Hello folks. I have a few suggestions that I think would be nice. Keep in mind, everything herein is my opinion, and I'm welcome to criticism as long as it's constructive. At the end of the day, developers develop at their own discretion. If all of these suggestions never make it into the game in any form, I won't be upset or any worse for wear. Cheers.
- More modular modding support
I get it, this is so generalized that it's probably been suggested before in various ways, but the skinny of it is this: A lot of mods struggle to accomplish what they are going for because a lot of the game is locked behind C (Or C++) and the build process. Every item and every use and attribute of that item should, more or less, be plaintext. Some examples would be things like more types of trees, more types of animals, tools, etc.
I'm not suggesting the addition of a pearl-white Volvo 240 but a nice travois or "
Purilaat" would be nice. I think something like this should have a weight limit of maybe 1 tree, you could load an animal on here and bring it back to your camp. It would be unwieldy, so you couldn't put it on a punt or raft. It also fits within the time frame of the game, I'd say.
You've just lost the use of one of your legs (or both!) and this slows you down or stops you from using your legs completely. Having weapons or tools with a [CRUTCH] tag allows you to walk as long as they are equipped. Maybe even an efficiency on the tag, for example a "[CRUTCH] = 10" for a completely efficient crutch tool, such as a staff, or "[CRUTCH] = 6" for something like a spear or Javelin. Maybe a staff is "[CRUTCH] = 9" and a separate tool can be made, an actual crutch, which has "[CRUTCH] = 10". Less efficient crutches make it harder to stand if your wound is too severe and incur a speed penalty.
Not having any wounds at all and having a "[CRUTCH]" weapon equipped could make it so weight burdens carry a lesser % penalty or exertion is lowered. These exist in real life, hiking poles for example. People who walk with spears generally do use it as a crutch even if the amount of weight they put on it is insignificant. I challenge you to try and scale even a small incline while holding a pole in both hands, as if you're ready to attack or something. It's much more difficult and less intuitive than using it as an improvised hiking pole.
Smoke! I can use my sauna as a smokehouse, which kind of defeats the purpose. You wouldn't want to stand in a smokehouse, and fish wouldn't get preserved in a sauna. My idea is, just a simple 'smoke' tile that fills up and dissipates whenever there is no roof above the tile. My idea is that it would be an animal or NPC of some sort, pathfinding towards the exit. If it doesn't have the ability to open doors, it would just 'walk around' in the area. I think the challenging bit would be to make them work with food. You'd probably have to make it so smoked food just requires the 'smoke tile' to pass over it, or maybe the smoke 'npc' goes over to raw food and 'eats' it, leaving behind smoked food of the type it ate.
One thing that currently exists is that certain cultures get a minor boost to a few skills. The biggest boon to picking certain cultures is their starting weapons and skills. I think it'd be interesting if they also had some specific traits, like maybe the Seal-Tribe gets a 10-15% skill bonus to skinning seals, or Reemiläiset take a 30% less penalty when using awkward tools for house building. Initial customization might be fun to get a better idea of who your character is, especially if you do a full random character. This idea can be expanded to certain negatives too.
In Dwarf Fortress, people have accomplished 'everything'. As an open ended game, you have to keep yourself entertained by coming up with 'megaprojects'. Things like a huge farm field, or a cabin so large you could house an entire village under its one roof. It would be nice if things like this could exist in the current game. Maybe a shrine made of 10 bear skulls, or a way to create your own 'village' that attracts settlers (and thieves!) and 'retire' once certain conditions are met. As there is no endgame, it wouldn't hurt to give major optional goals and objectives. Things that would take between 2-3 winters.
Anyway, thanks for reading my suggestions. Happy trapping, and remember where you left your raft
.