Combat, Hunting and Survival concepts.

[EternityTide]

I am aware that talking about implementing melee into combat is a flogging a dead horse, however I have given it some thought and I think I have come up with a few solutions.

Firstly, I have found that accuracy with the rifle suffers when fired beyond a range of about 15 meters. I have managed a few decent long range kills with the ironsights, but I thought that since this would be the rifle of a professional hunter (especially if it was found in the Trappers homestead) It would have a scope, nothing fancy, maybe a simple 10x crosshair reticle scope.

As well as that, this is northern Canada, so I would imagine that people would be keeping small arms (such as pistols or revolvers) in their drawers and cupboards in the event of encountering a bear or similar, so perhaps the introduction of a revolver (with it's own separate ammunition) would be useful. This would divide the firearms into a long range category (the rifle) and a short range category, I suppose the revolver would do less damage than the rifle, so maybe it would take two shots to kill a wolf, but the first shot would wound it significantly enough that it would run.

If shotguns were to be considered, perhaps this would allow the player to hunt the ravens we see circling over corpses, or maybe the introduction of migratory geese would see a proper use for this kind of weapon.

Also, I had the idea for the melee implementation, that the player could lash a hunting knife to the barrel of the rifle to make a bayonet-style setup, which would save on bullets when dealing with Fluffy (seriously, he moves so fast it's difficult in close quarters to bag that bugger with a single shot).

Onto a less combat oriented topic, I might suggest a usage of gut or cord in the game as setting snares for deer, and possibly smaller game if they are ever implemented. If an ice saw were includedinto the game, the player could use cord and fishing poles (which would be found in the empty fishing huts on mystery lake) to saw holes in the ice of the unnamed pond or mystery lake, or the river (etc) to fish for Arctic Char or Atlantic Salmon (whether they would have made it up through the Carter Hydro Dam I have no idea)

Finally, I think it would be an interesting addition to the game to add pinecones to litter the forest floors, which could be used as a form of fuel for fires (or could be harvested, like newspaper, to create tinder plugs).

[Trandor]

most of these suggestions have been brought up before, ice fishing has been suggested at least on 20 separate accounts. So maybe you will see some of these come true as soon as Wednesday.

I agree that melee combat as well as improved accuracy and more weapons would be awesome. But shooting the birds overhead... Well, that's not for me

[EternityTide]

No thoughts on the pinecones? They were my favourite.

[Trandor]

haha I''m sorry.

there was a suggestion before, where along the foraging option, wood could be found on the ground. I was in favour of that idea, but I'm still not certain how I would implement that, to find a nice balance of respawning woods and not cluttering the map. As for your pinecones. I like the idea of them replacing tinder plugs when foraging outside, but frankly, I never had any shortage of timder plugs so far, so i don't really see the need