Ragwort

Being woken up randomly is actually an affliction in itself, without putting any other penalty on sleep. For example if you select 8 hours sleep in a bed (other than on Interloper) you'll recover 44% condition, but if you get woken up half-way you'll recover only 28% (14% from each 4-hour sleep period). IMO this is enough of a gameplay penalty given that a struggle already has many negative effects on the player. I do like the idea!

This would save me so much clicking - fully support it!

In the spirit of the discussion so far I came up with the following simplification of the effects of this mechanic: The sprinting penalty seemed too short-term to fit with the rest, so I replaced it with dehydration which is an actual symptom of prolonged starvation. Instead of three levels of affliction, there's now just one - but the longer the player continues to starve, the more frequently they experience the symptoms. Edited to add: To avoid proliferation of mechanics, you could - if desired - roll the fatigue cap into this as well. Simply have the fatigue cap increase while the affliction is active, instead of after being at 0 calories for a certain number of hours (or whatever the trigger actually is for the fatigue cap)

@ManicManiac Two main reasons I didn't suggest a change to the fatigue cap: I don't know the specifics of how it operates, even after googling and reading the wiki! It's important for the player to get temporary relief from starvation by eating. In fact the current fatigue cap does this - even with a lot of the bar being red, it allows you to sleep to full as long as you are above 0 calories. But as a result the mechanic can only encourage eating before sleep, no matter how you tweak it. Moreover, the current way the cap is displayed breaks down if the player had more rest than the cap would normally allow (because they were above 0 cals when resting). My understanding is that the fatigue cap discourages a specific strategy - that of going multiple days between meals in order to maximize efficiency. I think it succeeds at that, but I don't see a satisfactory way to adapt the cap to a more general purpose.

You see my point then. And if you can think of a simpler way to achieve it, then please do say!

As I said earlier, the fatigue cap goes away every single time I eat 300 cals and then sleep 5 hours. Condition loss is healed in precisely the same way. There is no long-term effect, at least not on Stalker. I'm not aware of any increase in fatigue drain due to starvation being currently in the game. If there is information on this somewhere then please enlighten me.

That is why I've made this mechanic about as simple as it can possibly be. All of the nutritional stuff that I've seen discussed in other threads on this topic - body fat, muscle mass, protein, fat, carbohydrates, sugars, too many rabbits - all of this is abstracted into a single value. And all the player needs to see is "Hey, you haven't eaten enough for weeks and your body is going to suffer/actually suffering for it. Eat food to make this go away". And everything from that point on - how to find food, or how to just deal with the consequences - is up to the player.

For clarity I've made a brief and simplified description of the proposal (also added a difficulty mod, N.B. for obvious reasons this suggestion is not intended for Pilgrim) : I will also clarify: the purpose of this suggestion is not to "stop" the player doing anything or to prevent "exploits". Rather, the purpose is to introduce a meaningful consequence in order to improve immersion - in other words, to help the player's willing suspension of disbelief. Eating food when it is available and rationing when it is scarce is exactly what I would imagine doing in a survival situation - I would therefore consider it *highly* immersive.

I'd love to see this - among other things it would make completing a region map into a definite goal with a tangible reward. And it makes sense that at some point the player knows the region well enough to be able to fill in the blanks. Also agree with Kranium that mapping all named places should be a prerequisite (as well as the % completion).

I may at some point start keeping an eye on the "Calories Expended" stat and having a personal goal to bring it above some threshold (like 1000 per day or so) for my current run. But being in an established run with lots of gear, etc., of course that's the less important half of the problem. The more important half is, ought I to have starved to death earlier in the run when I was in more difficulty? I can understand the impulse to use a rolling average, but that has its own issues (which stand out starkly when dealing with Cabin Fever) and it would have to be a *lot* longer than 6 days. The whole point of this suggestion is that starvation should become an issue over weeks or months, not days! It's certainly not to "force" the player to satisfy yet another constraint during the first week (which is already the hardest part of the game, IMO). Also, the proposal I've described is actually very simple. There's a lot of text simply because I fleshed out all the details and illustrated with a running example, but at the heart of it is just one counter and two conditions under which it is modified.

