Feedback: Badwater

7 votes

I want to give a feedback to the badwater feature, I'm not sure if there is a better place than this forum.
As much as I like Timberborn, I'm not that satisfied with badwater. In short: As toxic as it is, I have a real strong motivation to get rid of it as soon and as far as possible except for a small pond for ressource collecting.
As it completely destory vegetation of the riverbank it touches, my first goal is to divert all riversources with flood gates at the beginning (see attached image). As it really knocks out contaminated beavers and the decon-pods are quite expensive and energy-consuming I do great effort to avoid beavers from touching badwater.
So in the end badwater gives an additional iteration of goals early to achieve, after that I play as usual with effectiv a little smaller map, as some parts with badwatersources (also diverted to the next map-border) are "forbidden area". I could write more feedback, but I'm at the end of the allowed lenght :)

Under consideration Experimental Feedback Suggested by: Quax (13 Oct, '23) • Upvoted: 27 Jan • Comments: 10

Comments: 10

13 Oct, '23
Gin Fuyou Admin
Yeah, regrettably we can't do anything about 1000 characters limit, it's quite annoying.
1
13 Oct, '23
tweek
I quite agree, I didn't dare talk about it too much... (I see that there's a lot of work being done! It's breaking ideas! To say: it's not super interesting. ..)

but to tell the truth, since I was never taught how to manage a drought, I already don't understand the functionality of water pumps which reject their contents at the back... and therefore I play games : Zero drought.

anyway, contaminated water, I don't even want to hear about it...

This echoes my post: pay attention to priorities! ...

Ankama paid dearly for it! ... they released a bunch of features, always explained how they work, and they are focused on "big events) leaving free bots which are ruining the dofus landscape... when we think about GOLD that they had in their hands...
13 Oct, '23
Zeed
Personally I don't like the irrigation change from todays update. I was dealing with the contamination just fine and really enjoying the new challenges in the game that brought. Maybe add it as a feature that can be enabled for further difficulty?
13 Oct, '23
Nicolas DUPRE
Badtides force you to schedule 2 paths for water.
One for the good water.
When badtides arrives, you switch the path to a dedicated canal in which you have hundred waterwheel to recharge your gravity batteries.
You right for the beginning of the game. I do the same, but I planned to create canals for badtides + cracks.
Management becomes quite difficult because we can not cross two kind of water canal :) (feature request -> aqueduc).
The new concept introduce more water sources for water wheel.
Click to enlarge

14 Oct, '23
Knightmare mode
Just got a Bad tide event on cycle 2 on the Meander map while playing iron teeth on Hard mode. Is this a bug or just a hard mode becoming impossible?
14 Oct, '23
WhiteRoo
On my one map with Badwater (Craters with Folktails) I quickly built dams to separate the water sources and then had a system of levees that diverted badwater around my clear water lake.

It took a long time of running the colony on 12 beavers, while all the levees, dams and floodgates got placed, where the colony was stagnating on 8 wellbeing. The problem here is that every tool for dealing with badwater is on Plank level, so there is no incentive to go into gears or further. And with the infinite district size, you can just stretch a road to anywhere, build up some stairs and platforms and levee up whatever you need.

I could have increased the colony size, but that would need SP to go into food production, that needs to go into water management and platforms at this point. After that, its just faster to stop the Inventor's Huts and get extra builders instead. Even potatos don't worth it, bc all those logs could finish the levees faster.
14 Oct, '23
Quax
Can we not? I did not make it now, but I think it should be possible to make a cross canal, with all four sides prepared with floodgates. Than you can manage the flow like an traffic light crossing.
Ragarding the diverting: I thought about to making thr maps borders solid, so you cannot simply threw out the badwater and have only a few definite entries/exits in the map. But then again it would change the game a lot, if the drought is not just a time to consume storaged water but indeed having the all waterways be polluted. You really would have to build two waterways, one for the freshwater and the river gardening, one to handle the badwater. This would be a big project, that cannot be done after or even before the first bad tide.
This could be fun, but I really think it would change the tone of the game much. Maybe it would an idea to give it as an opt when starting the map.
14 Oct, '23
WhiteRoo
(part 2)

After the water management system was completed, then came the other new bad gameplay effect. Whenever I forgot to divert the water routes at the start of the badweather season, which is very easy to do without warning soundeffects, I reloaded the game. It was a lot easier than trying to clean out the main water reservoir. Also, there is just too much riding on it staying clean.

I think the problem here is that it's very inconvenient to stockpile food and water. You need to pause the game and bust out the wiki and a calculator to tell how long can you last on the current stockpiles. Also, while the stockpiles boast big numbers, a colony of 70 beavers will rip through it within days. Its even hard to tell if something being over or underproduced.
11 Nov, '23
Quax
I would like to add my last experience, that just forces me to build the "out-of-badwater-way" as soon as possible.

I played on "lakes" and had managed to have two waterways from the one entrance. One that flow through my beaver-realm and the other a little bit away. When I got the first badwater flood, I closed my floodgates. All badwater rushed away the river outside, while the trapped water of the river through my realm supoorts me til the badwater flood was over.

The next time the badwater flood came, it seems that the pressure of the badwater was much higher than from the normal water flow. Say: A real riptide. The badwater flows over my floodgates. I managed that catastrophe a little, but had to dry out all my stored water. The end of the tide was near, so I hoped my beavers came through. Then I realised, that for some reason all my food storage was done - just a few berries left. I have no idea why. Maybe the beavers eat more during the badwater? ... next comment the end
11 Nov, '23
Quax
As my waterways dried up, my fields were dry and did not produce crop. I began to frighten. When the freshwater cames again, I still had to wait to flush a away the remains of badwater. My crops were about to die, so I let the mix-fresh-bad-water flow through my fields. Unfortunatly, it was still too toxic. Every crop die.
I did not waited to see my entire beaver population die of hunger and quit the game.

The lesson I learned: Badwater is Evil. It has to be your top goal to make the flush as soon as possible. Do not let your beaver touch it. If it happens, do not waste energy to decontaminate him, just let him retire (as one of your sparetime-beavers and finally die), you have enough beavers to take his job. A game feature you will have to avoid at all costs is not really what I would call an interesting game feature. I hope you find a better way, so the bad water can become a part with the game (i.e. the permanent flow that provides energy is definitly a plus).