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old Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

Vagabundus
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Forget the Aliens thing.

I am playing in the "random mode" of Stranded 2. My specific question has to do with avoiding catastrophic fires in camp. The game seems focused on destroying my storage box with middle-of-the-night fires.

Avoiding catastrophic fire
I have tried locating buildings away from fireplace (even locating my camp encosing two springs and building a well between the crops and my campfire). Nothing seems to work, mapping/strategic planning-wise.

I thought about extinguishing my campfire every time I leave camp, but needing so many leaves to make one container of water, and needing so many waters to extinguish fire--I end up spending way too much of my play time hitting trees for leaves, then squeezing the water from them. So if I needed the same 6+ containers of water to extinguish my campfire, I could never leave camp! (but then if I needed to make all of that water, I would not have time to leave camp!

This also makes it difficult to keep enough bottles of water on hand. I would think that there is some way short of squeezing leaves to get water. Extinguishing fires--whether the "I'm leaving camp" or the "Oh NO!My storage box is on fire again!" it just takes way too much game time.

I realize that there are no "empty bottles" in the game. Would it be possible to introduce something like "a fire bucket" that could stand next to my buildings and refill from rain?

Perhaps we could somehow use sea water (I'm not sure whether fighting fires with sea water is a problem--I know that the naval and coast guard vessels pump sea water to fight on-board vessel fires.)

Even if this water was not potable, the ability to just bring up some water from a spring or well would be helpful.

Finally, is there some way to use a shovel to extinguish fires? Here they consider a shovel to be an essential piece of campfire safety equipment. How about the option of building a "fire station" --something like the defense tower-- that would prevent or extinguish any nasty fires? A few shovelfulls of some nice sandy soil will put out many of the camp-sized fires!



Locust plague
I learned to check back regularly to check for locust swarms wiping out my crops. It seems that only a dozen or so wheat plants will trigger an invasion.

I read somewhere on these fora that the locust plague frequency is related to the total number of wheat plants on the island! (That will teach me to pick a large island. . .) It does seem a bit, well, strange, to need to slink about the island, dodging lions in order to cut down small, isolated patches of wild wheat so that the locusts won't sweep in and destroy (only) your small patch of wheat--just enough to make a week's worth of bread loaves.)

So I keep my net ready and go after them like crazy whenever they show. It is as exciting as watching grass grow! (irony intended)

Is there something else I could do to lessen the frequency of locusts? Maybe some plant they prefer to avoid (thus protecting my surrounding wheat plants)?


Are there other "plagues" that might arise?

How about an e-coli/generic food poisoning episode triggered by trying to store (and eat) perishable foods for too long? You would need an anti-poison potion, and would perhaps be unable to leave your immediate camp--your "tired meter" runs about 10x normal speed, so that you can barely walk around your campsite without feeling dizzy/disoriented.

Historically many folks in Europe suffered from a bacteria that thrived in grain that was improperly stored. The main effects were visual hallucinations. These were particularly difficult because they were not tightly coupled to the trigger events. Basically, someone goes to gather mushrooms in the woods and returns wild-eyed and screaming about monsters following right behind. . .

Adding a little more blur/random spots of lights/unusual shadows to the joint "trip" effects would seriously slow down a player's ability to cope with the basic tasks.

"Hey, stop laughing! I'm telling you, swear to God, there was a 10-foot tall Kiwi-like bird! And I couldn't run away fast enough because these huge red and blue and yellow airplane-things kept dive-bombing me! Hurry, they're coming this way. . .OH NO! The tent's burning with green slimy stuff!"

I'm thinking a cross between the joint hallucinatory effects combined with the old Rogue/Nethack hallucinations (in which things randomly appeared to be other objects). It's effects would be particularly difficult if you couldn't associate them with a specific action--unlike smoking a joint.

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

MrCowThing
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When 30 grain plants are on the island the plague will come. Best way to fend them off is to pick up any plants they destroy before they eat them, and continue to try killing them with a weapon.
The fire is strange, I have my hut storage and campfire pretty close, and never once caught on fire (except that one time I set a kiwi on fire and it ran into my camp :P)
The game can't tell where your camp is so limiting you so you can't leave camp is impossible.
Having stored foods spoil would get annoying, but I'm pretty sure its possible.

