I have a suggestion about the Log Pile,Stone Pile and Large Wheat Bundle,I think those “storage” can change to storage,like the Crate,because I think it is annoy that I need to destroy them to get those kind of resource,thank you!
There is actually a reason for the piles not to be like crates. The piles were added to reduce memory usage, because the game has to keep track of every single item you have, in case that item is needed. Crates do not solve this problem though. A crate with 64 items will still take the performance hit of 64 items, not one.
These piles however do affect performance, scince they convert 18 items into one. So the performance hit of 18 items also is reduced to that of one.
TL;DR:* Having the piles be actual storage items, like crates, would destroy the function they have.*
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along with the performance reasons @nikosthefan mentioned, the piles are also supposed to be there to lower the amount of raw resources you have in storage, to help if you’re hitting the storage cap.
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While I understand the item limit logic behind this choice, and it works great in its current form; I reckon that if these items could also work as containers at the same time then that would improve our storage aesthetics; and it would remove the confusion regarding how these items are meant to work.
A lot of players like to decorate with these piles, particularly the wheat bales; and I personally like to have a log pile outside each house to represent a bundle of firewood. In those situations, being able to use the piles as a storage location as well would be really useful – then our firewood bundle can store actual firewood, the Shephard’s cottage or barn filled with hay bales can actually hold lots of animal feed, and so on. If supplies run desperately low, we can dismantle the pile to provide more of that resource; but it means that when supplies are overflowing we don’t have to choose between decorations or a container, since one item can do both!
It is rather tedious to create, place, and then manually re-harvest these piles; and moreover they’re a band-aid measure for players who are over-producing these common supplies. Most players will quickly learn not to chop a whole forest at a time, or mine away half a mountain while allowing the stone to pile up; and so these storage condensing items become basically useless, since players figure out how to solve the problem without relying on them.
I’ve seen a lot more cases where the piles were used decoratively than I have seen where they were used for mass storage or hauling… in fact, the only time I’ve seen these piles seriously used to help with hauling was in a case where the player wanted to literally remove a mountain and re-use all the stone for building. They set up their mason’s benches at a kind of temporary mining camp, and had masons constantly working just to bundle up the freshly-hewn stone for transport and storage. They didn’t place the piles, but put them straight into crates, and moved those crates from the quarry to the building site; so each crate had 576 stone in it (although it only counted as 32 items, not including the crate); then laid out the piles in rows so they could easily be deconstructed and stored at the building site.
That case shows that the current implementation works quite well… but I can’t get over the idea of assembling a stone pile at a building site and having the hearthlings carry stone to it as well as away from it; or of putting a bale of wheat into a hayloft and then having the hearthlings pack more wheat in and pull it back out as needed. There wouldn’t need to be animations, and the pile’s model wouldn’t need to physically show how full it is; since the idea is that even an “empty” pile still has all the items in it which were used to create the original pile.
3 Likes
Ok.So,will the Citizen auto destroy the pile when they need those resource but there do not have any left in the crate?
no, you have to manually place and harvest them when you want the resources back… 
but it could be nice if an auto harvest function was added in the future
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I hope so,thank you for answering me 
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…but then we would need a button on a pile to lock it from autodestroy, for if that particular pile was to be an decorative one.
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No problemo mate, glad i could be of help
[quote] …but then we would need a button on a pile to lock it from autodestroy, for if that particular pile was to be an decorative one.[/quote] yeah, auto harvest definitely could cause problems, so a “lock” feature would be nice.