Fire Modification:

[TheEldritchGod]

1. Fix the bug where if you place a fire on a sloped surface, you can put multiple pots on the fire.

2. I want three different fire options: Normal fire that only warms you , cooking fire (requires 2 stones) , wind proof fire (requires 20 stones)

3. I would like the ability to make said fires tied to your skill level in fire building skill. You can make the basic "heating" fire at level 1. The cooking fire at level 3, and the wind proof fire at level 5 as the capstone.

4. All "found" fires should be assigned the "cooking fire" status by default.

This would make it so you had to actually gather some rocks to make a cooking fire (always bothered me that the rocks "appear"), it would also mean players were encouraged to actually use the fires that the NPCs had created and left behind for cooking purposes, since it would not be an option until you reached level 3. Thus also encouraging people to use the Fire Badge.

5. Tie the length of "ember" period to the amount of charcoal left in the fire. Charcoal is an excellent insulator and thus if I allow 25 chunks of charcoal to build up in a fire, it should "simmer" longer.

6. We should not be allowed to cook when a fire reaches "ember" period.

Extending the period of warmth without extending the period of cooking would be a nice in that it would encourage people to reuse the same fires over and over, so that the charcoal built up in the fires. I would go with changing it to Max 20 charcoal in a fire, and 30 seconds of "ember" period for every charcoal in the fire. Also, the fire temp drops to 1 degree C for every chunk of charcoal in the fire.

This would mean a fire could give you a max of +20 degrees of heat in "ember" , which would still put you in danger under blizzard conditions, even if it was wind proof. Also, you could then, as a player, toss a branch on the fire to "heat it back up", Which would restart the ember time period, but in total you would only have 10 minutes of ember time. So a place could sit there, watch the fire, and dribble sticks into the fire to keep it going at a low ebb, thus effectively stretching out the length of the fire, at the cost of not being able to do anything else, lest you risk the embers going out.

It has bothered me that fires have to burn at 80 degrees, but you can't burn the fire at a lower temp to make the wood last longer. This would simulate that, while being so time intensive to take advantage of the game mechanic that it would only be used in emergencies. Thus it enhances the game play without breaking game balance.

Don't have food cook faster if the fire is hotter, that's stupid as a turkey cooked at 700 degrees does not cook twice as fast as a turkey at 350 degrees. However, water should melt and boil faster or slower based on the temp of the fire. That would be logical.

7. Allow players to "reclaim" fires, which is the only way to gather the charcoal and stones that make up a fire. DO NOT ALLOW PLAYERS TO ADD CHARCOAL TO A FIRE. Once harvested, the coal should be "writing" charcoal, not burning charcoal. This would also give the player back half the stones used in its creation, and finally, once and for all, ALLOW ME TO REMOVE THE DAMN CAMPFIRES FROM THE MAP!!!

I think you will find my suggestions both add to player options and create incentives to advancing the character (I think the capstone ability to make wind proof fires for 20 stones is very reasonable.), while at the same time are naturally limited in scope and maintain game balance.  Everything has a cost, everything has a price, and it is sequentially unlocked.

Furthermore, forcing players to actually USE the campfires that litter the map (because until you reach fire 3, you will have to find someplace to cook/boil water.), will make those useless decorations finally mean something and wind up as part of game play.

Remember your conservation of game mechanics. Never add something to a game the players will never use. Bloat harms us all.

[Ice Hole]

I want to remove campfires.  Especially the turd ones!

[Spakerman]

This is an amazingly well thought out suggestion and i endorse it wholeheartedly.  I have literally never stopped at a preexisting camp fire to light a fire... it would be great to have a reason to do that.

[Psybin]

I also think this is a great idea! I only see one "problem" with it though, which is needing fire level 3 just to be able to make a cooking fire. While it would help push players to use preexisting campfires, level 3 would take too long at the very beginning, at least on higher difficulties when you start out in the middle of nowhere with little options. Level 2 for cooking would be a good balance I think.

