Please give us shoremen or ever-burning lanterns!

[TrevorJD 117]

Simply put, torches and lanterns expire. Whether it's an hour or a day, doesn't really matter. It's simply not practical to run around refilling lamps except in the smallest of bases.

Our main base now has six piers that support four galleons, a dozen schooners and a dozen brigs. We have a farmhouse, an animal pen and now that the extraordinarily large tortuga is in the game, we're going to be building another. It would be lovely to see the bases lit up naturally but not "refilling 200 lanterns every 24 hrs" lovely.

So what do I and most people do? Spam harbours with buoys in unnecessary places and use gamma 5 everywhere else, which is a terrible kludge.

Suggestion:

1. In-character: Have shore-based NPC crew go into "sweeping" mode and take care of maintaining structures, refilling lamps, re-stacking and balancing feeding troughs to minimise spoilage etc. They should have a largish range, perhaps 30 foundations or more and take resources from a shore-based resource box. I would love to see this implemented. I would happily feed and pay a number of crew to take care of the drudgery of base maintenance so that I and my crew can spend our time doing fun things.

2. Easier: Introduce an ever-burning lantern. I'd be happy to pay 3/4/5 times the cost of current lanterns, or make them out of gems, paste and alloy.

Edited June 10, 2019 by TrevorJD

[[GP] Guybrush Threepwood 626]

I'd be happy with either of these suggestions.

I only have a small base, but I don't bother with torches or lanterns because of the fact they will just burn away when i'm offline so end up refilling them so often. Having an NPC housekeeping would be good.

The repairing structures would also be good, it's one reason why i'm upgrading everything from wood to stone because of the pesky Cobras damaging everything.

[TrevorJD 117]

Yep, I always build from stone but I prefer the look of wood. /shrug

[Jack Shandy 242]

More uses for Crew would be very welcome, from gardening, feeding tames to base mainenance.

1 hour ago, TrevorJD said:

Yep, I always build from stone but I prefer the look of wood. /shrug

Stone wall's around the base and wooden buildings within, is what we do (PVE of course).

[TrevorJD 117]

The trouble with walls is that the resource respawn radius is only about 3 foundations. If you have any gap larger than that, a tiger, elephant or scorpion is going to spawn inside your walls. I do not wish to pave the entire yard as that would be lag inducing and visually unappealing, and I will not spam the yard with foundations because that's horrifically ugly.

The respawn radius is a separate issue. IMO it should be 3-5 foundations for vegetation and 20 foundations for animals. Also, carnivores shouldn't all be killing-spree psychopaths and herbivores shouldn't blindly wander around where humans are being noisy and destroying their habitat.

[TrevorJD 117]

Refinement of the idea from conversation tonight:

Create a number of Jobs that shore-based hirelings can perform. A hireling's current job would be selected from the radial menu. Assign Role / <list of roles>. As gunners and sailors have different costs per hour, I'd also have different costs for the different shoreman roles.

Farm hand - Collects poop from animals and stores it in a poop chest.

Farmer - Takes poop from poop chest and puts it in crop plots. Harvests crops and puts them in nearby larders.

Nanny - Feeds babies (but doesn't imprint)

Watchman - Refills lanterns and repairs torches, can be set to automatically turn lights on and off at dusk and dawn.

Handyman - Repairs all structures given materials

Stable hand - Refills and balances feeding troughs, taking from preserving bags / larders.