Efficient Gameplay with 0 Calories

[3rdbrother]

I've noticed that the most efficient way to play the sandbox at the moment is to always keep your character at 0 calories. 

You can easily check your daily average calorie use, and mine usually reaches to about 1000 calories. 
When starving, the daily condition loss will usually reach to about 15~20. 
Considering that this deficit can be easily remedied with around 340~400 calories (~17 calories for 1 condition when sleeping), the game gets extremely easy once you have a small stock of food going, which isn't hard at all even on stalker. 
Living at a constant 80~95 condition is no problem for me.
Even if I do get into a wolf accident, wolves will only deal around 50 condition damage at max when wielding a hunting knife, usually even less. 
Imagine that, just 400 calories per day as long as you don't get into any repeated wolf accidents or bear encounters, and I'm a very careful player. 
In addition to that, you get to break as much furniture, branches, and tree limbs as you want without any calorie loss, because you don't have any to begin with. (IMPORTANT)

Although I usually abuse this strategy, I feel that it should be fixed somehow. 
I think that the condition drop rate when starving is fair and stable.
However, I do think that they should implement some sort of negative status on the character when he/she is starving. 
May possibly a slower movement speed, and/or condition loss rather than calorie loss when breaking down furniture/branches/tree limbs? 

I really do hope that this is fixed, because I am forced to use this strategy as long as it exists, due to how efficient it is haha. #alwayshungry 

[exeexe]

they could change it that if you have starved for an extended period of time, lets say down to 50%, you cant regain strength fast again. Like the people who survived the holocaust in Nazigermany, many of them died when the americans came and gave them food because they werent used to eat all this food so they overate and died. They had to slowly get used to eat food again and the recovery came but very slowly.

Lets say the condition severe starvation makes it that so 10 hour of sleep will only give 10% condition back? and u will have this condition till you reach 100%

[3rdbrother]

The idea of dying from eating too much when being starved is actually quite morbid haha, but a real and interesting concept if they decide to add it to the game. Thumbs up with the idea of an ailment acquired from being starving for too long. Something that won't further worsen condition rapidly, but will instead slow condition healing when calories are finally gained again. 

I still just really feel like a nerf is needed when breaking down things on 0 calories. Imagine spending hours within the Pleasant valley farmstead breaking down curtains and furniture for mountains of cloth and reclaimed wood, at the cost of 0 calories, with no real backlash of any sorts. Kinda messes with the perform-actions-at-a-cost aspect of the game. 

[Ohbal]

This is somewhat present in most survival games out there. Another Early Access I follow closely has recently implemented a diet system, so the character gains and lose weight and health depending on what you eat.

I'm not a fan of overcomplicating this stuff, but something as simple and generic as: minimal cal consumption (what you expend by doing nothing, which we have in game) + activity based caloric consumption (which we also have) = total caloric ingestion necessary to retain your weight. Anything below will make you lose it. Anything above will make you gain it. To a point, gaining weight and losing it should affect the character. An over weighted char may run slowly, but should also have a bonus against temperature and carry capacity, for example. A thin character should have more cons than pros: reduced weight carry capacity, less resistance to cold, prone to illness... maybe a pro would be faster speed if not encumbered. 

 

[Magniff]

I've also addressed this exploit in the "wish list" section.
Instead I might have better place it here, but however.

While I've offered to different suggestion in my "wish list" thread,
I've got to admit, I really like the Idea of an additional affliction caused by starving for to long.

To throw in my five cents on how such an affliction might work:
The affliction is gained by starving for more then 9 - 12 hours (might be slightly randomized).
One can't regenrate any HP while the affliction is present.
To get rid of the affliction again, you'll need to stay above starving (hunger bar is not empty) for 24 hours.

[SteveP]

Sounds like there should be a % body fat measure that decreases with starvation and is not recovered by sleeping. What is a reasonable recovery rate for regaining fat? It should be directly proportional to the calories you carry so if you hover around zero, you won't regain body fat.

The best way to recover body fat reserves is probably to sleep on a full stomach in a warm place. I think calories during sleep are related to effective body temperature, room temp plus all warmth bonuses. We don't know too much about the effects of temperature or activities as indicated by Wikia Calorie Burn

Fatigue should set in rapidly when zero calories are available as well as susceptibility to mechanical injuries and wolf attacks. In addition, the wolf should detect a weak player and be much more prone to attacking, even when protected by torch or flare.

We  might want to make some concessions to players in the early game phase when clothing is poor by improving the clothing you start with and by reducing severity of weather for the first few days with more severe weather more common at the 40-50 day mark and beyond. I would hope this would get sorted out before game release and trust that Hinterland already has a handle on it. I know they have said they are addressing several concerns.

I do not know if it is feasible to get an alpha release for alpha testing of just caloric concerns. I can see they might want to keep the new features under wraps. At the same time, system configuration management branching & merging can be problematic if done ad-hoc. I once had the "privilege" of working on software that had dozens of code streams that all had to use manual feature/fix merging.

[Ohbal]

2 hours ago, SteveP said:

Sounds like there should be a % body fat measure that decreases with starvation and is not recovered by sleeping. What is a reasonable recovery rate for regaining fat? It should be directly proportional to the calories you carry so if you hover around zero, you won't regain body fat.

