Fire Mechanics

[Shanti]

I started typing an epic reply on another thread about how fires go out when you walk away from them. I realized that I have some big tweaks to the fire mechanics, that I think would help a lot.

First off, all of these suggestions are from my personal experience, which includes a lot of camping and backpacking. Primarily in California (cold and wet in the winter) and the Pacific Northwest (cold and wet almost year round). Growing up, we used a wood stove for our primary heat, so I have lit fires in stoves, on snow, in the rain, and in high wind conditions. I have used split, seasoned wood, and "harvested" deadfall from a forest. After 20 years of casual fire lighting experience, I can tell you my philosophy is to wait for ideal wind conditions, or super-protect your fire with a well made fire ring. And always use dry wood. Otherwise, the fire never really does more than sputter.

Having sat around a campfire, in not too cold in moderate winds (about 40 degrees F, 10 MPH winds), I can tell you that the windchill will remove almost all perceived heat from the fire, even as the increased wind consumes the fuel faster. Most of the heat from a camp fire comes from the warming of the air / fire ring around the fire, which then warms you, and a strong breeze will remove almost all of this. Sitting around that fire, everyone got cold and went to bed. Conversely, one year while snow camping, and sitting around a fire built on the snow (it melted down until it hit the ground, about 2' down), in cold conditions (10 degrees F) with no wind, everyone was quite warm, and complained the next morning about how cold it was when we left the fire and went back to our tents.

So, all that to say that a fire can be an super effective way to get warm, but the biggest factor with fire is wind. First, the wind must be blocked. I propose that the devs implement it like this:

• Add the ability to make a fire ring. It can work just like the placing a camp fire, but once the "ring" is placed, the player can choose between just digging a hole in the snow (no residual heat bonus), or digging a hole and lining it with rocks (trap that beautiful heat and keep it around longer). A time + caloric estimate to complete, and then a fast-forward until your new fire ring is complete. A place-able fire ring object found near cabins, or the camp office (a ridiculously heavy steel ring, like most campgrounds use) could give the player an option to quickly set up a semi-permanent outdoor base.
  
• Reduce our fire lighting skill to 10 to start.
  
• Add a +40 bonus for starting a fire in a stove, or +30 if using a fire ring, or if outside, and there is zero wind.
  
• Add a -3 penalty for every 1 MPH (or KPH) of wind. This would obviously be negated by the stove, but only partially offset by the fire ring.

[*]A flare or lit torch in hand should be able to replace your matches, and give a ~+20 bonus.

That way, initial fire starting values stay the same, but lighting an outdoor fire in anything but ideal conditions is going to be difficult to impossible without accelerate. Shelter becomes even more important, especially at the beginning, but an experienced survivalist could easily make fires outside.

Next, I think that fires should have both a duration and a temperature, and should generate embers. New mechanics work like this:

• Track each stick of wood in the fire separately. Each stick of wood has a burn time, a temperature bonus, and an embers rating. Each of these is explained below:
  
  • Burn time for wood seem well balanced, and will continue to work well
    
  • Adding a new stick of wood adds +X degrees heat bonus to your fire. Reclaimed wood may burn hottest (since it is the most dry) (10 degrees), then fir and cedar (8 degrees) then a fire log (5 degrees)
    
  • Once each stick of wood finishes it's burn time, it changes into embers. Embers can be a simple number, where reclaimed wood is +10, fir is +50, cedar +10, firelog +5. As soon as a stick of wood is consumed, embers are generated and they start decaying. When they are finished decaying, the embers go cold. How the embers decay should be dependent on the temperature at their location, exposure to falling snow, if they are in a stove or fire ring, etc, but mostly based on an exponential decay (Newton's law of cooling). Simply dividing the embers number by 2 per hour for normal (dry) conditions seems about right (for my proposed embers ratings above). Excellent conditions (like in a stove) might reduce the dividing number to 1.5, and really adverse conditions might increase it to 3 or 4 for super cold temperatures, high wind, or snow fall, all the way up to 9-10 for a blizzard.

An example of a fire like this might be:

• (start) I start the fire with a cedar log (burn time 1 hr, heat +8 degrees).
  
• (15 minutes) I'm still not warming up, so I drop a fir log on the fire. Now, the fire will burn for another 1.5 hours (fir's burn duration), but it will only be +16 degrees heat bonus for another 45 minutes, when the cedar is consumed.
  
• (1 hour) Now it's too cold again, but I don't need the fire to last that much longer, so I add some reclaimed wood. The burn time on reclaimed wood is 30 minutes, which is what I have left on the fir. After adding the reclaimed wood, the fire is quite hot (+18 degrees), and will burn for 30 more minutes, and has 10 coals.
  
• (1 hour, 45 minutes) I let the fire go out, and the coals are calculated something like this: the original cedar embers have decayed slightly for 30 minutes (to around 7.5) and are now increased by +60 for the reclaimed wood and the fir. At 67.5, under moderate conditions, they would decay to 33.75 after 1 hour, 16.87 after 2, etc, until they would "go out" when they drop below 1, just after hour 7. If I had lit that same fire in a stove, the embers might last longer, up to 9 or 10 hours. In a blizzard, the embers would go out in just over an hour.

Embers could also throw off heat (5 degrees * ember rating / 100), which could give the player an idea of how much longer the embers will stick around, although I would much prefer there to be a simple estimate when hovering over the fire: Campfire: Embers, less than 1 hour, or Wood stove: Embers, 8 hours.