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

garfield751
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i donno about the camp fire thing it might be a bug or something but as mrcowthing said 30+ wheat = plague.
and the spoiling food thing is a good idea but not very praticial because i store food for when i cant find any and if i run out of my normal supplies i dont want my emergency food supplies to go bad when i need them the most.

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

Amritsar
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That would be a great idea for a realism mod but only optional otherwise a good deal of the Stranded community would go loco.

And I must admit I have also never seen a random fire in my camp, are you sure it wasn't because you set a kiwi on fire (as mentioned before) and it proceeded to burn everything in sight?

Oh and having buildings between flames as a barrier doesn't work as it seems even wells catch fire I believe. Best bet is to leave a large amount of grass/dirt.

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

garfield751
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i was playing on a small random island and on day 82 i found the random fire thing but the alert is in germen so at first i was like wtf??? but then i saw my tree house burning in frount of me so i poped up the console and put it out

but srsly it should be a wayyyyyyyyyyyy small chance of it happening not every day or something

old follow-up

Vagabundus
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Maybe I am just unlucky. When I first played the adventure game, my first shelter caught fire twice and my storage box caught fire once. All while on the first island.

In two games I have played since, both in "Random Island" mode, fires in my camp have happened multiple times.

In the current game I even awakened to the "red type German fire warning" message only to rush outside and just look around! There was no fire, other than in the campfire.

The only thing I could figure out was that somehow my "campfire" was burning. Is this irony?

In that I didn't want to gather all the rocks and branches needed to build another, I put out the fire with a bottle of water. I still don't know if that was the culprit--is it possible to get a false alarm?

My storage box has burnt three times. The first time I was able to put it out with seven bottles of water, thus saving it. The second time it burnt while was on an overnight trip to the far side of the island. I came back and saw only a small pile of some of the things that had been in the storage box.

The third time I was in camp and used six bottles of water. (As it suggested onscreen, I put the water in my hand and then used them on the fire.

This was not successful. Perhaps the magic number is seven bottles of water. But that is a significant undertaking, when all water has to be made from leaves! Let's see. . .seven waters is 210 leaves?

But I tried everything I could think of after running out of the six waters. I jumped, tried smothering it with leaves, used the shovel, even tried to use the empty bottles (still showing in my "hand" while displaying 0 bottles left) in the nearby well. No use. I just had to sit and watch it burn to the ground!

That is why I suggested the shovel/campfire water thing.

I mean, my camp included two natural springs (the blue light sort, not just the hollowed out stone temporary supply) and a well I had made right between my campfire and the storage box, on the longshot that it might help prevent a fire. It didn't.

The only things I have had catch fire are my general storage box and the temporary shelter. My tent has never caught fire, and neither have wood/stone storage areas, Kiwi breeding boxes and gardens.

So are there any suggestions?

To answer the questions in the helpful attempts--Thank you all!

(1) Amritsar, I'm sure it was not a Kiwi on fire. I have never set a bird (or anything else on fire) except for campfires and torches--mostly the permanent location type. I haven't (yet) used fire arrows or tried "field fire harvesting."

By the way, anyone know of a way to burn a field of hemp? Just think. . .all that hemp smoke covering the island. Kiwis playing jump rope with dreamy-eyed lions. . .

(2) Garfield751, it has happened both the time I played the Adventure series (on Island 1) and both times I have played the "Random Island". My islands both were "big" and "moderate level" of nasty monster things. In each case there were multiple fires. Certainly not "every day" but for me, probably more like every fortnight or so. I haven't done any game interventions/cheating(?) yet with the system console, although I guess that would fix the problem. My post here was to try and figure out what was going on and how to combat it.

(3) TheKilledDeath, thanks for the confirmation. They definitely look like intentional happenings, especially with the flashing warning in German on screen. I'm hoping to find out what might serve as trigger for this to happen. I can't think of anything, except maybe leaving the fire going between uses (but that doesn't seem to be such a weird thing--there isn't an easy way to put the fire out without wasting a water.

