Good arguments for water system ?

[A Friend]

I did not mean to insult and I apologize for whatever tone I may have been using. But if water is gonna be added as a resource or need, I believe it should at least add a degree of challenge to the game. Building a well to quickly solve water issues seems like it would just undermine the purpose of it.

I do agree that should water be added, water can be contaminated and be a source of disease.

Strawman

Difference in opinion. I'm not really bothered by the lack of water as it'll just fulfill the same role of food. I mean The Sims is tagged as a "Life Simulation" game yet it doesn't even have a water need.

The food system is what drives the player to gather, farm, hunt, and generally interact with the environment. Without food, interaction would become optional. You might as well just wall yourself up into a 1 tile room under a mountain and say that you've beaten the game.

Biomes are there to provide new challenges that players can overcome and variety in maps. Realism mostly has got to do with it but it's probably not the sole reason.

These features are here with the intention of making this game fun and varied.
I'm not against adding water. But unless the whole point of the game is super-realistic survival, which I don't think it is, I believe it should at least bring something new to the table. One which food hasn't already covered. Go say "Water mechanics could X, and Y" instead of just pushing it "Because real-life has it."

Well that or maybe I'm just tired of the sole reliance on the realism argument.

Edit: There's bound to be someone to type up another extreme argument. So whoever's about to say "Eyebeams shooting out people's eyes are fun, why not add that?", stop right there. While it may be fun. It must also be sensible.

Also you can use /s if you can't find the font.

[O Negative]

You didn't have a bad tone, I was only poking fun. I'll apologize for my vague tone and strawman, though.

Anywho,

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If/Then

"If water is gonna be added as a resource or need, I believe it should at least add a degree of challenge to the game. Building a well to quickly solve water issues seems like it would just undermine the purpose of it."

I agree. However, I don't understand why people come to the conclusion that a well is going to be the solution they're offered. There are plenty of other possible passive methods of collecting water, and they don't add tedium nor make water collection trivial. I've listed them before.
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The Sims

The Sims is no different for me, with respect to basic physiological needs. I just think they wanted to keep their UI clean by having an even number of needs

I'm not a fan of the slippery slope arguments which often point towards RimWorld turning into The Sims if we add one more need.
"Then what? A hygiene need? Maybe a bladder need? Grrr!"
The Sims needs those mundane needs/tasks to keep the player occupied, because not much else is happening.
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Realism ≠ Good Idea

I agree 100%.
I've seen many arguments that rely solely on "This is how it happens in real life, so..." arguments, and their silly.
Game design should be, first and foremost, decided by what makes the game more fun/functional.
Realism only compliments gameplay.

I'm sorry if I ever came across as making that my main point.
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Biomes & Interaction

You're not wrong. There's no real way to argue that water couldn't offer a similar, yet unique, set of challenges and interactions.
Many have been listed in this thread already.
Unless, of course, you insist water collection will be made trivial & mundane

[Limdood]

Water needs to be more than just a relabeled food need.  It should have DIFFERENT effects on the game than food does, and it should have it's OWN challenges that stay pertinent through different biomes or game stages.

In short, water affecting colonists has already been done...in the food need.  Water affecting OTHER systems in the game (most notably growing) COULD enhance the game, but only if its done in a meaningful way.

[O Negative]

Heh. I'm gonna go ahead and throw in the towel on this one.

If I want a water mechanic enough, I can always continue to try to learn C# and make a mod of my own...

I thank you all for your valuable insight, though.

[travin]

Some great thinking here but I believe it's gone the way of overthinking, as these things tend to do.

Let's try looking at it another way: water is noticeably absent from gameplay. Except  most all actions inherently revolve around water intensive activities. Farming, cooking, medical treatment, defensive strategy, etc. So we already accept that water is necessary for survival but is, thusfar, unaccounted. Highly stylized existence, the nature of this game.

Instead of devising ways to make a water mechanic complex to satisfy some false notion of being realistic and representative, we can instead devise ways to keep it truncated while still adding an increased level of complexity for mechanics already presented in the game. Namely agriculture and animal husbandry.

We don't need to plumb buildings, provide hygiene and count how many times a day someone must drink. That's a bit of an overkill and unnecessary. If there is some form of water we can accept, as we do currently, that pawns are handling those needs on their own. But farming and raising animals,  primary means of sustenance, can't always fend for themselves. If you build a watering hole, or there's a natural one where animals can fend for themselves, that works. If animals can, so can humans. It just needs to be a available, the details of how that physical need is satisfied aren't important--how it currently works.

Agriculture, on the other hand is an exception. Most forms of crops in this game are naturally water intensive--and pawns can also derive their own water needs from these crops.  So having irrigation could diversify crops and not only provide improved, or crucial, nutrition in formidable circumstances but also a means of income. Seed stocks could be either traditional or found from each biome--the latter would be more suitable for those not investing in irrigation but with reduced yields. Trade could be more interesting by buying seed that is more suitable to an irrigated landscape or selling rare seeds collected from harsh landscapes. Surely there's a market for it.

Otherwise, do we need to demand realism just for the sake of complexity to make it seem plausible? I don't believe so. Just setup a pump and an irrigation ditch next to your crops and consider them watered. That level of simplicity is consistent with this game.

