Hunger and Food

[grover]

I know this has been addressed in the wishlist thread, but ...

You are hungry, and completely sated.
You are carrying about 40 pounds.

[Note that there was some other, un-recorded eating - so this isn't the bottom end of "hungry".]

You eat [10] handful[s] of rowan berries.
It tastes freshly-picked, and .

You eat [6] handful[s] of crabapples.
It tastes it tastes like an apple, and tartly crisp.

You eat [30] handful[s] of hawthorn berries.
It tastes freshly-picked, and .

You eat [3] of a handful of earthbread tubers.
It tastes very earthy and crunchy.

You eat [5] handful of round, white-capped mushrooms.
It tastes spongey.

You are feeling peckish [after 54 handfuls of food], and completely sated.
You are carrying about 30 pounds.

You eat a handful of round, white-capped mushrooms.
It tastes spongey.

You are full [after 55 handfuls of food], and completely sated.
You are carrying about 30 pounds.

You eat [5] handful of round, white-capped mushrooms.
It tastes spongey.

You eat [20] handful[s] of hawthorn berries.
It tastes freshly-picked, and .

You are full [after 80 handfuls of food], and completely sated.
You are carrying about 20 pounds.

That's a lot of craft timers, too. The PC?

gluttony.jpg (43.99 KiB) Viewed 6407 times

[Droll]

[Jeshin]

It is my understanding that the effectiveness of food has more to do with their calories then their weight. But yes food is messed up.

[grover]

It is my understanding that the effectiveness of food has more to do with their calories then their weight. But yes food is messed up.

Or volume.

Crabapples have about sixty calories a handful, though, depending on the hands. Nuts ought to have even more, but it appears codedly impossible to crack and eat unroasted nuts.

Of course, I understand it's alpha and that this is a known issue.

[Eru]

*bump*
This is still a pretty apparent problem. Why does one need to eat six to seven fillet's of fish or hunks of meat to reach from 'feeling peckish' to 'satiated'? It turns into unnecessary spam and food stores take a real dive. Can we please bump up the effectiveness of some foods?

[krelm]

Or, what was it, 15 slabs of horribly burnt meat to go from hungry to full? Sure it's poorly-cooked, nearly inedible meat, but that's still going to fill you up.

[Eru]

Right. I'd rather eat the 4-5 slabs and be able to RP doing so rather than try to spam the 15 down my gullet because there are only so many variations of chewing.

[Ava]

For a really active, fit man (like a lot of our characters!) to maintain weight, 18 calories per pound of body weight daily is a good average.

So a fit man at 180 lbs needs approx 3240 calories a day to maintain.

If the meat chunks, burnt or otherwise, are about six ounces and have a bit of fat on them, they're about 414 calories.

That's still only 7.8 steaks per day to totally fill up, for this fit 180 lb man.


ETA: What I'm trying to say is that this is not realistic at all, and in game mechanics, it's really clunky/weird/a hassle.

[Eru]

There's a point where realism kills gameplay. SOI is a game after all. I'd rather not spend the few hours of playtime I have each day with a steak in hand IG.

[Frigga]

It turns into unnecessary spam and food stores take a real dive.

When you start seeing some of the food stores in some places though - it makes it hard to believe that having or obtaining the food is actually the problem though. There has to be some way to balance spam foraging and spam hunting.

I'll ponder bumping up the value on some foods, but in trade consider adding more morphtos (IE rotting) on items to stop the endless backup of meat. And some crafts to combine smaller items into larger ones to cut down on the spam (and provide for more satiating dishes.)

[Songweaver]

Those sound like good steps to me.

[someguy]

It's not the raw materials. It is converting from the raw material to the cooked product. The percentage of players interested in cooking skill gains is small. The percentage of players not interested in starving is large.

[Olthadir]

If that is the case, why is the Ironwood Inn larders filled with cooked food?

I can personally attest to the back room being filled with cooked food, and in addition to that two additional shelves being filled with food that has not been placed in the storeroom to reduce the massive list what would come up when inquiring about things to purchase.

I don't want to cook anything because it seems like no one is interested in buying anything cooked.

[grover]

If that is the case, why is the Ironwood Inn larder filled with cooked food?

1. PCs who don't go outside don't seem to get hungry. I think I've played characters for up to 4 IG days (24 hours realtime) before they got hungry. Ale may also be somewhat filling; I'm not sure.

2. There seems to be a pretty wide disparity in PC income levels. If you're making armor, weapons, or something else that sells well to PCs, you should have plenty of coin. If your PC is trying scrape by foraging and selling to Arni, you might be getting hungry faster than you can earn money. You might be getting hungry faster than you can pick apples to eat! If you're living on a coded payday, you'll have even less in your pocket, and you may have access to a clan dining area -- both of which mean you're less likely to buy at the inn. And if you've gone and rolled some kind of weird bard/artist concept, well, good luck. Try staying inside.

[Ava]

It turns into unnecessary spam and food stores take a real dive.

When you start seeing some of the food stores in some places though - it makes it hard to believe that having or obtaining the food is actually the problem though. There has to be some way to balance spam foraging and spam hunting.

I'll ponder bumping up the value on some foods, but in trade consider adding more morphtos (IE rotting) on items to stop the endless backup of meat. And some crafts to combine smaller items into larger ones to cut down on the spam (and provide for more satiating dishes.)

Maybe make it fill people up more, but less easy to obtain? Maybe make the current stores go bad or something. Also, are we living in a food-scarcity sort of place, anyway?

People will keep hoarding if they need 20 steaks to fill up.

[EltanimRas]

Maybe make it fill people up more, but less easy to obtain? Maybe make the current stores go bad or something.

I'd rather see vNPCs eat from the food stores -- at least in clans like the Lodge and Guard for which that would make sense -- than have them go bad, because the latter suggests over-hunting, but the former doesn't.

Edited to clarify: That is, of course, if we're looking at long-term solutions to hoarding, rather than a one-time item changeover.

[likui]

If that is the case, why is the Ironwood Inn larders filled with cooked food?

I can personally attest to the back room being filled with cooked food, and in addition to that two additional shelves being filled with food that has not been placed in the storeroom to reduce the massive list what would come up when inquiring about things to purchase.

I don't want to cook anything because it seems like no one is interested in buying anything cooked.

I have eaten multiple times from the inn, but it just not cost-effective when I spend 10% of my character's life savings on what would amount IRL to barely 1/3 of a single meal. For a character who spends several hours daily on rping a craft which produces no tradable product (and hence, reaches starving level at least once per irl day), relying solely on the inn for his nutrition means using up all his money and being rendered inoperable due to irreversible starvation within 10 irl days or less.

[someguy]

I don't want to cook anything because it seems like no one is interested in buying anything cooked.

See the economy is broken thread. Two drinks is 1/3rd of a guard's income. I believe the lodge people are paid worse.

[Raukran]

Okay, let's see how many points I can touch on with as little efforts as possible.

*I think the sheer quantity of eating required to become full is stupid silly, and jarring to RP, especially considering it's mostly handfuls of something, a whole cooked critter, or manly portions/cuts of meat.

*Most items seem to have four bites, no matter what their IC size.

*The Ironwood is not a good slice of your average storage of meat. People sell the Ironwood anything they'll buy. I've seen first hand both the Lodge and Merchant Guard struggling for meat. Also, most of the meat currently held are cuts that have no crafts associated with them, or costly ingredients.

*As it stands, for a guild the size of the Merchant Guard, we have to have 50-100 portions of food on our table, just so we're not obliterated by someone coming in and eating 18 slices of meat. That's not even counting starving newbies and such.

[Frigga]

[quote
I'd rather see vNPCs eat from the food stores -- at least in clans like the Lodge and Guard for which that would make sense -- than have them go bad, because the latter suggests over-hunting, but the former doesn't.

Edited to clarify: That is, of course, if we're looking at long-term solutions to hoarding, rather than a one-time item changeover.[/quote]

The difficulty here is that things either go bad or don't universally, and given that item backup can cause storerooms to crash the game sure, having food (amongst other things) linger forever is a concern.

