Day fasting and night eating strat counter

[odizzido]

So I picked this game up yesterday(thanks for putting it on gog :)) and I've just found the 600 calorie per day diet. I was thinking if starvation lowered your maximum health in addition to lowering your regular health it would prevent that exploit. Well, I consider it an exploit at least.

You could have it so that max health drops twice as fast as regular health and only goes back up if you're not in a starvation state. Or whatever. I just thought of it so there is probably a better balance.

[CaveDweller]

@odizzido Welcome to the forums

Good suggestion, unfortunately (or fortunately) it is already implemented! It's a malnutrition sort of effect, but also relies on you not sleeping for long periods on top of not eating. The 'eye' in your HUD will start to turn red from the top down. You have to maintain a +calorie state and sleep to regain this lost stamina.

In order to nerf the 'exploit' the Devs would have to beef up this effect. However, many cultures only eat once a day - so it isn't necessarily an exploit. In other posts it has also been suggested that there be a stamina bar (like we already have) and a condition bar/field in the paper doll. Condition goes down, you walk slower and your load-capacity lowers etc.

[odizzido]

I had no idea there was already something like this....as you can tell I've never seen it.

I actually eat once a day fairly often so I don't have a problem with that......what I do have a problem with is eating only 600 calories per day, especially since I am running around in the snow. If I did that I would lose weight very quickly and it would not be healthy.

Also if that bar that has been suggested already killed you when it got to 0 that would be cool. Kinda like two health bars I guess, a damage bar and a life bar.

[UraniumAnchor]

What I'd like to see is in addition to taking damage when any of your needs bars are emptied, you start to build up a 'deficit'. For example, if you hit 0 on your calorie meter and then burn an extra 300 calories on top of that. At this point you can eat 300 calories to pause further condition loss and refill the meter back to 300, but since you have a 300 calorie deficit, the meter will passively drain faster until the deficit is paid off. So in the short term it's still a viable tactic, but doesn't work in the long term.

[Wormer]

While I admit this is not natural, it's the only way to play higher difficulty interloper games. I agree there should be a long term effect of malnutrition, but this should not be very severe in the short-term. Like proposed I support the idea of slowly lowering character max health in addition to the condition loss while starvation. I would say like minus 4%-5% per 12 hours. Unlike afflictions, this is a recoverable effect (yellow bar that fills condition from the right). Unlike condition max health doesn't regenerate during sleep, it only goes up when you're well fed. To balance this against 8 hours daily sleep the recovery effect could be like 1.5%-2% per 12 hours. If you choose to keep your character on the short rope let's say you keep him starving for 14 hours during the day and then he is recovering the condition during his 8 hour sleep. It's 3%-3.8% max condition drop per day. Keep going for 5 days straight and -15%-19% would be sensible. For a full recovery the character must be kept full fed for 3-4 days -- fair enough.

[stratvox]

On 5/9/2018 at 5:15 AM, Wormer said:

While I admit this is not natural, it's the only way to play higher difficulty interloper games. I agree there should be a long term effect of malnutrition, but this should not be very severe in the short-term. Like proposed I support the idea of slowly lowering character max health in addition to the condition loss while starvation. I would say like minus 4%-5% per 12 hours. Unlike afflictions, this is a recoverable effect (yellow bar that fills condition from the right). Unlike condition max health doesn't regenerate during sleep, it only goes up when you're well fed. To balance this against 8 hours daily sleep the recovery effect could be like 1.5%-2% per 12 hours. If you choose to keep your character on the short rope let's say you keep him starving for 14 hours during the day and then he is recovering the condition during his 8 hour sleep. It's 3%-3.8% max condition drop per day. Keep going for 5 days straight and -15%-19% would be sensible. For a full recovery the character must be kept full fed for 3-4 days -- fair enough.

I approve of this idea. In a real world long term survival situation (and esp. in the wintertime) the starvation technique would end up dramatically shortening your life. I never actually use that mechanic because I know that long term hunger like that would doom the player to a very crappy death and possibly one bound by insanity because that's how the real world works. Instead I expend a lot of effort trying to keep the player well fed and watered because only by being well fed could the player keep up the prodigious amounts of energy output that is required to walk through heavy snow in minus thirty weather. For example, in the real world, even with awesome clothing spending hours outside on an empty stomach should result in hypothermia coming on much much more quickly than it would with a full stomach because the energy to keep you warm has to come from somewhere. Also, walking all day on an empty stomach should deplete the fatigue meter significantly more quickly than on a full one.

With the way the game is now, that's a roleplay thing on my part, but it's a reasonable one given what the game is about imho.

For the folks that want to make the hard difficulties harder this sort of mechanic would go a LONG way to doing so.

[odizzido]

Actually I've found that setting sleep health regen to zero and awake regen to low you need to keep yourself in good condition almost all of the time or you die.

[Riotintheair]

On 5/9/2018 at 5:15 AM, Wormer said:

While I admit this is not natural, it's the only way to play higher difficulty interloper games. I agree there should be a long term effect of malnutrition, but this should not be very severe in the short-term. Like proposed I support the idea of slowly lowering character max health in addition to the condition loss while starvation. I would say like minus 4%-5% per 12 hours. Unlike afflictions, this is a recoverable effect (yellow bar that fills condition from the right). Unlike condition max health doesn't regenerate during sleep, it only goes up when you're well fed. To balance this against 8 hours daily sleep the recovery effect could be like 1.5%-2% per 12 hours. If you choose to keep your character on the short rope let's say you keep him starving for 14 hours during the day and then he is recovering the condition during his 8 hour sleep. It's 3%-3.8% max condition drop per day. Keep going for 5 days straight and -15%-19% would be sensible. For a full recovery the character must be kept full fed for 3-4 days -- fair enough.

Interloper got a lot easier for me when I stopped doing this. Sacrificing 12-15% condition per day to starvation was killing me. I enter starvation only if it's my last 700 Calories on the line and Interloper is perfectly doable (my current best run is at 580 days and the character has recoded only a single day in which he's eaten fewer than 2000 Calories and has averaged 3200 Calories per day.

[Wormer]

16 hours ago, odizzido said:

Actually I've found that setting sleep health regen to zero and awake regen to low you need to keep yourself in good condition almost all of the time or you die.

Good point! Makes me think that probably sleep health regen IS the thing that is overpowered? When you got no sleep health buff, there indeed no way to compensate for starvation.

10 hours ago, Riotintheair said:

Interloper got a lot easier for me when I stopped doing this. Sacrificing 12-15% condition per day to starvation was killing me. I enter starvation only if it's my last 700 Calories on the line and Interloper is perfectly doable (my current best run is at 580 days and the character has recoded only a single day in which he's eaten fewer than 2000 Calories and has averaged 3200 Calories per day.

Should try this yet. I am always under the pressure I wouldn't have enough food in the future, but have to admit the lack of food is the least thing that keeps killing you in interloper directly.

[Stone]

I'm willing to keep my character fed just to stop their whining about being hungry.

[Riotintheair]

There's a time and place for starvation, if I'm going to bed with more than 65% condition (for 10 hrs rest) I can give more. I could choose to give some of that to starvation, but usually I try to push harder or do more outside as that's more fun. I guess I understand the survivor's cabin fever... It's me. I mean I don't think I'd go sleep in a blizzard, but the overwhelming desire to go anywhere else is certainly one I understand perfectly.