player needs

[dakenho]

one thing that has kind of bugged me is the amount of food my character needs to eat, it feels to little honestly.   For example I constantly find that I can eat one steak and my character is good to go for the day.  A one pound steak is only between 800-900 calories if you were running around lumber jacking tress and zombie skulls you would probably use well over 4,000 calories a day.  Same problem with water, running around mid august in Kentucky with only one bottle of water?  While I agree previous version had you eat to often and that eating less often is good it still does not feel like your character needs to eat enough.  (maybe eat more but less often?)

 

 

I suppose my recommendation would be to put this in the option menu like most other things

IE

normal (current settings)

hard (1.5x)

harder (2.0x)

and real (food intake is related to tasks being done)

[The End]

If it's optional like you suggest, then fine, why not. I usually take the "Light Eater" Perk

just to skip the eating aspect of the game a little bit, so I can do other fun things.

But hey, optional is like free - you'd be stupid not to take it if offered right.

[PlasticandRage]

You can choose heavy eater for that aspect of the game to be more demanding too. Personally I find it realistic enough. Survival is about being hungry. Sure, you can eat a steak and not need more food for the day, but you'll only have the "fed" status for a short time, and then it disappears. I interpret that as your character having different priorities in a survival situation after having eaten a steak. He doesn't get hungry until later, but he's not fed the whole day either. Know what I mean?

[Rathlord]

It's also worth mentioning that you can go 3 weeks without eating in real life. Taking in a thousand calories a day a person can survive almost indefinitely.

Also keep in mind the importance of balancing gameplay and realism.

[The End]

...

Also keep in mind the importance of balancing gameplay and realism.

Word!

[Rathlord]

I will say I don't have anything against seeing these options in the game, I just feel it's already fairly close to accurate and probably won't be a priority for a while.

[RedKrypton]

It's also worth mentioning that you can go 3 weeks without eating in real life. Taking in a thousand calories a day a person can survive almost indefinitely.

Also keep in mind the importance of balancing gameplay and realism.

You can survive on thousand calories a day? As far as I know you need 2000 calories a day by just lying in bed and doing nothing.

I think it would make a lot of sense to buff food and especially water, because one water bottle lasts for fucking ages making water no problem to survive. A normal human being needs about 1.5 litres per day to not go dehydrated and die within three days and when it's warm even shorter period of time.

Now how could this make good game mechanics?

Simply look in your average supermarket and you will see hundreds of bottles of water, soft drinks and alcoholics. You'll also expect to dozens of cans of maize, peaches, beans and other fruit each.

Than there is the fresh vegetable and fruit part of the market with ten watermelons, 6 dozens of apples, pears, peaches and what not.

I won't have to describe anyone how a western super market looks.

Now think that the game starts 3 days to 1 week into the apocalypse, so a lot food and water are still not scavenged and the supermarket is like heaven.

In the first days everybody will rush to the supermarket to get as much food, water and even medicine to get going for at least a week or two.

If the owner hasn't managed to close up and the first looting started a lot of zedheads will stroll around outside and inside and it will nearly be impossible to loot until they start to move outwards.

If he managed to cover all the doors and windows with plywood and it managed to be untouched people will fight to their death for months worth of food and water and basic medication.

Now the clumsiness weight hybrid number would have to be reduced to make more sense in relation to weapons and stuff.

The most obivous change in gameplay would be that you have to plan a lot further than before. 1.5 litres of water will keep you going, but if you wander or worse run it can be up to 3-4 litres. In the early beginning water shouldn't be your immidiate concern as long as there is water from the tap. But should should take precautions as soon as you have your safe house. Fill the bathtube with water, every sink with water, every pot with water.

Supplies will constantly be in the back of your mind, knowing in a week there won't be any food left. [i personally often find myself in a position, especially with berries, where I can sit in my sage house for a month or longer and not have to concern about food] Also think about altough reduced realistic weight impact, that you have to plan trips and scavenging precisly knowing what to take and what to leave.

[Rathlord]

You seem to be a bit confused about how food and water work for human beings.

 

You can go three weeks or more without eating at all.

 

You can go three days or so without drinking at all.

 

If you have a third of a liter a day, that can keep you going for quite a while. If you have a liter a day that can keep you going nearly indefinitely, but you'll be weak and probably sick. 

 

Same goes for food. A small amount of food can keep a person going for an incredibly long time. A 2,000 calorie diet is enough to sustain a normal person forever, healthily but people live with much less than that for every day of their lives and have for thousands of years. 

