Fire duration shows effective time, not base time

[Rexdawn]

When making a fire outdoors, the fire lasts longer.  However, the base timer is shown and it simply decreases slower than normal, making it hard to track how long it will last.

It would be nice if the displayed duration was the EFFECTIVE time remaining based on modifiers instead of the base time.

[RegentRelic]

I think it adds some intensity when you don’t know exactly how long your fire will last. The best parts of the long dark are the things you don’t know rather then what you do. Plus you don’t how long your fire will last in real life, just a idea.

[Cr41g]

I agree... not knowing how long it will last just adds that extra something... unpredictable.. like the weather, the wind.. 

[Rexdawn]

17 minutes ago, RegentRelic said:

I think it adds some intensity when you don’t know exactly how long your fire will last. The best parts of the long dark are the things you don’t know rather then what you do. Plus you don’t how long your fire will last in real life, just a idea.

No, it just makes me waste firewood.  There's nothing intense about that.

[ManicManiac]

20 minutes ago, RegentRelic said:

I think it adds some intensity when you don’t know exactly how long your fire will last.

I agree 100%... I do really like that ambiguity as well.

[ManicManiac]

14 minutes ago, Rexdawn said:

No, it just makes me waste firewood.

The good part is that if you have the base time and you know what the bonus percentage applied is, then it's not too tricky to figure out your exact burn time if you really need it. (computers and phones have calculator functions that can be used to assist)

Edited October 4, 2019 by ManicManiac

[Rexdawn]

Yes, of course there's a workaround but that's not the point.  It would be NICE if it showed the effective remaining time and of COURSE I can live without it, but if you're going to show the duration of the fire (which is a good thing), it may as well be accurate.  It'd be like arguing that the calories displayed on food items would be fine just showing the base value instead of the value gained from having higher levels in cooking--sure, you could just get a calculator out and add the extra 10% or 25% but no one actually wants to do that.

[rakshasa]

I can live without it, but it'd be nice to have an accurate time. It's not really ambiguous once you know the rules. At firestarting 5, in the "outside" portion of a cave, I know with 100% certainty that my fire duration is doubled, and will confidently sleep 10 hours when the fire says it has 5h 30m left.

[Ice Hole]

The outdoor fires are dependent on the ambient temperature.  It really is not analogous in real world but it does bring ambiguity to the game.

Edited October 5, 2019 by Ice Hole

[stratvox]

On 10/5/2019 at 11:55 AM, Rexdawn said:

It would be NICE if it showed the effective remaining time

The issue here is that the effective remaining time is not really knowable because the as the temperature fluctuates the consumption rate of the wood will change with it. This means that having the temperature drop to -25 in the very late night makes for less remaining effective time than if it drops to -40. As I'm pretty sure the RNG figures that out at the moment of weather changing (which appears to be app. hourly to me) it's not really possible to know what the effective remaining time is. To get into the buzzword compliant weeds of this, a stochastic process driven by random numbers can't really be predicted.