Fractionalized Time to Allow Better Stacking

[Kauffy]

I thought that title would grab ya!

I'm in Day 72 of a Voyageur play-through, and this is the first time I've actually played sandbox since the new cooking mechanic was added.

What I'm finding a lot is that I begin cooking something (or two somethings), and then I want to stack in another activity: clothing repair, studying a book, crafting at a workbench,  fishing, etc. Unfortunately, since you can't read or craft in smaller chunks of time, and repairs can't be interrupted, you're often left staring at the food to cook, wishing you could make better use of the time. Fishing is the only one you can really make this work with now, though, since you can interrupt it (e.g., fish for 1 hour, and when the circle is half-full, you're at the 30-minute mark and you can cancel out of fishing and tend to your foodstuffs.)

Being able to stack time like this is especially critical when time is short or resources like firewood are scarce.

What I propose is allowing studying, and bench crafting to be done in smaller segments (15 minute?) , or just give them a cancel button like the fishing activity, and then calculate completion from there. I know with the bench now, you can craft in .5 hour increments, however when you get down to the last bit, it won't let you do half-hours (I think on the last 1.5 hours on a bow, it wouldn't let me craft for any less than the full 1.5 hours).

Additionally, perhaps, partial repairs. Sometimes, some clothing repairs take a really long time (like, fixing up an urban parka, using fishing tackle). This means that, in the real world, you could work on it for a little while when you had time, but in-game here, you have to make sure that you have the full time period available to complete it.

[Pillock]

Yes. This never really mattered very much before, but since the cooking update it's been thrown to the forefront of people's attention.

I guess you can rationalise it by assuming that you get so absorbed in your reading or concentrating on not ballsing up your sewing that you forget to check the cooking? Then at exact one-hour intervals, you suddenly go, "Oh, shit, my steaks are burning!" and snap out of the trance. Or something.

[Dawnshift]

8 hours ago, Pillock said:

 (...) I guess you can rationalise it by assuming that you get so absorbed in your reading or concentrating on not ballsing up your sewing that you forget to check the cooking? (...)

You could also justify a bear / wolves attacking you while reading outdoors then. Or your clothes catching fire by accident if you sit close to a campfire .

I'd expect the wilderness to hone your attentiveness not lessen it.