Panic/Stress decreases needs

[Strang]

I have read and heard many accounts of when people are in fight or flight mode, the need for things, such as food water sleep ect, are nullified whist the person is in the mode. So how about when your character is in a state of panic, other needs are reduced until the panic goes away. When you come out of panic mode, the needs that were reduced are more severe and would require attention.

[Gorkhun]

That's true, very exhausted people with adrenaline pumping and the need to stay alive can manage to stay awake if need be.  In fact, anxiety moodles and high panic levels could even prevent the character to go to sleep even if they're in an advanced drowsy state.  This can be both good and bad depending on the situation

 

As far as the fight or flight drops out, any "needy" states could exponentially increase in strength overtime, being related to the duration of an emergency state.  This would also provide more frequent drawbacks from negative traits such as claustrophobia for example, making them looking for anti stress means to make their panic low enough in order to manage to fall asleep, or to seek for rooms that are spacy enough to mitigate or fully negate their claustrophobia ^^ or flat out sleeping pills but then they'd have a bad rest and become drowsy a lot earlier, due to falling asleep despite being under the influence of uncomfortable moodles

[Anvilman6]

Interesting idea, seems a bit exploitable though, "I'm feeling peckish, maybe I'll go run past a horde of zombies to lower it for a while." However, the idea of them returning at greater magnitude might be a deterrent for this. Personally, with how often panic comes on at this stage of the game, I'm thinking it might be a bit tough to balance it though.

[Packbat]

Separate Moodles and physical status. If I were implementing it, any moodle with a lower intensity than your current Panic level other than Bleeding, Injured, Endurance, and Heavy Load would simply not be displayed, regardless of your true status. In an extreme panic? Hunger and thirst would be increasing at an accelerated rate, but unless you were starving or dying of thirst, you wouldn't see it ... and all the debuffs would apply exactly as much as they would if you knew about them.

 

I'm pretty sure that's the best model for what's going on, anyway. In fact, maybe Bleeding and Injured moodles should be hidden as well - if you've just survived a car accident, are you going to notice that you hurt your leg?