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tjbiel

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  1. These are all good things to consider, and I'd certainly leave it to the devs to decide how they want nutrition to factor into the mix of exciting/action-based dangers and mundane dangers. It may be worth reiterating, though, that death from starvation is almost always a matter of protein deficiency. Early symptoms related to protein malnourishment take hold within days and get steadily worse. Full-on kwashiarkor-type could take weeks, but not months, with a severely protein-deprived diet.
  2. @jefferyharrell Thank you for your idea! I think you've hit an important point about how to communicate the needs to the player. Moodles are one way to go, but do you have any thoughts on having it be a part of the Health Status screen? For example, a player with a couple of levels in First Aid (which in this case should perhaps be renamed "Medicine") might be able to do a medical check and "diagnose" a nutritional deficiency of some kind. Maybe "diagnosis" could even be a separate interaction from medical check, and require a little more time, and have a chance to fail or be incorrect/inconclusive. This way, the Moodles that a player experiences will correspond to the symptoms, which is more realistic than a Moodle that just says "Find some protein." @Wveth Thanks for your support! I'll check out that mod series you mentioned, they seem pretty interesting! It sounds like the F:NV implementation had a similar construction
  3. Hello! I think this idea is interesting but may need a tiny bit of context for my reply. Over the weekend I started a thread on possible mechanics for malnutrition issues over at http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/13244-mechanics-of-malnutrition/. The categories of food nutrients I posted at that time were Calories, Protein, and Vitamins, but a close fourth that I left out would have been "Salts." Water intoxication is actually a form of dilutional hyponatremia, meaning that the normal concentration of sodium (aka table salt) in your body gets diluted down because you put water into your body faster than you can pee the excess water out. From a neurological perspective, salts are very, very important, so I wonder what your thoughts would be on having Salts as a need rather than limiting it to just only a water intoxication picture? Things like sweating, drinking water, and (especially) drinking alcohol could all drain your Salts, and it might make an interesting dynamic.
  4. @Bennytheowl I thought about suggesting a few additional categories but then it started to sound like a micronutrient simulator instead In reality, most essential vitamins and whatnot are stored up at high enough levels in your body that you would need months or even years without them before you start to have noticeable symptoms. Mechanistically the trade-off is often between complexity and learning curve, to say nothing of fun. Also, having more than a few categories of nutrients means a lot more complexity in managing the properties of food items in the game. If the dev team is interested in putting in some other specific illnesses/diseases, that might be a better fit for "you need X" scenarios than having both players and the devs managing all those bits and pieces through food. There's a lot of opportunity to do more with infected wounds, have people able to catch colds, run fevers, have functional injuries like sprains/breaks, asthma, etc. Each of these might have a more specific way to help it, like bed rest, antifebrile meds, splinting, anti-inflammatory meds, steroid inhaler, etc. @hrot Some of that could probably be tweaked based on the availability of meats, and/or nerfing down the nutritional content of each. While it's true that you don't have to eat a lot of meat specifically, you do need nutrients found in meats, legumes, eggs, and nuts that are not as plentiful (or non-existent) in other types of food. And I agree completely that many plants have different nutritional content. In general, I would call plants like potatoes, radishes, carrots, wheat/barley/oats, rice, and so on "starches" rather than vegetables. Another way to describe this category would be "grains and root vegetables." Starches tend to be fairly calorie-dense and have lower protein and vitamin content. By contrast, vegetables means leafy green vegetables like spinach, kale, cabbage, collards, and the "tops" of certain roots, like turnips.
  5. True enough! From a mechanics standpoint that would be less interesting. Also, while meat is a pretty good source of a lot of nutrients (you can even overdose on vitamin A that bioaccumulates in the liver of carnivorous animals), it's true that there are some important vitamins you just don't usually get enough of from meat. Given those two things, I'll edit OP to suggest meats be low vitamin.
  6. Hello! Love the game. I saw that malnutrition was slated to get a little more attention at some point, and I thought maybe I could put my medical education to work. Not sure if things are already feature-locked, but here are some thoughts on game mechanics for malnutrition. I would strongly suggest the three types of food stats/nutrients be calories, protein, and vitamins. This would add some diversity without being obnoxious, and is true (enough) to life in terms of diet deficiencies that it furthers the survival atmosphere at the core of the game. It also corresponds neatly to four main categories of food stuffs. Starches: high calorie, low protein, low vitaminMeats, eggs, legumes: medium calorie, high protein, low vitamin (*edited from medium per feedback below)Vegetables: low calorie, low protein, high vitaminFruits: medium calorie, low protein, medium vitaminAnd here are some suggested effects of deficiencies with a little physiological basis. These would be progressive/cumulative, so that severe deficiency involves all the prior symptoms as well. Calorie deficiencyMild: decreased staminaModerate: increased fatigue, increased angerSevere: further increased fatigue, further decreased stamina, decreased happiness, decreased movement speed, increased time for interactions, decreases protein stat over timeProtein deficiencyMild: increased anger, increased fatigue, decreased staminaModerate: decreased happiness, decreased melee damage/accuracySevere: further increased fatigue, further decreased stamina, further decreased happiness, decreased carrying capacity, damage over time (protein wasting is generally the part of malnutrition that actually kills)Vitamin deficiencyMild: increased fatigueModerate: decreased stamina, penalty to healingSevere: further fatigue, penalty to sight, penalty to hearing, damage over time (e.g., scurvy leading to hemorrhage)-TJ
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