Spoilage of building materials

[Dimpy]

If food spoilage were a thing, then radiation preservation should also be a thing.

[RestInPieces]

In other words, reign in the exponential growth seed crafting provides (more or less, your description leaves a lot of details open). IMO that exp. growth is the biggest problem here and without it even the need for spoiled food might be gone.

 

An idea that I had already proposed in A16 was that seeds can't be produced but only found (or produced from naturally grown plants, never from your own seeded plants). RIP exponential growth, the food explosion is missing the fuse.

 

Well if I get more descriptive none will read my posts

 

You can reign it in but If you just remove the exponential growth by not being able to get seeds from your plants, you just kill the concept of farming and when looting seeds you might as well just be looting soon-to-be-food. I think exponential growth and farming go hand in hand.

[meganoth]

Well if I get more descriptive none will read my posts

 

You can reign it in but If you just remove the exponential growth by not being able to get seeds from your plants, you just kill the concept of farming and when looting seeds you might as well just be looting soon-to-be-food. I think exponential growth and farming go hand in hand.

 

If you declare it as essential for the concept, then sure. How could I dispute a god-given rule!

 

Seriuosly, I'm really not enough of a farmer-type player to question your assertion in terms of what they like (if that is part of your point).

 

In terms of balance there is a big difference though, without spoilage you have your supply growing at a steady rate and the point where you are self-sufficient can be controlled very accurately by the developer.

 

But even with spoilage: If you have exponential growth you have to add some form of spoilage into every step of food production, seeds, grown plants, the fruits and the processed dishes. Without exp. growth spoilage on seeds or plants is enough to make you always on the hunt for further seeds or any stockpile you have will dwindle again.

[Damocles]

If you declare it as essential for the concept, then sure. How could I dispute a god-given rule!

 

Seriuosly, I'm really not enough of a farmer-type player to question your assertion in terms of what they like (if that is part of your point).

 

In terms of balance there is a big difference though, without spoilage you have your supply growing at a steady rate and the point where you are self-sufficient can be controlled very accurately by the developer.

 

But even with spoilage: If you have exponential growth you have to add some form of spoilage into every step of food production, seeds, grown plants, the fruits and the processed dishes. Without exp. growth spoilage on seeds or plants is enough to make you always on the hunt for further seeds or any stockpile you have will dwindle again.

 

You cant really control the farming output: players could just plant more.

One player might have 20x more plants planted than the other one. The total output per player just cant be balanced with a single "growth speed" variable.

 

Farming output should be tied to player-(time)-investment, just as other resources (that have to be constantly mined) are.

 

The main problem with food is still: its a pointless items after a certain time, as more can be accumulated than can be consumed.

It gets to be a non issue after a while, as there will be no shortage.

That just does not feel like a survival situation.

[Roland]

The main problem with food is still: its a pointless items after a certain time, as more can be accumulated than can be consumed.

It gets to be a non issue after a while, as there will be no shortage.

That just does not feel like a survival situation.

 

That is not a problem. That is progression. The whole point is that you start out with scarcity and low tech that keeps the threat of starvation a real possibility and over time you move to a position of abundance where you thrive and it becomes a non-issue. Just because you eventually will get to the point that food is a non-issue doesn't mean you just make it a non-issue from the very beginning.

 

Eventually, you will have a top armor rating, perks, and guns and become unstoppable and extremely hard to kill. That doesn't mean we should just make people have all that from the get go.

[Lanadon Conners]

Food management is as much an important part of "survival" as managing ones health, safety, defenses, emergency resources and firepower.

 

I am glad that TFP is starting to work on this aspect of survival with greater focus but hold out for improvements to the number and ways Food resources themselves are obtained and managed.

[Damocles]

Currently its like a non issue after the first few days, unless the player really does not invest any time into acquiring it.

After that its mainly just getting specific foods with special bonuses.

 

beating the nutrition game should come way later in the progression.

[meganoth]

You cant really control the farming output: players could just plant more.

 

You are aware I was talking about a change that would have players not being able to craft seeds from their own plants? It means players can't just produce incrementally more seeds, and can't plant anything if they don't find any seeds.

 

One player might have 20x more plants planted than the other one. The total output per player just cant be balanced with a single "growth speed" variable.

 

How did that one player get 20x more seeds than the other?

 

Naturally there is a random element included with scavenging seeds, so one person will have a little more, another a little less. Assume seeds to be found in a frequency similar to acid bottles. You would have to supplement your garden with other food for a loooong time.

