No differentiation needed, the beacon could ignore water when it is placed and only react to new sources.
I think that´s quite fair, if you want an artificial waterfall of that size you should have to spend a lot of plots on it.
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This is correct. Every complex life-form on this planet needs water and even if there might be other life-forms on other planets that don’t rely on water (maybe some cool creatures for uninhabitable and hard worlds → stone/sand creatures) it would be cool if water would be an active resource and not only a “visual” gimmig.
Maybe this could also be a good balance for super hard worlds that it’s nearly impossible build a settlement because there is only extreme few water and if need to “stay” on this worlds you need to find that water (like the search of water on mars).
Where water is, is life.
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I’d rather see a waterfall that flows into a beacon than one that stops in the air and maybe even flows down on the sides of the beacon. Because nobody will use that many plots on a decent waterfall.
And why should that take a lot of plots anyway? You didn’t terraform anything. So there is nothing to be beaconed. (Assuming a waterfall from a flying island down onto earth or another island)
There really is no reason to force someone to use so many plots just to make the waterfall look realistic (and not let it stop midair).
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I’m not sure on a solution to this either, however I do like the idea of only being able to divert water from the source…
With that, do you mean pipes or just digging trenches and seeing how far the water flows before it tapers off (or will it flow indefinitely until the area to fill is level?
Hmm, the flowing water mechanic raises more questions as well… if you divert water and then place a beacon over the divert so it’s effectively ‘permanent’… and that diverted water still continues to flow outside of the beacon… what happens to world regen? Would the water be in a constant state of flux and disappear and reappear all the time?
I think any solution that you opt for would need to take the prospect any future farming mechanic into consideration as well. Maybe have a bucket that can transport water, but if that water is placed directly onto the ground, it dissolves into the ground and does not create a new flowing water source. You could have it so that water can still be transferred from bucket to barrel / irrigation system though, to feed crops.
Regarding water flowing into beacons … I’m actually in favour of it, purely due to the realism factor. Although it is a potential avenue to griefing, I think the possibility of it occurring would be reduced (as others have suggested), due to limitations on water flow and the inability to place water source blocks.
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Hypothetically, I think it is safe to allow water to flow from a source into a beacon (as mentioned above) provided that the source block can be somehow “taped” by the beacon owner. What I mean by this is the beacon owner must some how locate and claim the water source block or blocks that are flowing into their beacon. If this is a natural spring or river, that involves locating all source blocks that then directly flow through the beacon, selecting them, and some how tying them to the players beacon permissions. This could work similar to the beacon plotting mechanism where holding the beacon plotter also shows taped water sources, but otherwise leaves behind nothing that would be regenerated. That way, griefers can not some how divert water from rivers or pipes into another players space because those source blocks are not taped by the owner of the beacon.
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I wondered what water can be used for… I see some non-decorative mechanics / logics:
a) a transportation way. I want a water “path” to my house underground, so i can put my small boat there and enter a river. like this I can park my boat save in my beaconed “garage”…
b) land could become fertile for harvesting
c) water as a power source (to eventually support turbines to create energy)
Do I need to transfer water for all of this? Not necessarly…
a) here I can just choose a good location for my house
b) I worked out an idea, where water transfer is not necessary. You need pipes and a pump. As long as the suction side is into water (not necessarly source block), the function of the special sprinkler pipes is guaranteed:
I hope, a pump will not work without energy, so it also needs an external energy source (whatever it is).
c) I could use a similar construction like in b). Just with a certain logic of our real life: the generator has to be lower then the river- / lake- / sea-connection. I know, logically the water would have to run through to run the turbine, but since my concepts should exclude the necessarity of moving water, I’d skip that logically detail…
Theoretically you could also run the sprinkler system like this, if you have a lake that’s higher then the area you want to make fertile.
What other uses do you see (non-decorative)? And what do you think of these ideas? Anything I did not think of?
Edit: no need to praise my paint drawings, I know they are amazing 
What would be the problem with water “flowing” into my beacon according to actual mecahnics? I don’t really see it…
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To extend my idea, i want introduce a phisically existing force the water pressure.