(4) It has happened to me when I was away from camp. In that situation the alarm came when it was dark (I don't remember if I had just wakened from a weird sleep cycle, or if I was still wandering about looking for a way back home in the dark.) I was a long way from camp, the alarm came and there was no way I could make it back to camp. MrCowThing, that's what I meant by "not leaving camp." Not that the game wouldn't let me, but if I do leave camp--a long ways away--I never know when I will get the "fire!" warning. If I am in camp I can grab my seven bottles of water and extinguish it. If away from camp I might not be able to get back in time.

(5) For the locust thing, my best results have come from using the net on them (bugs is bugs and parts is parts). Although they are a bit frustrating to catch--they are moving vertically as much as horizontally--I can dispatch each with one "hit" of the net and their vicious little vile carcasses at least serve as fish bait.

By the way, the true devastation of locust infestations came in their complete indifference as to which plant-thing they ate. Locusts ate all the leaves and grass and food in storage as well as the crops in the field.

What if a locust swarm wasn't just a "lost this crop" thing, but a "all the leaves are gone on this part of the island" problem? Especially if we differentiated between a small local problem and a swarming locust plague. Not keeping an eye on your crops, or habitual over-planting might trigger a swarm that wouldn't just be happy with eating a few wheat plants then flying away!

[Oh, and we could have a plague of frogs!]

Hey, I wonder. . .could the locusts serve as a food source? Many people in equatorial societies eat locusts--often fried. It might even prove to be another entertaining way to gather food. . . plant a big field, then wait nearby, sleeping with net already in hand!

I believe the game already allows a tiny amount of food value for slime and other nasty stuff licked off of bark--I'm thinking of something like a 1/2 kilo worth of locusts (about half that present in a small-sized swarm) with nutritional value of a small meat. Probably with no food value without frying. If only for the decency of the thing (consider the initial "crunch" and the resulting "squirt" of the grasshopper guts . . .)

(6) As for the spoiled food thing: Of course it would drive people loco! But isn't a "touch of loco" what separates the Stranded 2 players from those of "Chutes and Ladders?" We're supposed to be tough and hardy.

And it would introduce a bit of risk into what has become a fairly predictable little world. Just think, players would not be able to simply go out on a hunting/fishing spree and stick the stuff away in storage for years to come!

The easiest implementation, code-wise, would probably be one time for all food to go bad. If we wanted to get more complex, we could assign different spoil times for existing food types.

Obviously, in real life, different foods spoil differently.

Raw fish would go first. After only a few days most fish is pretty much rancid.

Any hope for a clambake? Dig a big pit in the sand, fill it with clams, cover it and start a big fire over it. . . (maybe those with pearls would be ruined, so your risk would be tossing clams without pearls, or waiting until they bake--the clams with pearls wouldn't "open" and the pearl and clam would be ruined.)

The uncooked small meats would go next. They would last several days, at least. I would imagine that baked bread would last about the same length of time before going moldy. This is, after all, a hot and moist environment! (Not many palm trees growing in Norway.)

Fruit would stay good for at least a week. Of course there is a huge difference in storage time for various fruits. Coconuts, for example, should be good stored whole-husk for quite a while. Grapes and berries will only last a week.

This, by the way, is probably the most significant reason for the early development of beer and wine. When processed into beer (or "little beer" or "near-beer") grains would have a much longer shelf life. Wine, in particular, will last a very long time. We haven't dealt much in the modern world around the nutritional value of alcoholic beverages, (I would be surprised at anyone who could not find good bread year-round. . . but hey, a cold brew beats moldy bread every day!

The big meats would last longer, if only because they do "rot from outside" allowing you to scrape off the outside moldy bits and have a nice hunk-o-meat. The really top-notch restaurants that serve fabulous cuts of meat will keep their big hunks of meat in a cooler--not a freezer--then allow the little organisms to start the work of tenderizing the meat. Most customers don't know that moments before hitting the fire their steak was an entirely unappetizing green. Those who do know are the ones who appreciate a great cut of meat.

