How to fix seasoned woods

[van Veen]

These seasoned woods are just a disaster. I mean, they are illogical. Why is a shed harder to obtain and build than an academy? And why is seasoning woods so expensive and why on earth do you need tools for seasoning wood, but none for cutting it? It's absolutely ridiculous that seasoning wood requires an extremely rare blueprint making it a more costly secret, than a first rate build plan. Let alone that the secret of seasoning is owned by some ultra hardcore aggro NPC and to obtain you need to grind PVE like mindless. I thought this game was supposed to be realistic, but this is just fubar.

But enough rant, here is my suggestion. To fix seasoned woods make them time consuming to produce, but inexpensive.

Keep the shed, but remove the shed permit. Keep the blueprints, but make them available like any other blueprint for a small amount. The seasoning shed should function like a separate warehouse. You can place wood batches there for seasoning, similar to placing a buy contract with cooldown of 10 days (just an example). Placing logs into the shed costs some reals and labour hours (maybe half of the costs of cutting the wood in the first place). After these 10 days, the logs will have turned into seasoned logs and are available in the shed. A portion of the batch might not have turned out seasoned due to improper storing conditions (add an RNG that destroys a part of the batch). Each batch of logs then has a lifetime of another 10 days (expiry timer like the one on the trade mission cargo). After that, they are useless for ship building, so they have to be used in a relatively short timespan and cannot be stored forever. This way, crafting ships from seasoned woods requires long-term planning. Crafting a ship straight away from unseasoned wood can be done quickly. 

This mechanic can be fine-tuned by assigning different seasoning times for different woods, e.g. (fir: 10 days, teak: 20 days, live oak: 24 days, ...) and different expiry dates for different woods. You could even expand that system later with another level, i.e. another seasoning process turning "seasoned" logs into "hardened" logs with yet even different stats.  

In addition, adjust the bonuses from seasoned woods. It is not reasonable that seasoned logs are better in every aspect. For instance, non-seasoned woods should have better fire resistance than seasoned woods. There is no reason why ships from seasoned woods should be faster. 

Edited February 3, 2020 by van Veen

[Lukas97Austria]

5 minutes ago, van Veen said:

These seasoned woods are just a disaster. I mean, they are illogical. Why is a shed harder to obtain and build than an academy? And why is seasoning woods so expensive and why on earth do you need tools for seasoning wood, but none for cutting it? It's absolutely ridiculous that seasoning wood requires an extremely rare blueprint making it a more costly secret, than a first rate build plan. Let alone that the secret of seasoning is owned by some ultra hardcore aggro NPC and to obtain you need to grind PVE like mindless. I thought this game was supposed to be realistic, but this is just fubar.

But enough rant, here is my suggestion. To fix seasoned woods make them time consuming to produce, but inexpensive.

Keep the shed, but remove the shed permit. Keep the blueprints, but make them available like any other blueprint for a small amount. The seasoning shed should function like a separate warehouse. You can place wood batches there for seasoning, similar to placing a buy contract with cooldown of 10 days (just an example). Placing logs into the shed costs some reals and labour hours (maybe half of the costs of cutting the wood in the first place). After these 10 days, the logs will have turned into seasoned logs and are available in the shed. Each batch of logs has a lifetime of another 10 days (expiry timer like the one on the trade mission cargo). After that, they are useless for ship building, so they have to be used in a relatively short timespan and cannot be stored forever. This way, crafting ships from seasoned woods requires long-term planning. Crafting a ship straight away from unseasoned wood is still possible. 

This mechanic can be fine-tuned by assigning different seasining times for different woods, e.g. (fir: 10 days, teak: 20 days, live oak: 24 days, ...) and different expiry dates for different woods. You could even expand that system later with another level, i.e. another seasoning process turning "seasoned" logs into "hardened" logs with yet even different stats.  

In addition, adjust the bonuses from seasoned woods. It is not reasonable that seasoned logs are better in every aspect. For instance, non-seasoned woods should have better fire resistance than seasoned woods. There is no reason why ships from seasoned woods should be faster. 

Well as I am correct a seasoned wood is a wood out of a tree that is young or fresh.  So it's structure itself is stronger due the tree grows. I am not sure how to call in English so I will say it short in German. "die Fasern vom Holz sind widerstandsfähiger da der Baum noch im Wachstum steht."  So actually it is stronger in armor. But I am not sure how it should be faster etc. Maybe here are people with more background informations than I have.  Also the wood will go from seasoned into normal wood.  It's like a plane (su27 etc for example) when new they can pull massive manouver etc. When older it's steel or aluminium will get some cracks due the much load and you shouldn't and can't turn hard manouver anymore.  Seasoned to normal would work the same in terms of armor and splitter resistance. 

 

If I am wrong or  it's not true you are allowed to tell me that. I am only a human that can't know everything. A good start into the week folks 

[Montagnes]

Another fix would be removing them as they introduce several inbalances.

One of them is the difference in stats between a DLC ship as Redoutable (redeemed with S woods with one click) against its competitor, Implacable.

[van Veen]

36 minutes ago, Lukas97Austria said:

If I am wrong or  it's not true you are allowed to tell me that. I am only a human that can't know everything. A good start into the week folks 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying

Quote

Wood drying (also seasoning lumber or wood seasoning) reduces the moisture content of wood before its use. When the drying is done in a kiln, the product is known as kiln-dried timber or lumber, whereas air drying is the more traditional method.

...

When wood is used as a construction material, whether as a structural support in a building or in woodworking objects, it will absorb or desorb moisture until it is in equilibrium with its surroundings. Equilibration (usually drying) causes unequal shrinkage in the wood, and can cause damage to the wood if equilibration occurs too rapidly. The equilibration must be controlled to prevent damage to the wood.

Seasoning is primarily to stop the wood from deforming due to variations in moisture, so it stays in shape. Seasoning under wrong conditions (e.g. non-continuous support) may permanently bend the wood.

https://www.intouch-quality.com/blog/wood-warping-and-how-to-prevent-it

For planking, this might not be a huge problem, because planks are steamed to bend them into the required (curved) shape. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_bending

 

 

Edited February 3, 2020 by van Veen

[Yoha]

The main issue with S woods is they are too expensive to make. There are never enough tools. Just a handful of logs will wipe out your LH.

Economically it makes no sense to make your own S woods. Just break down unused DLC or play with DLC ships if you want S wood ships.

I do like the idea of the shed producing S wood being time based.