suggestion Wood saws and Other Wood Tools [POLL]

[SteveP]

Should we have some type of saw for harvesting wood from limbs. The hack saw won't cut it. [groan]

Optionally it could be resharpened using a round file or a tool kit or requiring a work bench. (please discuss)

Old saws tend to be rusty and dull quickly. Heating and quenching and tempering could be added at the forge to improve the ability to stay sharp. A rusty saw can loose it's temper if it is case hardened and become dull. Is there going to be an activity mechanic added to wood harvesting like the one for cooking?

Harvesting wood is time consuming with the hatchet. Fire and wood are some of the most valuable assets we have so being able to create stores of firewood is a reasonable plan for survival especially if there is an extended storm or if we find other uses for wood. We wouldn't have to cut limbs or logs to firewood length; we could make poles for all sorts of nifty things such as a cooking tripod, a teepee shelter, a ladder, a sled. A draw knife would also make a great extension for shaping things such as a handle for the axe, if it breaks.

Currently it costs 45 minutes to get three pieces of cedar or 50 minutes for five pieces using the hatchet. With a buck-saw you could cut a three inch limb in half in about two minutes and a 4 inch limb in 3.5 minutes. Maybe less because I haven't found anything online about wood cutting rates. So that would net you 30 to 40 pieces of wood in an hour. If you only cut half way through, often that is enough to snap the large branch with a stout kick or angled between two trees for leverage you could go even faster. The rate would be even higher if you took down trees and cut them with a cross-cut saw and split them with a maul. It would make it possible to have a fire going for extended periods of time and perhaps to damp down a fire or bank it in order to further preserve it at night. This would make the game more interesting so that we could weather out longer storms or use shelters that were more affected by the outdoor temperatures.

I'm sure there are ways to balance out the advantages such as the additional weight of a 30"  buck-saw at around 3-4 pounds or a bigger cross-cut saw at 8 1/2 lbs for a three foot single man cross cut saw.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=_gdrCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=what+is+the+weight+of+a+cross-cut-saw&source=bl&ots=x3ZdvgA7tW&sig=nrtjpOsWlMbWTlj-FdXDPp0hA6Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJ_Ou_-bXLAhVB7WMKHbiNBqQQ6AEIMDAE#v=onepage&q=what%20is%20the%20weight%20of%20a%20cross-cut-saw&f=false

Here is a useful website http://modernsurvivalblog.com/preps/preppers-might-freeze-to-death-without-a-crosscut-saw/ covering the importance of the cross-cut saw in the survival context where there is no fuel for a chainsaw. It only takes about an hour to cut and split a cord of wood with modern tools, even less with a power splitter.

Edited March 23, 2017 by SteveP
More Poll Options, Additional information on saws, weights, cutting rates

[Rusty_Old_F250]

I agree, but I think something light like a bowsaw would be a bit "overpowered" and make things a bit too easy, how about something like a splitting maul? The brutal weight of the thing would wear you out pretty quick and I sure wouldn't want to lug it with me everywhere I went.

My personal preference is a double bitted ax, but I think it has the same issues as the bowsaw, it would make things too easy.

Just my $0.02

Sam 

[illanthropist]

For fuel harvesting no not really, I think I'd rather just stick with the one tool for the job!

I have to constantly remind myself this is a survival game and not a homesteading/bushcraft simulator.

[SteveP]

Well for one thing, the wood saw or a double-bit axe could reduce the time necessary to break down limbs and would greatly preserve the life of your hatchet; No wonder it takes so long to break down a single limb with a wimpy little hatchet. Sure it's light weight so the trade off would be weight. A big old buck saw is going to weigh 3-4 pounds or a couple of kilos.

 

[elloco999]

While I would want to use a good bow-/ bucksaw in real live, I do think gathering firewood is already too easy so a tool to make it even easier (faster) would in my mind not improve gameplay.

