Ice cutting in winter for cold food storage!

[SnapJelly]

Hello friends,

I would like to suggest an option for ice cutting, reffering to the historical practice of sawing great big blocks of ice out of lakes in winter to keep their cellars more cold to increase shelflife of their food for a little longer.
Temperature and cellar mechanics are already in place so ''ice houses or iceboxes'' could easily fit in to keep the temperature slightly lower aand increase the shelflife of foods slightly.

It wouldn't be a very early game mechanic because you would need a saw and of course the ice would slowly melt so it wouldn't last all year long but it would be a great addition to make your first spring fruits last juuuust a little longer and it would also add something for the player to do/look forward to in winter.
Also keeping great big blocks of ice in your cellar would take up a lot of space so it would be a type of investment, giving up space in favor of having a colder cellar.

Pics for reference

[Momito]

I agree with this. My first playthrough, I can't remember how but I ended up with some glacier ice. I put it down in my cellar and was very disappointed to find out it did nothing, as I just sort of assumed this mechanic had been included! I also think it either encourages exploration (e.g if you are in a warm clime, its worth it to head north and find some ice) and gives winter another interesting thing.

Edited August 5 by Momito
thought of something else to say

[Emma Christenson]

i totally think we need this! I hate mass producing a ton of food only for it to go bad before I can use it. I feel it also wouldnt be "too" much work, considering we have similar features already( temp causing a change in shelf life)

[Steppe King]

How we feelin about ice cream

[KevenG]

diagram of an ice house, this one has the ice on top, but they could also be a room with the walls and floors being covered in ice:

Edited 17 hours ago by KevenG

[Andospe]

It reminds me of "oxygen not included" in which every item has a temperature and because of that increases its temperature other time by consuming the sorrounding energy in form of higher temperatures till the pound of changing phases. for example, ice in a storage container will melt at some point if the storage is in an area with higher temperature then the ice.

Perhaps something like this is applyable in the code some day. 

[SnapJelly]

1 hour ago, Andospe said:

It reminds me of "oxygen not included" in which every item has a temperature and because of that increases its temperature other time by consuming the sorrounding energy in form of higher temperatures till the pound of changing phases. for example, ice in a storage container will melt at some point if the storage is in an area with higher temperature then the ice.

Oh I love oni!! I should launch that game up again some day!

Though I don't even think such complex temp exchange mechanics are required to make this work in the case of VS; the game already checks for rooms and ajusts the temprature accordingly in the case of a cellar or greenhouse, the same way this affects the spoil rates of your food it could also affect the hypothetical melting rates of iceblocks.

I also wouldn't mind if the mechanic is limited for balancing reasons, for example ice only cooling down a room if it's placed on the floor and not it it's inside a container so you can't easily stack hundreds of blocks of ice for near infinite storage.

 

And while we're speculating: I also just imagined I would totally vibe with something like a ''chilled drink'' bonus, make wine or beer be slightly better if it's cold instead of room temp.

[Mac Mcleod]

One simple option is to simply treat cellars as 5C cooler when they are checked, if they have ice blocks in them.  
Have a message as for greenhouses, "This cellar is 5C cooler due to Ice."

Slightly more complex would be to require a certain number of ice blocks based on the size of the celler.

To be renewable, you could cut ice blocks from ponds with a saw.   

Simple options for thawing include:
1) Ice in cellars thaws in any Fall month that it is loaded.
2) Use a modified version of the thawing option for pond ice.

 

[Facethief]

4 minutes ago, Mac Mcleod said:

One simple option is to simply treat cellars as 5C cooler when they are checked, if they have ice blocks in them.  
Have a message as for greenhouses, "This cellar is 5C cooler due to Ice."

Slightly more complex would be to require a certain number of ice blocks based on the size of the celler.

To be renewable, you could cut ice blocks from ponds with a saw.   

Simple options for thawing include:
1) Ice in cellars thaws in any Fall month that it is loaded.
2) Use a modified version of the thawing option for pond ice.

 

That would make sense, since the -5 degrees would put the cellar temperature at freezing (I believe the base cellar temperature is 5 degrees celcius).

[Argakyan]

This + windcatchers would be cool
(pun intended)