If you read and understand the proposed mechanic I described, you'll see that it does indeed have some similarities with Hypothermia. Incidentally if you have specific comments on what I proposed, or suggested improvements, please don't hestitate to post them.

To be honest, I'm far less concerned with "realism" then I am with immersion. If the amount of meat on a deer or its caloric value differ substantially from reality, well, I'm not stopping to calculate any of this and so it doesn't break immersion for me. Perhaps it would for someone intimately familiar with hunting, in which case they could post about it. By contrast, I think most of us have an intuitive understanding that starvation is a gradual process which occurs over a period of weeks or months, not days. There's no need to stop and calculate anything to understand this. So when all consequences of caloric deprivation happen on a time scale of days at most, that does badly break immersion for me.

I did look at some of the past discussions before posting, and took them into account while writing. I genuinely feel the hunger mechanics are the weakest part of the game's immersion at least over the time I've played. Also as a concrete point, as far as I'm concerned the fatigue/rest cap might as well not exist. It scared me the first time I saw it - right up until the point where I went to sleep and it disappeared straight away. Since then I've ignored it with no consequences.

When I first started playing The Long Dark, I tried desperately to keep my calories above zero. When I inevitably failed, I didn't take particular care to observe the effects of being at 0 calories - I just assumed that it was a Very Bad Idea to leave it that way for long. The game became tense for me - a bit too tense, if I'm being honest - and only later when I read the wiki did I realise that the only penalty for being at 0 calories was 1% condition loss per hour. (Yes, there is the sleep thing as well, but that has never actually had an impact on my game in all the time I've been playing.) When I first realised that I could survive on 300 calories per day (not being skilled, I play on Stalker) in exchange for only a small decrease in effective max condition, it was a great boon to my gameplay. Suddenly I could stop worrying about food and focus on exploration, finding more clothing and tools, and maybe nabbing the odd rabbit every so often so as not to have to deplete my rations. I assumed that this strategy would prove unsustainable eventually - after all, in real life one needs at least 1200 calories a day, at a bare minimum, to survive over an extended period - but that mattered far less to me than being free to improve my situation in the short-term. I figured that once I started to see consequences for this extreme rationing then I'd bring my focus back to finding better food sources. However, after weeks (in-game) of playing this way I didn't see any such consequences. When I brought down my first deer I briefly considered eating all the meat at once - after all, my character had been on starvation rations for some time - but wouldn't it be more rational to just eat 300 cals and save the rest for later? Not wanting to transport the meat, I waited until I was leaving the area and then ate enough to get me through to the following morning. Finally when I got to Jackrabbit Island I started fishing and filled up my hunger bar, and considered going for the Well Fed buff. But how long could I sustain it? I'd become used to only needing 300 calories per day and the thought of needing so much more, and losing the buff if my calories ever hit zero even once, just wasn't worth the 5kg carry weight and +5% max condition in my mind. Ultimately, the hunger mechanics in the game now feel less like a struggle for survival and more like a background routine to be forgotten about, until just before sleep when I need to find some small amount of food (e.g., 2 cattails). Of course on Interloper things would be harder, but even then, wouldn't Interloper throw up other problems (like extreme cold) that would be more concerning? In any case, the hunger mechanic is definitely the biggest crack in the otherwise flawless immersion The Long Dark has provided me thus far. After some thinking I came up with the proposal described at the end of this post. The tl;dr version is: Let the player survive on few calories in the short-term. And if they're meeting at least half of their nominal calorie requirements, just let them be. But if they're eating the minimum possible, then after a week or so (the timing will depend on various factors), let them know that they are now risking starvation. If they start to eat well at that point, they'll