Absurdly Hot Fires

[NinJay]

I mean, I'm glad fires are not a constant temperature and that you can add maybe 20 reclaimed wood and make a giant super hot bonfire. But, just keeping a fire going for a long period of time? Feels like 130 F in a blizzard at night/early morning. Google tells me that's 54 and a half C. Of course, that's after all the clothes I'm wearing, but it still seems hot enough to kill, and it's only because of a slow, steady stream of fuel.

EDIT: Changed the title from "The New Fires," which sounds dumb.

[InvicteExsules]

Am i seeing that right? Air temp is 104F? That doesnt seem right, i agree

Yeah indoors at night I was adding just enough wood to keep my fire going as I slept in shifts so there was never very much on the fire and i got it up to like 55C by dawn, maybe a value in the decay rate of fire heat got messed up in the update, because that seems excessive.

[Guest mcopeman]

Hmmm... I'll investigate this.

Melody~

[elloco999]

A fire gets warmer with each piece of fuel you add and it quickly builds up to a max of 80C (176F). The fire temp never drops down until it dies out though...

80C is rather high, but I think this was done in response to the feedback many people gave that instead of lighting 2 fires to make it through a blizzard at night it would make more sense to make 1 bigger fire.

I think to balance the fires a bit it would be a good idea to lower the max temp of a fire to say 50C and also make it take longer to reach this temp. It would be nice if each stick you add would increase the temp a bit less. So the first stick you add raises the temp +3.2C, the second +3.1C, then the thirds +3.0C etc.

Also the fire should start to give of less heat after a while if you stop feeding it.

[McGuffin]

The issue, I think, is that the heat doesnt decay over time. Once it's hot, it's hot, even if the fire is close to die.

[NinJay]

The issue, I think, is that the heat doesnt decay over time. Once it's hot, it's hot, even if the fire is close to die.

Exactly.

[KD7BCH]

Fires should warm on a bell curve. The times are about right but the greatest heat should be in the midpoint of the fire burning. If you build a roaring fire you should still see the greatest heating closer to the midpoint than the beginning and as the fire burns down to embers the coals should throw off heat for a few hours or an hour instead of a few minutes. These embers should also allow you to restart a fire.

[ethomas21]

Jumping on what KD7BCH said, it would be nice if the embers of a fire could be reused to start a new fire, within a time limit dependent on the size of the previous fire. Maybe they last a lot longer in a stove vs campfire as well...

[Aduron]

The issue, I think, is that the heat doesnt decay over time. Once it's hot, it's hot, even if the fire is close to die.

I completely agree, this is the only somewhat unrealistic part. Yes, fires CAN get as hot as OP says. Maybe this is an issue about the difficulty of the game? It would be harder to not only have to manage heat amount (like the current setup) but also heat retention. Having to restock a fire could be yet another change for Stalker only?

And as for restarting fires from embers, I think you can do that... At least, I seem to remember that saving my life a few times, when foraging for wood took a little longer than expected.

[PolarBear70]

You can restart fires from embers. I've had to do that a few times.

As far as what KD7BCH said, I think the fire should build up to a peak point and then tail down as the fire continues. I've always thought that it was a little weird that the fire provides the same heat as it burns down to embers that it did at the middle of the duration, and at the start. A good graphic of this looks like this:

You'll notice that the fire starts up and grows rather quickly to its peak, and then tails down from there. The peak temperature is not in the middle of the curve but biased towards the start. (TLD fires may want to bias just a bit more for gameplay's sake... for those "OMG I'm at 5% and I need this fire to warm me!" moments.)

[Patrick Carlson]

That's really interesting PolarBear.

I'm sure my temperature was at peak strength the other day when I lit myself on fire.

[KD7BCH]

You can restart fires from embers. I've had to do that a few times.

As far as what KD7BCH said, I think the fire should build up to a peak point and then tail down as the fire continues. I've always thought that it was a little weird that the fire provides the same heat as it burns down to embers that it did at the middle of the duration, and at the start. A good graphic of this looks like this:

You'll notice that the fire starts up and grows rather quickly to its peak, and then tails down from there. The peak temperature is not in the middle of the curve but biased towards the start. (TLD fires may want to bias just a bit more for gameplay's sake... for those "OMG I'm at 5% and I need this fire to warm me!" moments.)

Exactly what I was thinking it should look like.

[ShadowThief098]

As someone who plays stalker I'm fine with the way it is, I've never been stuck in a blizzard freezing, and thought "hmm, I wish this fire was colder"

[NinJay]

Yeah, someone mentioned that fires could get that hot, and I agree. If I put that amount of wood on it all at once, it would make sense. The problem is that the fire always had 1-5 hours left to burn, and I constantly added a steady stream of reclaimed wood. Never really was a roaring bonfire with 48,797 logs.