Wish List Part 2

[potoole64]

Apologizes in advance if any of this has been suggested. I've not read every post..

Clothing: Realistically clothes don’t wear out that quickly and it takes me out of the game when I need to deal with it. A good jacket retains its ability for years, not weeks. As an alternative, I suggest changing it to ‘wetness’ analogy. Much of the mechanics stay the same, but it’s more realistic, which helps with game immersions, and adds some complexity. In a real survival scenario, staying dry is almost as important as food and water.

The wet mechanism would require the player to change some items of clothing regularly. Some items, like socks, would need to be dried/changed every two or three days. Not doing so, would affect their cold protection ability. This in turn could cause frostbite, which would be a medical condition.

It would work like this: Some cloths, socks, long johns, hat, gloves would get wet when the player is outside. Better quality items, wool for example, would loose their cold protection slower but still be affected. The player would need to change into dry item and leave the wet item to dry. They could be dropped in front of a fire or “hung” somewhere. The hanging would be trivial, which is why drop work just as well. In a ‘normal’ indoors area (45 degree (f)), drying could take a day. In front of a fire, it could be done in an hour.

This adds a new challenge for players. They need to have spare socks and hats, take time to change or risk losing warmth and getting frost bite. In blizzard conditions, coats and jean could also be affected. Go into a blizzard for any period of time and all your clothes need to be dried.

Item Interface:

* Add scroll bars to the item lists

* Make list bigger so I can see more items and scroll less

* Add the ability to multi-select several items and move them to storage in one click.

* For stack of items (matchsticks, tinder, pills, etc) Shift-click would move all items to/from storage and by-pass the ‘select item count’ dialog.

* Add a hot-key for the food menu

* Allow multi-select for eating food items. For example, multi-select granola, beef jerky and water, click ‘eat’. All the items are consumed one after the other. Times are sequential. This is just more convenient.

* Continuous scroll when the user holds down the up/down arrows keys. To scroll through an item list, I need to press the down arrow each time for each item. Press-and-hold to fast scroll would be nice.

In game pastimes:

This is just something to increase game depth and immersion. If I’m setup in a place with food and water, I can sleep for days, with breaks to eat, and not do anything else. That couldn't happen in reality and there’s no real challenge to it. If a player is fully rested, (fatigue < 20%, condition 100%) don't let them sleep. The result is, if the player has food and water, can’t sleep, but has nothing to do, it adds an element of going ‘stir crazy’ to the game. If you've ever been bored you know how tiring it can be, but if you've just slept for 12 hours, you can’t fall asleep. Instead, introduce some pastimes like reading a book, playing solitaire, carving wood or something like that. The user would have to find the item (book, cards, etc.) before using them. A book could only be read a few times before becoming useless. These activities would pass time, but increase fatigue.

Fire Usage:

* Display how long it will take to cook/melt/boil an item.

* Do multiple things on a fire simultaneously. I would like to cook, melt and boil at the same time. This is more of a convenience in terms of using the interface. Time could be increased slightly for balance. Example: separately - cook 20 minutes, boil 10 minutes = total 30 minute. Psudo-simultaneous adds 20% due to sharing heat. (Adjusted for balance): cook 20 (+4), boil 10 (+1) total 20 + 5 = 25.

Item wear

* I don’t think all items should incur a wear cost. I’ve already mentioned that items like coat, and boots would easily last a year.

* I don’t think ‘repair’ is the right metaphor for items like knives. I think ‘sharpness’ is better. (This is just semantics, I know). Sharpening is better then repair. It would require a tool (sharpening stone) but not spare metal.

* Eliminate generic ‘spare metal’. Using spare cloth to repair an item of clothing makes sense, but to use ‘spare metal’ to repair something requires a forge, lots of heat and years of skill. As an alternative, repairing an item requires another of that item. To repair a lamp, I need a lamp. A second alternative, which is a much bigger change, would have individual parts (2-4) for items. Using lamps as an example. Parts would be: igniter, wick, burner assembly, etc. These items could be harvested from other like items. I realize ‘spare metal’ is a simpler implementation of the same mechanism, but I like individual parts better.

Miscellaneous Item:

* A machete. I really want a machete to use against the wolves. It would just be cool.

* Using a knife to open a can has a risk of injury by cutting the hand. Can opener, no risk. Same with smash can (which I never actually used.)

* Eliminate distinct ‘reclaimed wood’ items from locations and use those little wooden storage boxes. Taking the box removes it from the room, and adds it to the loot. Harvesting then breaks it up into ‘reclaimed wood’ to be burned.

* In sub-zero temperature, small cabins will cause the player to lose warmth regardless of clothing.

* List max cold protection for clothing item. The current value is displayed, based on wear, but not what it would be at 100%.

* Eliminate melting water. Non-potable water has no in-game use that I've seen. In a survival scenario, you’d never just melt snow first then boil it later; you’d always boil it at the same time.

* Melting water should take less time. (Previous comment notwithstanding)

* Boiling water should take more time.

* Fewer pain pills – I think I only used them twice.

* Harvesting a lamp recovers the lamp fuel also.

* Be able to cook low quality food to avoid food poisoning. Can reduce calories.

* Use wolf urine to mark an area to keep other wolves away. (Got this idea from Jurassic Park III where a character uses T-Rex urine.)

* Revise the ‘encumbered’ mechanism to use a box or wheel barrel or big suitcase. It would still prevent running and incur an additional fatigue cost and require more food and water. Also, it could prevent using a rifle or flare. In case of a wolf, you’d have to drop the case first, and then equip the rifle/flare to defend yourself. This is just a way to save time moving resources from one area to another. The advantage is you could drop the whole package, leave the stuff and do something or run somewhere, then come back for it without having to store/drop each individual item.

* Tinder plugs and cloth can be used for warmth only fires.

[snegec]

I'd prefer more realism.

As an example, that calory values would be adjusted to real world. Eating 5kg of wolf meat in a single day is crazy. Not only that. I killed a wolf and gotten 5kg of meat out of it. Shouldn't I be able to use some of the non-edible pieces to fashion bait for other wolves, so i can gun those down from a safe distance?

Same for gathering wood and fishing. I got camped into one of those lake houses with a stove by 3 wolves the other day. All I could do was melt/boil snow to get drinkable water, fish to get some food into me and forage for wood (how I did that without stripping down the shack is beyond me), for 2 days until I got an unlucky streak of bad fish luck and died of starvation. Shouldn't I be able to throw raw meat at a wolf and have him get busy/distracted so I can safely leg it away?

[The_Hawk35]

. Shouldn't I be able to throw raw meat at a wolf and have him get busy/distracted so I can safely leg it away?

You can press 4 and you'll drop a decoy which in this case is food to distract the wolf.

[brenton_nichol]

* Harvesting a lamp recovers the lamp fuel also.

This mechanic is already in place, provided that you also have in your inventory a lantern fuel can at the time of harvest. It will add a percentage of the lamp's fuel to the fuel can.