What controls the number of burned out buildings?

[TheEldritchGod]

You know, with the creation of that mod that lets you have all the prepper caches spawn in a game, I can finally have my dream of playing a game with all preper caches. Ironically, I find having too much loot is a pain, if you mean to drag everything to the Quonset garage to put on display. On the other hand, I also want every possible location to spawn. I want to minimize the number of burned out buildings. I'd like as many intact buildings as possible, while keeping the loot at a minimum. Is this possible? Or am I going to have to live with max loot to get max locations?

Another question: I'd like to keep healing to a minimum. So I'm basically looking at making it so you only heal while sleeping, and keeping that on low. However, if I also set it on maximum thirst, I have to drink every 6-8 hours or take damage. Which is just annoying. Opinions on setting thirst at max? Will I enjoy the sheer brutality of it, requiring that I heal over several days, or will I just find it annoying?

And about animals: I'm thinking of putting fish, deer, and rabbits at low, but also thinking of having no fish deer or rabbits at all. Sort of think that might be a good trade off for having 18 prepper caches in a interloper setting. Maybe no Moose at all, thus requiring me to go look for the one moose pouch in the game in HRV. Thoughts?

Is setting weather variability on high good or bad? After playing deadman, I'm starting to think keeping the weather changing setting on low would give me some brutal blizzards and lock me up for days. Which is worse?

Finally Wolves and bears. If I set them on low, it's not as dangerous, but that also puts a major kabosh on the only source of renewable food in the game, as well as making it a bitch to make my own clothing and bedrolls. Cloth does run out. In the short run, high is worse, because more wolves, but in my Stalker run, I live off almost exclusively wolf meat. I think the harder version is wolves and bear low, at least for me. Either way, I'll be maxing out scent and detection so when they do spawn, they home in on me like a meat-seeking rocket. Thoughts?

EDIT: One more option: Only Bears. MANY. MANY, MANY Bears! No wolves to eat. No wolves for coats.

JUST. BEARS.

[Pillock]

Ok. I play all the time with custom settings similar to some those you're considering.

With 'at rest' condition recovery on Low and 'normal' condition recovery on None, you'll get about 15% regain from a 10 hour sleep (without herbal tea). I normally play with thirst rate at Medium, just because I haven't been bothered to experiment with that variable much yet, but turning it up would indeed reduce the amount of sleep you can safely take at a time, and therefore the amount of condition regain you get per 24-hour cycle. I find it much more immersive and fun that taking a big hit to condition (from, say, an animal attack or from prolonged freezing) means that you have to spend a few days recovering to get back to full fitness, and I reckon that having to drink more often during the day would be a worthwhile trade off to get this. Although, it should be noted that being on low condition for a few days after suffering damage doesn't actually restrict what you can do during that time (you're not actually 'injured' or physically weaker in any way): it just makes being out and about a little bit more risky, in case you suffer another unexpected hit.

I always play with animal detection and scent settings on max. I also put the animal populations all to 'medium', again because I haven't got round to tinkering with that specifically. I tend to get one bear at a time per map like this, which I think is good. Under normal circumstances, wolves seem to go about in pairs or threes, but I've had 4 or 5 coming towards me at once when I've been carrying meat or guts (note: any amount of meat, cooked or uncooked, seems to bring them flocking to you if you hang around too long in one place). You could use this to your advantage as a lure if you want wolf hides, perhaps? I have recently started playing with 'wolf fear' on High, and I've found that this makes their behaviour much more unpredictable, which I like - though the majority of wolves will still be aggressive if you don't take some action to scare them off.

I also always play with both weather and wind variability on Low,  just because it feels more like 'real' weather that way. You don't get days-long blizzards, at least not early game. But it seems that the different stages of change in the weather  (eg. sunny and calm >light wind >light snow and wind> strong wind and snow >full-on blizzard) each last longer, meaning you can predict more accurately and with more advanced warning what the weather is going to do next  - again, I think this adds to immersion and I like it.

EDIT: Sorry, but I don't know the answer to your main question about the destroyed buildings! I suspect it might be the 'Base Loot', as a guess? I always have that on 'Medium', because that's the lowest amount you can have while still enabling knives, hatchets, high-end clothing and prepper caches (without mods!). But with all the other loot availability settings on their minimums, the overall loot amount is much closer to Interloper than to Stalker.
(As an example, on a recent Mystery Lake spawn, in the entire map including a prepper cache I found 32 matches and one 65% firestriker (no mag lens), which lasted about 25 days before I had to start seriously rationing my fires, and about 35-40 days before I was actually forced to leave the map to find more, or die. I found no 'outer layer' upper-body clothing at all, no boots and no hats; one pair of red mittens, one hoodie, one pair of work pants, one pair of sports socks. 2 knives, 2 hatchets in 'normal' spawns, plus 2 more of each in the prepper cache. No hammer or hacksaw. One rifle. Hardly any food, 1 can of 5 coffees, 1 pack of 5 herbal teas. I also had the 'natural resources' on as low as possible, so not much cattails, rosehips or mushrooms, either.)
My guess is that setting the base loot amount to its maximum would give you the fewest possible destroyed buildings, but would probably also increase the overall availability of stuff in general. Worth a try, though.