Is hoarding useful?

[Guy Montag]

So I have picked up every item so far and I can barely get around the ship because of all the luggage and boxes of *fuses?* It totally makes sense to keep all the neat stuff and fuel, just curious if I can stop wasting time with the less interesting stuff.

[Mentally eel]

yea i want to know this to :D
also i can se why i would keep the radi o but .. a bell ? besides from ringing what does it do and is there someplace we can check out theese things ?

dont wana hijack but i guess op want to know these things to

[Kecske]

In my experience no. Early on you need the fuel, but it never really piles up, and later the automatic collector grabs them for you, just keep burning suff it sucks up, no mess necessary.
In my first run I collected absolutely everything and it was a pain to get around the ship.
Not 100% sure, but I have a feeling you can pretty much get to the end by mostly burning fuel barrels after they can be found frequently. I had like 10 of them stockpiled on my first run.

[Bomoo]

Not really. One game I ended with I think about 10 or 12 barrels of fuel when I reached the end. So no, there's way more fuel than you can use unless you run your engine all the time.

[rocketdrive]

Even if you run out of a fuel you can technicaly drag the machine. I'll admit i was thrown when I found out the character could do that.

[Malidictus]

Personally, I burn all the sentimental stuff first. Suitcases, toys, bells, lanters, what I assume are stacks of magazines, etc. Anything that's not a crate or a barrel gets throw in the furnace first chance I get. Once I'm out of garbage, I burn crates before barrels to cut down on the clutter.

I also try to use my engines as much as possible. Even when when the wind's up, I'll still gun the engine together with the sails just to use up some of that extra fuel. Plus the rush of speed is kind of cool. Sadly, that to smacking my sails on low-hanging structures and smashing into solid walls every so often.

*edit*
So no, I don't see the point of hoarding unless you're roleplaying. I saved a lantern and a flower near the bed because it makes the room look cozy. The only item worth keeping is the mailbox for the achievement.

[F R A N K L Y N]

Dear Devs, as stated above it would be great to have fuel balance increased in difficulty:

On my first FAR try ever, I hoarded everything, even missed around 5 crates or barrels late in the game, and still had to burn only crates, barrels and two chairs - ever.

Since I was inexperienced in optimizing driving with fueling at the right momentum, and still had to burn only the stuff I thought was dedicated fuel (the crates and barrels) plus two boring chairs: Not having the element of ever needing to burn personal items is (IMHO) missing out on the opportunity to confront the player with a new situation and feeling - the necessity to give up something you hold dear, if ever so slightly. Although, slightest of spoilers, this would fit nicely with the game's ending.

I know you had plenty of test players, and maybe the effect I described is not at all what you wanted. I just wanted to give some feedback.

[Malidictus]

Honestly, I kind of wish the game's mechanical settings were exposed in plain text files, rather than the Unity binary / packed files. I know not every developer wants their game to be modded or for users to be tinkering with their experience. However, I wanted to try and reduce the fuel gained by all items by half. So, barrels would give us half a tank, crates and loose items would give us half a tank. I'd love to try the game that way, see if I still end up discarding so much stuff and still end up vastly overstocked.

So far, the only way I've found to prevent the Okomotive from becomming hopelessly clogged with fuel items was to burn them horribly inefficiently (full fuel items at half fuel), run the Collector constantly, run the fire hose constantly and gun the engine needlessly at all times. And even then I still had fuel to spare, it just wasn't filling up every available floor space and hook in my vehicle, and it cut down on laborious storage management.

While I understand the developers wanted to create a game more reliant on the experience than the mechanics, I honestly feel it wouldn't hurt to have a "Hard Mode" where fuel items just give less fuel so we need to burn more of them. Make it optional, maybe require players to finish the game once before unlocking the hard mode. For me personally, the experience of desolation would be improved by having to mind my supplies and shepherd my vehicle.