We could look into stores being reduced in the Lodge and Guard by vNPCs, but that wouldn't change that a lack of morphs of any kind also means that any independent clans/businesses/the Inn would also have items that never go bad. Which likely isn't a feasible economic idea if you want to encourage things like smoking or salting of meats or pickling of vegetables. Why would anyone ever bother if a plain grilled steak lasts literally forever?

So, as I said, I'll look into adjusting the "value" on some items. However, don't expect things to ever reach SOI2 levels where a single cracker and a piece of pie had the same "worth" for satiation. Or a single bowl of oatmeal filled up people for a week.

The production, preparation, and consumption of food is a major part of the game economy and the interest for a lot of crafters (whether involved in one stage or all of them.) So - it needs to be a feature that continues to have real worth, and rewards skill and input accordingly. Having the most basic item provide the same "value" as a higher skilled item is not a feasible idea the same as it wouldn't be in any skillset.

But, I've heard the feedback, and I'll peek at it.

[EltanimRas]

The difficulty here is that things either go bad or don't universally, and given that item backup can cause storerooms to crash the game sure, having food (amongst other things) linger forever is a concern.

Oops. Let me rephrase: I'd rather clans with significant vNPC membership or customer base had vNPCs helping to eat their food supplies so that stuff would be less likely sit around long enough to go bad.

I didn't mean to suggest food should magically last forever, much less that it should do so without smoking, salting, and so forth.

So, as I said, I'll look into adjusting the "value" on some items. However, don't expect things to ever reach SOI2 levels where a single cracker and a piece of pie had the same "worth" for satiation. Or a single bowl of oatmeal filled up people for a week.

Two to three normal-ish meals per 24 in-game hours would work for me, as would 2-3 thousand calories worth of food, seeing as your average PC's probably pretty active.

Having the most basic item provide the same "value" as a higher skilled item is not a feasible idea the same as it wouldn't be in any skillset.

I'd like to think the value of higher-skill recipes is in the flavor -- I've certainly seen plenty of PCs willing to pay for higher-priced mead or whiskey in place of ale. And I'm optimistic that we'll have a lot fewer scurvy-courting pure-carnivore PCs once farming comes online.

That said, it'd certainly be reasonable if at least some of our higher skill recipes required more and/or higher-calorie foods to make (and were correspondingly more filling).

[Frigga]

Just to let folks know, I've started to look into this, I'll be going through the current food items and looking to standardize:

- Bites (Reducing bites on less filling foods to reduce spam), I'll be setting a standard on bites based on satiation

- Satiation on items.

I think one thing here that might have gotten overlooked previously is to make sure all the crafts that fry take into proper account they are indeed using lard.

- Standardized burned to properly cooked satiation ratio.

(We might have to agree to disagree on this point, some folks, but there's a reason skill-fail items aren't worth much. )

[EltanimRas]

Thanks, Frigga. <3

[ETA: I assume "burnt" means "partially destroyed" -- it might be a bit more dramatic than most RL cooking failures, but it works for me.]

[Eru]

Thanks for taking the time to look into this Frigga.

[Rivean]

(We might have to agree to disagree on this point, some folks, but there's a reason skill-fail items aren't worth much. )

I doubt anybody would have a problem with a skill failure ('You have managed to horribly burn this omelet. Good luck scraping off some bites off the top that are still edible'.)

But a low skill cooking craft is still a success, isn't it?

I see the low skill vs high skill yield difference argument, but my crappy low skill omelet is going to be just as filling (possibly more so, actually, as I'm likely to use more oil) than my mother's fluffy expert omelet. It just doesn't taste as good

Unfortunately, skill in cooking seems to be more of a quality and less of a quantity issue. I suspect if you want to make higher skill food codedly better than low skill food, in ways OTHER than taste, you might go into the long term effects of a good, well made diet, vs a poor one (but this promises to be a pain in the *** and not an idea I'd recommend.)

You could also go the route of having low skill food be bland and tasteless to the point where our PCs don't want to eat them, but that would be force emoting and also doesn't make much sense. People who are used to that sort of cooking (because for whatever reason, better isn't available) are perfectly happy eating it.

I'd be happy with just the taste tags, really. "The meat is poorly cooked, tough, stringy, and not at all appetizing."

Even then, it's relatively easy to throw some salt on something, toss it onto a grill, and have it come out semi decent.