[Rusty_Old_F250]

Now if our fuel requirements were drastically increased... That would change things completely! No more massive inside temp bonus and no fire, you freeze!

Sam

[vancopower]

Here is an idea instead of adding another wood harvesting tool, we could use the wood saw to make planks and boards from the wood we collect so we can use them in construction if that type of feature is introduced in to the game, I've already seen too many posts for making beds, crates etc. here is another piece of the puzzle. With wood saw and firewood the survivor could craft various wooden objects, also the rabbit trap should fall under this category together with large animal trap. As for wood harvesting tool well I disagree why do we need another tool sure wood saw is easier to use but it takes lot's of time which the survivor could not afford, well I suppose it could be considered as a second choice tool like the saw is when harvesting meat.  

[Dirmagnos]

Making boards, even with saw, would be an extremely slow and complicated process. Without proper tools its extremely hard.

[SteveP]

There are other tools that are easy to craft on a forge that could be used for processing logs to build a log shelter. A bark spud is one. A bill-hook is another. A bark draw-knife is another and log rollers are also handy for log construction. A bark spud let's you take big peelings from a log that can be flattened out into squares of roofing material or siding.

Bark spud

Draw knife.

I'd like a meat hook for hoisting a fresh carcass up for skinning and butchering and a block and tackle would make that possible. Having a sled or toboggan to skid home your deer or bear harvest would be nice too.

For milling planks, normally this is done with a large rotary saw powered by a gasoline or diesel engine. A band saw is the other method. This is probably beyond the capabilities of a single person. You would need a draft animal in order to skid out logs. I guess you could do it with a winch and cables or ropes. It's a lot of work but you could probably build a cabin in 150 days or so. How many logs would you need? You'd also need an axe to notch the ends of the logs and a spud or something to flatten the logs to make them fit tight. Here is a website with a lot of highly valuable tools for log cabin construction.

http://www.loghelp.com/categories/log-tools.asp

This would be a lot of mechanics to include all of the processes involved in log cabin construction. I was thinking more along the lines of a hut shelter with log poles for a stringer and shorter logs to make an A frame and covered with bark for wind protection and rain/snow protection. An improvised stove of bricks or a small metal barrel with a stove pipe could heat it. Build a reflector for your camp fire. Etc.

Cordage is an essential for constructing all manner of ad-hoc shelters and caches and tree stands for bow hunting.

 

[SteveP]

The advantage of a sharp buck saw is that it can cut a 6' limb in about 2-5 minutes where a hatchet takes about an hour for each cut.. Haven't you noticed how long it takes to harvest wood from limbs? You could easily build up a cache of firewood to last out a week or more of storm with a buck saw and it gets you way ahead of the curve for the coming bad weather. If you had preserved meat, also no problem. At about day 60 to 75 maybe a monster storm blows in.

Why think small? Think about adding several items to the tools and a dozen craftable structures and useful items. How about a big cauldron you hang over a a fire on a tripod? TLD already has the software infrastructure to create a lot of things and with the simple mechanics, development is fast. The art work is the big work. Art work can be done in parallel.

Foleys or sound recordings are also relatively easily made!

Edited March 9, 2016 by SteveP

[elloco999]

2 hours ago, SteveP said:

The advantage of a sharp buck saw is that it can cut a 6' limb in about 2-5 minutes where a hatchet takes about an hour for each cut.. Haven't you noticed how long it takes to harvest wood from limbs?

And that's why I don't want it added to the game. It's already too easy to get a lot of firewood, no need to make harvesting a branch go much faster.

[vancopower]

15 hours ago, Dirmagnos said:

Making boards, even with saw, would be an extremely slow and complicated process. Without proper tools its extremely hard.

Do you remember the simple and quality tools that are not so efficient now but at the beginning of the game they ware used a lot to repair your hatched and knife, well now we could use them together with the wood saw make some items, everything fits together nicely I hope that the Devs. will see this post and see how well it will fit in to the game.