The cooked meats would probably last quite awhile--we could even establish that a "big storage" box does have special areas for storing cooked meats--a nice bonus over just more space.

Then the unprocessed grains would last for probably an indefinite time.

In terms of game play, it serves as one more thing for the smart player to keep in mind. Instead of building up a huge food reserve then not bothering any more about it, the player would need to clean out the storage area of old food every now and then, replacing it with new food.Then you could eat the food that had been in storage instead of just eating fresh foods, relying on your cache stored away.

Pragmatically, I would imagine just one more daily storage-unit task. Instead of eating the food you kill that day, you would eat the food from storage. Not a problem if you are keeping track of things!

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

garfield751
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I am absolutly sure that the random fire thing is not caused by useing the console alot (I should know). I think that its something curupted in the soruce code or one of the scripts. What I would recmended is to redownload the game and it might make the fire rate back to what its spposed to be.

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

MrCowThing
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Actually making a code the spoils each type of food is easier than having it all spoil at the same time. Only problem would be adding all the new items for spoiled foods. We would have to decompile and change the texture of every food.

This is where a skin option for things would be WAY more efficient.

I'm coding a stinky box, or at least my name for it, it will make grasshoppers and other animals stay out of a certain perimeter around it. Also I'll code a bucket that can get water from any fresh water source and put fires out with 1 splash.

old update

Vagabundus
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I'll try reloading the code. I hope this fixes the problem. There were four fires today (in about 4 hours of play). The magic number is "seven." It always takes seven bottles of water to put out the fire. It doesn't seem to matter what you do with the water (placing it in one place rather than another, for example, or trying to throw the water at the flames when they appear on a particular area of the storage box.

So the water fire bucket would be welcome.

The really big news for me today. . .

As I was trying to play cat and mouse with a couple of very determined sharks I began to think. . .

What I really need here is a harpoon gun.

Wait! Harpoon gun is like an arbalest--small, light darts, no feathers or fins, relies on brute force to accomplish speed and distance. . .

I found out that you can kill a shark while standing on land with four shots. (Maybe 3--it isn't always easy to tell when you get a hit. . .sometimes you actually see blood in the ocean, and when the beastie dies, it floats sideways, so part of it sticks out of the water. Helpfully, once a shark gets a taste (or maybe just a smell) of you, it will circle in the area with it's trademark fin barely visible above the water. Shooting is easier with that sort of target.


You get several meats and teeth (of course). Retrieving them can be a bit tricky--it has to be done underwater, and other nasties are not at all prevented from wandering by.

AND. . . There IS A PIRANHA!! In the Ocean! I killed one today and when I visited the corpse, it identified it as "transfer to/from Piranha". They are harder to kill than the skarks--you have to be underwater to see them and they have an exceedingly thin profile while speeding toward your sorry soft fleshy bits waiting to be hors d'hoevres. . .

But by missing narrowly on one side, it turned briefly, exposing the side of its body. While not nearly the size of a barn door, and not even close to the size of a shark, hitting it cross-body does kill the beast.

The graphic doesn't look anything like the Amazon river piranha I have seen (saw some on a trip to Manaus, Brazil, many years ago). The graphic version is much bigger than a real piranha, and I didn't see the huge mouth full of sharp teeth that makes the Amazon river piranha such a lousy dinner guest.

And thankfully, there was only one, although it bit much faster and harder than any one real piranha. The danger of these little angels is that their dental apparatus can pretty much tear through anything resembling flesh. So when a thousand or so decide to eat all at the same time, it is the cumulative effect (although the whole meal sometimes takes less than a minute).

It would be an absolutely nasty "challenge feature" for advanced players to unleash, say, 300-700 of these little guys on some poor player who thought that escaping to the ocean to gun down the raptors was fun. . . I guess that the raptors wouldn't enjoy it much--piranha tend not to leave much behind in the way of table scraps.

Maybe that's *why* the raptors don't enter the ocean? Even if it happened .3% of the time it would require players to modify their tried and true "sighing because wasting these puny raptors just takes so long. . . " gimmicks and tricks.

The thing that would be terribly nasty about the whole thing is that you can't see them coming. If the visibility in the water s clouded at all they just look like a bunch of somewhat mellow small fish swimming around. (They don't tend to cluster together unless they are feeding).

So there would be little or no warning. All of a sudden the water boils around you and you have about 5 seconds to get out of the water, the piranha claiming any body part you happen to leave sitting in or close to the water. . .

At any rate, it was relatively easy to pick off this one fish because it swam directly toward me, like it was on a mission, rather than swimming around in rough circles looking for food. When I visited the corpse, it was probably the size of a football (either style).

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

Gregg
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If your still bothered about the fire thingy I found this a few days ago (in sys.):
*can't seem to find it now*

But it was something like "If 1-3 = 1 then create building fire."

I saw it somewhere, but can't find it, and it also had a message in German. If I find it again I will post it :).

old fire thing help

Vagabundus
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Thank you.

I very much would like to find it. This is becoming crazy.

I uninstalled everything (copied save files to another directory) and re-downloaded and re-installed StrandedII.

Then I started a new game.

Already I have suffered three fires: two on my tent and one on my just-completed storage box. I'm on day 39.

So that means an average of one fire every 13 days for me.

Isn't that a bit. . .much??

Especially in that with the storage box, the only way to put it out is with 7--I have confirmed this number--bottles of water. For the tent fires I could strike the tent, then rebuild it and the fire was gone. (one tent fire happened when I was sleeping in the tent--I awoke to the red German-language "Feur!" announcement).

A fix, or a code to change, or something (!) would be much appreciated. I love this game but seeing my storage box go up in flames as I am helpless to do anything about it--only two days after I had finally finished it--is frustration that approaches canceling out the enjoyment of the game.

NOTE:

Because of my long ramblings, I have decided to move this question (on avoiding fires) to its own spot.

Thank you so much for your patience.
edited 1×, last 27.05.08 06:37:21 am

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

Amritsar
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Sorry to ask you after you have moved the question but I would like to know which version you have? Is it a new addition in the 1.001 version? Because I played for at least 50 days on the gold release of Stranded 2 and never saw a fire.

And there is certaily no reason to reinstall Stranded if it has already been confirmed so you at least don't havw to worry about that.

old version of Stranded II

Vagabundus
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Thank you for your answer, Amritsar.

I'm not sure what version I have (can't find a typical "about" screen with that information--it's probably here, for some reason I just can't locate it. . .) It is a "gold" version, however, and recently downloaded from the unreal software site.

I downloaded it on 3-11-2003, the Win executable is 411 Mb.

I have tried to edit the configuration properties, but it doesn't seem to change things. To be precise, here are the latest fire dates and times (using in-game times)"

137-2
148-9
160-21

I don't know what else to do. Each time it takes from 6-10 waters to put out the fire. (I now know that it is not necessarily 7 waters, and that it does matter where you put the water--I just haven't figured out where and how and when--so this means gathering from 240 to 300 leaves every 10 days or so, just to make the required water.

Any ideas?

I tried changing the values in the random events file. I thought I set the minimum time between fires to 29 days (I think once a month is at least manageable--I do want to do things other than gathering leaves and pressing them with a rock to get water! But my changes don't seem to make any difference.

Are these files only utilized when the island is generated? That is, when I change these values will it have an effect on my current game, or only on new games I might start?

Thank you. This is a frustrating situation for me.

old Re: Hazards Avoidance (fire, locusts, Aliens, etc.)

Raven Shadow
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Vagabundus has written
Are these files only utilized when the island is generated?

I believe so.


Vagabundus has written
That is, when I change these values will it have an effect on my current game, or only on new games I might start?


I believe the relevant scripts have already been saved in your save game file, to make changes to the random events file take effect, you'll have to start a new game to get the new odds to take effect.

If you're comfortable using a hex editor and don't want to restart, you could try to edit the save file
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