Something is wrong with time

[Hotzn]

I just noticed that fires burn longer than indicated when you sleep (or you sleep shorter than indicated). I had a fire going in one of the fishing huts in CH, I had originally placed many sticks and one Fir firewood in it. When the remaining fire duration was indicated as 2 hrs 45 min approx., I went to sleep in my bedroll for 2 hours. On waking up, I found the fire indicated about 1.5 hrs. duration remaining. When duration had gone down to 1 hr 16 min, I went to sleep in the bedroll again for 1 hour. On waking up, the fire in the stove had 36 minutes left. Is it possible that for every hour you sleep the fire only loses 40 minutes of burning time?

This happened in v258, PC, Win 8.1.

[Jeremy JPOW Powell]

This is by design. What's happening is that the fire is always making calculations based off the actual air temp. If it increases then the fire will last longer. We don't show the time changing while you are looking at it as the time would be constantly going up and down.

So we do this behind the scenes. If you sleep or walk away from the fire it should update the time once you are back. This may have increased or decreased based off the temp.

So what you were seeing was that after sleeping for 2 hours with a 2 hr 45 min fire was that you gained 15 mins on your fire because of the temperature outside increasing enough to bring it up a bit. or atleast slow the decrease in time in a sense.

Hopefully that makes sense, I mighta mangled the explanation a bit. It's Friday.

Jeremy

[Hotzn]

Thanks for the explanation, Jeremy.

So that means if the temperature drops after I check the fire duration, it will actually burn out faster than indicated? Let's say, I plan to stay overnight in a fishing hut, stack up a fire in the evening for 8 hours, but then temperatures drop during the night, the fire goes out after 5 hours, and I freeze while sleeping? If I encountered that phenomenon in the game without knowing about it, I would be very confused.

Does it really make sense to have a fire increase in burning time when the ambient temperature rises? I would rather think that a higher ambient temperature would make things burn away faster, so a temperature drop would increase burning time. :geek:

Anyway, I would personally prefer if burning time to be constant, irrespective of ambient temperature. Many people will likely be irritated if the burning time indicated is not the actual burning time. And the way you are decribing it, I don't see any advantage for gameplay. But maybe I am missing something. :?

[selfless]

Also note: when you lie down to sleep for 1 hour you almost never sleep exactly one hour.

Check your log and you will see something akin to "slept for 1 hour 5 minutes".

[norup]

This is by design. What's happening is that the fire is always making calculations based off the actual air temp. If it increases then the fire will last longer.

If you are assuming some kind of managing of the fire, it makes sense. Otherwise, I find it counter-intuitive. I would expect a fire that is left to itself to burn faster, if the ambient temperature is higher. Why? Because less energy is required to heat the fuel to evaporate flammable gases. This effect is likely to be small, and a temperature-independent burn rate is a reasonable assumption.

Candle example