Proposed Change Discussion: Removing Zombie Iron drops

[Sarudak]

Crazy thought... What if you just removed all rare drops altogether?

[morvelaira]

That would rather invalidate the Arcane Scroll system, now wouldn't it?

[FlowerChild]

Crazy thought... What if you just removed all rare drops altogether?

That's a bit much IMO. As others have pointed out, some of the rare drops create interesting filtering challenges for the player.

That would rather invalidate the Arcane Scroll system, now wouldn't it?

No. The systems are independent from each other.

[orangeweaver]

I haven't started on sorting mechanics but I rather like the idea of a variety of mob farms, both passive and agressive, material farms, etc. Perhaps rather than the all or nothing we can start thinking of possibilities / situations that could affect our current systems, causing them to become more complex and diverge from the current set-ups / using the current set-ups as a base but eventually leading a skeleton spawner and a cave spider spawner and a tower farm and golemn farm to be vastly different end systems w/ end products.

[FlowerChild]

I haven't started on sorting mechanics but I rather like the idea of a variety of mob farms, both passive and agressive, material farms, etc. Perhaps rather than the all or nothing we can start thinking of possibilities / situations that could affect our current systems, causing them to become more complex and diverge from the current set-ups / using the current set-ups as a base but eventually leading a skeleton spawner and a cave spider spawner and a tower farm and golemn farm to be vastly different end systems w/ end products.

Yeah, let's not descend completely into theoretical wankery :)

This thread is about a very specific issue and question. Let me handle the rest.

[Marasambala]

Can you make mobs entirely unable to o cupy the same space at the same time. Dropping multiple mobs down a 1x1 pit would cause them to literally stand on top of the one below creating a useless mob pillar. Of course I'm sure some of you can find a way to exploit that as well;)

[XantyZon]

I think the Idea of reducing the zombie iron drops is a good one. Another thought crossed my mind on how to make it more difficult. The programing required for this thought might not make it feasible but if there was device that burnt EXP so that mobs would only with in a given radius drop there special items when not killed by the player.

[orangeweaver]

... theoretical wankery :)

Lmao. Absolutely will do. Work was pretty boring so I started to get a bit carried away!

[morvelaira]

Hey guys - try not to give extra suggestions when he's asked for opinions on a certain one.

[Gormador]

Yep, agreed on reduced rates. A bit more challenge isn't bad, is it ? :)

[The Phoenixian]

Everything I've wanted to say has been said before so I'll just chime in to show my support: I'm for the reduction of Iron drops from zombies (Especially if it's to Morv's suggestion for limiting it to armor drops which makes sense to me) and I'm very happy to see this coming up as I've thought Zombie Iron was a problem for a while.

[JesterxMailMan89]

Hm, are people really getting a ton of iron from zombie spawners? I have a system set up to smelt any rare drops I get from my Zombie spawner while afk-ing and after a total of 3 hours I only had half a stack of iron (which isn't a lot to me considering pistons).

I don't really care either way what happens as I enjoy strip mining but just wanted to see just how much iron people are getting from a single zombie spawner.

[StormBeforeDawn]

One thing that jumps to mind is baby animals falling into an animal den after birth, which is usually a bit crowded if the adults don't get out quick enough. Though you've also stated before that adding collision damage can be used as an exploit - essentially replacing saws with mobs stuck in a pit taking collision damage from each other

Arg...too many factors. You're perfectly right though. Thanks for the reminder :)

Yeah, that was what I was going to mention as well. Tough to balance all around. Perhaps adding that mobs that die by this method don't drop loot, although this seems out of the theme with your recent stuff. Personally I don't see animal singularities as an issue worth your time to deal with, more progression is a lot more fun. The singularities if in stacks of over 80 or so will lag any PC out and cause crashing to boot. If people are foolish enough to have them, their fps will pay the price.

As far as Iron goes, my 2 quarries output (btb) about as much iron as my mobfarm. I feel that in btb this is relatively close to balanced, but when you switch to regular BTW this seems to be unbalanced. Either way I don't particularly care, if the levels are changed it means iron will not likely be used for a building material any longer. If mob farms drop iron at all, all you have to do is afk for a few hours to totally devalue the stuff. Who cares if it is 4 hours or 32 to get a stupidly large stockpile? It seems to me that once you have hit a fully functional mob farm iron is really the last of your worries. I have a fully developed tech tree and I have perhaps 300 pistons running, and those are the only thing that really requires iron that you can't get it back from. Iron just isn't that important and I cannot really see someone making a golem farm with an actual need for iron as a resource rather than a building block. I honestly don't think this modification is worth your time to tweak a whole lot more, unless iron will have a major presence further down the line in the mod.

Edit: Jester, I have small chest of iron blocks from about a 40 hours of gameplay. This is from real mob traps, not poaching a spawner.

