Make Ice Fling-o-matics stop depleting fuel when unloaded

[remden]

I think it's weird how they still consume and drain fuel while unloaded because they aren't doing anything when unloaded. The player can turn flingos off every time they leave to deal with this but this ends up being very annoying in large bases and can result in something burning down if a wildfire happens before you reach the flingomatic to reenable it after coming back to it. So I think this simple change would improve the experience of players with large bases such as megabasers.

[SilverSpoon]

Flingo is one of the most outdated dumb thing in DST. After 11 years of adding tons of things for players to build and plant, and Flingo has never been improved.

Actually, there was an improvement once, but SOMEHOW it became outdated again.

Edited October 25, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Echsrick]

since when are flingos outdated? i still see often people use them for the obvious reasons of fire protection and willthering plants

[SilverSpoon]

14 hours ago, Echsrick said:

since when are flingos outdated? i still see often people use them for the obvious reasons of fire protection and willthering plants

I’m not a native English speaker, and as you know I’m stupid, so I'm not really sure what the nuance of the word “outdated” is…

I’m not saying the Flingo is unusable or that nobody uses it. I use Flingo too, but I dislike it about as much as facsimile.

Edited October 26, 2025 by SilverSpoon

[Frosty_Mentos]

No clue why would they need to be fueled when you're not around. Also, I think they should get some kinda slight rework to act better against flames because it takes forever for it to actually care to.

[Cheggf]

This is less showing an issue with needing to turn the flingos off and more showing an issue with how wildfires are incompatible with megabases. Even if the flingos didn't use fuel when unloaded there'd still be a hundred ugly flingos everywhere and you'd still need to keep refueling them. 

[lowercase skye]

Most things in the game simulate a very simplified form of their behavior even while unloaded, so that the world doesn't feel too much like it revolves entirely around you. Flingos lose fuel while unloaded, bee boxes produce honey, pig houses respawn pigs, farm plants grow, etc.

I'd rather it not be changed, since immersion is already a somewhat flimsy thing if you understand even a bit of the inner-workings of the game. It wouldn't make much sense at all for wildfires to literally be targeting your location and for flingos to intelligently turn on and off based on your proximity, and so the game tries its best to pretend that isn't literally how it works.

Edited October 26, 2025 by lowercase skye

[Frosty_Mentos]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

This is less showing an issue with needing to turn the flingos off and more showing an issue with how wildfires are incompatible with megabases. Even if the flingos didn't use fuel when unloaded there'd still be a hundred ugly flingos everywhere and you'd still need to keep refueling them. 

I believe this is just showing how wildfires are nonsensical on how they work in general. Flingos and wildfires only act when a player is nearby, if you go to underground they don't really do anything. Summer doesn't exist outside of caves or player sight.

[cybers2001]

Why do flingos need to burn fuel when idle, anyway? The survivors already have player-aware energy preservation tech, like Winona's heatlamps.

I think they should use very little fuel while on standby, and more fuel while actively putting out fires.

[hyoton123]

I wouldn't mind a bigger max fuel capacity, either.

[remden]

Only now thought about this, but: maybe flingos could also automatically turn off at dusk and when the world is wet, because wildfires only happen at day when the world is dry? To support using flingos for non-wild fires, it could have a third, always on mode (currently it only has on or off) that ignores dusk and wetness.

[Cheggf]

3 hours ago, remden said:

Only now thought about this, but: maybe flingos could also automatically turn off at dusk and when the world is wet, because wildfires only happen at day when the world is dry? To support using flingos for non-wild fires, it could have a third, always on mode (currently it only has on or off) that ignores dusk and wetness.

why don't you just turn wildfires off in world settings

[Popian]

19 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

Most things in the game simulate a very simplified form of their behavior even while unloaded, so that the world doesn't feel too much like it revolves entirely around you. Flingos lose fuel while unloaded,

I recall that they don't put out fires when unloaded, if so maybe the fires could check that there is an active flingo in range vice versa?