It could also be a little more granular so there's something for each level. It could go something like:

Lvl 1: heat only

Lvl 2: cooking with one cooking spot

Lvl 3: cooking with two spots

Lvl 4: windproof with one cooking spot

Lvl 5: windproof with two spots

On top of that, another incentive to use preexisting fires would be to have varying levels of them scattered, so you'd try to make it to the better ones in harsh areas.

Thinking logically only, you should be able to cook food on a fire at the lowest skill level, as long as there is fire and something to place the food on. That says nothing about how the quality of the food would turn out though. At least it'd be better than starving. Probably.

[Stone]

I get where you're coming from... but (forgive me):

• Cooking on higher temperatures is faster but, yes, cooking on too high a temperature will not cook stuff but burn bits of it.
• I find the whole 'two cooking spots/stones' thing as-is questionable. I don't think making you collect stones is going to enhance it. And much as I want a windproof fine 'anywhere', I don't think you can protect a fire from a blizzard unless you build a small house around it. I get that the stone circle 'appearing' isn't realisitic but we're stuck here because every stone in the game should probably be buried under a foot of snow. Its imprefect as-is sure but its always going to be imprefect.
• Not being able to cook on a fire you reach some 'level' isn't enhancing the realism for me I'm afraid. The existing skills do a good enough job of progressing your abilities.
• No cooking on embers? I agree, embers should last long and some interaction with charcoal makes sense, totally. But you can cook on embers. You just... you can.

[Cr41g]

as someone who has spent some time in the bush camping here in Canada... windproof fires do not exist.. at least not that you can cook on or plan on warming yourself around...especially in a blizzard

[Kaisentlaia]

I'm forced to agree with 1, even though I like the multiple cooking spots.

2-3-4 I like the idea but I agree with @Psybin and @Stone, I think that the player should have the possibility to make a cooking fire even at level 1. I'd love to see a regular campfire just for eating, that could then be improved adding stones (and time).

23 hours ago, TheEldritchGod said:

Tie the length of "ember" period to the amount of charcoal left in the fire. Charcoal is an excellent insulator and thus if I allow 25 chunks of charcoal to build up in a fire, it should "simmer" longer.

This is brilliant and I need it so bad (I agree with 6 too).

7, yes please. I wished for it as well in this thread (with a few ideas on how to manage the UI for fire-removal).

[Hotzn]

On 16.7.2018 at 2:35 PM, TheEldritchGod said:

1. Fix the bug where if you place a fire on a sloped surface, you can put multiple pots on the fire.

2. I want three different fire options: Normal fire that only warms you , cooking fire (requires 2 stones) , wind proof fire (requires 20 stones)

3. I would like the ability to make said fires tied to your skill level in fire building skill. You can make the basic "heating" fire at level 1. The cooking fire at level 3, and the wind proof fire at level 5 as the capstone.

4. All "found" fires should be assigned the "cooking fire" status by default.

This would make it so you had to actually gather some rocks to make a cooking fire (always bothered me that the rocks "appear"), it would also mean players were encouraged to actually use the fires that the NPCs had created and left behind for cooking purposes, since it would not be an option until you reached level 3. Thus also encouraging people to use the Fire Badge.

5. Tie the length of "ember" period to the amount of charcoal left in the fire. Charcoal is an excellent insulator and thus if I allow 25 chunks of charcoal to build up in a fire, it should "simmer" longer.

6. We should not be allowed to cook when a fire reaches "ember" period.

Extending the period of warmth without extending the period of cooking would be a nice in that it would encourage people to reuse the same fires over and over, so that the charcoal built up in the fires. I would go with changing it to Max 20 charcoal in a fire, and 30 seconds of "ember" period for every charcoal in the fire. Also, the fire temp drops to 1 degree C for every chunk of charcoal in the fire.