In our real world it is prooved that hight of water creates certain pressure in the bottom and obstacles the water has to flow through create a decreast of this pressure.
We can very easily transfer this fact to machines and pipes inside the game.
The number I call now, are just to explain the idea behind it.
If you connect a pipe to water as in c) and go down 4 blocks, you create a water pressur of 4.
You could say a turbine needs 4 units water pressure to create energy.
Sprinklers you could say decrease (consume) water pressure by 1.
With 4 units water pressure your could make 4 sprinklers work. If you add a fifth, it would not work because the sprinklers before consume all water pressure.
Same way I would say, a pump should create the same amount of water pressure, then the turbine consumes.
Because both machines can interact - I tell you later why this is important.
Second to introduce: energy consumption / creation.
A turbine creates 4 units of energy.
Let’s say a bulb consumes 1 energy unit, so you can run up to 4 bulbs with one turbine.
Same way a pump should consume 4 units of energy. (if you remember, i hope a pump needs energy source)
So 1 turbine can run 1 pump and 1 pump can run 1 turbine.
Like this people could not create a perpetuum mobile (an energy system that provides more energy then it consumes).
Means: if 1 turbine would just need 2 units of water pressure, I could run 2 turbines with 1 pump. These 2 turbines can run 2 pumps, which can ran 4 turbines. You see an endless energy cycle upwards. You can maximum balance this with recources a machine needs to be build. And with machine I mean energy creators in this case (either water pressure or electricity.
If the game runs with water and electrical force this definetly has to be considered and balanced in some way.
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Simple. A griefer may place or divert water to flow into a beaconed space and flood what ever is inside of your beacon. This could drown livestock, pop torches, or interact with lava to create stone without the griefer needing to be able to even enter the beacon themselves.
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you can simplay avoid that if you fear it.
Water can flow one block then it falls if I got it right. So if you fear something like that, make a step…
Since beacons (if this habit stays) prevent anyone to build something over you. It’s completely safe.
Like this:
If my thoughts will be adopted and water system stays like it is, you can easily protect yourself.
On the other hand, if noone can place water somewhere, this is out of discussion anyway if you didn’t build your area next to a river / lake / sea that is higher then your plot.
Beacons don’t prevent anyone from building over (or indeed under) you … it just prevents them from placing their beacon there, effectively reserving those spaces for you.
Anything built above or below though, would eventually deteriorate with world regeneration.
Your solution should work though, but is entirely dependent upon the existing build within the beaconed area.
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That’s something i already mentioned in my original post in this topic (look above). I like this idea and i hope the devs will adapt it.
Absolutely. My original post was most mostly about farming but this is indeed an other good use for water. I really like your idea.
The problem was covered in my original post in this topic. Water + Lava = Granite … and that’s - we all accept that - not good. that’s why there was a discussion about safety and anti-griefing.
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Would it be possible to change the properties of water passing into a beacon? So as it stops having a destructiv effect when moving from outside a beacon into the beacon of a player (If the source block does not originate inside that players beacon that is)
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Okay, that was a misunderstanding on my side.
But do you all see, that the biggest problem would be caused if fluids would be transportable? I mean if you are far enough away from fluids or if your builds are higher then the fluid it cannot effect you in any way.
And a way to play with water is given by my pipe examples above.
That’s probably way easier, then changing the current logic of water.
And the answers on this can be clearly answere [quote=“james, post:21, topic:3787”]
? Fluids can’t flow into beacons ?? Fluids can only be placed in beacons ?? Fluids can’t be placed but must be diverted from their source ?
[/quote]
Fluids can and should flow threw beacons, so people could use for example as transportation. If someone fears anyone could cause a problem on his property with fluids, just stay away from it or adjust your build.
No, fluids should not be placable at all because there is no essential use that cannot be solved different.
Yes, fluids can be diverted, but according to the current mechanism it will not make a long way… But that’s not a problem anymore.