Finally, a wooden stove or camp fire ring should continue to radiate heat after the fire is burnt out. I think the best way to do this is use the fire's temperature bonus, and immediately start degrading it when the fire goes out. Obviously, how quickly the fire's bonus degrades should depend on how cold / windy it is around the stove / fire ring, and it should degrade fairly quickly (hit zero in about an hour or two for a stove that is inside).

[nicko]

I would like to see when building a fire over top of another the old fire becomes part of the new one. atm it does not v258.

as you can see I built a fire over top of a dead recent fire, you can do this many times and the deadwood continues. prb a major code change but it would be pretty cool if your deadwood attributed to your new fire! thanks.

[toebar]

really good info and thought put into this... but I just think you're over thinking it a little.. Don't get me wrong--Your suggestion would certainly create a more realistic fire model... but would it add that much to the game?.. I'd say no.

Fire rings can be helpful, but I never ever use them in winter (and only in other seasons if one has been made already). It's just too hard to find rocks when there's 3 feet of snow on the ground--and the payoff vs effort is not there. Best option is just to lay a deck of larger wood on the snow and light the fire on top to avoid everything sinking into the snow too quickly. In a survival situation, however, I would certainly take the time to have rocks around my fire at my home base.

[octavian]

but would it add that much to the game?.. I'd say no.

Agreed.

[whisperwind777]

• Add the ability to make a fire ring. It can work just like the placing a camp fire, but once the "ring" is placed, the player can choose between just digging a hole in the snow (no residual heat bonus), or digging a hole and lining it with rocks (trap that beautiful heat and keep it around longer). A time + caloric estimate to complete, and then a fast-forward until your new fire ring is complete. A place-able fire ring object found near cabins, or the camp office (a ridiculously heavy steel ring, like most campgrounds use) could give the player an option to quickly set up a semi-permanent outdoor base.
  
• Reduce our fire lighting skill to 10 to start.
  
• Add a +40 bonus for starting a fire in a stove, or +30 if using a fire ring, or if outside, and there is zero wind.
  
• Add a -3 penalty for every 1 MPH (or KPH) of wind. This would obviously be negated by the stove, but only partially offset by the fire ring.

[*]A flare or lit torch in hand should be able to replace your matches, and give a ~+20 bonus.

That way, initial fire starting values stay the same, but lighting an outdoor fire in anything but ideal conditions is going to be difficult to impossible without accelerate. Shelter becomes even more important, especially at the beginning, but an experienced survivalist could easily make fires outside.

Next, I think that fires should have both a duration and a temperature, and should generate embers. New mechanics work like this:

• Track each stick of wood in the fire separately. Each stick of wood has a burn time, a temperature bonus, and an embers rating. Each of these is explained below:
  
  • Burn time for wood seem well balanced, and will continue to work well
    
  • Adding a new stick of wood adds +X degrees heat bonus to your fire. Reclaimed wood may burn hottest (since it is the most dry) (10 degrees), then fir and cedar (8 degrees) then a fire log (5 degrees)
    
  • Once each stick of wood finishes it's burn time, it changes into embers. Embers can be a simple number, where reclaimed wood is +10, fir is +50, cedar +10, firelog +5. As soon as a stick of wood is consumed, embers are generated and they start decaying. When they are finished decaying, the embers go cold. How the embers decay should be dependent on the temperature at their location, exposure to falling snow, if they are in a stove or fire ring, etc, but mostly based on an exponential decay (Newton's law of cooling). Simply dividing the embers number by 2 per hour for normal (dry) conditions seems about right (for my proposed embers ratings above). Excellent conditions (like in a stove) might reduce the dividing number to 1.5, and really adverse conditions might increase it to 3 or 4 for super cold temperatures, high wind, or snow fall, all the way up to 9-10 for a blizzard.

An example of a fire like this might be:

• (start) I start the fire with a cedar log (burn time 1 hr, heat +8 degrees).
  
• (15 minutes) I'm still not warming up, so I drop a fir log on the fire. Now, the fire will burn for another 1.5 hours (fir's burn duration), but it will only be +16 degrees heat bonus for another 45 minutes, when the cedar is consumed.
  
• (1 hour) Now it's too cold again, but I don't need the fire to last that much longer, so I add some reclaimed wood. The burn time on reclaimed wood is 30 minutes, which is what I have left on the fir. After adding the reclaimed wood, the fire is quite hot (+18 degrees), and will burn for 30 more minutes, and has 10 coals.
  
• (1 hour, 45 minutes) I let the fire go out, and the coals are calculated something like this: the original cedar embers have decayed slightly for 30 minutes (to around 7.5) and are now increased by +60 for the reclaimed wood and the fir. At 67.5, under moderate conditions, they would decay to 33.75 after 1 hour, 16.87 after 2, etc, until they would "go out" when they drop below 1, just after hour 7. If I had lit that same fire in a stove, the embers might last longer, up to 9 or 10 hours. In a blizzard, the embers would go out in just over an hour.

Embers could also throw off heat (5 degrees * ember rating / 100), which could give the player an idea of how much longer the embers will stick around, although I would much prefer there to be a simple estimate when hovering over the fire: Campfire: Embers, less than 1 hour, or Wood stove: Embers, 8 hours.

Then how do you caculate the heat and the ember if the fire is turned into ember in 9 minutes when a blizzard strikes? Some of the existing mechanics in this game just prevent it from becoming realistic.

Currently I never make a campfire longer than 30 minutes. I don't want a 12 hours' campfire turned in to 9 minutes ember just because some sudden storm coming from no where.

It's just a matter of time before a player learn that it's not worthwhile to warm up by making a campfire.

Just find a bed and take a nap because it's far more efficient and effective.