Add more plant spawners to counterbalance irreparable damage from Summer fires

[rezecib]

Edit: Since the response to this was a bit polarized, I decided to make a mod for it so that people who do like it can load it into the game. It's on the workshop now.

 

So first I want to say that I really, really like summer. It adds a lot of tension, especially when you've got a really nice base set up; before RoG once you had a good base you didn't really have to worry about much anymore.

 

But I think summer definitely needs some tuning. The biggest problem is that wildfires can occur off-screen where you can't do anything about them because you don't know they're even happening. I know there's a smoldering sound that occurs, but with the audio muffling that occurs during Summer, it can be hard to hear if other stuff is going on (chopping trees, etc).

 

Also, before anyone says that smoldering is dumb to begin with because you can't do anything about it: that's not true, you can smother smoldering objects.

You can extinguish them and player-made fires with ice, and smoldering objects with a variety of things like rot, guano, and manure.

 

I propose two fixes:

1) Make smoldering more obvious, and/or limit it to the visible screen. One way to do this would be have the character say something when an object starts smoldering, like "I think that's going to catch fire!" or "I smell smoke!".

2) Add spawners for non-renewable plants, much like the flower spawner that now operates in Spring. Two two main victims here, as I see it, are mushrooms and reeds: there's no way to relocate them, and no way to get them back if they catch fire.

 

There could be a mushroom spawner in Autumn, which could prioritize birchnut biomes for spawning and limit the number of mushrooms worldwide to a certain cap.

 

Similarly, a reed spawner could operate in... say, Spring, seeing as that's when it's wettest, and limit the number of reeds total to some fraction of the marsh tiles (e.g. maximum of one reed for every 8 marsh tiles).

 

As for saplings and grass, these are also non-renewable victims, but there are usually way more than enough of them and you can relocate them to a protected location. That being said, it probably wouldn't hurt to have very low-level spawn rates for those, too. However, you can farm their products pretty well from tumbleweeds.

 

What does everyone else think?

 

(this was my first time doing a poll, I hope it works correctly)

[simplex]

I don't like the idea of spawners, but I don't think reeds and mushrooms should smolder at all. They are, after all, highly wet...

It makes sense to keep reeds and mushrooms burnable, so that a nearby burning object can light them, but spontaneous combustion seems a bit silly.

[Devon Aster]

I'm... uncertain about this.  While I do think adding the dialogue of "I smell smoke!" or something similar could be useful, being in the same vein as the character alerting to approaching hounds or Deerclops, the spawner idea seem a bit against the grain of the game.  Lightning can strike and burn those same resources.  We have the lightning rod to ward against it and we were given the Ice Flingomatic to do the same for smoldering.

 

If certain plants are made renewable, I'd like to see them come at a cost.  Flowers we could replant from butterflies instead of killing them for wings.  I know they spawn automatically now, but they're fairly low tech so it doesn't unbalance things too much.  For mushrooms, I'd like to see it done at the price of letting a stack of rot sit in place or leaving logs around to decay (though I don't think that'd be a popular option, since I don't think it's uncommon for excess logs to be left lying around to be collected later).  The type of mushroom should be random to keep people from farming green or blue ones.  Reeds could maybe drop some kind of seed or leave a burned clump that can be dug up, both only plantable in marsh tiles and requiring rot or manure to flourish again.

[rezecib]

I'm... uncertain about this.  While I do think adding the dialogue of "I smell smoke!" or something similar could be useful, being in the same vein as the character alerting to approaching hounds or Deerclops, the spawner idea seem a bit against the grain of the game.  Lightning can strike and burn those same resources.  We have the lightning rod to ward against it and we were given the Ice Flingomatic to do the same for smoldering.

 

If certain plants are made renewable, I'd like to see them come at a cost.  Flowers we could replant from butterflies instead of killing them for wings.  I know they spawn automatically now, but they're fairly low tech so it doesn't unbalance things too much.  For mushrooms, I'd like to see it done at the price of letting a stack of rot sit in place or leaving logs around to decay (though I don't think that'd be a popular option, since I don't think it's uncommon for excess logs to be left lying around to be collected later).  The type of mushroom should be random to keep people from farming green or blue ones.  Reeds could maybe drop some kind of seed or leave a burned clump that can be dug up, both only plantable in marsh tiles and requiring rot or manure to flourish again.

 

The mushroom idea is really cool!

 

I understand your argument that we can protect against this irreversible damage, but the reason I highlighted mushrooms and reeds specifically is that you can't relocate them. Protecting things with lightning rods and ice fling-o-matics is feasible if you can cluster them, but for both of these you have to rely on sheer luck that a number are in the same place. It's definitely not feasible to maintain running fling-o-matics all over the place, and since wildfires can start as you're leaving an area, you can't even get away with just turning them on while you're there.

 

Edit: I definitely think the spawn rates for both of these should be pretty low. Like, 10 mushrooms spawning across the world per autumn, and certainly capped close to the number of mushrooms you see at world gen. It would be a bad thing if it completely removed incentives to preserve them, but it would also be bad to have their numbers slowly whittled away to nothing due to unavoidable mishaps.