 

4 hours ago, SteveP said:

The advantage of a sharp buck saw is that it can cut a 6' limb in about 2-5 minutes where a hatchet takes about an hour for each cut.. Haven't you noticed how long it takes to harvest wood from limbs? You could easily build up a cache of firewood to last out a week or more of storm with a buck saw and it gets you way ahead of the curve for the coming bad weather. If you had preserved meat, also no problem. At about day 60 to 75 maybe a monster storm blows in.

Why think small? Think about adding several items to the tools and a dozen craftable structures and useful items. How about a big cauldron you hang over a a fire on a tripod? TLD already has the software infrastructure to create a lot of things and with the simple mechanics, development is fast. The art work is the big work. Art work can be done in parallel.

Foleys or sound recordings are also relatively easily made!

Both the hatched and the saw are equally useful, the wood saw is better at cutting wood on to smaller pieces but the hatched is better at splitting the wood :

WOOD SAW IS BETTER FOR THIS:

 

HATCHED IS BETTER FOR THIS:

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.peakfitnessnw.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/361.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.peakfitnessnw.com/uncategorized/woodchopping-top-5-wood-round-strength-exercises-for-skiers&h=3240&w=4320&tbnid=RJo1iPJmjKwO2M:&docid=ObgQpfvw7bU-WM&ei=RzPgVtaED4mssgG23LygAQ&tbm=isch&ved=0ahUKEwiWxMez6LPLAhUJliwKHTYuDxQQMwgtKAIwAg

 

So you can see they are dependent on each other first saw the wood then chop it to pieces, but looking from the game perspective if they introduce wood saw I hope that it will be to make items not collect wood since as  elloco999 pointed out it will be too overpowering and it will brake the game play, and as we can see from the pics here not true because you will still need the hatched to split the wood in order to burn it  especially for stoves because the whole trunk will not fit. Also in order to use the wood saw you have to lift the limb and some large limbs are just too heavy to hold them in the air and cut through them, given the conditions that the survivor is in I think that the wood saw will not be so efficient tool to harvest wood. Yes it is more effective at cutting but it takes more concentration, focus and stable ground and some of the limbs the survivor finds are up on a hill plus when you are tired  and cold  you don't have patience to cut the wood properly you just wanna wack the thing and be done with it. 

Edited March 9, 2016 by vancopower

[illanthropist]

2 hours ago, elloco999 said:

And that's why I don't want it added to the game. It's already too easy to get a lot of firewood, no need to make harvesting a branch go much faster.

This, I don't see the point of adding weight to my inventory that will only serve to add a new sound effect to a blurred transition period of the game clock.

[elloco999]

59 minutes ago, vancopower said:

So you can see they are dependent on each other first saw the wood then chop it to pieces

Have you seen the size of the branches we can harvest in TLD? You don't really need to split those. The only reason to split them is if you want to burn them faster or to make them easier to light.

Of course, IRL you would harvest trees, not branches and then you would definitely need to split the wood.

Edited March 9, 2016 by elloco999

[vancopower]

14 minutes ago, elloco999 said:

Have you seen the size of the branches we can harvest in TLD? You don't really need to split those. The only reason to split them is if you want to burn them faster or to make them easier to light.

Of course, IRL you would harvest trees, not branches and then you would definitely need to split the wood.

Why to split the wood, Main reasons:

First you can not start a fire with wet wood and the dry part is inside.

Second as I mentioned you can not fit the wood in the stove, also it roles you can not build campfire if you can not stand the wood in one place.

Third you will need lots of tinder and lot's more unsuccessful tries to start a fire since the bark of the tree is more resistant to fire unless the tree has moss on it.

Finally I tried adding whole trunks to the fire if the fire is small it just goes off after 5-6 min. The fire needs to burn for a long time to reach temperature so you could put whole trunks in it even then there is a chance of putting it out if the wood is wet.

