Hello sweethearts, xoxo. This is Herder, one of the devs of Pride and Fall. It’s been almost two months since the last dev diary, so I’m hoping that all the Christmas pressure has left your body and you’re not giving into the sorrows of the january evenings – we’re definitely not giving up and we want to show you that we’re still alive, and that every day we’re making small steps towards our goal. Today on the day of publication it’s the 22nd of January. A unique day. Of course, it’s Grandfather’s day above all else, so don’t forget about your beloved seniors, but for us additionally it’s the day Pride and Fall was born. Symbolically, of course, since the idea of Pride and Fall, as we’ve already gone over in the first entry, was long in the heads of many people. However it was this day that the Discord server for our mod was made and on this day that the gigantinc brainstorm meant to create the lore, fill in the map and to create whatever our autistic souls willed, had begun.
There is no better day to then let you in on a little secret. From the depths of my heart, I would love to release huge patches for you all left and right. And I know, that this might not be what you were expecting, maybe it might not be a lot, but believe me – everything has its price. And since the mod is free-to-play the price reflects on our devs in the form of other aspects. The sad truth is that we’re losing developers faster than we’re gaining them. Not many people want to work on our mod. Or at least not many people want to give it their time. That’s why it’s hard to find ones that would be willing to join the dev team. Nevertheless, we’ll still try and provide, so the modding world does not forget us. However without you, dear readers, our renown does not exist. So then, we must hand in hand spread the vision of our mod, because we’ll all benefit from it.
But you didn’t come here to parse through the complaints of a geriatric developer. Today we’ll be talking a bit about resources. It’s not the most fascinating subject, I know, however it is the key to understanding how a shattered Poland should and does operate. The resources from vanilla in this scenario were... somewhat alright. However in the long run, half of them seemed quite pointless. Poland doesn’t possess a rich enough palette of resources to represent the assortment of resources present in the base game in a meaningful way without making up some large deposit of Chromium under Włocławek, or a Vistula flowing with gas and oil.
Okay, you might say, but custom resources already are a thing in PaF, so what’s there to talk about? That’s true, they were and still are, however they’re spread about in a way that’s rather chaotic, so now we’re trying to implement a more organised system for where they could be located. They should play a vital role in gameplay, especially at game start. So, let’s list them all off, those you know and one which might not be as familiar.
Fuel, High-Grade Alloys, Synthetics, Coal, Scrap, Electronics, Junk, Food.
https://i.imgur.com/lRQwe6W.png
Altogether they paint quite a colorful picture of Poland after the Fall. Let’s start from the end then, as that’s something new. Food. Well, everyone who played survival games knows that they won’t go far without it. In a society engulfed in civil war as seen in our mod, food might just be much higher valued than gold. So, to better show off what polish society must go up against, we’ve decided to add food as a resource.
Well now I just want to get some barbecue…
https://i.imgur.com/i7xHV1C.png
But to make gameplay a bit more engaging, the spread of food doesn’t benefit all the warlords. Some, having access to wide swathes of farmland won’t have any issue with feeding their citizens. Others however, confied to gigantic cities, without having any means of growing large amounts of crops... will face some issues, that they’ll need to solve. Either through trade, or conquest. Of course, some factions like the new Grójec Orchards, or Food Processing Co-operative in Radom will have significantly more of this resource.
The cities might have industry, but they don’t have food.
https://i.imgur.com/i7xHV1C.png
Earlier on our Discord, we posted a small teaser about this very mechanic which showed how some levels of food rations handed out to our subejcts might look. These policies will be partially controlled by the player. For instance, if at some point we run out of food, we’ll have time until the next month tick to remedy the issue. If we fail to do so, our rationing “level” will automatically decrease by one. This is tied to some not-so-pleasant debuffs. Especially, if we’re still unable to feed our population as we resort to rationing, then… well, we can let natural selection do it’s thing, but I wouldn’t personally tell my people to eat cake.
With enough food, we might be able to raise our rationing level.
https://i.imgur.com/G8pJfxz.png
There are also three special diet types, for entirely lore reasons – the meat, vegetarian and vegan diets. They’re tied to specific factions and their narration, for instance the Brotherhood of Coal. Adopting this diet will mean that we will no longer be balancing our population’s food intake ourselves, but don’t think that doesn’t mean they won’t go hungry. It’s best to keep a close eye on food from then on.
RADICAL, GARDENING, HOP HOP HOP
https://i.imgur.com/T3n6Tn8.png
Next we’ll talk a bit about Coal. Poland is built on the Black Gold, therefore coal also needed to become one of the key resources that PaF is based upon. Currently, it’s used by powerplants to generate power. Simple, right? Of course, but the spead of coal deposits in the current version is quite incorrect. For that reason, I was able to develop a system for coal, that makes some kind of sense. Firstly, lignite and black coal is mined in many places across Poland, however there are also those veins which are not exploited. And some… are running dry. Through trial and error or made up values we’ve managed to implement a mechanic for their veins.
