Evolving environment, pine cones, trouble with a hunting hut

[druffzilla]

After playing another marathon of this lovely game two more ideas came to my mind which, I think, would add a lot more immersion and realism to the game.

Evolving Environment:

Houses:

Houses and habitable structures should slowly decay, the Insulation would suffer e.g. -2 degrees in the very beginning adding -1 degree every ~75 or 100 days. With a cap of -8 degrees maybe?

The interior could have a small chance of decaying too, shelves fall apart after a while, everything you placed on them simply falls to the ground. Cabinet doors fall off and everything you stored in them falls in front of them. Maybe you can repair them with tools and scrap metal?

Nature:

Dead and fallen trees add up over time and bodies/carcasses disappear because they get covered by snow.

If wolves catch deer the deer population grows back and the wolf population rises, if you kill wolves the opposite happens.

Pine cones:

Pine cones spawn randomly with a lower chance all around pine trees, they can be burned as a whole for ~15min burn time and a good amount of heat or harvested for pine nuts and a tinder plug maybe?

If pine cones are bad tinder, there could be "pine cones" and "empty pine cones" which have the burning properties of a stick.

The pine nuts would have a fairly good amount of calories and could be a respawning but rare food source.

Also I came across a hunting hut which would not let me in without crouching, not really a bug but definitely something which should be ironed out soon or later because there's also a bear roaming around it.

Not sure if its a bug yet so I thought I just put it in here before I create an extra post.

[toebar]

pine cones are not particularly good for burning. Most in BC are quite small anyway.

Also, there's currently no pine trees in the game, only cedar and Douglas-fir for conifers. Cedar cones are very small, and Douglas-fir cones are bigger but not big enough to burn for very long. The seeds in the cones of both of these species are very small (nothing like pine nuts).

Plant food sources should not really respawn, since it's winter and plants are dormant--use your resources wisely.

[druffzilla]

Hmm... Yeah maybe there are no pinetrees in the game... This one might look a little bit like one?

Yes. Plants should not respawn, but sticks and limbs do too so cones could fall off trees too.

Resources are not what they used to be anyway, other then ammunition and matches everything lasts almost forever, and if I run out of ammunition one day I would search for pinecones rather than fighting wolfs with my hands.

Charcoal for example should not respawn and maybe pinecones/fircones would burn very hot because of their oil and could work as an alternative?

But yeah, I guess other cones than pinecones would not be worth to harvest for their seeds.

[toebar]

yeah, it could look like a pine tree, but given the game's artistic style (which I really enjoy), I don't think it's fair to judge the realism of the look--other needle-leaved trees can look pretty similar.

you're right about the cones respawning like branches do--that would make sense. but, there's still not really a good survival use for then