Burning and freezing mechanics for all items

[Faalagorn]

I originally wanted to post it in Small but Important Suggestions Thread, but since it grew to be more than a small suggestion, I decided to make a separate thread for it.

 

Currently, we have the CantBeFrozen flag, as well as the cooling down and freezing mechanic as well as related blue color change and freezing progress bar and icon for food that extends their shelf time, but it applies to food (Type = Food) items extensively. In the opposite, there's a temperature mechanic for food that depends on the heat source and temperature settings, as well as related GoodHot and BadCold flags and a related red color bar which this time applies to all items, but only have effect on food that either can be cooked or has the before mentioned flags.

 

Those mechanics are fine, but not without issues it seems but what I'd love to see is extending it to be slightly more realistic for other items. Currently you can put items with CantBeFrozen inside the working freezer and while they don't get the benefit of freezer, they also don't get the disadvantage of freezing (having to thaw). Conversely, you can put a book in oven and it'll be just fine. With that in mind, here's what I suggest:

• At the very basics, all items should froze when put in the freezer and have to be thawed before using, including items that have CantBeFrozen flag (see below for details) and items that are not Type = Food. Accidentally put your gun in the freezer and want to shoot it? Sorry, you have to let it thaw.
• Similarily, putting non-cookable items in heat sources should destroy them (and risk a fire?). Ideally those items would be replaced with (Burnt) version of said item – similar to cookable food – alternatively replaced a generic item such as ash, to easily identify the item was destroyed and having to remove it afterwards. In case of the latter, ash even can have some uses.
• Finally, items with CantBeFrozen flag should get damaged (destroyed?) when frozen – packaged drinks, milks and eggs, would explode for example. However, CantBeFrozen flag currently isn't much consistent with its usage. Right now from perishable foods, only eggs, wild eggs (but not egg carton!) and milk  have it, when only a part of nonperishable items have that flag. 

Which brings me to the following conclusion: only items that pose a risk when frozen should have the CantBeFrozen flag, as it seems to be an original idea, as almost all bottled liquids got the flag initially. Over time additional items got it, mainly things like antibiotics, cigarettes, salt, pepper. I don't quite get what was the logic to add the flag to Chips, Instant Popcorn, Peanuts and Sunflower Seeds (though the latter weren't even possible to find in the game shortly before this flag was implemented) when other perishables don't have this flag.

If my last suggestion would be implemented, then usage of this flag could be tweaked, with only tightly sealed liquids to pose a thread of damaging when frozen, most of which already got the tag anyway. For details, see my food spreadsheet.

 

The whole system would certainly need some tweaks to get it right, depending on how accurate it'd be, for example some items would burn faster than other (magazines, books), especially when put in campfire, and some would actually explode (fuel, deodorant, ammunition). Some items would actually survive too, depending on temperature (metal things), on the other hand putting metal things in microwave would risk a broken microwave or even a small fire too, which was already suggested, most recently here.

Heck, maybe that could actually replace the current add fuel to campfire mechanic eventually? Something like other sandboxes such as Minecraft have – if it can burn, it can extend the time campfire is lit when put inside the container.

 

All of these suggestions would reuse the mechanics that are already there and I think would fit nice with the temperature/weather overhaul with the addition of outside temperature having effect on food as well (cooling down in winter causing it to last longer when outside or heating up when left in summer, causing it to rot faster, as was originally suggested in the weather test build thread by @vanorfeadiel and later expanded by me: