Ideas on Temperature

[Aerona]

I've been thinking about how a system for the impact of temperature on hearthlings could be implemented to add to the survival challenge. Hearthlings would have a new bar indicating how well their homeothermy is going, with neutral in the middle ideal and hitting either extreme resulting in unconsciousness or even death, if they can't return to a safe hearthfire or recover by just not doing anything. New wound conditions like frostbite and sunburn might accumulate when this gets to the extremes of HHP damage, with SHP first to represent more mild conditions like heat exhaustion or numbness.

Each hearthling would have some ability to self-regulate to the centre of the scale at a certain rate when their environment nudges them toward one end or another, by either by expending their stamina to cool down, or their energy reserve to warm up. If a hearthling's ability to regulate their own temperature isn't enough, or they're too low on energy or stamina to keep up with the rate of change, the way to survive would be to change their environment or use tools to reduce their exposure, for example by building up a fire, jumping into water, or staying out of the wind or sun.

In the environment of H&H, not usually marked by sand dunes, the sun's rays aren't likely to ever be dangerous on their own, but at high noon in high summer, heavy exertion (and, especially, inappropriate clothing) could still make it add up to too much. This would make it a better time to be out on the water, or in a shady forest, instead of working hard out in the dust fields. Still, farmers with the right stats, equipment and supplies should be able to tough it out, especially if those supplies include frozen treats made using ice brought down from the mountains!

Warriors would find it to their advantage to wear less armour (and more wet warpaint!) in such conditions, and might find the amount of water they need to carry enough that it could guide the times and places they conduct their campaigns, encouraging night raids or tunnelling in - with underground being a good place to be during a winter siege as well. Those expecting to fight opponents with much better armour than they have access to would especially have reason to engage (or defend) where the heat is the worst, while in the extreme cold, it may be that only those wearing heavy furs (and equipped with skis or snowshoes, of course) will be good at fighting, even if they're not as well-armed.

At night in the spring and autumn, and for most of the day in the winter, being indoors, underground, or near a fire would be necessary to avoid spending extra energy on staying warm. Good clothing could mitigate that, while being wet could make it much worse. 'Soaking' could be a value with a cap that increases with each item of clothing worn (depending on their capacity for being soaked), and that can be quickly reduced by changing into dry clothing, or more gradually as part of warming up by a fire. Bad weather conditions would add to this value even for those who don't go into the water.

In hot conditions, the extra cooling effect from being soaked could be a benefit, or even a necessity for travelling through an inferno. Perhaps with a special garment that's designed specifically to have a high capacity for retaining water - along with such good insulation it'd be uncomfortable anywhere else - useful for entering burning buildings, or a hypohetical magma dungeon. To discourage warriors from too liberally making use of the cooling benefit of getting soaked just to reduce how exhausting it is to fight, it might be good balance if equipment that gets soaked tends to degrade unless it receives special care. Waxing or other waterproofing methods could protect from this, but also resist getting soaked in the first place... and such waterproofing might be essential for a basic cloak to be any use in a sleet storm.

A hearthling's stats could indicate whether they're better at staying warm in the cold, cool in the heat, or some of both. This in itself could be a reason to work toward characters with balanced stats so they can adapt to any conditions, and be an added wrinkle for min/maxed characters, who may find they can't function as well at the extremes and need more pampering.

Since new characters are the ones the most at the mercy of the elements, and the system shouldn't be irrelevant to anyone, higher stats definitely shouldn't just equal more temperature tolerance overall. Some characters might have an easy time staying cool, and therefore be more comfortable with brief periods of heavy exertion, but struggle to stay warm and therefore need a lot more shelter and clothing available, making them bad at roughing it out in the wilderness. Others would have a relatively easy time staying warm without shelter, but have to wear less in summer and spread their exertions out over a longer period of time. This could add a new dimension to the interactions between hearthlings with 'civilized' lifestyles and those without.

In addition to the extreme heat from molten rock or a fire burning out of control, there may be some mystical sources of extreme cold more severe than anything within common experience. Those who assume that going underground or indoors is always a good way to find shelter could, on occasion, find such places haunted by creatures whose mere presence makes a midwinter night feel like a summer day by comparison... a torch in hand could be the least of comfort in such a situation!

[Sevenless]

add to the survival challenge.

There is no survival challenge in this game if you understand the mechanics. You don't need to eat food or drink water if you're patient and avoid some activities early game for example.

I think the game is fine that way. It's too long lasting of a game for survival mechanics to be anything other than annoying in the long run.

[TheServant]

Shubla new account?

[Aerona]

Shubla

That guy has really left a mark on you! No, I did have another account years ago, but I only played on one world before this one.

...

The survival challenge right now comes mainly from animals (possibly including other hearthlings) and the wounds they cause. There's other factors that can complicate that already, but none of them come into play unless the character is actively exploring. And neither does getting attacked by wild animals, usually. That's why it feels like something's missing to me, especially in a game that uses fire as a central theme.

In the long run, the challenge goes away because hearthlings adapt and alter their environment. Once you've got a full cupboard, wardrobe, and the house they go into, there's no risk of succumbing to the elements so long as you still have it. In the game right now, on the other hand... it's as easy to just plonk a bed down outside in the grass as it is in the Sims. (Save for that one Sims 3 expansion where they added seasons and made it so sleeping outside caused health problems, anyway.) But there'd still the potential that someone whose village is destroyed or casts them out to end up in a situation where they need to build fires to keep warm and worry about the weather until they find or build a new home. I think that would add a lot to the atmosphere.

The other complications that would arise from this system wouldn't make survival any more difficult, but they'd have emergent effects on gameplay strategies that could make the game more dynamic, with conditions changing at the whims of the seasons or weather, and adding the potential for climate shocks to reverberate through the whole game world. In the long run, that would give the game a lot more longevity! If conditions are the same every day and they affect everyone the same way all the time, then strong factions stay strong and there's no good time to attack them (mechanically, anyway). But if one faction is adapted to the cold and another is adapted to the heat, and it gets cold all of a sudden, that shifts the balance of power.

This is a bit outside the scope of the thread, but volcanic winter is one of the main factors that brought down the empires of the bronze and iron ages... not because it got cold per se, but because the lack of sunlight caused crop failures. Still, it works as an example of how a mechanic that would certainly be annoying for, say, farmers, is the same sort of mechanic that's needed to keep the game from getting boring due to everyone settling down and resigning to the situation staying the same until the end of the world.

[Audiosmurf]

I do think it would maybe be cute if the game had a bit more survival pressure

[VDZ]

Shubla new account?

That was my first impression as well. Started posting less than three hours after I pointed out TonyRigatoni as an obvious Shubla alt ("Tony" hasn't accessed the forum since one minute before that post), second post and fourth post are positive responses to Shubla threads. The post formatting doesn't match Shubla's, though, but then again neither does TonyRigatoni's and in addition to the weird timing and unusual proximity of posts they have roughly the same ideas, and Aerona has Shubla-tier bad takes ([1] [2] [3] [4]). It's also worth pointing out they started posting within 34 minutes of first opening the forum and made 20 posts in 2 days despite apparently being a forum newbie, all but one in C&I and the W15 Prelude thread. I guess Shubla is at least putting in effort now?

[abt79]

the sad ( ) part is that the Shubla name actually had some pull with j&l, unsubtle derision notwithstanding. They even let you keep advertising your spyware client on the forum