I thought we prepared for the voyage? Did no one think to bring more than a weeks worth of food and fuel?

[Void*]

So I reached the end of week 2 and I don't have enough fuel, nor food, to keep everyone fed at normal rations? For some reason this really REALLY bothers me. Did no one think to resupply at the last port we left? The captain mentioned we had enough food to get there and back but we can't even make it half way there before we tell everyone we'll starve in a week? Nothing bad has even happened but unless I half ration and run cold I can't end week 2? Guess I'm eating the dogs and crew?

I can appreciate this is supposed to be a resource management game but.. this takes me out of the story in a way I can't resolve. And I really, for lack of a better way to describe it, hate it. Its ruined the game because it breaks the immersion in an amazing way - that the crew and captain are that incompetent to have this occur or this was the expected result and we have to starve/freeze to death because in one more week we're all out of resources.

[Chris (Fellow Traveller)]

So the fuel and food resources you see are not all of the resources on the ship. You are able to restock your food and fuel from the stores on the ship but have to assign crew to these tasks. You'll be taught how in the next few game weeks.

[Void*]

Forgive me but... this doesn't answer the topic.

I can NOT feed my entire crew normally (I have to reduce it to half ration) and I can NOT fuel the ship fully (have to half burn) at the end of week *2*. The game won't let me proceed onward or access any other larders or the like and I must take a -20 to decorum. This breaks the entire feel of the game for me.

If there's an entire storehouse of food why do we have to half-ration? Why was it not added to the total? Why are we running out of fuel an entire X weeks away from even reaching the destination?

This is.. one of the weirdest inventory systems imaginable to not know how many supplies you have on ship. Did we just leave port without taking stock of the supplies and we are operating with a 'mysterious number' of food/fuel?

I don't mean to sound mean but it's so... backwards for a better way to describe it. As if you just boarded onto a plane and then you're told 30 minutes into your two hour flight that there isn't enough fuel onboard to make it to the destination and you have to begin picking people to throw off the plane to make it lighter.

It's because the game is going for immersion that this... feels so wrong and off putting. Forgive me - but I think this is not a game for me. I can not reconcile the mechanics here with the excellent writing/story that I have seen so far. It's too jarring for me.

Thank you for answering.

[Fringehunter7719]

The game presents the information as though if you choose "none" or "half" rations the crew is not getting fed or heated at all (or substantially below what a human needs to survive).

However, in all mechanical respects it plays as if these are bonus rations assigned to make surviving the incredibly harsh freezing conditions a bit easier and more comfortable, or to make up for the ill effects of exceptionally cold weather even for the antarctic.

Crew get a barely survivable amount with "none" set as a bonus, causing them to grow surly. At "half" someone sickens or weakens very occasionally, causing minor discontent. At normal they have what they need. At "high" they have plenty causing significant easing of any mutinous feeling in the crew.

Think of it that way, or it becomes a real headache trying to understand why 25 people can survive 8 weeks in freezing polar conditions with no food and just a little bed rest.

Unfortunately if you take the labelling at face value and set food and fuel to "normal" while you're in weeks 1-4 and conditions on the expedition are very clearly normal you actually waste something like 350 resources in their entirety, which is about 25% of all the spare resource capacity the game offers.

[Vlodril]

The game does a terrible job of immersing you with some of these decisions. Someone mentions explicitly you have provisions for months but you struggle from the start somehow.

[AssaultCuirass]

Originally posted by Vlodril:

The game does a terrible job of immersing you with some of these decisions. Someone mentions explicitly you have provisions for months but you struggle from the start somehow.

yeah the gameplay is very much separate from the narrative and makes playing it feel gamey. during winter dialogues said there wont be any hunting but you will be able to hunt just fine.

[SmokeyTheGoat]

Yeah the resource management, particularly in the beginning is very poorly done. It breaks all of the immersion to have to ration and demoralize your crew BEFORE YOU EVEN GET TRAPPED IN THE ICE.

Makes more sense later, when the ship floods, sinks etc, but it ruins the feel of the game knowing that to give you your best chance of success later, you have to purposefully do things to your crew that no captain or first officer would ever do in a safe and normal situation.

If I had known this was the case before I bought the game, I probably would not have purchased it.

[Raikira]

The devs should probably watch or re-watch The Terror.

[Jahus]

Complaining about the game because it's hard :)))

[CaoLex]

Originally posted by Jahus:

Complaining about the game because it's hard :)))

It's not even supposed to be hard, it's literally a interface tutorial during which ship out of food before even reaching last refuel and resuply point despite having like half a year worth food in the cargo and you get access to take food out of cargo only when you are already lost morale from failing despite not even being captain.
It's like playing the chess where you only allowed to move any figure except pawn for the first two turns or skip them.

[RATDOG]

I completely agree with the point in the original post here. There are a ton of different ways that this could have been handled without immediately having to go to half rations. The game even makes a point to talk about how much fuel and food you have! I really enjoy this game but this is very lazy.

[Wriken]

I was also thrown off by this. I actually exited out of the game to browse the guides because I was convinced that there must be some game mechanic that I was missing.