[b0rsuk]

Sunlamp is extremely cheap to build but has outlandish power usage: 1600W. I think this is to make up for the lack of water system. If there was a water system, indoor farming could have a rational and less arbitrary cost.

[Hans Lemurson]

Outlandish?  It provides 100% light in a 100 tile area.  That's a lot.  You can fit 4 solar collectors in their radius.  If Solar Panels weren't forbidden from using artificial light, it would be ridiculously easy to create an over-unity power generator.  Sun Lamps give far too much light for their power cost.

[Jstank]

Are you sure you need a resource to make something? I know in the Medieval mod you can make ice blocks out of an ice tile, and you don't need anything to make it.

Or maybe you can make a bucket out of a bench, and when you take it to the water gathering spot the bucket changes from a empty bucket to a full bucket, and when you use the bucket to make a meal or drink it, it turns back to a empty bucket.

What if you turned the food processor into a water storage unit.... The colonists would go and get the bucket and dump it into the hopper. The hopper will only accept water. Then the storage unit can be connected through pipes to the cook stove. The cook stove will use water the same way that items use power. Use a parallel but separate system. Intake pipes can later connect pumps to underground water sources later in the game when you research water pumps. Water pumps can be placed either by surface water sources or underground water sources. Underground water sources needs a water scanner to reveal. Water scanner works like ground penetration scanner except it is much cheaper to research and build. Add a resource on the map called Natural well to all maps. Natural wells work like Geothermal vents but can produce natural water when a well is built on it. In the desert this is necessary to survival, so pawns will have to transport water to the hopper from the well using buckets. Buckets would then need to be made from either steel or wood, or you would never have buckets in the desert or tundra. Later pawns can build a pump by the well to pump the water through pipes. Again, water pipes work identical to power lines except the resource transported IS water. Also, when it 'rains' the water storage unit will automatically start filling up by itself if it is unroofed. For ice maps, have melt ice snow to water bench. Use collection spot from medieval mod, to collect blocks, have blocks = water buckets, pour water into the storage unit. When it snows have water fill but at a reduced rate.


So therefore I think that having pipes and a requirement that the cook stove be hooked up to a constant water supply to use would make more sense if you could create a ground water resource to attach a pump to. I think that is the best solution if it was simple to do from early game. Neolithic cultures could make a well and aqua ducks or something. It does start to sound pretty complicated once you start to try and wrap your head around it.

And don't forget beer, beer = water because DF!

[Hans Lemurson]

The entire point of the debate in this thread is that there's a difference between "Can" and "Should".

[b0rsuk]

The entire point of the debate in this thread is that there's a difference between "Can" and "Should".

Well put.

Unmodded Rimworld deliberately keeps certain level of abstraction. You have neurotramine as a component for many drugs, where in reality you would probably need a few dozen of reagents and chemicals from different sources, with different deterioration rate, handling and storage requirements. You have components, but you could have screws, gears, wires, transistors, electronic boards, resistors, capacitors, lenses, magnets and more. You have medicine, but you could have bandages, syringes, scalpels, anaesthetics, disinfectants, antibiotics, thermometers, etc. Not everyone enjoys minute details of every aspect of colony simulation. Not everyone is a gun enthusiast, has chemical interest or likes to tinker with Rasberry Pi Zero.

[SpaceDorf]

Against whom are you making this point ?

I liked the suggestion of JStank and suggested to him to repost from another thread ( thirst need )

It is abstract enough to fit the rimworld setup and different enough from Hunger to make sense as a ressource.

[Jstank]

Thanks spacedorf! I wish I knew how to mod stuff or I would try and work on it. I recently discovered the mars mod and it has similar systems to my suggestions. Water is possible!

So expanding on that idea (just thought of it) Lets say you wanted to have a juice dispenser, to have yummy juice drinks that provide a mood boost. Make a bench called a juicer, hook it up to your water storage tank. Have a bill adds berries and uses water out of the bench and wala you have berry juice + 5 mood boost! 

[SpaceDorf]

Yeah, I wish I had a head for modding too.

I know XML and C#, but I have no Art skills and no endurance for the work ..

[white_altar]

I'm specifically interested in arguments that are not just listing things that would make Rimworld sound more detailed. In particular not making a parallel power system that's functionally identical. Anyone can list stuff.

Water is a huge requirement for life, and it's not all that common.  I think Rimworld is hollow without at least some mention of water.  In short, it just seems necessary.

Weather.  You can't have weather without water, and there is a LOT going on there.  Plants don't like humidity, they like water.  The suggestion of flooding requires moving water though, and that's a challenge.  Shrinking and growing puddles on the other hand is a done deal (poison ships for instance).

Would it "balance" the game to add water as a resource?  It would certainly stack the odds in the favor of life in some biomes and against life in others.

I think half of rimworld is watching survival and chores from an historians perspective.  We didn't zap cholera with chlorine and wastewater treatment until the turn of the 1800-1900s.  Add water and there are a lot more ways to lose a colonist as well as ways to keep one alive.  I'd say heck ya it adds balance.

Easy to Implement:

• Just change "Power conduit" to "Infrastructure"
• Start without irrigation or running water and research up to it.
• Frankly I think latrines or outhouses are key.

[travin]

It would be great if water were used as a disaster incident. That's a very common thing in any world. Having a portion of your base, crops or equipment rendered useless from flooding would pretty amazing. Having the ability to control or channel the water an added bonus.