc.

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@Gathers:
Also I still don't understand how much Food each colonist eats per season, or how much food units you get from the various crops.
Or is 1 wheat = 1 food, 1 flour = 1 food and 1 bread = 1 food, 1 barley = 1 food and 1 bean = 1 food?

Food is complicated, but I'm counting food as "units", each unit of food is enough to feed 1 person every day for 3 months, which is a lot of food...but it makes it more forum game friendly. The amount of food per crop is different based on calorie content x 30 days x 3 months = Unit of Food.

Can those production rates (e.e. wheat to flour, flour to bread) be increased (with tools, or other items, as I already know that some/high skill at a profession can increase production)?

Yes

and what does that "B" stand for, bushels or ...?

And why did we even use up food in spring (except for the 3rd month)? I thought we got 1 year worth of (non-spoilable) food for each colonist, so that should have lasted us until month 2 in Spring, right? Possibly a bit longer, since we had about 10 people die and not eat their rations for some time. It's not tasty (and I agree on the sentiment that eating bread all the time does get boring), but it's still better than starving.
Sure, it makes sense to eat spoiling food (e.g. fish and berries) now and safe the non-spoiling food for later, but then we should have more non-spoiling food (from the original 1 year worth) still left, yes?[/spoiler]

You were originally given 4 units of food per person, which is equivalent to 1 year of food. summer, fall, winter, spring = 4 units of food. The extra month in the beginning of the game was only to bring you to the current "season" schedule, it does not help you when it comes to food spent. bummer I know. you had 5 people die...not 10, and yes, they did not eat their food, so it got added back into the "communal food pile".

If time left over, try to make an over (for bread making) out of clay, stone or whatever else is at hand and works. - If that is not feasible with raw clay, make bricks first.
If time left over, make more farm tools (until # of tools = number of farmers)

On the most part...there is never "time left over", you get three turns, spend them wisely.

[thinkslogically]

Ok, so this season, shall we focus on oats and whatever else you guys can forage?

If anyone finds any fruit trees, fruits, nuts or promising plants from the wilderness that could be transplanted into the "orchard" area, please bring them to Freya and we'll get them planted.

[GathersIngredients]

So whenever you speak of crops (e.g. 1 acre of beans yields the following)

Beans Production Rate:
5d3 bushel per acre = Bx2 = Yield

then this means
1acre, (beans takes 1 season to grow) creates 5d3 bushels (so 5-15 bushels), and Bx2 means you get 2 food per bushel (so 10-30 food per acre of beans). Is that correct?

Can we get the same "production rate" formula for all the crops please? And do we even have those available, or not?

From the spreadsheet we know only wheat and oats (and beans and squash, which is the same as beans) so far, so there's still Rice (White), Rye, Corn and Pumpkins left to know.

Oh, and according to the spreadsheet, only rice and pumpkins take 2 seasons to grown, all other crops you mentioned are 1 season. (...even wheat, what's up with that? I thought you said - elsewhere - that wheat needed 2 seasons to grow...)

Btw. I'm also not trying to be a pain, I just want to understand it all and hopefully figure out the most effective way to produce food.

If time left over, try to make an over (for bread making) out of clay, stone or whatever else is at hand and works. - If that is not feasible with raw clay, make bricks first.
If time left over, make more farm tools (until # of tools = number of farmers)

On the most part...there is never "time left over", you get three turns, spend them wisely.

I'm sorry, all those "if"s and such are possibly unnerving, but I have no idea how long it would take to build this makeshift, animal powered mill. If you'd ask me for an assumption I'd say no longer than a day, probably spending the morning with the help of enough people to move (roll, then lift) the grindstones to the designated place (depending on how far they need to be transported), and then spending the afternoon fixing the wooden bits into place, tie them together with ropes, etc, create a makeshift harness for the animal/human to have it roll around in circle.
I'm also assuming that such a construction would need 1 person (other than the animal/one working the grindstone) assigned permanently to apply new grains every so often, collect the finished flour and keep the worker going (e.g. dangle a carrot in front of the goat's eyes, just beyond reach), but it would still be much more efficient (work hours wise) than mortar and pestle...

Anyways. what I was trying to say was: I think that such a construction should be possible to finish within a month easily (if Bjorn can get the help of 20 or so people for one half-day, so perhaps he spends 10 days to substitute whatever word they missed out on by helping him, during that month). But I don't know what your assumption is. According to mine it would be stupid to write: month 1 work on mill, month 2 work on mill, month 3 work on mill.
So I am making contingency plans for the other months, so I don't have Bjorn spend them idle. (the 75 people watching 5 others fish was bad enough, I don't want to add to that).
Because e.g. if the "mill" I have in mind (which in this case is NOT a building but just an assembly of parts that we have readily available) is done within 1 month, then 2 months will be left over to do other things.