see the risk decrease to zero relatively quickly. If not, after another week or so, tell them they are starving and give them a moderate debuff - but supress its effects anytime their calorie store is above zero. Now the player has a reason to eat during the day - and will notice an immediate improvement from doing so, as we can all imagine upon eating when desperately hungry. The debuff becomes more severe over time, until after about 5 weeks it becomes so severe that finding an adequate food source is just about the only thing that matters. Once the player has stabilised their food situation, they'll know they have reached an important milestone. Further, from this point the player only needs roughly twice as much food to maintain the Well Fed buff! And in any case a freshly killed deer, or a well-stocked fishing hut, will provide the player with a long-term benefit that doesn't disappear as soon as their calorie store hits zero for any reason. Proposal Specifics: Add a "Starvation Risk" meter ("SR meter" for short) which ranges from 0 to 50000. The SR meter start the game at zero and it is initially hidden from the player. While the player is at 0 calories, any calories expended (whether from normal burn over time, time-accelerated activities, or some other source) increase the SR meter by the number of calories expended. Thus, if the player is awake at 0 calories for 14 hours and then asleep at 0 calories for 5 hours, but doesn't do anything that takes more calories than normal during that time, then their SR meter will increase by 14 * 100 + 5 * 60 = 1400 + 300 = 1700. Anytime the player consumes calories, the SR meter is reduced by the number of calories consumed. In the above example, if the player consumed 300 calories and then slept for 5 hours to restore condition back to full, their SR meter would immediately decrease to 1400 and would remain at 1400 throught the 5 hours (after which it would start to increase again, unless the player consumed more calories). Thus, on 300 calories per day the player's SR meter would increase by 1400 per day in this example. On the other hand, you can easily work out that 1000 calories per day would be enough to keep the SR meter at or near zero (in this example). The SR meter is converted to a percentage which we will call "Starvation Risk". Once Starvation Risk rises above 20%, it is shown to the player unless and until it reaches zero again. In our example, Starvation Risk would first be shown to the player after about 7 days. Note that filling the hunger bar from 0 to 2500 calories reduces Starvation Risk by 5%, and consuming 7500 calories from a deer carcass would reduce Starvation Risk by 15% - a very noticeable amount, making bringing down a deer and finishing all of the meat well worth it, even if one doesn't have any other reason to stick around and cannot safely transport the meat. Once Starvation Risk reaches 40% the player acquires a new affliction, "Starvation". In our example this would occur after just over 14 days. - The affliction lasts 24 hours. After the 24 hours have passed, the affliction is re-applied if the player is still above the 40% threshold (same as how Cabin Fever currently works). - If the player consumes calories then all effects of "Starvation" listed below are suppressed for as long as the player remains above 0 calories. However, the affliction itself remains and its effects will immediately return if the player hits 0 calories again. - Similar to being encumbered, the severity of this affliction depends on how high the SR meter is, as detailed below: SR meter below 35000: "Mild Starvation"; effects: - Sprinting speed boost reduced to 75% of normal - Fatigue drain from all activities increased by 25% - Damage from being at 0 calories increased to 1.5% per hour (thus 6 hours of restorative sleep per day, or 9 hours on Interloper, are needed to restore lost condition) SR meter between 35000 and 49000 (after approx. 25 days in our example): "Moderate Starvation"; effects: - Sprinting speed boost reduced to 50% of normal - Fatigue drain from all activities increased by 50% - Damage from being at 0 calories increased to 2% per hour (thus 7 hours of restorative sleep per day, or 10 hours on Interloper, are needed to restore lost condition) SR meter above 49000 (after approx. 35 days in our example): "Severe Starvation"; effects: - Sprinting speed boost reduced to 25% of normal - Fatigue drain from all activities increased by 100% - Damage from being at 0 calories increased to 3% per hour (thus 9 hours of restorative sleep per day are needed to restore lost condition, and on Interloper even 10 hours restorative sleep per day will result in 10% condition loss per day)