jorb wrote:We've been developing, and here's what's new.
[*] You can now inspect "Mine Pyre"s to determine how much time they have left to burn. Their timer is currently 7 RL days. I've seen some discussion on this already, but welcome more of it.
From what I've read about fire-setting as an historical mining practise, I feel like the concept needs to be further adapted-- this feels like a jumbled-up implementation, rather than a sound addition.
First, the question of the pyre itself-- the addition of sand suggests that you're creating an environment for pyrolysis, rather than an open fire. A pyrolytic fire is going to produce temperatures lower than an open fire-- 500 to 600 degrees celcius, rather than an open fire, which could reach 900 degrees celcius, or more. Given that fire-setting functions on the basis of thermal shock, you'd likely want to use a hotter fire, rather than a cooler fire, to increase the effectiveness of the pyre.
Secondly, the subject of thermal shock-- in order for fire-setting to be effective, the rock needs to be quenched with water after being heated. This isn't an invention of modern physics-- this was being done two thousand years ago.
That being said, let's look at your implementation of the idea. First, you've left out the thing that makes the process effective-- the quenching. Secondly, you've seemingly opted for a pyrolytic process-- have you at least had the good grace to give us some charcoal when the pyre burns down? Since the world hasn't been around for seven days, we don't know-- but I'm guessing you haven't. Now, you've created an inconsistency in your game design-- if a tar kiln produces charcoal in three days, then it doesn't make sense for another pyrolytic process to take seven days-- especially when it's less well-made than a tar kiln, and contains less fuel.
So, how do we make your implementation make sense?
1) First, ditch the sand. You want a blazing hot fire to increase the effectiveness of quenching.
2) Second, add a requirement to quench the pyre-- make it require a full barrel of water to complete the action.
3) Third, reduce the timer to correspond with the number of fuel ticks that the required blocks of wood produce. A fifty-block pyre would take 1082 minutes to burn-- little more than 18 hours. That seems like a more reasonable amount of time.
4) Fourth, scale the number of blocks required for a pyre based on the level of the mine-- begin with fifty blocks to move from level one to level two, followed by seventy-five blocks for level two to level three, and so on. This has some degree of real-world logic behind it-- the move from sedimentary to metamorphic to igneous rock should require additional work to get through.
While I realize that any sort of time gating will remain unpopular, a gate like this at least remains consistent with the systems which already exist in the game.