Micromanaging Rope lengths problem

[codyo]

Why are entire lengths of ropes wasted when you only need 5 feet of a 30 foot rope for a single arrow?
I'd like to use a really long piece of cord for when I'm crafting arrows in large batches. It should be assumed that my character is clever enough to separate the rope into pieces automatically during the craft time. Instead of having to manually cut 5 foot sections of cord for every single arrow I want.
This goes for every other recipe with rope lengths. I was confused as well when I tried drying 50 pieces of meat at once with a long rope and saw afterwards that the remaining 15 feet disappeared.

[Acolyte]

There is currently a bug in the game (which wasn't in the 3.60 BETA) where creating arrows requires 1ft of cord per arrow per arrow. So if you are making 1 at a time it wants a single 1ft cord, if making 2 it wants 2 separate 2ft cords (total 4ft) and so on - 3 at 3ft, 4 at 4ft and 5 at 5ft.

As to the micromanagement I believe it was put in because the auto cutting was creating errors in the number of cords returned from drying and smoking meat.

   - Shane

[Sami]

Yes, there's that bug in arrow crafting code, formula goes wonky. The thread is here:
https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=5232.0

We'll try to come up with a quick fix asap.

Auto-cutting would still be convenient in some cases but not always. Sometimes you want to preserve eg. the only good long rope you have, therefore we've decided to leave cutting to player's discretion as it's safer than letting the game think for behalf of them. Naturally, there could be options to enable/confirm auto-cutting, but implementing those in the midst of crafting requirements functions now would be a mess.

[codyo]

Auto-cutting would still be convenient in some cases but not always. Sometimes you want to preserve eg. the only good long rope you have, therefore we've decided to leave cutting to player's discretion as it's safer than letting the game think for behalf of them. Naturally, there could be options to enable/confirm auto-cutting, but implementing those in the midst of crafting requirements functions now would be a mess.

What if instead we have a crafting option that lets the player define what length he wants and cut as many pieces as he can from a single rope?
Like call it "Cut many small sections". Then the player can choose a length from 1-9 or a custom one.
For example, if he chooses 4 feet out of a 30 foot rope. Then he will end up with seven 4-foot pieces with a 2-foot length left over.
That would be super helpful for building trap fences too.

[Sami]

Auto-cutting would still be convenient in some cases but not always. Sometimes you want to preserve eg. the only good long rope you have, therefore we've decided to leave cutting to player's discretion as it's safer than letting the game think for behalf of them. Naturally, there could be options to enable/confirm auto-cutting, but implementing those in the midst of crafting requirements functions now would be a mess.

What if instead we have a crafting option that lets the player define what length he wants and cut as many pieces as he can from a single rope?
Like call it "Cut many small sections". Then the player can choose a length from 1-9 or a custom one.
For example, if he chooses 4 feet out of a 30 foot rope. Then he will end up with seven 4-foot pieces with a 2-foot length left over.
That would be super helpful for building trap fences too.

Yeah, we could have alternate cutting options like this. Things regarding tying equipment renewals are still shaping up.
When it comes to fence building, if you use withes as tying equipment it's the simplest way to go.

[Dr.Hossa]

I dont know, but i find it quite convenient to craft that ropes and cords.

I mean, it could make things a lot more complicated, because you add an extra option in the action menu, the game handling could suffer, there can be new bugs etc, etc...
Unless sami's got a real smart simple programming answer to that. (Perhaps add a little option, like "half the length of the rope"??)


To try helping out a little:
make that cords and ropes in batches with the "r" command. dropping all what you dont need makes it easier.
Also, to simplify cutting, you can cut for example the 4 ft withes into 2 ft pieces. then when you select cutting thos smaller ones, the game automatically cuts them in half, for example if you want to smoke or dry and not waste tying equip.
Furthermore, if you are using withes from saplings for a trap fence, you dont have to cut them anyway, because the have already the right length.
(thats what sami is saying actually)

One thing the game doesnt do, but should(i think), would be cutting 3 ft automatically as well(as there is also only one option to cut that length. Doesnt matter if you cut 1ft or 2ft from that, the result is the same- 1+2, or 2+1...)

[ineedcords]

Player do not want to waste tying equipment resource.
when it comes to cooking, 1 feet rope is the supreme choice as only that size guarantees nothing will be wasted.
we want 15x 1 feet ropes rather than 1x 15 feet rope.

With that logic, upon acquisition of a 15 feet rope, logical thing to do is to shorten it.
this process takes unnecessarily too many operations at the moment.

"Shorten to pieces of N feet" option is going to be a huge UX improvement.

[Dr.Hossa]

yea, that of course would make things more convenient.
i just offered a workaround for the current system. what i do, is precutting a big number of tying stuff, so i end up with some straight, and some uneven numbers of cord. So i dont have to cut all of them down to 1ft. It is a method of moderate effort, yet it has the downside having many different lenthgs of tying stuff, and if theres different qualities, it can get somewhat messy...

but perhaps there is another option, although it would turn over the whole system again:

treat it just like repairing or crafting clothes. e.g. when you repair a coat which is missing 1,2 lmbs and you choose the cloth for repair, the game system automatically cuts off 1,2 lmbs of that, and does not waste the rest.
It is actually just a realistic thing that if you got a 15 ft cord and you craft a bow, for which you need a cutting tool anyway, the character cuts of that needed 5 ft for the bow, as part of the crafting process – and saves the spare 10 ft. i mean, where should that spare cord go anyway...?

[Solara]

Ah, good to know I wasn't the only one bewildered at this. I haven't played in awhile and I was just getting used to a bunch of new changes today, this is the one that baffled me though. Starting up a new character and somehow I used up 15 ft of cord making a single loop snare. I assumed this was not the game working as intended, and was quite curious what my guy did with the rest of it.

[JP_Finn]

Ah, good to know I wasn't the only one bewildered at this. I haven't played in awhile and I was just getting used to a bunch of new changes today, this is the one that baffled me though. Starting up a new character and somehow I used up 15 ft of cord making a single loop snare. I assumed this was not the game working as intended, and was quite curious what my guy did with the rest of it.

Welcome back, I’ve been on and off since 90’s.
I was very used to drying and smoking 19lbs at a time, now I make my cords to 25’ and prepare 50lbs at once. Also, fish uses 1/2’ per fish.

Cutting withes is one way operation, you can’t join them.
And for fence building, you need minimum 4’ section x2. No shorter ones will work.

Greatest benefit from tying equipment in feet vs weight is: fletching arrows. Now a 1/2lb (15’) cord makes 15 arrows (after cutting to 5’ sections as fletching is limited 5 arrows per set) or make 3 bows. Cut to 3’ sections let’s you make 5 loop snares. Big dead fall trap takes 6’ of cord. And another great deduction of needed tying equipment is raft, no longer 3 ropes/tying equipment, but mere 10’ of rope.

And you can still use sub-par quality cloth/leather/fur to make (no-quality:decent) bandages, then cut half of those in to cords.