If you don't get hungry, you'll never starve!

[MaxTunnerX]

Because thats what always happens, especially in early access games. And it happens because half of the community wants this, and the other half wants the opposite. You always end up with both things from which you pick the one you like. Balance is another reason for this. If they make iron mining harder, they will add electric mining tools to compensate etc. It just happens like that.

 

Now back to the reason why Im here:

The topic title is misleading. It's very much normal to be hungry before starving, you can never starve if youre never hungry.

[Ghostlight]

I’ll just assume you kept reading and saw where I said spoilage would be better than passive depletion of fullness.

 

I was responding to Hek.

 

Personally I would hate food spoilage as a mechanic. And I would like to point out that food was implemented in A16 really really well (like many things they broke when they didn't need to be changed at all).

 

In A16....

 

1) The wellness mechanic meant the player would strive to make the best food to get the best wellness boost. So you'd go out your way to make Meat Stew. In A17, all food is created equal. It really doesn't matter what you eat, so why bother making anything but the simplest foods?

 

2) Balance was spot on. Players rarely had a comfortable surplus of food, and if they did it was because they went out their way to create it.

 

So it kind of smarts when food has been implemented so poorly in A17 that we are at the stage of discussing spoilage (ugh) as a mechanic to fix it, when it worked perfectly well in A16.

 

There's a lesson here, if only I could remember what it was....

 

If it ain't broke don't fix it? Nah it's not that.

 

Oh yeah....I remember....

 

If it's working really well don't replace it with a poorly designed piece of garbage.

 

Which could be the MANTRA for A17 tbh.

[JaxTeller718]

Why do you say this? They dont have to add in those things. But even of they did maintaining a greenhouse would still be more work than you have now. Heat, electricity, more work put into the building. Plus they could make the glass costs a lot.

 

Either way this would still be more work than it takes now to run a farm.

 

EXACTLY. I agree here and would love to see this added.

 

Not everything needs to be streamlined. Electricity is CRIMINALLY underused. Look at Rust, Ark, SO many other game run circles around this one when it comes to implementation of electricity.

 

Finding more use for it can be fun and a nice end game goal in setting up a nice colony/community. Ad spoilage can be a real thing because now you can have fridges that save your meat. Everyones happy then. And modders can play havoc with electrical items.

[hotpoon]

1) The wellness mechanic meant the player would strive to make the best food to get the best wellness boost. So you'd go out your way to make Meat Stew. In A17, all food is created equal. It really doesn't matter what you eat, so why bother making anything but the simplest foods?

So true. Now that I can make bacon and eggs, I have zero desire to put any further effort into cuisine, and I def. won't bother farming.

[Roland]

Roland, I assume this is the thread you were talking about? If so, I don't think it is the opposite of what I was suggesting in my thread at all.

 

I would have no problem if this were implemented so long as the drainage is very slow. I always assumed that this was how it was anyway. I'm quite surprised to find out that hunger only depletes if your character moves.

 

In your thread you had two points. One was dealing with the point at which hunger starts to impact the stamina max. The other one was having to micromanage hunger. If this idea in this thread gets implemented you will be managing your hunger more often than you are now and it truly will reach the point of micromanaging.

 

Frankly, for someone with your preferences that you outlined I'm surprised you would be for a mechanic that drains your fullness faster than it does now.

[Hek Harris]

So....if I set the slider to 25%, I will have 250 Meat in my chest instead of 1000.

How exactly did that help??

Which day are you (1000 meats at day 7, yes, there is an issue), what are your settings (have a look at some other threads where newbies explain they don't find food), how many meat would you hope to have in your safes if the game was set as you would like ?

[Roland]

So it kind of smarts when food has been implemented so poorly in A17 that we are at the stage of discussing spoilage (ugh) as a mechanic to fix it, when it worked perfectly well in A16.

 

It's also kinda weird that you would try this tactic again after I already explained to you that spoilage has been an off and on topic in these forums since the beginning. It has nothing to do with A17 and is not some mechanic barely brought up to fix anything. Nice try though.

[Damocles]

spoiling food... thats the way to go to keep feed interesting in mid and later game (and not just use up 1 inventory slot).