Edited October 26, 2025 by Popian

[remden]

18 hours ago, Cheggf said:

why don't you just turn wildfires off in world settings

because I would still like to have to deal with them, but without having to turn flingos on/off twice per day for conserving fuel and whenever I leave them

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, remden said:

because I would still like to have to deal with them, but without having to turn flingos on/off twice per day for conserving fuel and whenever I leave them

Placing flingos down a single time and then having them automatically be super geniuses about maximum conserving fuel so you never have to engage with them and you just place them down a single time doesn't really feel like "dealing with them" to me. I'm pretty sure if flingos automatically turned off whenever wildfires were incapable of happening you literally wouldn't need to refuel them. I think they'd last more than an entire summer.

[remden]

31 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Placing flingos down a single time and then having them automatically be super geniuses about maximum conserving fuel so you never have to engage with them and you just place them down a single time doesn't really feel like "dealing with them" to me. I'm pretty sure if flingos automatically turned off whenever wildfires were incapable of happening you literally wouldn't need to refuel them. I think they'd last more than an entire summer.

"Engaging" with them by just clicking on them to refuel/turn on/off isn't very exciting due to simplicity and frequency of it. That's also like saying that placing down a lightning rod isn't dealing with lightning. How long they would last without loss of fuel without player presence depends on the player(s) in the world but turning off at dusk would only add about +50% due to how short dusk and night are during summer, which would be 7.5 instead of 5 days (summer is 15).

[Tigris Nano]

I disagree because it would be another illogical thing just like wildfires magically appearing around you and not anywhere else. Tho this one is quite understandable because it requires way less server resources than keeping whole world loaded constantly and burning random stuff. And ofc loading our beloved and very well optimized spiders, god bless klei for all servers burnt by spiders. Yes, draining fuel from unloaded flingos requires server resources too but not that much I think.

Instead I would like to have improved flingos with better range and bigger fuel storage so players would have to refuel them not so often and build less of them. We got this sort of qol update for chests so I think flingos could get upgrade too. Maybe some combo with ice crystaleyezer which would shoot freeze rays at fires and keep things fresh. I prob even wouldnt mind if its going to use brilliance as fuel as long as it lasts long enough and does its job.

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, remden said:

"Engaging" with them by just clicking on them to refuel/turn on/off isn't very exciting due to simplicity and frequency of it. That's also like saying that placing down a lightning rod isn't dealing with lightning. How long they would last without loss of fuel without player presence depends on the player(s) in the world but turning off at dusk would only add about +50% due to how short dusk and night are during summer, which would be 7.5 instead of 5 days (summer is 15).

I think that out of the 120 minutes of summer only 44.5 of them actually have the world be able to burn. 

[AliceShiki]

8 hours ago, Tigris Nano said:

Instead I would like to have improved flingos with better range and bigger fuel storage so players would have to refuel them not so often and build less of them.

Improved Flingos with bigger range would certainly be much appreciated.

Especially if there was a way to automatically refuel them, like... If they're within a Winter area (like Ice Crystallizer), they get refueled automatically... Which I honestly don't think would be a big deal, since it's not like we need to refuel Lightning Rods.

I might be willing to actually turn on wildfires again if there was a Lightning Rod equivalent for Flingos... Right now they feel like too much of a hassle to be worth engaging with.

[oregu]

This still doesnt fix the issue that flingos are unrealistic to manage for large bases without taking way too much time.

Also what do you mean by it doesn't make sense? Many things in DST work offscreen.

Edited October 28, 2025 by oregu

[Frosty_Mentos]

7 hours ago, oregu said:

This still doesnt fix the issue that flingos are unrealistic to manage for large bases without taking way too much time.

Also what do you mean by it doesn't make sense? Many things in DST work offscreen.

Only spawners like spiders, goats, beefalos and plant growth happens offscreen. And addition now with brightshades and rifts, but that's all. There is a death component to masques but yea it's mostly just mobs doing things. Deerclops can despawn and bear remains in place.

Smoldering just doesn't do anything just like if there is no player near the ocean for ocean debri like bottles to spawn. Fire actually eventually extinguishes if you leave an area, places like forest don't spread without a player nearby.

Flingos in general just don't do anything but keep plants alive off screen. Without players nearby there is nothing to extinguish.

Also, weirdly, if you are under a canopy like giant trees, everything away from it still smolders.