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Author Topic: Fires, curious about their absence and the reason behind it.  (Read 915 times)

pamelrabo

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Just like other players, I've had villagers dying of thirst because the river froze and they couldn't think of using the fires from the kitchen or the smelter to melt some ice and drink.

Also, a fire originated by a forgotten beast burned the whole cavern in another embark, with the citizens just ignoring it or being caught in the flames by accident. So basically dwarves avoid fire or ignore it.

This doesn't happen in adventure mode, where you can set a campfire (and melt ice) and interact with it, just in fortress mode, so I'm curious about the reason. ¿Is it a design decision, like in "we'll get to that later", or "it's just how it's intended to be"? ¿Or a technical reason, like in "Implementing and fixing this would be a hell/timesink so great it's better to leave it for later"?

Other games (Prison architect, rimworld) deal with fire management, you can set fires and you can try to extinguish them if they become too dangerous, and it's not out of character for a medieval city simulation like this game is.

So: curious about it. ¿Is there a devlog or a forum post where I can read about this matter? or ¿Can someone give me a brief explanation?
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Loam

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Re: Fires, curious about their absence and the reason behind it.
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2019, 08:54:03 am »

Probably "just haven't gotten around to it," or maybe there's some technical difficulties to be sorted out. I don't think anyone's opposed to adding fire management to the game.

I found a few dev items on fire on this wiki page, such as Req480 (dwarves actually doing something when they're on fire, instead of just standing there burning to death). I seem to remember some discussion of adding a way to start fires in Fort Mode, but I don't know where that is.
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Iduno

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Re: Fires, curious about their absence and the reason behind it.
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2019, 02:24:00 pm »

I'm not sure how good heat transfer through layers is. As far as I know, magma is needed to melt ice through one layer.

Although Toady could add a temporary workshop that needs to be placed on ice (similar to a magma forge) that produces drinkable water. It's just enough of an edge case that it's not likely to be implemented.
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: Fires, curious about their absence and the reason behind it.
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2019, 02:46:55 pm »

You could totes make a workshop that turns ice into barrels of drink, for example. Make it need a unit of fuel or maybe add a magma version to simulate the need for heat.
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pamelrabo

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Re: Fires, curious about their absence and the reason behind it.
« Reply #4 on: June 19, 2019, 02:10:37 am »

Oh, I've thought about that, and the kitchen needing fuel, too. Right now the cooks are doing 'roasts' without any heat at all.

That would surely tune down the excess of prepared food I always have (one busy kitchen feeds more than a hundred villagers, I think).

But my curiosity was about fire, in general
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Deus Machina

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Re: Fires, curious about their absence and the reason behind it.
« Reply #5 on: June 19, 2019, 02:17:00 am »

I always just figured they managed without the serious fuel needs of other workshops. Or at least little enough you can assume they gather that in their spare time.
Sure, forges need coal or at least charcoal, but ovens can run on enough random little sticks or packed grass and leaves.
Even stuff like dried camel dung, but I'd hope for indirect heat in that case.
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