 

-> with electrically powered fridges as an endgame item. (slowing down spoilage to like 25%)

 

And more gameplay influence by the quality of the food.

(Like some variation of the former wellness system)

 

Producing high quality food perpetually would be an important part of the players economy.

[Arkheias]

I'm just going to clarify what led me to create this thread.

 

I've been trying to make a mod which would make the amount of meat you get from animals proportional to their actual real world sizes. I.e., a stag could give you 60 lbs of meat whereas a chicken might give you 5 lbs. In the real world, the stag gives you 12x more meat, but in the game you only get 3x more meat. That seems dumb.

 

Another part of balancing this is deciding what a unit of raw meat actually is. So I did an experiment to see how much the hunger meter would deplete in one day without performing any activities, to get a baseline. I was planning on using this to determine how many units of grilled meat the player would need to eat at minimum just to counteract that loss. I would then treat that minimum amount of grilled meat as being equivalent to 2000-2400 calories. Then I would select an arbitrary type of meat and use its calories/lb to reverse engineer how many lbs of meat each unit of grilled meat would be equivalent to. Each unit of raw meat would then be treated as 1/5 of that.

 

But now my plan is ruined. I could easily work around it with just an estimate for how much food a character consumes per day on average, but now I have the additional problem of knowing that the meta strategy for not starving, is not moving. I can't unlearn that. I don't want to know that. It shouldn't be a thing.

 

 

As an aside, it would be perfectly normal for players to have more meat than they could ever possibly consume when they indiscriminately slaughter every animal they come across just because. A stag can give you 60 lbs of meat. Each lb of that meat is about 540 calories. That's approximately 32,400 calories total. That could sustain a person for two weeks just by itself.

 

Watch this video to see how horrible you all are.

[Roland]

You could sprint around and do nothing else to get that baseline.

[HungryZombie]

Or mine all night. Mining really depletes your food.

[Arkheias]

I looked at the xml files to see if I could figure out how the hunger system works. Apparently, it is not using stamina that consumes food, but regenerating stamina that consumes food.

 

From entityclasses.xml:

 

<passive_effect name="HealthChangeOT" operation="base_set" value="0.017" /> <!-- heal 1 point of (red) health / minute -->

 

0.017 HP/Second * 60 Seconds/Minute = 1.02 HP/Minute, this seems simple enough.

 

<passive_effect name="StaminaChangeOT" operation="base_set" value="10" />

 

If this works on the same scale as health then:

10 Stamina/Second * 3600 Seconds/Hour = 36,000 Stamina/Hour = 36,000 Stamina/standard in-game day

 

<passive_effect name="StaminaLossMaxMult" operation="base_set" value="0.0068"/> <!-- regening stamina costs food, blacks out the stamina bar -->

 

36,000 Stamina/Hour * 0.0068 Max Stamina lost/Stamina regenerated = 244.8 Max stamina lost/Hour.

 

You can theoretically lose a maximum of 244.8 food point in a single default length day.

 

I then did my own tests, where I just jumped continuously in the same spot for four in-game hours (jumping directly subtracts 20 stamina and doesn't affect regeneration), and my character consumed 45 food and 49 water. If you extrapolate that over 24 hours, you could theoretically consume 270 food and 294 water. I'm just going to ignore this test for my final calculations though.

 

According to this arbitrary article, peak performance is burning 12,000 calories a day. I'm assuming that peak performance does not allow for sleeping.

 

If we assume that endlessly jumping in the same spot is peak in-game performance, then each unit of food is equivalent to 49 calories. One unit of grilled meat is therefore 490 calories.

[babspsol]

Food is fine the way it is right now, it is not unrealistic.

 

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-true-story-of-a-man-who-survived-without-any-food-for-382-days

 

If you chose to 'Never move' you can last a long long time. Thing is...most people dont have the mentality to do nothing for such a long time.

 

I had to check the date of that article. With most people in the western world obese or at least overweight, the statement in that article that "most" people can survive a few weeks without food is ridiculous. The average person today could survive months without food quite easily.

 

I do a lot of fasting myself and am very active in fasting communities so know a lot about how far people can push this.

 

But this is a game and I have no idea why the reality card has to be played every time we talk about computer games. Liberties need to be taken in order to make the game challenging. If I could go until day 21 without eating, which I have done IRL, then what kind of challenge is that? It would be boring, I'd hate it.

