Sleds, Husky's, Snow depth and Snow Shoes

[Cpt Flaps]

I'd love to see some sled like contraption for dragging large quantities of supplies and equipment from place to place. After you've exhausted a region it's quite a painful process to move house. Building a sled that you can drag would be the obvious solution, maybe inhibit weapons and defence systems while dragging as an offset to the grander carry capacity, etc. Would love to see tamable Husky's or something that you can use for transit (Sled attachment) and defence, allowing them to smell meats, etc to help with hunting. Maybe a relationship status between you and the animal to allow and open various traits and characteristics that define each tame. This could help to refresh your play style, different treatment for different play styles. Maybe even allowing us to make a choice to slay the companion in desperate times for harvesting, etc...

Be great to see a depth of snow implemented, that could be overcome by by crafting snowshoes, etc. Could add a whole new level of survival to the game and generate areas of inaccessibility with regular footwear. Letting the players build up their crafting skill before they can see the entire map.

 

Anyway, just a few ideas I've had I wanted to share.

Big thanks for the game & the continuous updating and development Hinterland have put in to this title. I jumped in year 1 on Xbox and the evolution of this games been amazing and kept me coming back to this day. Great work!

 

[UpUpAway95]

While I like Huskies and dog sleds IRL, I'm not in favor of it in the current context of this game.  I like the current nomadic focus that game has and I don't focus on moving everything to one base.  Rather, I like to ensure that I have what I need spread out in several locations across the map so that I can access stuff in whatever zone I'm at and I don't have to carry everything with me or return to a central location whenever some attack ruins my clothes or breaks a tool.

I like the snow depth and craftable snowshoe idea.

[ManicManiac]

@Cpt Flaps,

Sleds have been a topic of discussion since way back in 2013.  Dog companion has made the rounds a lot as well (very recently even ).  I'll add my two cents and then defer to previous Mailbag Dispatches:

On ‎5‎/‎6‎/‎2019 at 12:31 AM, ManicManiac said:

10: Sled - Definitely a neat idea.  This topic in particular has been discussed at great length by many people... in short it seems that the general consensus is it would be neat but would have drastic effects on game play and potentially pose a lot of complex problems in terms of implantation and balancing.

 

On ‎8‎/‎31‎/‎2019 at 5:37 AM, ManicManiac said:

but reasonably consistent with the lore of the game, even if we did find a dog... it would probably immediately try to eat our faces off due to the effects the aurora (in that carnivores animals are preternaturally aggressive and blood thirsty)  

 

On ‎9‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 2:01 AM, ManicManiac said:

It's a neat idea, it really is... I just don't think it would fit with the lore of the game very well.  I've had this subject on my wish lists before (a while back).  The conversation sort of came to the realization that dogs are carnivores, so they would most likely just turn hyper-aggressive like the other carnivores in the game.  Making this particular type of animal companion somewhere in between "extremely dangerous" and "just not possible under the circumstances."   

 

Quote

Raph from Mailbag Dispatch #17:
Re: Sleds -- I think I've responded to something about this in a previous Mailbag; short version: it's very hard for us to simulate sled behaviour in our world.
 

Raph from Mailbag Dispatch #19:
Hmm...it would be a huge amount of work. I don't think taming a Wolf would make sense, but perhaps a dog companion? I'm not sure we'd be able to pull it off. I do like the idea, but creating a good AI and meaningful mechanics so that it felt like a real relationship...that'd be a whole other game's worth of work!
 

Raph from Mailbag Dispatch #32
3) I'm not really sure how high an AI companion ranks in the list of priorities.

Edited September 11, 2019 by ManicManiac

[UTC-10]

The basic idea is easy, the implementation would be time consuming and extensive. Sleds, skis, snow shoes, containers, permanent shelters, tamed animals, stews and soups, more animal-hide clothing, etc. are all easy concepts but the ramifications of implementations and possible limitations of the game structure kind of say those will be a long time coming. 

[Kean Valk]

I think a way to add the sled idea that would at least be possible balancing wise, would be to make something that could be pushed along the railroad track. That way it had a set path, lots of in-game limitations, (such as the derailment in ML getting fully in the way) but would allow for much larger loads then what you can normally be carried. The problem is that even that isn't balanced and you can already see some glaring issues, like "How is it gonna move from region to region?" or "how much would something like that cost??" 

As for the idea of snow shoes and changing levels of snow, personally I really like the concept of this idea. But just adding show shoes would call a lot of things into question. For instance, why does the level of snow never change? Even after 3 blizzards in the same week and below freezing weather 24/7, not an extra inch of snow.