This would mean a fire could give you a max of +20 degrees of heat in "ember" , which would still put you in danger under blizzard conditions, even if it was wind proof. Also, you could then, as a player, toss a branch on the fire to "heat it back up", Which would restart the ember time period, but in total you would only have 10 minutes of ember time. So a place could sit there, watch the fire, and dribble sticks into the fire to keep it going at a low ebb, thus effectively stretching out the length of the fire, at the cost of not being able to do anything else, lest you risk the embers going out.

It has bothered me that fires have to burn at 80 degrees, but you can't burn the fire at a lower temp to make the wood last longer. This would simulate that, while being so time intensive to take advantage of the game mechanic that it would only be used in emergencies. Thus it enhances the game play without breaking game balance.

Don't have food cook faster if the fire is hotter, that's stupid as a turkey cooked at 700 degrees does not cook twice as fast as a turkey at 350 degrees. However, water should melt and boil faster or slower based on the temp of the fire. That would be logical.

7. Allow players to "reclaim" fires, which is the only way to gather the charcoal and stones that make up a fire. DO NOT ALLOW PLAYERS TO ADD CHARCOAL TO A FIRE. Once harvested, the coal should be "writing" charcoal, not burning charcoal. This would also give the player back half the stones used in its creation, and finally, once and for all, ALLOW ME TO REMOVE THE DAMN CAMPFIRES FROM THE MAP!!!

I think you will find my suggestions both add to player options and create incentives to advancing the character (I think the capstone ability to make wind proof fires for 20 stones is very reasonable.), while at the same time are naturally limited in scope and maintain game balance.  Everything has a cost, everything has a price, and it is sequentially unlocked.

Furthermore, forcing players to actually USE the campfires that litter the map (because until you reach fire 3, you will have to find someplace to cook/boil water.), will make those useless decorations finally mean something and wind up as part of game play.

Remember your conservation of game mechanics. Never add something to a game the players will never use. Bloat harms us all.

Good ideas here. I like the idea of distinguishing between a "normal" fire just for warming up and a cooking fire with cooking spots. Also that you would require 2 rocks (not the little stones you throw after rabbits, but actually heavier rocks which can neither be thrown nor carried around easily - maybe weighing 3 kg each) to build the cooking fire. Best make it so that a warming fire could be upgraded to a cooking fire if you have the necessary rocks and space around the fire to place them.

I am not sure a windproof fire would be a good idea though. Allowing us to persevere by the fireside in the open while a blizzard is blowing would be a fundamental change in game mechanics. Might be overpowered, and would break immersion for me personally. I want blizzards to be terrifying beasts which make you seek shelter asap.

Making cooking fires only available at firestarting level 3 needs careful consideration. Early Interloper runs could run into thirst issues. Either a number of pre-established cooking fires would have to be placed strategically around the maps (not sure if I would like that - those "found" campfires should be rare in my opinion), or we might need another means to quench thirst. I could imagine eating snow in that respect, which of course would have to come with a heavy downside (severe temperature loss, maybe additional hypothermia risk etc.).

I also like the basic idea of a longer "embers" period than we currently have. That we would not be able to cook anymore, but the fire would still give off a little residual warmth for some time and could be re-ignited by just adding firewood.

There are other things I would like to see in an overhaul of fire mechanics as well. I think it was mentioned in the Milton Mailbag that the game actually has a system for firewood "wetness" in place which is currently not in use. That seems interesting. And it bugs me that the chances of lighting a fire do not decrease with increasing wind. Granted, we cannot light fires under strong wind. But there should already be a huge difference between a windstill or wind-protected place and a slight wind.

[TheEldritchGod]

On 7/17/2018 at 8:05 AM, Cr41g said:

as someone who has spent some time in the bush camping here in Canada... windproof fires do not exist.. at least not that you can cook on or plan on warming yourself around...especially in a blizzard

I agree. however, we have wind proof barrel fires. So if you establish that, you can have other windproof fires.