[JesterxMailMan89]

Edit: Jester, I have small chest of iron blocks from about a 40 hours of gameplay. This is from real mob traps, not poaching a spawner.

...Okay? That is from real mob traps as you said. I want to know about just one zombie spawner. From the rates I've been getting Id have to stop playing the game for several days (real life days) and just leave it afk-ing in order to build a decent collection of iron.

Im interested in the rates other people are getting from their spawner (again just 1 zombie spawner) because to me the rare drop thing just isn't good enough for me to consider it worthwhile to afk for iron

EDIT: Im an idiot, Ive been thinking in terms of actual spawners and not mob traps. I get your point Storm, and you are absolutely correct.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I get the impression that spawner traps are way lower yield than regular mob-farms.

As for balancing for afk: that's just not something I can worry about at present. It's not something I do myself except when testing specific features for the mod. If my game is running, I'm always playing in one way or another.

Later tech-levels will likely have mechanisms within them to specifically discourage afk play, and it's already incredibly dangerous in anarchy SMP, but for now, I can really only balance for legitimate play and what feels right for it.

As for the time involved in making this change, it took 5 minutes tops. I'm currently testing in my own world.

[Battosay]

Of course the spawner-based trap will yield way less iron, they only spawn up to 2 or 3 zombies, and every 4 or 5 seconds, when an efficient mobtrap will take care of over 100 mobs, which are kill - according to your setup - in a matter of seconds, or almost instantly. Even if not all of the mobs are zombies, and that it may took you more time to get the mob killed, you'll still get more zombies.

Not the same thing at all :)

[MoRmEnGiL]

Of course you do not want to nerf generic mob traps too much, or they become again much less attractive. But I'm sure you will get it just right.

I repeat that Iron golem farms are very cool, and can be incorporated into a huge aesthetic build in cool ways, just look what docm has done ;] (also no testificate stacking is required whatsoever)


I'm worried with you messing with collision and stacking though at this point, because I'm fairly confident 1.3 will be a mess regarding glitchy mobs. Might want to wait for that before you try things.

[StormBeforeDawn]

Yeah, I get the impression that spawner traps are way lower yield than regular mob-farms.

As for balancing for afk: that's just not something I can worry about at present. It's not something I do myself except when testing specific features for the mod. If my game is running, I'm always playing in one way or another.

Later tech-levels will likely have mechanisms within them to specifically discourage afk play, and it's already incredibly dangerous in anarchy SMP, but for now, I can really only balance for legitimate play and what feels right for it.

As for the time involved in making this change, it took 5 minutes tops. I'm currently testing in my own world.

Hey, if you're happy, we are all happy. Really curious to know what you mean by afk discouragement, but I have a feeling that's the only hint we are getting.

[Battlecat]

I repeat that Iron golem farms are very cool, and can be incorporated into a huge aesthetic build in cool ways, just look what docm has done ;] (also no testificate stacking is required whatsoever)

Word on checking out Docm77's design. No mob stacking that I can see except for the Iron golems themselves and that's only because of the absence of hoppers in vanilla.

I know I'm late to the show, but I believe reduction in iron drops rather than removal would be better at the end. Also, I agree with morvelaira that armor drops make much more sense than tool drops for the reasons she mentioned. Honestly, with the changes you made so rare drops always drop, the vanilla rates were going to be an issue since they weren't balanced for mob traps.

Just a barely-related aside: Honestly it would have been pretty cool if mojang had made it so zombies actually spawned randomly equipped with the rare armor drops rather than just dropping it on death. It would be a lot creepier and it would have been a fairly easy way to make "boss mobs" and it would make the rare drops a double edged sword. But this is just me bemoaning design decisions and games in general where mobs don't use the incredible items they are carrying and not intended to be a suggestion.

[CycloneSP]

Heh, I just afk'd at my exp zombie farm for a matter of 5 minutes and have acquired about 12 bars worth of iron in drops. So yeah, I am for reducing the rate of the iron drops. I certainly don't want to see iron drops disappear simply because 1) I like renewable resources and 2) I'm lazy and hate mining. I prefer building proofs-of-concepts and other mechanical devices than mindlessly hacking away at iron and coal ore in the bowls of the earth.

But I do agree that the with the current system, an efficient mob farm will certainly devalue iron to the point of nothingness. Yet on the other hand, I do find mass production of rails to be a tad expensive....


Meh, whatever. Keep up the good work FC, you always have a better feel for these things than I do.

[Donzaffi]

I don't like actually the rare drops of mobs, they are nothing at all rare, if they were so rare as scrools okay, but like now?
I am for the change, its a good begining, as the ability to smeels comes later in the tech tree, the other rare drops not are so annoying