 

Hey now there is an excellent option, imagine this:

Wood saw is added in to the game. it makes harvesting wood faster but it could only produce whole trunks which can not be added in to the fire unless the correct temperature is up, Also you can not start fires with them. So yea you can collect more wood but you can't have the same quality as the split ed wood. Also you can not add whole trunks if the fire is less than 1 hour maybe

Edited March 9, 2016 by vancopower

[SteveP]

13 hours ago, elloco999 said:

And that's why I don't want it added to the game. It's already too easy to get a lot of firewood, no need to make harvesting a branch go much faster.

Play Timberwolf for a while and see how many days you can harvest wood with one hatchet before it is used up. See if you can last a week holed up in the alpine hut riding out a fierce storm. As I have already stated, creating a LARGE cache of firewood is a good thing and does not make the game magically too easy. Remember, for each threat there must be an appropriate response; for each bonus there is a corresponding new threat or risk. This is referred to as balance.

 

11 hours ago, vancopower said:

HATCHET IS BETTER FOR THIS:

 

This is a picture of a heavy splitting maul! There is no way that a hatchet is appropriate for splitting wood, especially wood cut with an axe. You can only split wood that has been cut with a saw. And if you spend any amount of time making firewood, you will know to use the proper tool for the job.

The buck saw and a splitting maul or double bit lumber jack's axe are what is needed to lay in an adequate supply of firewood to last through an indefinite amount of storm.

 

Edited March 10, 2016 by SteveP

[illanthropist]

Sorry you feel stressed Steve but I don't think anyone's being negative mate, just opinions that differ.

I like the minimalistic approach the game has and don't want it to turn into one of those OTHER survival titles with giant crafting and skill menus, running round felling trees riding wolves and killing everything that moves.  I stick by my original statement, as it stands we aren't building log cabins or even a rudimentary shelter we're chopping up some deadfall for a campfire.

I feel the same when people talked about having stuff like more weapons, semi automatics, spears, slingshots etc. in the game.  If I wanted all that I'd go buy something like farcry.

[SteveP]

No worries. It's been an interesting morning.

I agree totally about having tons and tons of skills and tools that just magically let you navigate through the achievement list is not what I think the vision of TLD and it's not what I want. I like to have it make sense in a realistic fashion. Look at all the magic you can do in FarCry Primal; that's not realistic. To me this game is really about the survival aspect, the trade offs and the risks. I'd like it to have some legs, some more interesting and challenging bits. At the moment there only three or four risks. Wolves & bears, weather, food poisoning and injuries.

[LucidFugue]

I'm always a bit wary of arguments for adding things that boil down to "It would be more realistic".

In the current environment, I don't see a use for a saw. At least, not in terms of gathering firewood, even if that is the most sensible, real world use. However, I could see it having a use in the future.

Example: If felling trees was a possibility - that would be a job for a saw. I'd like to see limbs getting dropped in storms (and the danger of being struck by them), and potentially entire trees going down (like those hollow trunk ones). Perhaps tree-felling/trunk clearing can be used as a way to open pathways.

I've worn out a hatchet trying to keep warm in TMW, but that was after about 5 solid days of hacking up limbs with no whetstone. And I found 3 hatchets in the map. Wood gathering isn't a problem, and if saws were to introduce better and faster ways to get firewood, there would need to be further changes to make it non-trivial again.

[Boston123]

"In real life" hatchets are almost useless for anything resembling actual work. Full-sized axes are better at felling/chopping/delimbing, saws are better at cutting trees into manageable pieces, and mauls are better for splitting firewood.

In my Scout troop, I don't think the kids have used a hatchet "seriously", once. They get all excited and bring one on a campout, then when they try to actually use the thing, they realize that other tools are "more effective", and the hatchet gets put away. I don't carry a hatchet on me when I am in the woods.

I do, however, carry a 3/4 axe and a folding bowsaw. They never leave my pack.

In-game, the hatchets are "too effective" at what they do.