[Cr41g]

apples and oranges.... but ok

[TheEldritchGod]

Why 2 rocks and 20 rocks? Because we need to do something with those rocks. Reuse elements whenever possible. The creation of a new resource is a waste of db.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

1 hour ago, Cr41g said:

apples and oranges.... but ok

No. Code is code is code. If the fire is a firebarrel, or a windproof fire, or a brick of cheese, what matters is what the game mechanics says it does. Fluff is best ignored for purposes of game balance. If the code says it is possible in one sense, it is possible is every sense.

[Cr41g]

oh code..... yeah THAT'S possible

[ThePancakeLady]

Okie dokie. 

Just to add a new voice here... I do not like or agree with having a windproof campfire, period. Or making cooking fires tied to any Skill levels, be it Cooking or Fire Making.

I don't care how good I am at making fires. I should never, ever, ever be able to build one on the ice , in the middle of a lake, in a blizzard, with furious snow and screaming winds, have it light 100% of the time, and never get blown out or knocked down. I am a survivor, not a freaking Arcane Master Fire Wizard, carrying a Legendary Epic Wand Of Combustion And Wind Removal. (Though that might be a new character I try to build in Grim Dawn or another aRPG...)

And if I am hungry or thirsty, I don't care if I scrap together a small fire of twigs, dried grass, and a few stones laying around on the ground. Don't make me cart 30 lbs of stones just to be able to cook. I am happy with an assumed action of grabbing stones laying around when I build a fire. I do not need the tedium of actually having to pick the dern things up and cart them around. And yeah, my n00b survivor is going to try to melt snow, on any teeny fire she makes, no matter what. She isn't going to be too stupid to figure out how to put snow in a can and set it beside the fire, along with that somewhat suspicious can of pork and beans she found laying on a floor somewhere. 

I like the idea of deepening the mechanics of the game, and making them more "realistic" in a video game sense. But, I am sorry, some of these, even as well thought out as they are, are just going to aggravate too many players, and they feel like trying to make the game mechanic more complex and frustrating, just for the sake of making them more complex and frustrating. Don't make me/others micro and min/max every dern thing in this game. I only do spreadsheets for work. Not for fun.

[Khan_Drichthyes]

12 minutes ago, ThePancakeLady said:

I should never, ever, ever be able to build one on the ice , in the middle of a lake

I want to be able to do that and have it melt right through the ice.  ALAKAZAM!  A fishing hole!

[ajb1978]

Dakota fire hole.  Hypothetically, if you took the time to hack through the frozen ground, you could dig two pits side by side, then chisel out a small tunnel connecting them.  Light your fire in one pit, and the other serves as an air intake.  Lay a grill or something over the pit with the fire, and cook on that.  Or stack a pile of stones in the middle and build your fire in a ring around it, then that central stone serves as your sole cook surface--a one-surface fire, but it's windproof. 

With that in mind, I would think that this sort of thing could be useful for true wilderness survival characters, living out of a snow shelter somewhere, as a means of building a semi-permanent campsite.  This type of campfire would take a long time to construct, similar to a snow shelter, and would have to be placed similar to a snow shelter.  I.e. not on a rock, or on ice, or anything.  But that said, yeah, frozen ground = long creation time.  It'd have to be at least 2.5x as long as chiseling a hole in the ice for ice fishing, to represent digging two holes and then connecting them.

[athikers]

So that's what's it's called, a Dakota fire hole. I read about it "somewhere" and actually built a couple. Granted, mine were smallish and I was not cooking. More testing the concept, but it is windproof.

[ajb1978]

2 hours ago, athikers said:

So that's what's it's called, a Dakota fire hole. I read about it "somewhere" and actually built a couple. Granted, mine were smallish and I was not cooking. More testing the concept, but it is windproof.

They are handy for starting a campfire that you don't want anyone else to see.  Like...park rangers (cough cough).  If you make your hole deep enough and take care not to build the fire too high, this kind of campfire is only visible at extremely close range.  Also since it receives excellent ventilation, provided you scoop the ash out from time to time and don't let the intake get blocked, it burns very cleanly.  Very little smoke.

And if you keep the excavated dirt piles next to the holes, you can immediately extinguish the fire by shoving the pile back in.