[Devon Aster]

The mushroom idea is really cool!

Thanks

 

I understand your argument that we can protect against this irreversible damage, but the reason I highlighted mushrooms and reeds specifically is that you can't relocate them. Protecting things with lightning rods and ice fling-o-matics is feasible if you can cluster them, but for both of these you have to rely on sheer luck that a number are in the same place. It's definitely not feasible to maintain running fling-o-matics all over the place, and since wildfires can start as you're leaving an area, you can't even get away with just turning them on while you're there.

I do see where you're coming from, since the Ice Flingomatic requires fuel where-as the Lightning Rod works regardless.  You might not even know if the former wasn't working properly until the plants come onto the screen and you see them toasted.  Still, I get the feeling that the smolder/fire mechance was meant to be an echo or extension of the lightning one to add another seasonal danger to prepare for.

 

Edit: I definitely think the spawn rates for both of these should be pretty low. Like, 10 mushrooms spawning across the world per autumn, and certainly capped close to the number of mushrooms you see at world gen. It would be a bad thing if it completely removed incentives to preserve them, but it would also be bad to have their numbers slowly whittled away to nothing due to unavoidable mishaps.

People have been asking for replantable reeds for a while now, for similar reasons, and the devs have been pretty firm in keeping them as they are.  Some have asked for the same for mushrooms, though I don't recall the response on that.  Resource attrition is, I think, just a part of the game.  I think we're meant to eventually leave our current maps for new ones, though it's possible to stay in one for hundreds of days with careful management.  Maybe the devs are trying harder to give us a push back towards trying new maps, instead

[rezecib]

People have been asking for replantable reeds for a while now, for similar reasons, and the devs have been pretty firm in keeping them as they are.  Some have asked for the same for mushrooms, though I don't recall the response on that.  Resource attrition is, I think, just a part of the game.  I think we're meant to eventually leave our current maps for new ones, though it's possible to stay in one for hundreds of days with careful management.  Maybe the devs are trying harder to give us a push back towards trying new maps, instead

I saw SethR write here that their reasoning for not having replantable reeds is that they wouldn't make sense outside of their own biome (he was comparing cacti to them), but that doesn't seem to interfere in any way with having them be able to respawn in swamps.

 

As for pushing us to go to new maps, perhaps, but it seems like many of the new changes have been aimed at making more things renewable, not less. Tumbleweeds make trinkets, gears, fireflies, and probably many more things renewable, and moleworms make all minerals renewable on the surface. On the surface, pretty much everything is renewable now (not birchnuts exactly, but they've said there are plans to add a system that will allow you to expand birchnut forests, but be more difficult than two-seeds-per-tree).

 

Personally, I would say the best outcome for me would be if everything was renewable, but took some work and required working with a system unique to the resource (like logs for mushrooms), as this is interesting gameplay that promotes focusing on some aspects over others (meaningful strategic decisions). That's a lot more work, though, and can really clutter a game sometimes, so I'd be happy if things were just renewable. Being required to ditch a world doesn't sound as fun as being able to carefully and systematically nurture it into being a better world.

[Silane]

I use the "More Plantables" mod to get around the reeds/rabbits/tallbirds/mushrooms, lightbulbs/mushtrees cave bananas etc.    The mod does have terrain limits which are nice, being as tall birds on rocky land, reeds in swamps, lightbulbs in guano and mush tree in fungal etc.   Which is nice and give another use for the pitchfork and terrain besides a visual.

 

 

But it would be neat if that was mainstream.   This would give much more purpose to the pitch fork/terrains in general.   (Also not being able to use terrains for fuel would make the game more challenging for some)

 

But making all growables replantable/self spawnable would be a wonderful way to add to the worlds.

 

What I would say though is to add a setting to the map settings that can be altered.  "Setting name here" : Barren, less, Default, More, Lush.   Say a barren world has very few of them and they grow slowly over time, and a lush world has lots?     It might also effect which terrains are bigger/more abundant?    Barren worlds are all rockyland/savvanah/desert, luch worlds are Autumn, forest, grass, etc.

 

This would also take some of the fields out of the world gen and save space in the world controls, and as things would be generally forced to stay in their own biomes.

 

With a max world gen depending on the size you choose and then a max amount over time, like the beefalo herds max size of 12.    

 

Plus adding things withering in winter as there wilting in summer, as well as things should fully freeze in winter as things can burn completely in Summer.

[Devon Aster]

I saw SethR write here that their reasoning for not having replantable reeds is that they wouldn't make sense outside of their own biome (he was comparing cacti to them), but that doesn't seem to interfere in any way with having them be able to respawn in swamps.

I thought there had been more before Seth's post, but I may be misremembering.  It's true we're getting more resources.  I think it's been mostly in line for how much more of those resources we need.  I'm not strongly opposed to renewable/replantable mushrooms or reeds.  It would be nice to be able to group them together for easier picking and protecting.  If it goes that way, I'll be replanting along with you   I would like to see something more involved, but as you say it can quickly get out of hand.  They would likely need to introduce new mechanics to allow for special spawning circumstances and I'm not sure that's something they'll want to tackle at this point.