[511594405]

Speaking of spoilage, anyone remember the rotten meat and fertilizers on A16? We might need a calory/disease system to balance Food input/output, eating too much should result in obesity,i might want to put the fridge in use to counter spoiling,remember the cold in Starvation ? I really wish A18 would bring the gardening system back in A16,or it just my fantasy anyway

[zombo]

I would like to add my support for material spoilage (at least in some hard-survival mode!)

 

Wood that rots in 2 weeks because this zombie virus thing is like, a super mold or something.

Cobblestone that crumbles after a month as rainwater seeps into the cracks.

Concrete that also starts to crack and shatter after 3 months.

Metal that begins to warp\rust\collapse after 6 months.

 

This could also apply to poi's but then they should probably respawn after a year or something.

 

World decay would be amazing. Thank you OP for this fantastic idea. Project zomboid does something like this, but it's mostly just vegetation growth like vines on buildings.

 

And yes I am a fan of food spoilage too, as long as it's kept somewhat realistic. If my corn goes bad in only 2 hours...

[Guppycur]

So, I understand that food spoilage is realistic in the sense that it is something that you see in the real world, but the link between that and better gameplay seems kind of tenuous. The biggest reason I see for adding it is it encourages players to continuously harvest food, rather than just stockpiling it. How does that make the game more fun though?

 

If it does make the game more fun, Why not apply spoilage to other things too, such as building materials?

 

That would actually be super easy to do, mod wise, too...

[pApA^LeGBa]

Food spoilage is coming? Man they really try hard to make the Zombies redundant. Same as i said in the dog´s thread: More Z´s instead of such artifical tedious challenges. Go and put UMA in the trashbin so we can have more Z´s.

[Viktoriusiii]

Food spoilage is coming? Man they really try hard to make the Zombies redundant. Same as i said in the dog´s thread: More Z´s instead of such artifical tedious challenges. Go and put UMA in the trashbin so we can have more Z´s.

 

Can you explain to me what enhances the difficulty and what is just tedious artificial challenge?

Because for me the survival aspect is as big a part as the zombie apocalypse.

So I don't know what you mean by artificial. Why is another survival aspect artificial.

 

And there are ways to combat it and help balance the games progression, so why is it tedious?

Like what makes this more tedious then say... looting 50 corpses after hordenight?

 

 

I'm absolutely against artificial tedious ways to enhance the difficulty.

Stamina in .0 was one of them. It only served as a reduction in gamespeed and didnt give any new challenges.

I dislike falling floors like in the library skyscraper or mines on top of cranes.

But this is an intricate system that will make food a ressource you have to balance out.

No longer is farming an optional fun sideactivity but actually something you might want to have.

[RipClaw]

Food spoilage is coming?

 

Why do you think that food spoilage is coming?

 

So far only players discuss the pros and cons but I haven't heard from the developers that something like this is planned. More precisely, I got the impression that madmole is currently rejecting the idea.

One of the reasons is that you can't prepare well enough for the Horde if you're constantly busy getting food. There are also problems with multiplayer servers. Even if you don't play yourself, the game continues to run on the server as long as someone is logged in. If you log back in after some time all food would be spoiled.

[Damocles]

Even if food spoilage would be the better game mechanic, I doubt they want to take the risk implementing another relatively complex system into their networking architecture.

 

Its not that trivial to keep track of food spoilage, handle decay and how food-stacks work.

 

It would be a dynamically changing (over time) property on an inventory item, something that is not in the game yet.

[pApA^LeGBa]

Why do you think that food spoilage is coming?

 

So far only players discuss the pros and cons but I haven't heard from the developers that something like this is planned. More precisely, I got the impression that madmole is currently rejecting the idea.

One of the reasons is that you can't prepare well enough for the Horde if you're constantly busy getting food. There are also problems with multiplayer servers. Even if you don't play yourself, the game continues to run on the server as long as someone is logged in. If you log back in after some time all food would be spoiled.

 

Roland´s post on the first page of this thread. Sounds like it is coming.

 

And yes spoilage is very importnant if you talk about RL survival. But in game this is a thing where it´s too much of realism. It´s nice that we can´t go out at 4:00 and come back at 22:00 now without the need to eat anymore (you could even do that on a 120min day). That was a very good move. But spoiling food really adds nothing to the gameplay, no fun and no challenge included there. Just checking the "best before" date.

 

Also they will kinda overdo it. See Rolands post about having to eat it the day you made it. No thanks. I am gonna play some stupid cooking browsergame if i wanna deal with that crap.

