Weathering and decay

[next ruin]

i would love if things like rain and snow could damage your buildings over time, over the course of years (or months if it's constant), and you would actually have to build with roof blocks/slanted blocks in order to prevent your walls etc from decaying and needing repair either by chiseling in new blocks on top or by full replacement. wood could go moldy and rot and stone could last much longer against erosion but also grow moss that the player could have to scrape off, things like that, so if you made your roof a flat row of wood planks and didn't perhaps caulk or tile it somehow it would rot and could be destroyed if not repaired in time. there could also be rusting mechanics for tools or metal blocks left out in the rain and snow.

[signal juniper]

I was thinking the other day how funny it is that a wattle fence can withstand infinite instances of a boar slamming itself against it, and then decided that I definitely didn't want that kind of decay to happen 😂

[next ruin]

i definitely would want it to be something that could be turned on and off like soil instability, but wattle fences breaking more easily would also be great incentive to go and actually make stone or rough-hewn fences where you need them! as someone who prefers to play with more realism that's the kind of thing i would absolutely want to happen lol. animals damaging buildings also wouldn't have to be the same mechanic as environmental damage and was not in this suggestion.

[empty island]

would natural terrain be affected?

[nocturne axle]

Maybe a more simplistic interpretation of this would be thatch roofing degrading over time; first into aged thatch and then eventually starting to let the weather in. Adding fresh thatch to the roofing blocks would repair them. Climate would affect the rate this happens at, with temperate, common rainfall (and the associated snowfall) letting a roof last around 10-12 months or something like that before beginning to fail

Making it so everything rots feels like it could get out of hand quickly

[nocturne axle]

I think any nerf to wattle fences would need to come with a broader woodworking update (which I would like). As it is, they're only marginally less effort to create than rough-hewn fences, and if anything are more tedious to create in quantity

[next ruin]

i was imagining it to apply to things like wooden planks and other player-made blocks, since natural terrain exists on the level of geologic time and will have been settled into its position under the elements. it would still be cool for rain to cause mudslides with soil shifting on, and for natural stone to grow moss, but i feel like those would be separate mechanics.

wood could need to be varnished properly with something like beeswax or resin or daub or a layer of bark (perhaps giving an advantage to building with logs) in order to be weatherproof, and a cobblestone path left unattended for years could eventually become slow to walk on and need to be cleared. i also think specifically items and tools rusting and rotting when left out in the rain would be a fun addition for realism and another good incentive to building shelters and actual workstations.

[next ruin]

that's fair, and i also think it's still very true to life since weaving is naturally a more time-intensive technology. in this scenario, a roof or even thatching woven into the fence could also be used to prevent the wattle from deteriorating.

[nocturne axle]

Weaving wattle from sticks is time-consuming in real life, yes, but it's dramatically faster than chopping down a tree with a stone axe, chopping the felled trunk down to sizes you can carry home, hewing them into workable pieces of timber, and then lashing them together in some way

Meanwhile in-game both processes can be done instantaneously in the crafting grid, and felling a tree takes a few seconds.

[nocturne axle]

Some organic natural things like fallen trees and dead bushes would make sense to incorporate into a decay mechanic. Fallen trees might even regenerate mushrooms at a faster rate than the mushrooms growing on healthy trees, but the mushroom generation would degrade the log faster. They could be a source of maggots for fish bait as well.

Something like moss growing on certain surfaces when it's raining and temperature conditions are right and then dying back in dry heat feels like it might be doable, if approached in a more broad-brush fashion like snow. I imagine it could easily get performance-heavy if done more granularly. Though moss growing more on the sides of trees opposite the sun could be an immersive navigational aid for players with the map disabled (that particular idea could even be incorporated into regular chunk generation as opposed to needing a broader mechanic).

When it comes to soil instability, I think it and terrain generation need more work to play nicely with each other. So much of VS's current terrain is very unstable that anytime I base near a hillside with that setting on I hear drifters and bowtorns getting buried in landslides on a nightly basis.

[fierce goblet]

not too bring up the Other Block Game(tm) but i love the copper aging in minecraft

come on vintage story's whole lore is about rust how are we getting oxidation-mogged

building with metals in vs is expensive as heck ofc but seeing a smallish chiseled copper statue slowly turning blue would be awesome