Quote from: Bren;831932Sounds a bit like Hiero's Journey.

I loved those books.  They were super fantastic!

Quote from: nDervish;832451Fishing is actually the only food source which is tied to location/hex contents.  Herders produce Food and/or Build "for every hex the community controls" and farmers/improved farmers are also "for every hex".  Fisher folk produce Food "for every hex the community controls that contains a lake".  Both the Food Shortage and Food Surplus events are "1d6 Food per hex the community controls".

Foragers don't produce Food as such, but instead they allow an Economy test each week in the winter and, for every success or raise scored, one hex doesn't require Food - which means they can completely eliminate the requirement to spend Food for a one-hex settlement with a single success, but, even with multiple raises, they have little impact on the Food requirements of a community controlling, say, 10 hexes.

Also, from the random event possibilities, Good Weather adds a flat amount of Food (1 Food per applicable Citizen Edge) regardless of community size.

Given that only fishing is constrained by location and the way that Foragers and Good Weather work, the optimum situation (at least with respect to Food) is a single-hex coastal/lakeshore settlement, as it can get all possible Food production methods and maximum benefit from Foragers and Good Weather events.  Any expansion from that single coastal hex results in a worse Food situation on average.  (Foragers can't feed the whole community; Good Weather effects are diluted; and some of the new hexes may not allow for fishing as a production source, but still have the same per-hex consumption.)

That's the point I was trying to make with the vorpal sword comment. What resources/Edges/survivor knowledge are available to the party is entirely in the hands of the GM. If said GM creates a potential community site on a lake and lets them have everything in a single hex without laying out any incentive for the town to expand, then absolutely it would be insane for the group to step out of that hex.

Take the lake, for example. Just being on a lake doesn't get you any food. You need survivors who know how to fish. You need something to fish with. You might have to deal with rivals (or mutant animals) that have caused the local fish population to drastically decline. And it's only when needs like those have been met that the GM actually gives the community the Edge that lets them produce the food.

Quote from: Brand55;832494What resources/Edges/survivor knowledge are available to the party is entirely in the hands of the GM.

Does it include tables to randomly generate extra resources or do such things show up solely by fiat?

Quote from: Bren;832581Does it include tables to randomly generate extra resources or do such things show up solely by fiat?

Not really, unless you count the random events tables. Even then it's up to the GM exactly what is found when "Extra Resources" comes up. Ultimately they're all Build points, but you can't realistically build a micro nuclear reactor if all you're finding is wood. It's one of the areas I'd like to see expanded.

Quote from: Brand55;832494That's the point I was trying to make with the vorpal sword comment. What resources/Edges/survivor knowledge are available to the party is entirely in the hands of the GM. If said GM creates a potential community site on a lake and lets them have everything in a single hex without laying out any incentive for the town to expand, then absolutely it would be insane for the group to step out of that hex.

Take the lake, for example. Just being on a lake doesn't get you any food. You need survivors who know how to fish. You need something to fish with. You might have to deal with rivals (or mutant animals) that have caused the local fish population to drastically decline. And it's only when needs like those have been met that the GM actually gives the community the Edge that lets them produce the food.

Yep, agreed.  But you can explore and locate the specialists without also expanding to control the hexes those specialists are in.  You can have your one-hex community on the lakeshore in hex 1342, then go out and recruit the fishermen hiding in hex 1542, the herders on the plains of hex 1138, etc. all without expanding the community beyond the single hex.  These things are not location-dependent (the specialists can walk back to hex 1342 with you), thus they do not provide a reason to expand your territorial control.

Expanding your community to additional hexes produces minor drawbacks, but provides no benefits in the general case.  There are a small number of exceptions where you need a hex containing a specific feature in order to make use of a community edge[1], but the mechanics incentivize remaining as small as possible while meeting those requirements.

The various Building Edges can provide a small incentive to expand if you find usable (or easily restorable) buildings to annex, since that would usually be quicker and easier than building new ones, but it's not a hard reason to expand, since you can instead build them in your single-hex community if time and Build permit.  And it still remains a losing proposition to expand into hexes which don't contain any needed buildings.


[1]  Aside from the already-mentioned fisher folk needing a lake, you need a hex with a river to build a hydroelectric plant, and... I guess that's it.  I was sure that the Micro Nuclear Reactor required control of a site with a ruined reactor to restore, but I was wrong.  As long as you possess nuclear fuel, you can build one anywhere.

That's why I think that, with the RAW, resources are so important. There are lots of things the party can do to help the community prosper, but the town may still need to expand to take over new ruins/forests/etc. so that its organized groups can scavenge and gather necessary Build points for certain projects. That, along with more dice for Food production reducing the odds of a really bad roll, does give some incentive for expansion. I know that's not very well spelled out in the rules, but it's how I see them working and one of the ways I'll expand the rules if I ever use them.

If you ever try out the Food-usage-per-population ratio, let me know how it works.