 

The human body is capable of adapting very well. A small amount of food and water is enough to keep people going for a lifetime, it's just not going to be fun and you won't be healthy. The idea that every man, woman, and child needs 2,000 calories is an unfortunate idea that should stop being propagated. For many of us, 2,000 calories is actually a good deal more than you need.

Also, I doubt even very active people consume 4 liters of water a day. I'm not sure you have a solid grasp of how human beings work; there's diminishing returns on how much caloric intake and water intake are required in addition to the norm when factoring in work. There's no 1:1 ratio for how much more water you need per work done, and to a certain point there's no additional water needed per work done.

 

That's just not how the body works.

 

I'm not sure exactly how much it takes, but imbibing 4 liters of water could cause hyponatremia .

[PlasticandRage]

It also all depends on things like your size, height, average healthy weight, metabolism, etc. All kinds of things. There's no set caloric number that people absolutely must have each day. As long as you're drinking fluids you can live on practically no food at all for a really long time. I watch a lot of survival shows, on like Discovery and Nat Geo, and what have you. I'm not sure if you guys would be familiar with the show "I Shouldn't Be Alive" or not. Essentially the premise is that people who have been in disaster survival situations and lived tell their story in an interview and narrate a reinactment of what happened. Anyway I saw an episode a while back where this guy survived on something like 4 small fish for something like 76 days on a life raft in the Pacific. He got super sick and almost died, but was still able to do it, and still get the things done he needed to get done for survival, and eventually make it. Real world survival situations are almost always about enduring hunger.

[Jjoncm1]

Back to the OP since this is turning into a health debate   . Is there no reason why we, the users, can't have an option in sandbox that was can adjust to our liking at some point in development. I mean if someone wants to set the day time to a longer span, and they want to be looking for food all the time and build a massive farm, good for them.

 

Need Options:

 

Food Amount - Low, Normal, High, Realistic

Water Amount - "   "

 

 

But sense it's happening, I think 2,000 calorie was a number made for the average somewhat active person. Like someone else posted, in reality it should be based on your activities which would be harder to implement. If you are a pro athlete, you can't survive off 1000 calories. Likewise, if you spend the day in PZ doing very laborious activities, you would be burning more calories and getting more hungry than sleeping all day. Whether or not that was implement I wouldn't care. I still think it would be nice to have a sandbox option sometime in development though =).

[Rathlord]

I will say I don't have anything against seeing these options in the game

 

A pro athlete could likely survive indefinitely off a 1,000 calorie diet. He might not have the energy to keep being a pro athlete, but he'd live just fine. Like I said, people (especially Americans, sadly) have a very skewed idea about the whole concept of Caloric intake and it's affects on the human physique, which is largely due to misinformation propagated by the FDA.

[Jjoncm1]

 

I will say I don't have anything against seeing these options in the game

 

A pro athlete could likely survive indefinitely off a 1,000 calorie diet. He might not have the energy to keep being a pro athlete, but he'd live just fine. Like I said, people (especially Americans, sadly) have a very skewed idea about the whole concept of Caloric intake and it's affects on the human physique, which is largely due to misinformation propagated by the FDA.

 

What I meant was not a pro athlete post-apoc but rather while he is being active in a normal day setting =). (Someone who runs 10 miles a day or trains for hours on end plus what ever else they do can't do much on 1000 calories without issues). I'm sure post-apoc, pro athletes could adapt just fine and probably better than most people. Sorry had to clarify.

[Rathlord]

I get what you're saying, it's just that it's not entirely relevant (which a lot of people seem to be missing). When people take in less Calories, they are simply forced to be less active and such. It doesn't just cause you to die like some of the people here seem to be suggesting (not you particularly JJ).

 

RJ had talked about implementing a nutritional system at some point which I think would be interesting. It would be nifty (but probably far too complex) to have a system that measured your nutritional intake and then calculated it against the work you're doing over a period of time, and make you either get exhausted much quicker or higher chance of getting sick if the ratio wasn't correct. It'd also be a great way to implement being "overweight" as something that could come or go rather than being a set perk.

[Jjoncm1]

RJ had talked about implementing a nutritional system at some point which I think would be interesting. It would be nifty (but probably far too complex) to have a system that measured your nutritional intake and then calculated it against the work you're doing over a period of time, and make you either get exhausted much quicker or higher chance of getting sick if the ratio wasn't correct. It'd also be a great way to implement being "overweight" as something that could come or go rather than being a set perk.

 

Indeed mate, would be nice but I can see how hard it would be to implement in the game, I would be plenty happy with options