[...]

This is where I'd say the concept could start getting too complex, losing effectivity, as it would confuse the new player more than drive the playstile.  

Quote

We  might want to make some concessions to players in the early game phase when clothing is poor by improving the clothing you start with and by reducing severity of weather for the first few days with more severe weather more common at the 40-50 day mark and beyond. I would hope this would get sorted out before game release and trust that Hinterland already has a handle on it. I know they have said they are addressing several concerns.

[...]

The current hit the player gets when starting a game is spot on, (imo, of course). Tuning it down... wouldn't be in favour

I'd aim for greater bonifications and penalties depending on if you are getting well fed. Basically everything in the game (resistance against infections, speed, carry capacity, cold resistance, recovery from illness, sprains...) could be affected by your nutrition. 

[Vhalkyrie]

I don't think this should be changed.  If they change it, then you'd almost have to constantly eat.  It would also make starvation less realistic.  A real person can go almost a month without substantial calories as long as they stay hydrated.  In the game, it's about 2 or 3 days depending on the difficulty level before condition loss gets into the red with starvation alone, which I think is fine from a gameplay standpoint.  In my 100+ day game, I eat 800 calories in the morning, and 800-1000 calories in the evening.  Midday meals are optional, but I do eat a 'lunch' if I'm traveling far distances where I might run into wolves or bears.  Since I'm not a hibernating character, I do risk running into wildlife during my adventures.  While I can handle them pretty well, occasionally things do go wrong.

For my purposes, I think it's fine where sometimes I eat zero calories when I'm indoors cooking/boiling water.  I can conserve my food reserves and not eat as much.  At one point earlier in the development, they had a concept of negative calories, but they got rid of that.

Personally, I'm not in favor of mechanics that will add to 'fat storage' as it will overcomplicate things (just as negative calories did).  In my Voyager game, I think it's working as intended.  People will starve or hibernate, but I say let them.  If they try to overcompensate for them, it will ruin the game for the rest of us.

That said, I might be ok with performing less efficiently with less than 50% hunger, just like fatigue less than 50%.

[SteveP]

I greatly simplified the process of starvation; there are four stages of starvation, the final one being death.

Symptoms & stages of starvation

Now Entering Starvation Mode: What Happens To Your Metabolic Processes When You Stop Feeding Your Body

How your body fights to keep you alive when you’re starving

0-6 hours after eating

6-72 hours after eating

72 hours and onward

That said, your brain is not out of the woods yet. It's still short of about 10 g of glucose per day. The brain has got to get its energy from somewhere, and that somewhere is your body's own proteins. At this stage in your starvation (or fast), all the cells in your body will start to break down protein that releases amino acids into the bloodstream. These amino acids are then converted into glucose by the liver, and your brain is happy again.

But your body isn't. You have now entered into the regrettable phase called autophagy where your muscle mass starts to waste away. You are literally cannibalizing yourself.

Death

Needless to say, the body is not doing so well despite these evasive maneuvers. Starvation wreaks havoc on the immune system, mostly on account of an extreme deficiency of vitamins and minerals. And in fact, some people will become weak and die of immune-related diseases during starvation.

Eventually, however, the body will run out of options. Glucose, fats, tissue, and muscle mass are finite resources that will eventually be exhausted, and with it, death. The end-stage of starvation typically brings with it one of two different diseases: marasmus and kwashiorkor.

 

[Magniff]

I really like SteveP's body fat suggestion!

It could be implemented as some kind of dynamic affliction,
in which it's actual effects depend on your current body fat ratio.
 

Gain and loss mechanic:
Just as SteveP suggested, as soon as a player is starving (empty hunger bar), his body fat would start to decrease at a certain rate.
It could also be gained at the same rate, if the player is sleeping and not starving at the same time.
The players warmth bar might also be considered In order to fine tune this new mechanic.

Consequences of a high body fat ratio:
A very high body fat ratio would provide a warmth bonus, but also cause the player to be slower while he's moving on snow.
In addition, HP loss from starvation should be way lower, until your body fat ratio has actually droped to zero.

Consequences of a low body fat ratio:
A low body fat ratio could provide a small speed bonus on snow (never faster than moving on a road) but also induce a warmth penalty.
As soon as the body fat ratio gets really low, wolfs would start to be more aggressive towards the player (since he resembles a weak prey, now).

Some mercy to fresh spawns:
Freshly spwaned players could be provided with a rather high body fat ratio, to keep the level of punishment low during the first few days.

[Drifter Man]

I think that this "controlled starvation" is an issue, although not a very serious one. Each player can choose how many calories they want to burn and how often to hunt. It is up to you whether you choose to starve or not. This game gives many options to choose from and this is one of them.

That being said, I agree that calorie consumption should reflect the amount of activity you do (which it doesn't when you starve) and that there should be some form of penalization for starving. Not because I want to punish those who use this as an exploit, but because I want to know that running out of calories is a serious problem for my character. The body fat system may be too complicated although I am not opposed to it completely. Reduced carrying capacity, increased vulnerability to wolves etc. are the way to go, in my opinion.