mod request Mod Request - Food inside land claim only spoils while claimant is online

[Cameron Ellis]

Basically title. I love the food spoilage/preservation mechanics but play pretty infrequently. This is fine in a single player world, but some friends have started a server and I’m running into the annoying problem of much of my food rotting while I am offline.

This is made even worse by the fact that the most active server member works nights and is therefore on when few others would be, causing the server to be running very often.

This makes it nearly impossible for me to really engage with a lot of the food systems besides extreme long lasting ones because it is otherwise impossible for me to stockpile or prepare for winter. 

As a solution to this, I would love a mod that makes it to where food stored in an area I claim will only degrade while I myself am online. I realize this may be fairly niche because it really only helps infrequent multiplayer players who enjoy food spoiling and cooking variety, but as it stands, the food spoilage system as it currently stands is my biggest issue with multiplayer servers and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Thanks.

[Streetwind]

The food spoilage problem on multiplayer servers is an ongoing discussion, and I don't want to marginalize it.

But what you're requesting here is not the solution you think it is. Instead, it's a huge exploitation hole. If food only spoils while a player is online, then what keeps people from storing their food in offline players' land claims and completely remove food spoilage from the game? Heck, a group of people could just chip in together and share the cost of an extra VS account whose only purpose is to log in once, claim an area at the central hub, and log off to never return. Now everyone has access to an infinite-duration food storage zone. The same works with two people playing in different time zones. Just store your food in each other's homes.

At that point, why not sidestep such degenerate player behavior paths, and just set the server to something like 0.00001% food spoilage speed from the get-go? Same result, without needing a mod, and forcing players to do unimmersive things.

Things like this are part of the reason why the base game hasn't implemented a solution yet. Because as it turns out, most quick and easy solutions... aren't.

A variant I've seen is that food in the player's inventory doesn't spoil while the player is logged off. That's not exploitable by other people... but it is also limited in utlity for each individual player, as inventory space is limited. And it might be fairly annoying and unimmersive to empty your inventory and then pull everything off of your shelves everytime you want to log off, only to have to put everything back where it was once you log in again.

The best actual solution in my own personal opinion is slowing the whole server down significantly. If people can only log in rarely, it's weird for them anyway if ingame years take only a hundred-odd RL hours. Logging in once every few days is like rolling the dice on which season it is right now. Switching to 30-day months from the base 9 goes a long way towards a more steady, believable progression of time in a game world where the player isn't present 24/7. You could even do more than 30 days per month, or increase the RL time an ingame day takes to pass - all these numbers are configurable by the admin. Along with it, you'd greatly slow down food spoil speed to match the increased year length. You might need a mod to adjust crop growth cycles... but I think there is one already, I just forgot the name at the moment.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Streetwind

[Cameron Ellis]

6 hours ago, Streetwind said:

At that point, why not sidestep such degenerate player behavior paths, and just set the server to something like 0.00001% food spoilage speed from the get-go? Same result, without needing a mod, and forcing players to do unimmersive things.

I’ve got no illusions about this being the perfect one size fits all fix, but rather tailored to my niche situation which I’m sure applies to some others. I wouldn’t want to simply turn spoilage down because I’d rather engage with it fully and make things that don’t necessarily last very long.

In regards to exploits, I’m less concerned about balance given that it is a mod and I think people who would choose to exploit it would have an easier time slowing spoilage to be a non factor entirely. 
 
The people who opt into the mod would be fans of the spoilage mechanics to begin with and I think could be trusted to self enforce the spirit of the thing. Even if they do choose to exploit, it’s their server so whatevs really. Admittedly this logic falls apart on bigger servers, but like I said it is a niche solution and it would probably just be inadvisable for them to use it if all their players can’t be trusted.

The time adjustment suggestions were good though. Our solution currently was just to double the time in each day but there’s probably a better balance to be struck there between time/day and days/month.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Cameron Ellis
Typo

[ShaRose]

How about only doing the food spoilage stoppage when the claimed land is set to nobody else can access it? If claimed by a group, you can make it so that it only happens if there is nobody from that group online. It stops the exploit you mentioned, and if a group really wants to have most of base usable by others (or everyone) they can make it so food storage is a separate claim.

Note I don't really play online, so I'm not sure if that would work with common dynamics, but that's my first thought. If nobody online can access the food, there's no reason it can't be time stopped.