Improvement Suggestions

Let's assume that the gathering buff to yield gets reworked, since the 100% boost at lvl 7 is not only a pain to compete with for new gatherers, but also it's destroying farming as the game progresses. Supply is increasing way faster than demand. It leads to nuked crop prices and demotivated farmers. Or even a lack of farmers because people don't want to go through the trouble. I would personally very much prefer something like a 20% increase at lvl 7. What if the default yield would be like 3, with gathering max lvl it would be increased by 20%, which yields 3.6 per field (the game could remember the 0.6 for X time and add it to the next harvest of the same crop, resulting in 36 crop for 10 tiles of a crop harvested). This would push towards bigger fields, which is more pretty and probably more fun for farmers. What if fertilizers would add to this yield instead of just resetting the old value, allowing better yields later in the game, pushing it to 4 (4.8 with max gathering). Would actually make fertilizers more useful. What i mean is at world generation to put the values not at 100% of what they can be. The gains of these could be: Fertilizers become more important and useful Crops retain value after the first few days because the max yield (including specialization boost) is lower Bigger farms actually make sense Farmers get less demotivated Crop prices might even end up ok Just using example values btw.

A problem with food is that while it tiers up, it quickly gets more expensive, yet the gain is only xp and sometimes the same amount (or even less) of xp as what a lower tier offers. By the time high tier food becomes available for a reasonable price, there is not enough interest in xp, because players largely have the stars they want, so aren't really motivated to buy better food. There are mods that already do a nice job improving the benefits of the mechanic (XP Benefits mod) but my idea is to add more benefits/buffs to food than just xp. Specific (groups of) foods could give specific advantages, such as: Increased running speed for X time Increased inventory carry capacity for X time Increased hand carry capacity for X time Increased tool usage speed for X time Increased tool damage for X time Decreased tool durability loss for X time Increased harvest yield for X time Darkvision for X time Increased swimming speed for X time Animals are not offended by your existence for X time Highlighted ores, aminals, etc Devs can literally go crazy with this This should make people want to keep eating food items from the group they want the effect of to keep the effect active. Higher tier food could give stronger/better/other effects. Effects could stack (tier 1 5% and tier 2 10% results in 15%), maybe certain combo's can even affect each other. Making it a challenge to mix and match for the best effects. Did i say devs can literally go crazy with this?

My Radical Idea-Proposal: Lower-tier food should yield fewer calories than higher-tier foods, creating a clear calorie gradient across food tiers. Crop growth and food-production should take noticeably longer. Incorperate Pollution deeper into Gameplay (Level-Up, Housing-Value, Crop-Yield) Why ? (Expected results) Introduces a tangible labor cost (not just time/material) for producing food and higher-tier goods. Makes process efficiency, research and upgrades significantly more valuable. Higher-tier foods become attractive for their greater calorie yield and longer saturation effects. For Public Servers: Reduces the ability to “grind” large wealth with low-tier tools alone; Evens out playing field between strategic 'buisiness-decisions and trade' and Players having a lot of time and 'grinding away'. Strengthens Political gameplay: higher land use for farming and farmers needing more of it requiring Zoning-Laws - AND with higher gameplay-effects of pollution: management of 'pollutable Zones' (industrial Areas) will gain importance as well as inter-City Cooperation when pollution can 'travel'. If pollution persisted longer (even if it accumulated more slowly) and food-growth and yield are set sstricter: zoning, political decisions and allocation of land for 'industry vs. housing' would become a highly-more meaningful gameplay mechanic. Important: I want the possibility to customise Values easily for Server-Owners So Servers can have and improve their Gameplay-mechanics based on the playing-style and so they can adjust the gameplay in different directions. Maybe the Community can then find different styles and challanges for even more Replay-Value! Expected Gameplay / Flow Impact General Early game would emphasize self-sufficient-farming for longer periods as well as allocating more time, calories and land-use for it -> extending early-stage gameplay and making achivements harder and more rewarding. Small upgrades (e.g., basic housing, simple tools) would be more impactful; minor achievements would reward sustained effort rather than instant grind. Scarcity of high-calorie food early on would drive innovation (Upgrades), reward high levels even more and grow demand for higher-tier production methods. Early-Game Food is important, (Like in human history) players would need to make a lot of it and feed themselves - allocate much land and calories for basic survival. Slow food-growth and Yield would demand a ton of land. Building and Crafting would require strategic tought (what is needed, how much of it and how can i cooperate with to no build stuff twice) Even basic buildings and upgrades will improve calorie-ussage, making it more important. Mid-Game Cities are needed to administrate and protect huge amount of lands for Farmers, to protect the plots for farming from foreigners stealing. As well as making sure food is secured in advance since it takes so long to grow and a shortage might put the people in an disadvantage to other communities. Fertilizers for higher yield will be required and farming will become more than just 'mindlessly grinding', especially since: optimal Crop location will make a more important difference and some crops just can't really be economically brought to the local food-shops. Butchers and Cooks will be importand since they can salvage more calories from food. Maybe they can make higher tier foods (higher XP) as well as lower tier foods (food scraps salvages) for cheap calories? and higher XP might bring more high-quality foods from scraps (like Goulash and PulledPork was invented for)? If more land is needed for Crops and (bigger) animals might only spawn in deep forests while more small animals spawn in farmland only might be a good reason to preserve forrests and make sustainable forrestry more important for loggers. Late-Game Protection of farms from pollution is needed by making industrial areas far away or crop-yield will stagnate and even worsen as well as bad air might lower housing-value, make higher need for calories if worked in smog etc. a wider reach of pollutants would make the need of a city to actually place pollutants (no only generators, but also workbenches who will 'lose' pieces of metal or minerals) far away from the farmland and their living-spaces as well as make a need for multiple plots of land, and coorperation between cities to no cross-pollute. wind having an effect on pollutants by having differend wind-directions and diffusion effects by higher chimneys might be a valueable effect for smart decisions. Risks & Mitigation + Conclusion in my comment because of Character-Limitations