[OzHawkeye]

I don't get why people would want spoilage, because I don't see it changing anything in the end.

 

You're still going to have more food, at end game, than you'll ever need. Spoilage would just either force you to refrigerate it, or leave it in its raw form as grown plants in the ground (unless they're also going to spoil).

[MaxTunnerX]

I don't get why people would want spoilage, because I don't see it changing anything in the end.

 

You're still going to have more food, at end game, than you'll ever need. Spoilage would just either force you to refrigerate it, or leave it in its raw form as grown plants in the ground (unless they're also going to spoil).

Yep, same thing as with the seasons. Refrigerators would become a thing, especially when electricity exists, and again the game would be much harder for newbies, while endgamers will still get the same results.

[Arkheias]

I just thought about the tests on food consumption that I did, and I remembered that I did the test on a new game. When you start a new game in A17.1, you start out with 150% food and 150% water. Does anyone know if it is possible that having over 100% water would increase your stamina regeneration, which would then increase your potential food consumption rate?

 

From my calculations, the maximum food consumption in a 60 minute day should have been 244.8 without any stamina regen boosting buffs.

 

From my tests, after 2 hours of constant stamina regeneration through constant jumping in place, I went from 150 food to 127 food. That's 23 food per 2 hours, which would be 276 food per day (264-288 after accounting for in-game displayed value rounding).

 

At 3 hours, I had consumed 34 food total. 34 food x 8 = 272 food consumed per day (264-280 after accounting for in-game displayed value rounding).

 

At 4 hours, I had consumed 45 food total (49 water). 45 food x 6 = 270 food consumed per day (264-276 after in-game displayed value rounding).

 

In a slightly less scientific test which involved constantly chugging coffee while jumping in place and occasionally drinking beer to maintain a buzz, I managed to consume 17 food in one in-game hour, which would be equivalent to 408 food over an entire day. Due to rounding, it could have been closer to 16 or 18, which would be 384 - 432 food over an entire day.

[Ranzera]

I think spoilage would be cool from a realism perspective.

 

I also think passive burn along active burn would be a net positive. It would create a baseline burn rate of food consumption and it would also lower the amount of food you need when you're doing something really demanding (like mining).

 

Currently, you can go days without eating if you're doing a big base build... because you're just placing blocks and upgrading with a nail gun. You're using 0 stamina, so you don't need to eat. Simultaneously, if you're mining, you're eating a hilarious amount of food (unless you're augering, which the first scenario applies again).

 

Neither of those scenarios make sense and an active/passive burn food consumption system would smooth out the extremes somewhat.

[OzHawkeye]

I think spoilage would be cool from a realism perspective.

 

As always, this is just my personal opinion, but if the only argument in favour of food spoilage that can be found is it's "realistic" that's a poor reason to implement into what is after all a game, and not a simulation.

 

If plants continue to live forever as they currently do, then the simple way out of food spoilage would be to not harvest until needed. If plants "die on the vine" then farming is going to become a small, incremental, but repetitively required task that'll need to be timed in expectation of the foods harvest date.

 

Likewise, if refrigeration negates food spoilage, then it's just an additional electricity consumer.

 

I just don't get what food spoilage would add to the game, in terms of fun.

[Maynard69]

As always, this is just my personal opinion, but if the only argument in favour of food spoilage that can be found is it's "realistic" that's a poor reason to implement into what is after all a game, and not a simulation.

 

If plants continue to live forever as they currently do, then the simple way out of food spoilage would be to not harvest until needed. If plants "die on the vine" then farming is going to become a small, incremental, but repetitively required task that'll need to be timed in expectation of the foods harvest date.

 

Likewise, if refrigeration negates food spoilage, then it's just an additional electricity consumer.

 

I just don't get what food spoilage would add to the game, in terms of fun.

 

I gotta agree. This feature would just lead to complaints about the system from some for adding tedium, the rest, it would not bother but it wouldnt do much to alter their experience positively either.

 

I think it would be a neat little feature, but unless its super quick and ez to implement, it wouldnt be on my wish list.

[RestInPieces]

Spoilage imo is essential from a gameplay perspective and great from any other thematic perspective. The devs were considering it afaik since long time ago - I don't know/can't imagine what the hold-up is.

