Condition and hunger connected to each other

[Arran]

I think it is too easy to recover condition now. Also hunger stat is not too important comparing to others. With "hibernation" player can survive with just 500 calories per day. Connecting condition regeneration with increased calories burn rate can make game much more interesting:

1. When player is starving every 100 calories missing cause 1% condition regeneration. On average player burns 100 calories per hour so condition loss stays same, unless player do some heavy task (ie cut tree) - then those missing calories cause higher condition loss.

2. Regeneration of condition require in addition to all needs fulfilled also burning extra calories (body needs more food to regenerate). For example at rate of extra 50 calories for every 1% condition:

- awake player with 90% condition will burn 150 calories per hour, regenerating 1% per hour (or 125 cal/h with 0.5% regen per hour);

- when sleeping player with 90% condition will burn extra 500 calories. If calories empty during sleep regeneration stops and player starts starving again. Extra calories needed for regeneration during sleep are shown in sleeping menu.

- calory burn rate for regeneration could be connected with difficulty - ie pilgrim / voyager needing only 10 cal/%,  stalker 20 cal/% and interloper 50 cal/%.

This way on lower difficulties player can still regenerate more than 50% over night. I think regenerating 90% over 1 night is really overpowered but in lower difficulty modes it may have some role.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Arran

[gotmilkanot]

I'm not sure what difficulty you're playing on but I feel that condition recovery from sleep is pretty balanced on Interloper since you can only recover 32% condition max from one night's sleep (10 hours). On Interloper, even with animal clothing, weather is still very cold and you're expected to take freezing damage during travelling which drains 20% condition per in-game hour. You take alot more damage from wolf struggles and you can be one-shotted by a wolf in early game with poor clothing.

Also, you hardly ever need to hibernate except in early game Interloper. Although Well Fed buff is nice, I find it a luxury and waste of time in early game Interloper where you have to loot regions fast during the first few days when the weather is still forgiving so I do use the hibernation technique. Not too sure if I'll like micro-managing calories.

[Arran]

In all other game modes you can regenerate upto 90% of condition in 1 sleep session. Interloper is only game mode where you regenerate much less and its much more natural i think. What is not natural is that eating 500 calories before sleep is enough for your belly

I dont propose any micromanaging calories. You will just need to eat more if you take condition hit. Its natural you need more proteins to recover if you are wounded. It will also fix "hibernation" method - if you start starving, eating just 500 calories to recover during night simply wont be enough.

[odizzido]

Linking calories to health in the way TLD has is a design flaw imo. Any of these solutions is like trying to glue together a poorly made foundation.

The most health should be linked to calories it's lowering Regen when you're starving.

 

Starvation should do things like increase how quickly you get tired and reduce your maximum carry weight. If you haven't eaten for a week and a half you should have a carry weight of like 5kg. Eventually you should just collapse and die.

Also eating shouldn't just make everything better is seconds. You should have to eat properly and slowly work up your carry weight again just like it slowly decreased with starvation.

 

The way it currently is is you can eat 15 deer over the course of a month but then not eat for like 8 hrs and then die of starvation.

[ManicManiac]

Hunger and condition are already connected...

When we start starving, we start losing condition, and if we don't eat for the better part of a day we also have a Fatigue/Rest penalty that steadily increases until we eat (then the penalty slowly recedes - that is to say it doesn't get better in seconds).

I'm good with the mechanics as is.  I don't any real need (or value add) for a drastic overhaul.

1 hour ago, odizzido said:

The way it currently is is you can eat 15 deer over the course of a month but then not eat for like 8 hrs and then die of starvation.

This isn't even remotely true.
I hope you were just being factitious.

Edited August 1, 2020 by ManicManiac

[gotmilkanot]

3 hours ago, Arran said:

In all other game modes you can regenerate upto 90% of condition in 1 sleep session. Interloper is only game mode where you regenerate much less and its much more natural i think. What is not natural is that eating 500 calories before sleep is enough for your belly

I dont propose any micromanaging calories. You will just need to eat more if you take condition hit. Its natural you need more proteins to recover if you are wounded. It will also fix "hibernation" method - if you start starving, eating just 500 calories to recover during night simply wont be enough.

There are many unrealistic aspects about this game. It can take weeks to heal from a sprained ankle in real life, not just immediately after you apply a cloth bandage in-game.

One deer should feed you for weeks in real life, but can only feed you 3 days max on Interloper if you're maintaining Well Fed buff. If you're using starvation technique (750 calories per night's sleep), you can stretch a deer to over a week which actually makes more sense to me to be honest.

Games are meant to be fun, and will lose some of the fun if they were made to be too realistic.

I think the current mechanics are fine as they are. You get Well Fed buff as an incentive if you don't starve, and for those who use starvation technique to save resources, they have to trade it off by managing their inventory more often to not get encumbered.

Edited August 1, 2020 by gotmilkanot

[odizzido]

9 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

This isn't even remotely true.
I hope you were just being factitious.

It is true. If you for example make it to a cabin after being in a blizzard but you're really low on health the starvation could kick in and you will die from it. You could argue the blizzard did most of the damage, but the starvation still finished you off. It shouldn't be that way.

[ManicManiac]

I think the example you're using is very reductive and a bit dismissive (seemingly in order to justify the point you want to make).  I think what you are basing your statement on would be roughly analogous to something like: "The patient was brought in suffering massive contusions and internal bleeding... but the patient didn't drink any water recently so... I think we'll label the cause of death as dehydration."    Now granted dehydration may have been the contributing factor that pushed the other factors past the point of no return... but it was just the last component not the major source of damage/harm.

 

1 hour ago, odizzido said:

You could argue the blizzard did most of the damage

This would be correct.  The rate of condition decay from starvation is 1% per hour... so if the player takes care of themselves, it would take about 4 game days to die of starvation... it does not take 8 hours to die of starvation; as your previous statement asserted.  Such a thing would certainly be a contributing factor if the player also unwisely or unfortunately put them selves in such a precarious position to leave themselves in a terribly poor condition to begin with.  Even then, I'd day hunger was a contributor but only in the "straw that broke the camel's back" kind of way.

So... in the specific example you cited, it may have been the 1% per hour drain that finished the job... but starvation isn't what doomed the player, it was all the poor decisions/bad luck that left the player out in a blizzard losing most of their condition and leaving them in a fragile/weakened state.  All that the starvation did was tip them over the edge, and into The Long Dark (but the over arching cause of death, was being freezing could in a blizzard).

 

1 hour ago, odizzido said:

but the starvation still finished you off. It shouldn't be that way.

I don't think this statement makes much rational sense...   I'd say it's pretty reasonable to have multiple factors contributing to death.  If a character looses 98% of their condition due to freezing to death, then takes refuge in a cave, and then also started starving because they didn't bring any food with them...  Then I'd say it's reasonable to expect that player would be dead in the next two game hours (because that last 2% would have been lost in the course of those two hours of starvation).  I mean, it's pretty basic math.  I mean if you only have 2% to work with and do something that causes you to loose 2% more condition... then yeah, I think it's pretty fair for that character to die. 

I understand what you're trying to get at... but I just don't think the argument holds up very well.  I think the mechanics and their relationship with condition is very well balanced and makes enough rational sense (in the context of the game rules) for it work well as set of mechanics and metrics to build a survival experience around. 

Edited August 2, 2020 by ManicManiac
Edited for clarity. :)

[odizzido]

I don't think we think the same at all. Nothing you wrote convinced me in the least and I don't think you understand the issues I have with linking health and calories the way the game has. We will never convince eachother.