[brummbar7]

It's fine how it is as far as spawn limits and what smolders.  I do agree that smoldering needs to be more obvious.  More smoke, like black clouds, and it would be nice if the character would say something.  The summer muffling seems to affect the smolder sound sometimes which makes it almost impossible to hear.

 

Reeds are rarely within range of one another such that they can have massive losses.  I don't think I've ever seen more than two reeds within fire range of each other, aside from the reed trap of course.  Solution: don't visit your reed trap in the summer.  Just like everything else in the world, if you're more than a couple screens away, nothing is going to happen, including spontaneous fires. 

 

And, I'm pretty sure that if an item starts to smolder, and you run away, only that particular item will burn, even if other things are well within range.  I had that happen with a pig house in the middle of a forest once.  Didn't burn any of the many trees around it when I came back later.

 

Maybe summer time is a good time (ironically) to spend time in places with few flammable items, like the desert (Are cactus flammable?  I sure hope not...), mosaic biome, or rocky biome.  Swamp too really, even though a nice stack of dug spiky bushes is nice for the winter.

 

Mushrooms are more likely to be within wildfire range of other items, but they're just not that big a deal, at least to me.

 

To me the most critical item (and surprisingly it wasn't mentioned at all in the polls) is the berry bushes.  I already try to scatter them now to prevent wildfires, but friggin flowers keep spawning in amongst them in spring and they're hard to see, and they act as bridges for fire.  I really don't want to have to fuel a THIRD flinger all summer for a dense berry farm, but it may end up that way.

 

So far though I've gotten by just fine by carrying an ice staff around in the summer to extinguish things that I care about. 

[rezecib]

To me the most critical item (and surprisingly it wasn't mentioned at all in the polls) is the berry bushes.  I already try to scatter them now to prevent wildfires, but friggin flowers keep spawning in amongst them in spring and they're hard to see, and they act as bridges for fire.  I really don't want to have to fuel a THIRD flinger all summer for a dense berry farm, but it may end up that way.

Totally forgot about berry bushes, oops. I guess I've been playing too much Wigfrid (...although, actually, I don't relocate bushes as other characters, as I find dragonfruit farms easier to set up and better in the long run). I would lump them in with grass/saplings, poll-wise, I suppose.

 

I get that strategically now you should stay away from things like reed traps in the Summer, but do you really think that's good gameplay? Personally, that just highlights how silly wildfires can be as a gameplay mechanic, if all it's doing is encouraging you to turtle up in the one place you can protect, or stay far far away from anything you value. I would almost rather have wildfires be able to occur anywhere rather than how it is now, because then at least there wouldn't be a reason to hide to protect forests and reeds, etc from yourself.

 

Regarding running away resulting in only the smoldering object burning, maybe I just hit a bad timing window but in one of my recent games I was working on clearing a reed trap and never saw fire at any point, but came back later to see 90% of the reeds gone.

[brummbar7]

I get that strategically now you should stay away from things like reed traps in the Summer, but do you really think that's good gameplay?...all it's doing is encouraging you to turtle up in the one place you can protect, or stay far far away from anything you value.

Ya, it's fine.  You're just avoiding the reed trap for 1/4 the year.  that's not the same as turtling.   The reed trap is pretty much alone in its vulnerability/non-renewability.      And you can still go anywhere, just bring an ice staff.  Or I guess stack of rot since apparently that stops smoldering, but ice staff is ranged so faster.  I've played through like 4 summers now and never had that big a problem.   Even before flingers were feasibly refuelable.   It's fairly rare for wild stuff to start combusting in my experience.  I do all kinds of stuff in summer.  It's even better now that it used to be; since the ice hat spoils, there's no reason at all not to just wear it constantly, as opposed to swapping it on and off like I did when it had durability.

[rezecib]

Ya, it's fine.  You're just avoiding the reed trap for 1/4 the year.  that's not the same as turtling.   The reed trap is pretty much alone in its vulnerability/non-renewability.      And you can still go anywhere, just bring an ice staff.  Or I guess stack of rot since apparently that stops smoldering, but ice staff is ranged so faster.  I've played through like 4 summers now and never had that big a problem.   Even before flingers were feasibly refuelable.   It's fairly rare for wild stuff to start combusting in my experience.  I do all kinds of stuff in summer.  It's even better now that it used to be; since the ice hat spoils, there's no reason at all not to just wear it constantly, as opposed to swapping it on and off like I did when it had durability.

I've been through a lot of summers too without problems, but wild stuff can and does catch fire quite frequently in my experience. I really like it as a mechanic as far as renewable things are concerned, but for non-renewable things it feels very... off.

 

As a side, fashion melons are way more fun to use than ice hats, I recommend trying them

[taciturn]

Add carrot berry bush and mushroom spawners for autumn, and let straw/reeds/twigs be spring spawners. At least as long as fires are so punishing. Also Pine Cones and Bitchnuts left on the ground between winter and spring could be replaced with new trees?

 

I think RoG needs more work on dynamic relationships between the seasons.