Limited foraging for wood inside

[elloco999]

In my current run (started and still playing in v1.38) at 76 days, I've foraged at least 500 and probably closer to 700 reclaimed wood in the Camp Office alone. I think I saw a post by a dev that the amount of reclaimed wood you could forage inside a building should run out at some point. Now either this is not working (yet) or the limit is to high.

My current strategy is to wake up, usually around 6 am. Forage inside for 6 hours. Forage inside for 3 hours. Forage outside for 1-2 hours depending on the weather. Forage inside until 9-10 pm. Sleep until 5-6 am. Repeat for another day or two, as condition allows. Then eat a lot, sleep a lot and start all over again. Until something interrupts this rhythm like needing to get some fresh meat or needing to repair something.

This nets me on average 14 reclaimed wood per day. without hardly ever having to go outside. If after say 200 reclaimed wood the wood was gone, I'd need to at least go out to other buildings to get more (if I don't want to forage outside because my clothes are not up to that). Smaller building should have a lower limit, as should buildings with not much wood inside (like the bunker).

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FORUM ADMIN NOTE: In order to facilitate bug tracking and repairs, the devs need some basic post information provided otherwise these become classified as feedback discussion threads. As such, and so that the Hinterland team can focus on specific bugs reported, this topic is being moved to the Alpha Playtest Feedback section.

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[Trandor]

+1 I agree. I would also love if by foraging inside indoor furniture would disappear, but I think simply limiting the amount of foragable wood indoors would already suffice.

[elloco999]

Yeah, thought of that myself, but it would take time to implement and lead to all new discussions like how many wood needs to be taken before a specific piece of furniture dissapears, why can't I collect more wood while this piece of furniture is still remaining, why can't I harvest this .... for wood etc. Probably best not to go down that road. Just limiting the amount of wood that can be foraged would suffice for me, but it would be nice to have some indication that it's almost all gone (other than no wood after foraging).

[Beanie]

This seems sensible, though I would add a message to the player that there is no more wood available, not just the usual "You haven't found any usable wood".

[Trandor]

Both ways seem plausible, but I think it would be weird if after foraging there was a note telling you "24 wood remaining here", so better do what Beanie suggests and have a message that says something along the lines of "There is no more wood available here."

[elloco999]

I was thinking more along the lines of Will saying something like "Not much wood left here." after foraging when you've foraged most of it and then "That was the last piece" when it's all gone. Well not exactly in those words, but you get my drift. Certainly not a message telling you exactly how much is left.

[Trandor]

We're on the same page then. I like the idea of Will telling you something. Because whenever it's possible, I'd like to play the game with the HUD entirely turned off, so I have to rely on the character telling me stuff. So it would be awesome if you did get some kind of verbal message.

[Burning Bridges]

I guess that's what we expected when we foraged wood: there would be a reasonable amount of wood the first time we forage a location. And then, every consecutive time would just produce a little. At least that is the logic in most games. Basically only two states: unforaged or foraged. Foraged would still yield a little amount (>0), but in fact so small that players would not benefit from it. Like 33% reclaimed wood.

And personally I think there is really no need to to alter the 3d models of the environment. do you realize how much extra work this could for a small team? If the game just told me that I have already foraged the place would be enough, I know I need to go somewhere else. I don't know how the game works outside but if the game world is divided in cells that would be no problem either.

[Burning Bridges]

The whole wood mechanism would become more interesting anyway if wood would be more challenging to find.

Tight now it is (roughly):

inside:

random * {2 reclaimed wood}

outside:

random * {2 reclaimed wood OR 2 cedar wood OR 2 fir wood OR 2 tinder plug}

hatchet:

forage_wood() * 2

But let's say forage_wood(n) changes with n being the number of total attempts, and forage_wood(n) = 1/n

forage_chance(1)= 100% (forage for the first time)

forage_chance(2)= 50% (forage for the 2nd time)

forage_chance(3)= 33% (..)

forage_chance(4)= 25%

forage_chance(5)= 16.5% etc every time you forage a place

And this works great with a serviceable distribution layer (per cell) that assigns a believable wood_distribution(xy) value according to what is on the map at xy, be it a "forest", "dead trees", or just "plain snow"

building:

reclaimed wood

tinder plug

forest

fir wood

cedar wood

tinder plug

dead tree:

rotten wood*

tinder plug

plain snow:

nothing

That would result in a relatively believable distribution of wood for every cell xy (provided that it can be organized that way)

forage_wood(xy) = forage_wood( previous attempts(xy) ) X distribution (xy) X tool_modifer

I would suggest the same for metal. If you forage metal in a forest you get 0. But there should be metal in buildings, garbage dumps, car wrecks etc, and the same function could be used that reduces the yield after n attempts.

This is not rocket science. I assume that the developers have thought of all these things, the question is if they want to go in this direction or leave the things as they are ..