Beasts of Burden

[Havok40k]

I know the devs have already planned on farmable mobs for food and supplies and such, but what if you could craft a harness for an animal, like an ox, and attach plows and hoes and such to speed up farming/terraforming operations? Rather than slowly digging grass up by hand with a shovel, an ox could break the ground behind it, or convert it to farmable soil much faster or in wider swaths than a player. Other applications could be as mobile storage, improved harvesting, pulling large mobile wagons or siege weapons, etc. To my knowledge, no other game has this feature.

[Grimoire]

You never know but it seems like something people wouldn’t really find a use for and plus with all the hills and slopes dragging something would take longer than just running somewhere, and plus if you leave it behind when your overwhelmed then the resources that went into making the weapon is the enemies.

[Havok40k]

Thanks, Grim. Sure, navigation would be something to be tackled, but I don’t think it would break the idea. I’m assuming when you say “leave it behind” you’re talking about the siege weapon idea. While it’s true, that would be a bad play, I was thinking about using them to fight Titans rather than PvP. What do you think about the idea of plows and hoes attached to a beast, for quickly building vast farms or terraforming terrain? It would sure make leveling a mountaintop much less of a headache! I would think they would be heavily relied on for vast urban projects!

[Grimoire]

Maybe if you have a fenced in area but after tilling I don’t think there would be much use for it. Though a sprinkling system or something I can see be implemented.

[Havok40k]

…? I’m not sure I understand where you’re coming from. Why would it need to be fenced in? And what purpose would a sprinkler serve?

[Grimoire]

Well how would an animal know where to till? And sprinkler system so you can have an automatic watering system so you wouldn’t have to run and get water to water your plants.

[Havok40k]

Ah! I was thinking the animal would be lead by the player, much like beasts of burden are used in third world countries. The player leads the beast, and the beast does the work. So if I wanted to level a large area quickly, I would simply set a harness with a bulldozer attachment, then where ever I lead the beast, it would dig up 3×3 swath of land behind it. If I wanted to till land, I’d switch the harness for one with a plow, and lead it along where I want to make farmland.
https://dpqe0zkrjo0ak.cloudfront.net/pfil/4000/ph_4000_18477.jpg

[Grimoire]

What if they make it difficult to tame a creature? What happens when players kill your livestock? It is a neat idea though but gotta think of how some players be them toxic or friendly. Though I think maybe if you want large areas of land cultivated you could ask for he’ll to tend to the land as well.

[Ramusaru]

Difficulty in taming creatures is something I would expect, that’s cool. As for the toxic act of mass murdering livestock, I think this should depend on how valuable said livestock would be alive. Imaginably livestock would be somewhat hard to come by, and some like dairy or fabric animals would be more valuable living than dead in the long run.

Probably the Beacon would immunize your livestock against other players but yourself. Or you use gold, buy new livestock, and start over again.

[Grimoire]

Ya but buying livestock would be kinda game-breaking in my opinion, but if people would breed them or if you find them in the wild luckily spawning around, you can lead it with a rope or something back to your place, just make sure you hire a mercenary to fend off monsters and toxic players. lol

[Havok40k]

“What if they make them difficult to tame” That would be a good challenge and may add value and a sense of reward for taming them, so I see difficulty as a good thing in this case.

“What happens when players kill your livestock?” Breed and tame new livestock, no big deal.

[Grimoire]

I kinda see it as a tool that will rarely if ever used.

[Thorbjorn]

But an awesome tool that will be used for appearance too (livestock always looks need on farms)

[Grimoire]

I agree on that though for customization. Maybe have a perk with it that the more creatures you own that have a special *farm* armor on it will give your crops and stuff a perk that will make them grow a little faster or yield more from harvesting.

[Havok40k]

Rarely used? Assuming it clears a 3×3 as fast as a player with a shovel clears a single dirt block, it’s already working 9x faster than a player. How is that not super useful?

[Grimoire]

Well unless after harvesting the should becomes normal then I guess but I dunno. Only people who have large areas of land would use something like that if they do.

I kinda like the perk thing though.

[Havok40k]

You make no sense, kid.

[Grimoire]

I’m 26, I’ve played alot of building games and that sort of thing. I played Harvest Moon religiously and played games like Minecraft and Terraria.

It’s just my opinion and others will have different views than you, doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.

[Zouls]

well i like the idea of it too, everything you protest though grim is mostly you saying ”this is useless because I dont like it” its gonna get ya hated tbh.
But he is right though, i dont think farming is going to be that big a part of this game compared to caves and stuff, but later on if thye do actually make you able to make giant farms that are needed then it would be very useful.

[Havok40k]

I know the farming is not super exciting, I was more pushing the terraforming idea of using it to level land. Plowing and harvesting is only an extension of the possibilities. Leveling land in Oort is much slower than in MC because the way the voxels tend to distort typical land clearing methods and because the basic shovel is quite slow. As it is, it took about 25 minutes to level a 15x15x2 area for my home :/

That being said, I’m interested in seeing how the universal economy plays out with player cities and such. I have a feeling that farming will be useful as a source of income. We shall see!

And Grim, sorry if I offended you there, but the run-on sentences, wild tangent ideas and odd broken sentence structure gave me the impression I was speaking with a 15 y/o with ADD (no offence).

[Grimoire]

Sorry I type on my phone and sometimes it messes with my chat weirdly.

I’m not saying I hate it. Just thinking about in my head how it would work in different ways. Like if the animal ways always equipped with the land tiller, wherever that creature would go without a fence while the player was away wluld tend land and would possibly run into other players and you might lose them. Stuff like that.

But ya. Not a bad idea cause I love farming stuff. Just trying to think of the bad things if they out number the good for uses ya know?

[Havok40k]

Easy fix to keep them from doing that is to have animals with tools equipped remain stationary if no player is guiding them.

[Grimoire]

Or can build them a stable.

[Havok40k]

Sure, that would also help protect them from griefers, provided that a beacon was nearby.

[Toady]

I think being able to tame beasts of burden is an excellent idea.

Trading between worlds is supposed to be a major part of the economy of the game, so the ability to move large quantities of materials all at once could help a lot. Plus if nothing else, it would add flavor to the game.

[Master_Chill]

I believe the designers of Oort Online had the same idea when they created the concept art, have a closer look at it, you’ll see a cow-like creature tugging away in the dirt in a small corner of one of the paintings.

[Author]

Posts