[illanthropist]

 

5 hours ago, LucidFugue said:

I'm always a bit wary of arguments for adding things that boil down to "It would be more realistic".

Agree, the dev's have already stated publicly they are not aiming for realism using the starvation mechanics as an example.

You could tear the game a new one if you focused on realism:

Why doesn't your pack ever degrade or rip?
Why does the bedroll only weight 1kg?
Why can wolves only smell me from 50yds or so and not over miles?
Why is a sprain healed in 4hrs and not 4 days?
Why are my matches not ruined after falling through the ice?
Why did I recover from a bear attack so fast or even survive at all?

As far as the term "hatchet" without splitting mauls, erm I mean hairs, I imagine a large amount of the playerbase probably don't know the difference between a hand axe and a hatchet, plus, at it's current weigh in game of 1.5kg that's a pretty hefty hatchet.  My hulfators agdor weighs about 900g so I think we can make the assumption it's a hatchet in name only as a kind of colloquialism.

Edited March 10, 2016 by illanthropist

[SteveP]

1 hour ago, illanthropist said:

 

Agree, the dev's have already stated publicly they are not aiming for realism using the starvation mechanics as an example.

You could tear the game a new one if you focused on realism:

Why doesn't your pack ever degrade or rip?
Why does the bedroll only weight 1kg?
Why can wolves only smell me from 50yds or so and not over miles?
Why is a sprain healed in 4hrs and not 4 days?
Why are my matches not ruined after falling through the ice?
Why did I recover from a bear attack so fast or even survive at all?

As far as the term "hatchet" without splitting mauls, erm I mean hairs, I imagine a large amount of the playerbase probably don't know the difference between a hand axe and a hatchet, plus, at it's current weigh in game of 1.5kg that's a pretty hefty hatchet.  My hulfators agdor weighs about 900g so I think we can make the assumption it's a hatchet in name only as a kind of colloquialism.

What are you trying to say here exactly? Are you suggesting that all pretense of realism is to be given up? That this is a game of limited realism and deserves nothing more? That sounds a lot like sand bagging so I'm going to get back to appeals to realism in a second.

The point about realism is that the game does not strive for photo-realism. The art work is impressionistic or surrealistic, not sure what the right description for it is. That's fine. I love the artwork. If you change any part of the art work you would ruin the visual cohesiveness of the environment. The second point about realism is the development cost of simulating everything in the available world. We need to strive for representative assortments of things.

Concerning axes of various kinds here is the best resource I could find after about 20 minutes of research: http://www.orionn49.com/choosing_an_axe.htm

1.  Hatchet:          - 18" 1.5 lb
2.  Limbing           - 24" 2 lb
3.  Felling             - 36" 3-4 lb
4.  Splinting maul - 48" 8 lb or more

I think the game is realistic in its intention to simulate certain aspects of survival such as trade offs. This wishlist is about input into ideas for how the game can evolve. So a common complaint is that after a certain point in the game, it becomes rote. I agree. Here's what I think is going to happen:

They are going to introduce some new stuff in several categories: wild life, tools, weapons, medicine, food and resources. It's going to evolve along the general theme as has already been established, moving away from reliance upon products and returning to more primitive technologies such as forging and flint knapping. It should also evolve new risks and a few of those have been proposed including illness (3 IIRC) and injuries (avalanche) as well as a suggestion that the weather could get much worse later in the game (around day 50 to 75) provided we have the ability to get prepared.

So why are you leery of realism? or appeals to realism? Is the game is not supernatural enough for your taste? just kidding.

