A dying wish for extinguishable (and salvageable) fires

[Nyarlathotep]

My mind is awash with surging tides of emotion and madness became an old friend many blizzards ago. My frozen fingers can barely grasp the charcoal with which I scrawl these words, and my apology in its advanced state is for all these reasons and many more that I dare not speak of, when considering the state in which this letter may find you... if it ever may...

I have decided that I will spend the final minutes of my life writing this message, corking it in a bottle and throwing it from the lighthouse at desolation point in the hope that Hinterland will find it...

I have been sitting in my snow shelter next to a fire fighting off cabin fever. Once again the weather has turned foul, the blizzard outside has picked up and it howls incessantly, like a thousand devils, slowly tearing the spirit from my body as it insidiously strips away the thinning wall of snow, cloth and sticks that seperate us. My fire went from a 2 hour fire to 9 minutes, and as crazy as it sounds, this is all bearable. Whilst its not a totally unique incident, its scenarios like this that helped me to carve out my own unique story. This is what I play TLD for, but sadly it pretty much stops there.

I try throwing a piece of coal on the fire and it goes back up to 1h15m, but quicker than I can blink, it drops back to 9 minutes. I unload another piece of coal onto it, same thing... I'm a bit upset, so 'for science' I dumped over 50 sticks and 40 odd pieces of coal onto it over the next few minutes only to have every piece do the exact same thing.

Its not something new, but its something that has really annoyed me for quite some time. I can totally accept that some weather is just too horrible to sustain a fire, but where the hell did all my fuel just disappear to?

Hinterland, can you please fix this? 

The mechanic to pull coal out of the fire is already in place, how about unburnt fuel as well? 

It'd be nice to be able to stomp out a fire (or salvage one that has blown out due to bad weather) and have it allow you to pull out the charred logs/coal for use in the next one. It's not an impossible idea to imagine in a real world scenario.

**jams cork in and throws bottle** 

Due to my weakened state, the bottle slips from my frozen grasp and falls short of the sea.

As my lifeless body collapses onto the snow, the bottle slams into the rocks beneath my feet. 

The sound of the smashing glass is lost in that same wind that lifts and carries the message away... 

with me...

[Stone]

? dramatic @Nyarlathotep! Up voted. Wind blown fire? Cool! I dig it, I love the wind dynamics. But for all that fuel to disappear makes no sense. So a better treatment would be great. Maybe they could add a 'poke fire' feature: poking any fire gives +2mins burn time per hour of burn time. Poking wind blown fire unlocks 90% of fuel before wind blown. Poking requires one stick/bear spear in inventory.

[TheEldritchGod]

It's already harvest-able.

Take a torch. Without pause, take another. And another. And Another. Let them fall like rain to your feet until the fire is at 9 minutes or less, because you won't be able to take anymore torches.

Wait.

When the torches all burn out, pick them back up. Now harvest them. Each one is one stick. With maxed out fire skill, one stick is 10 minutes of fire. It costs 10 minutes to make a torch.

Fire Harvested

[Ice Hole]

The OP is referring to fires that are extinguished by wind.  The fire could have 10 hours remaining and when the strong gusty wind blows the fuel vanishes with only 9 minutes remaining for the fire.  Harvesting torches is just not an option.

[MarrowStone]

This is a pretty good idea. The fire would have to be completely extinguished before "reclaiming" however.

Also, I believe they should limit it to just logs and coal counting towards it. This would also help make sticks less overpowered than they already are and differentiate fuel advantages and disadvantages. 

The reason the fire must be wind extinguished however is because one could heat up very fast by pouring all their logs on the fire, only burn one log and then take all the logs back... also, the fires would have to be coded much differently to only burn one log at a time which isnt really how fires work. 

Perhaps i have a solution!

Instead of claiming whole logs back, map charcoal becomes another fuel type, when a fire is extinguished by wind, it can be harvested for charcoal equal to half of the previous burn time?

Burn time added by sticks wont count towards it.

[Nyarlathotep]

On 02/06/2018 at 7:01 PM, MarrowStone said:

This is a pretty good idea. The fire would have to be completely extinguished before "reclaiming" however.

Also, I believe they should limit it to just logs and coal counting towards it. This would also help make sticks less overpowered than they already are and differentiate fuel advantages and disadvantages. 

The reason the fire must be wind extinguished however is because one could heat up very fast by pouring all their logs on the fire, only burn one log and then take all the logs back... also, the fires would have to be coded much differently to only burn one log at a time which isnt really how fires work. 

Perhaps i have a solution!

Instead of claiming whole logs back, map charcoal becomes another fuel type, when a fire is extinguished by wind, it can be harvested for charcoal equal to half of the previous burn time?

Burn time added by sticks wont count towards it.

Yeah, its also bit strange that once coal has burnt out you are able to maintain the fire temperature with any fuel whatsoever that you have on hand. Fire is a pretty major aspect of this game, so they shouldn't be afraid to spend some time on bringing it up to par. 

Each log should have a burn time (according to size/type), when a player throws a log on a fire, it should begin to burn respecting this 'burn time' from the very moment it is placed in there.

If another log is placed on the fire, it should also begin its timer, ticking in parallel with all the other fuel which is currently burning. Placing more fuel in a fire should not put so much emphasis on increasing the length of time the fire burns (as it currently does), but instead emphasis on increasing its heat output with a smaller emphasis on the burn time.

The 'fire skill' should be the factor that increases the length of time with which a fire burns. Given the right fuel, anyone that is skilled in building fires should have no problem whatsoever building a fire that burns all night using specific wood stacking methods.

Comparison of early vs late game player responsibilities would therefore reflect in the amount of wood needed to maintain a fire, most notably over a long period of time.

If a fire is scattered or kicked out (which would really be quite easy, given the amount of snow laying about) then each of the logs should have their 'burn timer' locked as a percentage (similar to what we see on every other item in the game) a 50% burnt cedar log would only burn for about 30 minutes or so etc... Having these round down into 25% increments could stop it becoming too granular or being exploited, whilst still giving the player some great opportunities to salvage/scatter a fire they have just started for any number of reasons.

Kicking a fire out should of course have some sort of penalty incurred offering the player some choices in carving out their own story, nothing too crazy though. Something such as 5 minutes of time and a smidgen of calories lost in respect to this 5 minutes should suffice. The players body temperature should not plummet in a ridiculous fashion during this time.

If this was to come into effect, things such as fire being a 'fail safe wolf repellent' would probably need to be looked at as it would likely make an already pretty OP mechanic even more ridiculously OP (outside of this discussion, this is something that should probably be balanced out anyway) And as far as a player starting a fire to stop themselves from freezing to kick out when they are done, isn't that what its there for anyway ?