Why flaming bats/thieves should NOT burn your structures

[megaunit321312]

Whenever the swarm of bats come to attack in the evening time (which is usually when they come for me), pig guards wield a torch, and end up burning bats when they attack them with it. The bats then fly everywhere randomly, often running through any structures/farms I had set up near my house, which spreads and destroys everything in the process.

Here's why this is a problem:

1) Ice flingomatics are often not viable or convenient as it's already a rush early game to prepare for the oncoming seasons (buy house, pith hat, mining helmet, make farms, make lightning rod, make bug spray to manage insane beetle swarms, gather nettles, make sprinkler, babysit nettles as the sprinkler has a tiny capacity, on top of finding food to stay alive).In short, Hamlet is far too fast-paced to realistically make an Ice flingomatic early game alongside all this, where accidental wildfires can annhiliate a large chunk of your progress.

2) Fighting bats away from pig guards quickly becomes unreasonable, as they soon come in such large numbers, you will need the help of the guards to make any headway. Because of this, there is plenty of opportunity for a disaster to happen, as torch wielding pigs quickly burn dozens of panicked bats.

3) The pig thief is equally a problem, whom appears very often in town during the evening times; coincidentally, pig guards also live in these towns, and pull out torches during the evening times (I think you see where this is going). However, when the thief is on fire, he is even MORE dangerous, as he moves around incredibly panicked throughout the town, possibly burning a lot more than bats ever could in the process (I would know)

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The only real solutions to this problem seem so awkward and unintuitive, if bats come down during the evening you must either:

1) Hide in your house when bats are about to come in the evening, and only emerge when it is day again and the guards wield weapons instead

2) Place all farms and outside structures that couldn't fit in the house far away from the town, which is heavily inconvenient for what hamlet asks of you already

3) Run away from the pig town if bats come at dusk, and try your luck in the jungle hoping for fights to break out between the bats and hanging vines/spider gorillas/pirhana plants (which you are also subject to being hurt by, especially in the dusk where it can be hard to see)

OR (If you're nowhere near a pig town)

3) Keep running from the bats, and hope most lose you during chase, in which case random bats are now strewn across the map for you to joyfully discover later on when you don't expect it.

Unlike essentially most hazards in the Don't starve series, suffering with burnt structures as a result of this problem in little control of the player, especially early game. Even if you commited your full focus to making an ice flingomatic early game, you're now suffering from being criminally under prepared in other areas - there is just too much to do.

In conclusion, flaming mobs ideally shouldn't burn down your structures from brushing over them, or guards' torches should be changed to not light up enemies. Hamlet is far too task-heavy in the early game to justify preparing for such an unexpected event that can have so much impact on your progress.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

[Xenologist]

Try going to shipwrecked, you can get elephant cactuses that work wonders on bat swarms

[dissentist]

You can drag bats through other groups of mobs, not just pig guards..  Also flaming bats setting things on fire actually has precedent-

 

"Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with over a thousand compartments, each containing a hibernating Mexican free-tailed bat with a small, timed incendiary bomb attached."

Bats don't follow for long, you can easily ditch them in a field and then pull a couple at a time to kill them off all by yourself if you want, they don't "hound" you nearly as bad as the rabid beetles.  By the time bat hordes are big enough to be a problem you've had plenty of time to do everything including setting up a fling-o-matic..