When creating a work party, allow adding each item from the work order separately to allow for setting different weight or not requesting the item at all. Reasoning: when used for modern research, the cost of paper, ink and whatever other ingridients are needed is not the same. I want to be able to pay differently based on the ingridients contibuted without having to use a marketplace for one reason or the other like if I am using a public laboratory.

The amount of calories provided by high tier cooking and baking is nowhere near where it should be when compared to the huge material requirements. Also many professions need to spend huge amounts of calories for crafting, making the use of high tier food mostly unaffordable. Turning a flax harvest into seeds for oil can cost hundreds of thousands of work units, even with basic upgrade 4. The calories provided by advanced cooking are on the same level as campfire cooking, but costing way more ressources. Also Cutting Edge cooking only has corn ethanol and wheat ethanol as lvl 0 recipes, taking it as a profession is absolutely useless. Please add some items to be crafted by Cutting Edge Cooking to make it actually useful.

Fed up with eating seeds when planting them by hand during a server lag.

While using pickaxe as soon as you pick up what your mining, the 'placement' hologram ghost appears and is a huge distraction splotch on the screen and nobody in my group wants to mine because if it, so it would be great to be able to turn it off/on by hot key or maybe in the world settings. Having the hologram 100% of the time on the screen (while carrying resource) for less than 5% use, does not add up. The only time it would be used is to stack up resource in the wild if you dont have stockpile space or dont want build more stockpiles, or someone wants to stack up resource in the wild without it counting as trash/junk/waste. To sum up, it needs to be able to be turned off/on and keep this for those who use it, we use the wheelbarrow. Alternate suggestion to a hot key or check box - same improvement Maybe use the tool we already have to build or place something ...is that what the hammer is for ?? as of the writing of this, while carrying a stack or bundle and having the hammer enabled, the left mouse button will attempt to pick up and give message of not enough room to do so, maybe if the right button is available...place single or whole carry somehow... Thanks

When voting to ratify a constitution, non of my friends can vote unless I port forward our server. Even though they are playing on a game that is being hosted from my computer already. I feel like the game should not need to re-direct you to a website to engage in core mechanics of the game, it should be self contained.

So fishing has the cages you can put in the water for passive fishing (I do enjoy fishing with the fishing line). But hunting has nothing really to help out passively. Cages/traps to catch the tiny and small category of animals would be pretty cool. But hunting with the bow, and how crazy animal moves it's just ridiculous. Especially when trying to price out meat. basically your meat is almost based on the price of arrows.

Player retention seems to be a big issue with most servers. Some additional metrics and some additional rewards might help keep people on their servers longer. In my head its a system with a set number of levels, and at each level there are either cosmetic unlocks or small character perks or marketplace coins that are unlocked along the way. Logging into a server each day gives you a little bit of experience. Maybe each transaction or each calorie spent gives a little bit of experience. Being active when the server shoots down the meteor or completing some objective gives a lot of experience. And then going inactive on a server reduces some experience. The punishments need to be pretty minor, because people have lives and things come up, but serial leaving every server on the 3rd day should ultimately result in not unlocking the extra perks that come with this system. A little incentive to stick it out when things get a little tricky might help a lot with keeping people on a server rather than just re-rolling the second someone faces a little bit of resistance. Other bonuses that I can see are that there could be metrics that might also be useful for server admins, maybe if it tracked people leaving early they could restrict joining if they have a big negative score. Or people might be inclined to join games later than the first 3 days because they would be closer to the objectives finishing. Not a fully baked idea and I'm sure there's a lot of room for improvement, but feels like something should be tried and this is something that would likely be helpful.