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Agreed - I stated the same thing in my post, with a possible solution to transportable water …
So you can only really move water from container to container. Pipes would also work as well, but would rely on the use of beacons to protect the piped area. Which leads me to your following statements …
If you’re far enough away to not be griefed, you will need to use a lot of beacons just to protect pipes.
It also raises the question… why should people have to compromise their builds, or forego building a farm close to water (if/when farming is introduced after initial release). You’ll always get people that want to build a nice waterfront property, or underground (below water source level), or just with the fore-thought that water (or lava even) may play a bigger role in a future update.
Anti-griefing measures, in my opinion, should not just be reliant on players having to some how know that they shouldn’t build so close to a water or lava source as someone else might grief them.
I think the removal of the ability to create a new water source is a step in the right direction, as this will negate the most immediate threat of someone just dumping water/lava around your beacon. The only other issue remains with water/lava diversion - which has potential to be a drive-by issue, that would eventually be resolved by either plugging the divert yourself, or waiting for world regen to fix it.
It only really becomes a permanent issue if the griefer beacons the actual diverted source. Which may just mean that they were unaware that their water/lava diversion had caused issue elsewhere.
The current mechanism is only a placeholder as flowing water has not be converted to the C++ build as yet…[quote=“james, post:1, topic:4247”]
Next week, we will be making a small update to release some of the final C++ porting features, such as making fluids flow and creatures dropping items.
[/quote]
Your trench idea would prevent griefing damage to your build, but I wouldn’t want to see everyone needing to dig a trench around their builds to protect it. Although that may be the only plausible solution to preventing diverted sources.
I’m still in favour of allowing water/lava to flow through beacons as people will want this as it’s an additional creative resource, and it removes the less than ideal invisible barrier from the game. I don’t think preventing it from flowing through beacons will stop griefing either (although it will prevent actual damage to your build), as your could still potentially surround someones beacon with a wall of water/lava.
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Fluids flowing through beacons… scares me a bit.
Example scenario:
Someone places some water (or diverts some water) into your beacon. Those changes outside the beacon will be regenerated… meanwhile your beacon has random water inside of it that isn’t even connected to any source blocks anymore since the beacon is not regenerated.
conversely, you place water inside your beacon, and it flows outside of the beacon. The world regen will regenerate away the water that flew outside the beacon, but the water in your beacon keeps flowing outside again…
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Wouldn’t the water just go away when the source is cut off? Or what do you have in mind for future water physics?
But yea the second point was something I wondered too. But wouldn’t the regeneration be so slow that you’d hardly notice the water disappearing and flowing out of the beacon again?
Regeneration cannot be allowed trigger world simulation to occur, as it is utterly trivial to end up with an infinite loop of water flowing/regnerating/flowing/regenerating etc.
So stop thinking about “placeable” water. It can potentially cause too much problems. And as you maybe read in my former posts, just decorative reasons would justify placeable water.
Or do you still want to be able to place fluids somewhere by a certain reason?
And diverted water should not be the problem. Just build far enough from water or higher then the source block / lake / river / sea.
Assuming the water can just run 7 blocks away from it’s source, there is not even a problem with beaconing too long ways of pipes. One beacon of the current size would already make it to have you far enough.
@Stretchious I can understand your worries about substractions in creative possibilities. But this is better then having bugs by infinite loops…
So what is your approach to solve that problem?
Maybe make flowing water not regenerate if it would dissappaer and only if a block would replace it?
That would be the easiest solution I could think of without a drawback. Except for not full regeneration outside of beacons because flowing water would not always regenerate.
Tricky problem…
@Smoothy The problem luca is talking about, is that if you let flowing water from inside a beacon regenerate outside of it then you’d have a constant loop of disappearing and reflowing water.
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The issue is, it doesn’t even need to be placed fluids .
If you divert fluids and then beacon it… the diverted route that leaves your beacon, is not the original path it would have taken, so world regen would still be in a state of flow/regen as @lucadeltodecso stated.
I get the feeling that this is not going to be solvable in a way that everyone will like - even though that way will be necessary.
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