Simple item which would allow for quality of life when traversing water. Nothing fancy and certainly nothing that would required movable constructions…
Must have:
player can actually be afk while using boat - so it will not sink and kill char. Some swims are quite long and not beeing able to move afk is irritating. It is not risk, it is certain death. Running from combat can take half a minute or less. Swimming to the shore can take few minutes. Returning to sanctum will teleport to closest shore. Not always best idea when you want to answer phone.
Nice to have:
traversing using boat would be a bit quicker than walking with walking skill. Would change quite drastically how people traverse terrain and using water would stop beeing such big pain.
Love it. A titanium boat would surely burn your backside though?
In all seriousness good suggestion, once release is all wrapped up we’ll begin planning for the next update and talk about features suggested on the forums. This is in no way me saying “we’ll definitely put this in”, but it’s a cool idea to discuss.
Yes!
The way you describe it doesn’t seem OP and would preserve the work of bridge builders (I suck at this , but have seen amazing ones and we should keep their use).
Lore-friendly (read: small, and more tribal- than technological-based) vehicles are one of those features that I’d love to see in Boundless the most. But while I think a lore-friendly ground vehicle would simply be better in the form of an animal (I WANT TO RIDE A WILDSTOCK), simple boats would be perfect for water. I think they would also be very beneficial, not only as a mechanic per se, but for the aesthetics of the game: imagine what an harbor, where many players can dock their ship, would look like.
Some aspects I think would be important:
Personalization. Obviously wood and cloth colors (maybe gleam for night lanterns?), but also different models / tiers for the hull and sails. Nothing fancy, 2-3 models per part would be enough, like the styles we have for doors. Best of all would be glyphs on the sail, but that’d require to implement glyphs in the first place.
A reasonable way to use them when needed. While I find Minecraft boats the most simple and functional way to implement the concept, I strongly dislike it. Imho, picking up and placing a boat like any normal block feels… terrible. More like a sad, tiny raft than a real, majestic boat.
On the other hand, I understand the need to have the boat with you when you need it. But that would be an interesting case of study: would people start to create canals, and water portals between worlds, so that you may travel like we do now, but on boats? Because that would be AWESOME!
A reasonable meaning to use them, besides simple traveling. And that means two things: some water-heavy planets, and at least some form of water enemy that you can fight decently only when you’re on a boat. Maybe a boat cannon / harpoon too… but maybe that’s too much.
While i perfectly understand wanting bigger vehicles, i’m looking also on time required for each solution and practicality.
Vehicles which are more complicated than “minecraft boat” would be very restricted and you would practically only use those on your home world, where you have set up some kind of infrastructure.
Very small usefulness cause we have portals which are way better than that.
At the same time if you would have some type of movable canoe/boat which you can take with you, it cut tones of frustration from exploring/moving through unfamiliar or rarely visited planet.
Customization further than color based on wood, etc. will be higher barrier for implementation. This means we won’t have any boat for long time instead of having very basic boat now (and relief of one of major pains from my perspective) and if this get accepted maybe “refined” and “decorative” tier vehicles later.
Maybe spark powered surf board would be more interesting, like you can charge it at home and it would give you some mileage from that. Though simple boat relying on power of oars could co-exist they are not mutually exclusive.
Anyway, great suggestion, while there are bridge builders some water surfaces are too long to bridge over (at least with anything beautiful) so there could be docks that provide location for other docks on other side of the water.
However it is implemented it will be great addition.
Any kind of boat would be a useful tool for exploration only when dealing with big bodies of water; using them to cross rivers is simply overkill. But as long as there are portals in water, it is irrelevant if you’re crossing your home world ocean, or all the oceans in the universe. So you would not use it only on your home world.
The current portal system is not aimed at improving exploration, but travel, which is a bit different. The same could go with boats. I understand your point though, I think it is subjective to prefer them for exploration or for travel.
Customization actually requires relatively little code: different models are like different crafting recipes, different colors depending on materials are already implemented. It “just” requires to create some models, but it’s pretty standard work. For example, farming will require much more work in that sense.
Imho the biggest issues in non-inventory boats are persistence and loss: the worlds should save the location of each ship, and players may forget where they docked. Maybe a smart way to “summon” creatures and ships through a portal could be used, but this could prove to be a heavy load of work…
While I agree that exploration would be very good use of boat, i disagree that it would be only use.If boats would have higher speed than walking without agility but slower than 8/8 agility than crafters/builders who didn’t invest in speed of traveling would use it to move around.