 

As always, this is just my personal opinion, but if the only argument in favour of food spoilage that can be found is it's "realistic" that's a poor reason to implement into what is after all a game, and not a simulation.

 

If plants continue to live forever as they currently do, then the simple way out of food spoilage would be to not harvest until needed. If plants "die on the vine" then farming is going to become a small, incremental, but repetitively required task that'll need to be timed in expectation of the foods harvest date.

 

Likewise, if refrigeration negates food spoilage, then it's just an additional electricity consumer.

 

I just don't get what food spoilage would add to the game, in terms of fun.

 

Depends on what you call "fun".

The whole game is full of realistic, simulation-like elements. If you took them out, there wouldn't be much of 7DTD left, so perhaps they may have some merit.

 

For example loot timers - a lot of people hated the idea of them as they couldn't imagine how a realistically tedius thing like loot timers could be fun. Spoilage benefits are even more obvious. As for the "just an additional electricity consumer" - having (additional) reasons to use an (underused) system is also how everything else in the game works.

 

Fridges should definitely not negate spoilage completely though, just improve the player's in-game QOL, and farms should not last infinitely.

 

when it worked perfectly well in A16.

 

rofl

[SxR]

Food Spoilage makes me delete. :f

[OzHawkeye]

Spoilage imo is essential from a gameplay perspective and great from any other thematic perspective. The devs were considering it afaik since long time ago - I don't know/can't imagine what the hold-up is.

 

 

 

Depends on what you call "fun".

The whole game is full of realistic, simulation-like elements. If you took them out, there wouldn't be much of 7DTD left, so perhaps they may have some merit.

 

For example loot timers - a lot of people hated the idea of them as they couldn't imagine how a realistically tedius thing like loot timers could be fun. Spoilage benefits are even more obvious. As for the "just an additional electricity consumer" - having (additional) reasons to use an (underused) system is also how everything else in the game works.

 

Fridges should definitely not negate spoilage completely though, just improve the player's in-game QOL, and farms should not last infinitely.

 

So I'm going to have to do a little farming on a regular basis in order to ensure I've got a little harvesting to do on a regular basis to consume before it goes bad?

 

If spoilage comes in, I hope it's easily modded back out, because, while I would definitely give it a try, I can't find much fun in setting up a farm rotation that has, say, a half dozen potatoes ripening each day for me to eat. I'm just not that into food management I guess.

[RestInPieces]

So I'm going to have to do a little farming on a regular basis in order to ensure I've got a little harvesting to do on a regular basis to consume before it goes bad?

 

If spoilage comes in, I hope it's easily modded back out, because, while I would definitely give it a try, I can't find much fun in setting up a farm rotation that has, say, a half dozen potatoes ripening each day for me to eat. I'm just not that into food management I guess.

 

I am sure it will just come down to an xml option.

 

If they implement it well though, it won't feel like micro-management.

Farm plant expiration times don't have to be strict at all and with electricity, item expiration times will become something you will intuitively know after a while. There is no need for any rotations. As for any inventory micro-management, which the game suffers already from, and which will naturally come along with spoilage, they should implement some proper UI indicators, auto-sorting etc that will completely eliminate it. That's only common sense.

[Maynard69]

I am sure it will just come down to an xml option.

 

If they implement it well though, it won't feel like micro-management.

Farm plant expiration times don't have to be strict at all and with electricity, item expiration times will become something you will intuitively know after a while. There is no need for any rotations. As for any inventory micro-management, which the game suffers already from, and which will naturally come along with spoilage, they should implement some proper UI indicators, auto-sorting etc that will completely eliminate it. That's only common sense.

 

Sounds like a lot of work just for people to say "Oh neat look the food spoils just like in real life, kinda a pain, but cool"

[RestInPieces]

Sounds like a lot of work just for people to say "Oh neat look the food spoils just like in real life, kinda a pain, but cool"

 

It's not. And it being cool/uncool has nothing to do with it.

 

It has gameplay value as many other, realistic or not, game elements that are "kind of a pain", like hunger, stamina, durability, diseases, loot timers, SI, etc (99% of the game), will complement electricity and will act as a much-needed resource sink.