 

This game has horde in it´s title. It should start to contain real hordes now that we are already in A17. Not micromanagment "challenges"

[RestInPieces]

Not micromanagment "challenges"

 

Have played quite a lot of games with spoilage and it's like zero extra micromanagement, because after a while you just learn what's what and get used to doing things a certain way without looking at the "best before" date. Food becoming non-issue so early in the game, makes for more boring gameplay and and a game that is more oriented towards shooting stuff than trying to survive. I can understand that this is not how a lot of people may see it, but others would really enjoy this option - I know I would.

[apostrophe]

I'm in favour of food spoilage.

 

I have 250 meat in my chest. I'm next to a lake, so boiled meat is always on the menu. With this, hunger and thirst are a non-issue to me, and that's a bummer.

[Rez090]

To me, the only material that could even apply to material spoilage is wood. Wood would make sense because termites should still exist and would eventually get to your untreated supply of lumber. Maybe some aid items could also be roped in but I'm unsure which ones would make sense.

[pApA^LeGBa]

I'm in favour of food spoilage.

 

I have 250 meat in my chest. I'm next to a lake, so boiled meat is always on the menu. With this, hunger and thirst are a non-issue to me, and that's a bummer.

 

Try to get that much meat on a crowded MP Server. Good Luck.

 

Food Spoilage may work in SP but on MP servers it´s just going to be a huge pain in the butt.

[apostrophe]

Yes, my experience is SP only.

[xXBadDreamXx]

if they bring food spoilage i certainly hope they repair basically the entirety of every other part of the game being imbalanced because adding a new untested mechanic to what the game is now would probably set it back quite a bit. as for resource spoilage, ive never heard of this in any other game so im unsure why youd want it or what the benefit would even be. i think resources are better managed just by balancing how quick you can gather them. honestly...balancing how quick you can gather food should also be a decent method of controlling how much food a player has. what alot of people miss is that hoarding large amounts of food and materials are something that a TON of players love . it appeals to their OCD and is part of the fun....nerfing the amount of stuff people can hoard would just add another negative tick to the game where there are several allready

[AtomicUs5000]

as for resource spoilage, ive never heard of this in any other game so im unsure why youd want it or what the benefit would even be. i think resources are better managed just by balancing how quick you can gather them.

 

Me neither. Construction materials certainly do degrade over time... but to condense decades, if not centuries, of natural degradation into game days is a bit too much for my taste. As for food spoilage, I can understand it. I think adding it into the game would be too much for it to be worth any benefit it could bring. If they did, I would accept it though. Probably wouldn't bother me. I think the same effect can be achieved by simply making it so it was possible to burn food. It wouldn't solve stockpiling tons of food, but it would solve stockpiling food that is immediately ready to be consumed.

[Damocles]

if they bring food spoilage i certainly hope they repair basically the entirety of every other part of the game being imbalanced because adding a new untested mechanic to what the game is now would probably set it back quite a bit. as for resource spoilage, ive never heard of this in any other game so im unsure why youd want it or what the benefit would even be. i think resources are better managed just by balancing how quick you can gather them. honestly...balancing how quick you can gather food should also be a decent method of controlling how much food a player has. what alot of people miss is that hoarding large amounts of food and materials are something that a TON of players love . it appeals to their OCD and is part of the fun....nerfing the amount of stuff people can hoard would just add another negative tick to the game where there are several allready

 

No matter how you try to balance it with the distribution of fooditems in the world,

either its too sparse (making the game impossible to play without constantly running into hunger) or too abundant (always leading to an oversupply after a while).

 

There is no middle ground really. it will always end up with food being a non-issue, as balancing it too scarce would be a blocker to the gameplay.

 

Food is also a different thing than ammo for example.

There can never be enough ammo, but the game still works just fine without any ammo available (player then using melee or bows).

 

A large supply of ammo would just make the player change his fighting style, thus using up more of it.

Same with building materials: more materials, just build bigger base... , too few materials: re-purpose an existing POI.

 

With food there is no such alternative, and there is also no way to just consume more (as would be the case with building materials and ammo)

 

The only way too keep it from stockpiling (as consumption is a fixed static amount per time) would be to remove it dynamically, either by spoilage or by using it for some other purpose. (like incrementally more resource demanding recepies for dishes, that use up more lower level foods per dish)

 

... drains are important in an ingame economy, overabundance is not fun in the long run.

[xXBadDreamXx]

but again i ask...why is later game food stockpiling bad and an issue at all to begin with?