Overhaul to Hunger, Starving and Damage from Starvation

[Rohzdear]

First post on the Forums. Great game and It seems to have a great community too.

I was suggested to post this in here from the members of the Suggestion Channel in the Discord.

 

I like the idea that Starving (your Hunger Meter being completely drained) instead of Depleting your Health Bar first, must first Deplete your Nutrient Reserves, then drain your Health.

This way you'd still lose Health from your Max Health being decreased (due to Nutrients being consumed), but this way the system is more realistic, prevents you from healing damage due to Starvation by using Poultices (which doesn't really make sense), gives the Health bar a more precise use in being mostly for combat, and also giving you a bit more time before you starve to death, but still receiving penalties from allowing your Hunger bar from being depleted.

This I think would make the early game a bit more manageable. Not being able to constantly find food in your first days would not be a death sentence, but still maintaining the pressure of keeping your Hunger satiated or else lose the very important HP bonus needed to survive stronger monsters and wild animals.

Apologies is this has been suggested before.

Edited July 30, 2021 by Rohzdear

[Bardheart]

I'm raising this one from the dead to say this is STILL a great idea and really needs to be implemented if not modded in.

[Thorfinn]

Welcome to the forums, @Bardheart

Not 100% sure I understood the suggestion. I thought I had it, until he said it would make starving at the beginning of the game less likely. But if your nutrition bars start out at zeros, how would it make any difference?

[V1ncent]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

But if your nutrition bars start out at zeros, how would it make any difference?

I think the OP means that people do not need to constantly look for food to maintain the satiety bar filled with the suggested Nutrient Reserves. For example, one may find some leftover poultry and cranberries, but has not gained enough crops to sustain at the beginning. The nutrition can serve as a buffer even after satiety being rapidly depleted during exploration.

[Thorfinn]

Oh, OK. Another suggestion that won't have any effect on one after a couple-three starts and has learned how to look for food? Guess I'm indifferent, though with my ever-present opportunity cost reminder.

[LadyWYT]

I seem to recall there being part of the code commented out, that was meant to allow players to build up fat reserves that could be burned to avoid starvation. I think it was a 6:1 ratio, in that it took 6 days of fat accumulation to go one full day without any kind of food. 

8 hours ago, V1ncent said:

I think the OP means that people do not need to constantly look for food to maintain the satiety bar filled with the suggested Nutrient Reserves. For example, one may find some leftover poultry and cranberries, but has not gained enough crops to sustain at the beginning. The nutrition can serve as a buffer even after satiety being rapidly depleted during exploration.

It's a neat idea, but I'm more in @Thorfinn's camp on this one. The player isn't in good shape at the start of the game, thus they aren't going to have nutrition/fat to rely on to avoid starvation(nor does it make sense for them to have such given what they just woke up from). By the time the player accumulates nutrition/fat, they don't really need the reserves to stave off starvation anymore since they have food supply under control. Applying a debuff to a hungry player before starting to drain health could give the player a grace period before they starve, but it could also soft-lock the player into a slow death since it's difficult to hunt or cover territory if one's movement speed/attack strength have been dropped.

The best case scenario that I've found so far, thanks to tinkering around with various iterations of the concept for a mod, is that fat reserves/nutrition only serves as a small grace period to delay a meal for a few minutes while the player finishes a task, rather than as a mechanism to allow the player to go for a day or two without food. That way the player can finish whatever they were doing without losing health and hearing their character whimper, but won't be able to do things like go all winter without food stores or complete the story without packing supplies.