... why there is no gold maintenance cost?
Because we are
only few modders, create this mod
in our spare time, also have a
real life and
thus could not yet implement all concept and ideas we have.
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"Maintenance costs" is
planned since years, but I
simply did not yet have the time to implement it.
e.g.
"Changing Cannons to Professions" was on my list
for 10 years before I found time to implement it.
Even though all graphics of
@Schmiddie had already existed. And he had invested countless hours in creating those as well.
Not even considering yet all the effort this may have caused to other team members for testing, text writing, bugfixing, ...
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For several of the concepts I have implemented I have
easily spent 40+ hours - for really big ones (like e.g. "Large Rivers") even 100+ hours ...
(And a feature like
"Maintenance costs" is easily also
40+ hour additionaly to normal work life and private life.)
And again, these are just my own efforts that
do not even yet consider efforts of other team members for graphics, texts, translations, testing, bugfixing ...
Even a mid-size feature may
easily cause 80+ hours of effort in total for our team. And these numbers also
only work because our team is
experienced enough.
All of us modders have very similar situations, some even more trouble finding a bit of spare time because they e.g. having small kids.
Some of us sacrifice almost the last tiny bit of spare time and hardly played any computer game themselves for years.
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How many features do you think we can implement
in our spare time?
How many hours do you think we can invest each week additionally to private life and job?
This mod has not been implemented in days or weeks - it has been implemented in
almost 14 years ...
Again, every hour we put into modding is invested
on-top of job and real life, not instead.
If we can invest e.g.
12 hours additionally a week, that is like
working one and a half days additionally a week.
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Question: "Why is there no ... ?"
Answer: "Because nobody was willing or found the time to invest the effort."
That is the
simple answer to all the questions like
"Why have you not already ... ?" / "Why is there no ...?"
If we had
more modders actively contributing it would be a totally different story.
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I know you meant no harm by that question and I am not angry.
But sometimes I feel that community does not really understand reality of modding.
Modding - especially on the high level we try to do - requires lots of time and effort.
Great ideas and concepts have never been the issue - just people motivated to actually invest effort.