User:Khnumbaf/Ideas

Here I will post loose ideas on how to improve our great game further. It might be a scetch of test mechanics, new features etc. Feel free ot comment.

Echo sounder/fish sonar on ships

Think old fashion, similar to the dowsing rod, not high tech electronic sonar. Should only be usable off shore and should have a fishing level requirement. Could possibly be tied to test of windsong, playing sounds to "lure out" the position of the various types of fish in a limited search area. No increased yield, but an ancient device that somehow reveals where the fish types stands. If going for the windsong approach, specific combinations/melodies could "unlock" spesific types of fish (similar to the old game "Loom", for those who know it). That way, on could upgrade the fishing device gradually, adding more tunes over time.

Bring back gold panning

Not as a repleasement for gold mines, but as a first method. Pannings were in game in Tale 1: "April 2003: Gold panning becomes available. As gold mines have not yet been discovered, this becomes Egypt's first source of gold and permits research on several key technologies to proceed." Source:History of Egypt. Although I admit that gold is not the most important/useful metal in todays tellings, they might play a similar role as in the beginning, creating an early "gold rush" along the banks of the Nile? Sounds fun to me.

Test idea: test of the good samaritan (working title)

The idea is that players undertaking the test will be tasked to "program" and write a small story for a "temporary npc". The player would have to contruct some kind of hidden problem/flaw that the npc-character has. Then, the npc will be "let loose" and randomly spawn at the location of another test participant (abruptly, after triggering some factor set by the creator, like harvesting grass or making clay bricks). Once the npc has spawned, it will not go away until the player, taking the role of the good samaritan/helping hand, has figured out how to help him/her. The player will have to help 7 unhappy npc-Egyptians before passing. Example: Amon the commoner has cought a bad cough, not recovering. Some hints about the cure would be provided, but the player would have to figure out the ingredients and/or crafting method (like mixing certain herbs with citrus, boiling it in a kettle, yielding a healing mixture etc). The test involves puzzles, so it would probably be a thought test, albeit a very different one. Could this be doable? As for game mechanics, one could use the existing character models, to limit graphic work. The npc would vanish once the riddle is solved/after some time, so this would not be a backdoor for adding NPCs to the game, albeit the similarities to quests are certainly present. The important thing is that the players would "script" them, not the devs.