I'm perfectly willing to entertain appeals to realism if it does not make the early game too difficult. The wear rate of tools is something that might get addressed I suppose. I don't think we should close the door to that idea in order to improve the reasonable suspension of disbelief. I think we do need to trust the developers as well as our abilities as alpha-testers to be able to find & fix anything that's not balanced. I think it's reasonable to assume that there are methods for gathering feedback that perhaps we don't know about and are considered to be competitive advantage and as a developer, I might not want to expose. Heuristics and adaptive tuning are another, perhaps secret advantage. At this point in the game evolution, considerable effort has been extended to document the condition decline rates and the calorie values and nearly all of the objects within the game. It would be preferable to use the spawn frequency as a tuning variable as well as the weather. Therefore, perhaps to address the limits of the hatchet, rather than changing the hatchet's attributes, it would be more expedient to add a new tool or tools. I really really like the idea of new wild life, both game and predators. Elk and moose are appealing since they also have the capability to be threats. They might only frequent certain maps. The gathering of parts for some tools might span several areas. If we have flint as a resource, then perhaps it should only be available on one of the maps such as the mountains where volcanic obsidian could be present. Canada is not a region of chert although that's something that bears researching.

Lastly, please remove the white space at the end of your postings folks. Thanks.

[LucidFugue]

1 hour ago, SteveP said:

So why are you leery of realism? or appeals to realism?

I'm not leery of realism - every idea that finds its way into the game is going to have a basis in reality. But there is a level of abstraction involved in translating reality into gameplay. There are loads of different saws and axes; a blacksmith will have dozens of hammers to do various kinds of metalwork. That doesn't mean it makes sense to spend development effort on details that don't add anything to the game. So, when I say I'm wary of arguments that boil down to "it would be more realistic", I'm not saying I don't want realism. I'm saying realism isn't reason enough for adding something.

So the concept put forward is: A saw that can harvest wood faster, but to compensate wears out quicker, and needs to be either tempered at the forge, requiring a trip to DP, or fixed up at a workbench. 

My first thought is - Why would I want that? Yes, in the early game, with poor clothing, you will begin to freeze in the 45 minutes it takes to harvest a limb. Then you'll likely burn every piece of wood you just harvested so you can safely rest your condition back. Then it's back out to harvest more before the fire goes out. The hatchet can get worn out pretty quickly in those conditions. But if a saw wears out faster and requires even more complicated maintenance than a hatchet, I don't see it helping much there.

Outside of that state, you have more time free to spend outside, and less time where you are required to have a fire going for survival. That means that if stockpiling wood is your goal, you're already free to do that. There is already a delineation between how to gather wood with a tool (hatchet, limbs, furniture) and without a tool (sticks and branches only). In the end, a saw is another tool that I would definitely use if I found, and if I had both a hatchet and a saw, the choice of which to hang on to would hinge on whether I had a whetstone, or access to whatever the maintenance needs of the saw was.

Hence, my thoughts relate to how realistic uses of a saw could be incorporated into the game in a way that would add something new or different. Because we could add any number of tools for harvesting wood, and they could all claim to have a basis in reality. But having more wood harvesting equipment won't necessarily make the game better.

[illanthropist]

39 minutes ago, LucidFugue said:

2 hours ago, SteveP said:

So why are you leery of realism? or appeals to realism?

I'm not leery of realism

I think that was aimed at me

[SteveP]

I think it has to be looked at in the larger context; does it open up more opportunities for interesting situations and introducing new risks and excitement. Longer storms, trade offs in weight. A cross cut saw can weigh around 10 pounds so there is a trade off and since trade offs are a big part of the game, I think it would make the game better. It could open up territory for example. You could make it so that certain game strategies open up such as extended fishing in the fishing huts on Coastal Highway. It takes a massive amount of wood to weather some of the storms on that lake depending upon how long they last.

I can see reasons for the compromises to realism with meat for example. They built it so that it was necessary to hunt frequently which means more encounters with wild life which are the primary threats in the game. We have a limited number of bad actors in the game: predators, cold, injuries (which are minimal) and illness (limited) Predators and dangerous game add excitement so there is a big benefit for going in that direction.

How much development cost is there to this? There is art work. There are sounds that need recording. There is a modest amount of coding and integration since the object frame work and mechanics have already been done for the hatchet. Compare this for example to adding new wild life.