It’s so sad Tomasz Sommer died of Lignite…
https://i.imgur.com/pNwiuoE.png
A vein of coal has it’s set amount. It corresponds to a certain category of deposit that we can begin mining after unlocking a certain tech tier. Each one gives us access to deeper layers and harder to exploit sources of coal. However, possesing a known coal vein is one thing. If we don’t have an already operational coal mine in the state, then we won’t get any coal out of it. But! This is where newly made Decisions come in to play.
https://i.imgur.com/BF64Syo.png
Mines can bring us a lot of happiness and light. Trust me, nothing can go wrong.
https://i.imgur.com/hqFA8eE.png
These decisions will allow us to build new coal mines on existing deposits, or expanding the already existing operations to dig deeper. It’s worthy to note that each year, a certain portion of the coal will deplete from the deposit based on how much of it we’re currently mining. There’s enough coal to last for decades in all of Poland, and yet…
The Brotherhood of Coal, as you might’ve guessed, will be the biggest beneficiary of this new coal policy. And yes, just for them we’ve prepared some decisions that will allow us to take more drastic steps when it comes to securing new deposits… since in most of the GZM Metropolis and in Wałbrzych many mines were closed over the years. Though that is no detterent for ambitious pioneers hired by the Brotherhood. At a hefty cost, they’ll be able to transform the metropolis into a mine-laden hellhole.
https://i.imgur.com/McmWNzc.png
Long live the Miners’ State! Long live Elder Ziemkiewicz!
https://i.imgur.com/iDD1R96.png
Well, maybe we’ve gone a bit overboard. But we have coal!
https://i.imgur.com/tbWwq4O.png
In accordance with these changes, we’ve also changed the Energy mechanic to take into account more modifiers, like building cost, or electricity’s price in resources. This also means that electricity policy will play a larger role that beforehand. Or well, we’ve already released two factions based around it and all others will from now on see its elements. This is a result of new country policies, added in a similar vein to those of food, just without its dynamic elements.
Of course, in this case we’re taking into account the ambitions of the warlord, not the current state its power grid is currently in. Additionally, countries that have a strict policy of renewable energy, will be unable to build coal power plants. For the Atomic Crusade we introduced the mechanic of Uranium deposits. We’re not fully decided on what role Nuclear Energy will play in other countries. From the beginning of the mod, we planned that only the Atomic Crusade would have the benefit of harnessing the atom. However in the future this train of thought might change. Afterall the nuclear annihilation of someplace like Poznań is way more tempting than common sense.
Atomic energy? Who would need that? Why?
https://i.imgur.com/4O4lajh.png
Now I’ll move onto the part that’s slighty less interesting, that being the rest of the resources. Fuels – It’s an expansive category, since we’re not just taking into account one kind of fuel but all sorts of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, canola oil, pure distilled hatred and so on. For that reason, fuels do not get their own source mechanics like coal, which could natually be fitting for the countless deposits of crude oil and shale gas. Besides that, who hasn’t ran their car on spirit, doesn’t know what life is. For that reason also, we can’t really differentiate between the various fuel sources, but that doesn't mean that they won’t get their own decisions! Aside from the oil already exploited in Carpathia, we can search for it in northen Greater Poland, the Lublin region or use one of the oil platforms on the Baltic.
Finally, the production of Draże Korsarze can commence with full steam.
https://i.imgur.com/gzsyvwa.png
Same thing goes for electronics… which is electronics only in name, given the core of its production remains the copper mining operations of KGHM, but that is a material for another dev diary, so sadly you won’t learn what copper androids dream of. However aside from copper mines, we’re also talking about semiconductor or cable factories in Poland (despite being few, however). And if that doesn’t pan out, you can always steal traction.
Issues arise when we move onto quality metals, that being the High-Grade Alloys which appear in our mod as Aluminium. And technically also steel, good steel, made in Huta Katowice. And every other metal that’d make sense for this category. Raw Iron is no longer excavated in Poland, same goes for most other metals, and export after the fall is very limited. Here we’re forced into a compromise, since in a realistic representation, 90% of warlords would not be able to produce anything of value. This resource’s deposits will be mostly expanded through focuses and rare decisions where it’s fitting.
But smelting steel is the best thing in the world
https://i.imgur.com/a86fBnB.png
Lastly, there’s the so called trash resources. Synthetics, scrap and junk. They make up the core of our economy, using them we build anything that has wheels and a cannon. Here we assume recycling to be the peak of Post-Fall economy, as we can find all kinds of trash and rubber littered around every bigger city. And if it runs out, remember, one man's garbage is another man person's good un-garbage.
And here I’d like to end this entry, thank you for your patience and to remind you of what I mentioned at the start. We really need your help and more hands on deck. Inmodestly I’ll say that we cannot let this mod die out, as it is a collective work of Polish culture. Thank you for your attention, and stay safe. See you in the next entries!
By - HerderDg
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