[ThePancakeLady]

17 minutes ago, ajb1978 said:

They are handy for starting a campfire that you don't want anyone else to see.  Like...park rangers (cough cough).  If you make your hole deep enough and take care not to build the fire too high, this kind of campfire is only visible at extremely close range.  Also since it receives excellent ventilation, provided you scoop the ash out from time to time and don't let the intake get blocked, it burns very cleanly.  Very little smoke.

And if you keep the excavated dirt piles next to the holes, you can immediately extinguish the fire by shoving the pile back in.

Indeed. But I never had reason to try this in snow or permafrost. Only in areas where fire risk was high, so the protection from wind and low smoke and flying ember production was good for that too. Really useful in the deserts, if you could find the right type o soil to dig one in (sandy soils collapse quickly when heat is added...), I suppose it would help in war areas to keep hidden, so something a military person might know and have been taught.
But... not really something your average survivor would know about doing, unless they had advanced books to read that taught them. Especially with snow and ice... which melts into water, which tends to extinguish fires... though I suppose it would be believable enough, considering how the game skirts real world reality often enough, as it is. 

 

I am guessing they would have to put the fire axe and shovel in to make this work though. Out fragile prybars and small hatchets break quickly and easily already... the amount of snow, ice and permafrost we would need to dig and break out would far exceed the amount of ice we break to clear a fishing hole. Would you see needing to do daily maintenance on it, like we do with snow shelters, to prevent it from collapsing or filling in with new fallen show and becoming ruined?

[ajb1978]

16 hours ago, ThePancakeLady said:

I am guessing they would have to put the fire axe and shovel in to make this work though. Out fragile prybars and small hatchets break quickly and easily already... the amount of snow, ice and permafrost we would need to dig and break out would far exceed the amount of ice we break to clear a fishing hole. Would you see needing to do daily maintenance on it, like we do with snow shelters, to prevent it from collapsing or filling in with new fallen show and becoming ruined?

I think once placed, they should be fine.  No maintenance required.  Regular campfires aren't bothered by new fallen snow, and a campfire left unattended for several months lights up just as easily as a fresh one.  So for in-game consistency, no maintenance.

[ThePancakeLady]

Fair enough.

[grahambird80]

What about the ability to at least create a base for a fire to be created on? There are times while I am out and about and I struggle to find a place to put a camp fire.

If you could clear an area and / or lay down some stones to put the fire on top of, agree that it would not make sense to be able to do this on top of ice.

[Kayosiv]

I like the idea of needing stone to place food around the fire, but the 20x stones for windproof fire and gating fire creation behind fire levels is a poor idea that I don't like. You need basic tools to survive immediately, and being too stupid to put food next to a fire so it cooks is silly.

[s7mar7in]

On ‎7‎/‎16‎/‎2018 at 8:35 AM, TheEldritchGod said:

6. We should not be allowed to cook when a fire reaches "ember" period.

In my opinion, the campfire is the keystone of this game for reasons of survival and for our immersion into the game world.
Let's agree the fire mechanic in TLD is extremely well done and is worthy of efforts to make it even better.

A game must also strive to maintain some unbreakable rules.
As an example, for fire building: If the survivor has a road flare/box of matches, tinder, firewood/book, and possibly lantern fuel/lighter fluid; it is kind of an unbreakable rule that the character has a chance to successfully light a campfire.
As an example, for cooking skills: If the survivor has a tin can and is surrounded by snow while sitting by a campfire; it is kind of an unbreakable rule that placing the tin can near the campfire has a chance to successfully melt snow into water.

Please let me suggest that item 6 from the OP may have potential for improvement.
As an example: If a campfire has (2 hours) burn-time remaining, the survivor could be given a NEW option to "bank the fire". This could allow the survivor to reduce the fire to extremely long-lasting embers and allow for food to be left on the fire-ring cooking stone(s) to complete cooking with no risk of being ruined by over-cooking.

Good luck my friends!