Water

[Salty Crackers]

I think that water is more of a nuisance than a challenge. It's too easy to stockpile for things like hibernation runs. I feel that eventually, potable water should become unsafe water after a few weeks. You would then have to re-boil or re-purify the water. Water should also have the potential to freeze if it sits in the cold for too long. Then, you would either have to leave it in a warm place for a while or thaw it over a fire. Finally, I think you should be able to use water purification tablets any time you want. There's not really a point in purifying your water if you can just boil it. This way, water purification tablets actually have a purpose.

[selfless]

Purification tablets are in fact currently useable at any time (provided you are carrying some dirty water) from the inventory page. They were included on the fire's water page only to remind players that they had them in inventory and serve the same purpose as boiling.

Agree water in real life would go bad and freeze, but for the game that might be hard. Degrading water with a condition % mechanic may be doable, but then individual bottles of water would need to be tracked instead of the current system where it all lumps together.

Frozen water would be interesting but would require more work on the melting/heat transfer mechanic to become totally real. Probably the wet clothes model is the better one to modify since it first freezes in the open then thaws when near fire.

[hekele]

Freezing could be interesting, but also might be pretty limiting and complicated. Is the water in my backpack? Carried inside my jacket? Can I choose? If it's in my backpack it'd freeze any time I was outside for more than a couple hours. If water freezes, meat should freeze, too, and then same questions.

I disagree about water going bad. Boiled water in a sealed container isn't going to slowly grow bacteria out of nowhere. They'd have to be introduced back into it somehow. If water were in individual bottles, it could maybe track water you've drunk from, versus ones sealed since the boiling water was put in.

I'm not sure what you mean about purification tablets. When can't you use purification tablets?

Personally, I think the water system works pretty well as it is, though.

[SteveP]

Frozen water would be a good addition for Stalker. Water kept on your person obviously should be kept warm as well as water indoors. It tends to make the game more like a physics simulator for calories so maybe that's good since calories are a theme of the game. Several indoor locations are below zero.

Shouldn't we be able to draw water from the lake at fishing holes? it would save time for melting snow and still probably need boiling. I like the idea of different bodies of water having a different probability of food poisoning from drinking "unsafe" water. For example, the lake on Timberwolf Mountain would be very clean, as would Mystery Lake.

[Salty Crackers]

To tell the truth, water purfication tablets are still pretty useless. When melting snow, you can just boil the water. There are non-potable water sources (such as the basin in the gas station), but there are potable water sources (toilets) with a lot more water. Even if we could get unlimited unsafe water from the lake, you could still use the stove in the hut to boil the water.

Speaking of getting water from the lake, that's a good idea. It saves time melting snow, and that is boring. Maybe there would be a chance of getting a fish too. By taking water from CH, it's also a way to get salt to maybe preserve meat in a future update.

[hekele]

I've only used the tablets once, but I do carry one with me at all times, and I often melt some snow on the last moments of a fire. If I ever get stuck out where I don't need a fire, but I'm dehydrated, it's nice knowing I've got a tablet and some un-potable water. Similarly if I have to hole up somewhere without an indoor fire, and/or low on fuel, I can just do the melting half of the process.

Although, as someone who who's eaten clean snow thousands of times and never gotten sick from it, I know the risk from 'unpotable' water from melted snow is much less than the game suggests.

[illanthropist]

Puri tabs ain't that useless, recent example, broken axe bad weather and low on water collected enough sticks to boil up a litre then dropped in a tab, time spent foraging more sticks and karate chopping branches I would probably have froze to death.

Agree with the endless supply needs reviewing though, should be limited by the amount of containers you carry

[cekivi]

Agree with the endless supply needs reviewing though, should be limited by the amount of containers you carry

Doesn't the mass of the water already take care of that? If you want to haul around 10L of water that's a third of your total inventory used up.

[illanthropist]

Agree with the endless supply needs reviewing though, should be limited by the amount of containers you carry

Doesn't the mass of the water already take care of that? If you want to haul around 10L of water that's a third of your total inventory used up.

But there's nothing stopping you from filling 3 lockers with 40 litres of water each, when I first looted a bottle I figured that would have added to my total but there's no limit apart from 5 litres at a time prep.

[Drifter Man]

I've been thinking about water, too, and about the current possiblity to stockpile infinite amounts of it. In my current run, I have about 250 liters of water stored in bottles on the floor in a below-zero environment that should have frozen weeks ago.

I considered some ideas regarding freezing/degradation mechanics but there is always the problem that it would make the current pooled storage system (water volume being tracked rather than individual bottles) impossible. Each "piece of water", no matter how small, would have different status and the result would be something like that with meat - 0.01 kg or 1 kg, it always takes up 1 slot and cannot be pooled.

The simplest solution to inifinite water storage is to introduce bottles/canisters similar to flasks and jerry cans for kerosene, and limit these bottles/canisters in number (only they wouldn't vanish when empty). No degradation mechanics of any sort would then be necessary, but again, pooled storage would be lost.

Personally, I like the simplicity of pooled storage and even suggested the same for kerosene. I don't think I would trade what we have for a more realistic water management system.

Water purifcation tablets work fine, in my opinion. Melting 1 liter of snow takes 20 minutes, boiling the water takes additional 10. If the fire ends before the melting is done, one gets proportional amount of non-potable water. But if fire ends before the boiling is done, no potable water is made - the boiling temperature was not reached. This can easily happen if the wind puts the fire out, and the tablets allow to turn whatever non-potable water is available into potable water, saving the player from dehydration.

Taking non-potable water from ice holes is a good idea.