On the one hand, it’s annoying having to walk out to build each zipline tower / station. On the other hand, the stupid things only have a range of 30 tiles, so it’s not like you have to go far.
The towers aren’t all that much cheaper, so it makes sense to only build stations. Especially when you factor in having to walk out to build it. If you have to walk 60 tiles because you chose to put a tower in the middle, you’re significantly increasing your build time for only a modest savings in materials.
The worst part is that each tower / station can only have two connections. That makes it problematic to come up with efficient layouts. I’m guessing tubes can connect however many times you please, like paths.
Ha! Overengineered indeed. Apparently I went three levels higher than was strictly required. If I were doing it over I’d probably still build one level above the sluices.
Yep. Another nice advantage to them. On my Folktails run I made a kind of big loop with the ziplines, but it meant the beavers sometimes had to go far out of their way to get somewhere. The tubes are faster and more direct.
Part of the cost though is that if you don’t want the network to interfere with other stuff, you have to elevate it (like the power transmission). So it takes even longer to build.
Well, that’ll come in handy if you flood the downstream area for more water storage. I’ve got something like a 7-deep lake in my Iron Teeth run. Part of that is natural outflow but I need a pump to get to the rest of it. I could reduce the need for the pump if I did a bit more invasive landscaping, but it works well for now.
Is there pressure? The top left water source on the first map (lakes) is in a tunnel. If I just walled it off, what would happen? Would it explode from the pressure? Crumble the surrounding earth?
I’m wondering if this tunnel I’m digging out – a massive PITA when you want the tunnel to be multiple levels high – is actually pointless, and I could just fully wall off the entrance with a layer of sluices then levees on top. It’s only two high.
Never tried walling off a source completely. I’ve never seen any notion of pressure otherwise (i.e., from depth). Maybe the game just doesn’t let you wall off a source completely? Not sure.
There is the dome thing you can build for badwater sources specifically. Makes me think you can’t just wall off a source, since otherwise its existence is pointless.
Tested with water: Walling off a water source completely fully plugs it up. I can’t imagine badtides would be any different. I won’t do this because it feels wrong, but I will take advantage of that fact to allow using just a single tunnel lane for drainage.
I know bees sting you vertically, just like wellness buffs apply vertically. My question: If I have a zipline over bee-boosted cropland, will the zipliners get stung? Same question for tunnels and tubeways below, I suppose.
Just picked this game up on the Steam Summer Sale. I meant to play it on my steam deck during a trip, on days when I was the one staying back with the napping baby. But travelling with kids ended up tiring me out so bad I napped too… So I’m only getting into Timberborn today.
I’m not too sure what I’m doing yet, and I managed to balloon my little starter base up to 50 beavers without really planning to do so. So far, I haven’t run out of food or water… For more than a day or two.
Droughts are getting longer, so we’ll see how things work out for me. I kinda expect disaster.
So I survived a couple of droughts and badtides. The map I’m playing on is one of the beginner friendly ones, and I’m starting to see why - there are two badwater sources downstream of me, and two or three clean water sources that empty into the same basin, which I have dammed.
Badtides are more of a challenge. Currently, I funnel everything into one big basin, with the old riverways fully blocked off with floodgates. I divert as much water as I need for myself and drain off the rest. During droughts I can fully seal off every other exit the water has and slowly drain the basin into the river my base is built along. For badtides, I close off my river and some pools upstream, and open the gates to every other direction. This has devastated much of the land, but I don’t live there yet, so that’s fine. The only issue is that it means emptying my massive basin every time a badtide comes, which means I hardly benefit from saving so much water up.
I’ve got some ideas for how to dam up these water sources such that I can divert badtides away before the main basin. But everything is so far from my main base now - it’s probably time to figure out districts. My main base is a total mess, so a bit of a fresh start sounds nice anyways.
I forget exactly, but can’t you selectively pump/filter/refine badwater and end up with clean water + some industrial byproduct (that one of the factions can use, I think, but maybe not the other)?
Check your clean sources to see if there are any natural diversion channels upstream. There often are, just blocked by debris or at a higher level than the normal flow. You can then use sluice blocks to let clean water through the normal route, or divert the badwater down the diversion channel.
Districts are largely a legacy feature from early access. People don’t actually use them in general, especially with the introduction of ziplines and tubeways.
Not to say you shouldn’t play around with them to see if you can make them work. Mainly I’m saying if you find they end up being more trouble than they’re worth, you’re not alone. That is the consensus opinion.
Well, I guess it depends on how far “really far away” is, and also what they are doing out there.
Once again I planned, practiced and recorded a full run, so I can give you some “for instances.” (Playlist)
Here is me finishing setting up my initial metal production. No ziplines yet, of course. It’s not all that far away from my district center, but it’s not exactly close, either. I don’t even bother building these metal scavengers a water station. I do eventually add some ziplines for them, but not for a while:
Here is when I head out to set up badtide diversions. As this is an ongoing, involved construction project – three simultaneous projects, actually – I do set up comprehensive zipline networks. But still no districts even though these projects are way off at the edges of the map:
And then finally, here is me damming up the far edge of the map. These poor beavers walked forever to get there, and then had to make a bunch of trips. Interestingly, I originally set this up with ziplines but it ended up being much faster/more efficient to just walk it instead. A zipline pylon costs 40 materials to build; a station 80. This damn I’m putting up is 8 earth blocks and three dams, which is a grand total of 108 materials. Simple math confirms that just walking 108 materials out there is much faster than trying to construct three or four stations plus five or six pylons along the way.
I did not end up using districts, or even remote water and food stations, for anything. Not for moderately far away mining operations, not for super involved construction projects extremely far away. The only thing I gave my poor put-upon beavers was ziplines. But not even that for the initial metal farm, because of course ziplines require metal.
This seems like it would be a GTA game for me … id start serious and then screw around for hours doing “what if i did this instead of that” and watching things burn …
Alright, I think I’ve got the hang of it. Beaverea is now a bustling town of two hundred beavers, with big dams blocking off my water sources, shutting off badtides, and feeding a massive lake that can keep me going through droughts.
I think it’s time for a harder map, maybe on the hard difficulty now. Time to found Beaver Sheva (Be’er Sheva)… Strike the Earth Wood!
