Eating simulator

[Cyanade]

Tabbed out came back shortly after 20% of food and water missing

[Sasheria]

the higher difficulty increase the hunger and thirst, you might want to turn down difficulty (I use normal)

[Phoenix Cat]

Originally posted by Cyanade:

Tabbed out came back shortly after 20% of food and water missing

Did you just Tab out or did you hit ESC then Tab Out. If you did the first one you are gonna lose food and water over time. I have ESC to the menu and have had no issues leaving game for a bit.

[Cyanade]

Originally posted by Sasheria:

the higher difficulty increase the hunger and thirst, you might want to turn down difficulty (I use normal)

I was in Normal XD

[Sasheria]

Originally posted by Cyanade:

Originally posted by Sasheria:

the higher difficulty increase the hunger and thirst, you might want to turn down difficulty (I use normal)

I was in Normal XD

Did you tab out? cause the game does NOT pause if you did that (like what Phoenix Cat post)

[arti_llery]

Yep, always best to hit esc to pause then tab over.

Unless killing time for something to grow.

I believe you can lower the difficulty to cut the food/water loss while tabbed out.

[Mesond]

Just wait until you get infected without a cure on hand for hunger going down on hard.
When out of fuel.

At least then the game is challenging and requires having to multitask and make use of auto pilot when dealing with a situation. Got to be prepared for the unprepared. The game also clearly informed me I can't just wait it out with low immunity, so I actually like this.

Otherwise food and water is easy enough. 2 water and 2 food will last a while while taking your time exploring a place. If out of food then it's easy to make basic insect lures.

If tabbing out then hit esc and pause the game first.

[sillybrian]

I hate to think I'm going to put this game on easy mode, but the hunger/thirst rates are pushing me toward that. It's not that they are unmanageable, they are just unpleasant. This is a game, I want to have fun with it, and I feel constantly frustrated by hunger/thirst more than most games.
I think I felt this way in Raft as well, and it's too bad because in both instances it really does take away from the game when you find yourself frustrated with hunger/thirst rates. In Raft I was able to finally mod that to a reasonable value, but not sure there is any way to do it here other than dropping the difficulty.

[ChanceGateau]

I agree somewhat. I feel hunger and thirst should be more realistic. I mean; at an extreme scenario, a human can survive 3 days without water (you start feeling the negative effects after about a day and a half), and 3 weeks without food; though you get decidedly bad after 3 days or so without eating anything.

I think for water, it's good. It is necessary to drink something (i.e. fill the thirst meter) once per/day (or so) as it is; which is about right, given how fast the day/night cycle flows in the game. Hunger though, can be tweaked a bit to make is slower.

Food isn't that hard to get though. Here are some options that might help.

1. Bee-line to a overgrown garden towers; get the seeds for the lobster peppers, sun melons, or whatever you can find, and grow one of each. You'll have to bee-line the missions somewhat; at least until you open polymers for the small/large gardens. They grow 3-4 each, so you'll just have to harvest as you need, and cook them.

2. Bee-line to unlock polymers (same tower as above) to give you canola; and you use the flowers to make advanced lures for the moth collectors; which gives you better (more filling) moths. Each is somewhere around 60% of your hunger bar.

3. Going through the game, you can find ration packs. I tend to save these for emergencies, or longer mission; and keep a stack in my inventory; in case I am far from my ship; like in the underdust. Investigating almost ANY tower can give you one or two. In a pinch though, eating them is a quick and easy food, and offers about 40% food restore.

[sillybrian]

Originally posted by ChanceGateau:

I agree somewhat. I feel hunger and thirst should be more realistic. I mean; at an extreme scenario, a human can survive 3 days without water (you start feeling the negative effects after about a day and a half), and 3 weeks without food; though you get decidedly bad after 3 days or so without eating anything.

I think for water, it's good. It is necessary to drink something (i.e. fill the thirst meter) once per/day (or so) as it is; which is about right, given how fast the day/night cycle flows in the game. Hunger though, can be tweaked a bit to make is slower.

Food isn't that hard to get though. Here are some options that might help.

1. Bee-line to a overgrown garden towers; get the seeds for the lobster peppers, sun melons, or whatever you can find, and grow one of each. You'll have to bee-line the missions somewhat; at least until you open polymers for the small/large gardens. They grow 3-4 each, so you'll just have to harvest as you need, and cook them.

2. Bee-line to unlock polymers (same tower as above) to give you canola; and you use the flowers to make advanced lures for the moth collectors; which gives you better (more filling) moths. Each is somewhere around 60% of your hunger bar.

3. Going through the game, you can find ration packs. I tend to save these for emergencies, or longer mission; and keep a stack in my inventory; in case I am far from my ship; like in the underdust. Investigating almost ANY tower can give you one or two. In a pinch though, eating them is a quick and easy food, and offers about 40% food restore.

All of this is true, and it's nice to see someone taking the time to be helpful. I played the game about 11 hours or so during early access. I LOVE the airship base building. In fact this is my favorite game to build and customize the base. For some reason, this one just really stuck with me. I love that most of what you build in there is functional! And I also love that you can set your course, leave the helm and go craft stuff or hang out on the back deck and watch the scenery go by. They really did an incredible job with that.

But the hunger and thirst I just found frustrating. Like I said, not unmanageable.... I eventually wound up with plenty of food and water. But it still felt like you were always having to go do that instead of doing something fun. And then your character would need to sleep, and then all of a sudden you are eating and drinking again.

Realistic? I mean, maybe. I can see the potential draw to that. I think everyone will have a fine line between what they find fun and what they think is too much. For me, most games are fine. This one, and Raft, both felt like I was spending too much time managing those stat bars compared to the amount of time I wanted to be spending building my ship.

But I mean it is what it is. I just kind of wish they would add custom difficulty sliders so that I could play with combat on normal difficulty but slow down the hunger and thirst rates just a bit.

[Cyanade]

Originally posted by sillybrian:

I hate to think I'm going to put this game on easy mode, but the hunger/thirst rates are pushing me toward that. It's not that they are unmanageable, they are just unpleasant. This is a game, I want to have fun with it, and I feel constantly frustrated by hunger/thirst more than most games.
I think I felt this way in Raft as well, and it's too bad because in both instances it really does take away from the game when you find yourself frustrated with hunger/thirst rates. In Raft I was able to finally mod that to a reasonable value, but not sure there is any way to do it here other than dropping the difficulty.

Yeah i wanted to go Easy mode just for the reduced food and drink consumption but i didn't want the easier enemies that came with it :S if we could only customise the start conditions.

[deltahazer]

Something I found helpful for cutting down on the feeling of constantly having to scrounge food and water was a little counter-intuitive. Use the old-world packaged food/water/energy drinks first instead of stockpiling them while subsisting on scavenged water and boiled food. The reasoning is twofold:

1) Time-saving, since you aren't going through the cooked/bottled supply as fast or hitting the bunk as often
2) Space-saving, because the old stuff doesn't restore as much per unit consumed, so you'll free up the space they occupied quicker.

It also helps if when you're away from the airship you go ahead and consume those old world items instead of picking them up if the relevant bar is already down enough that you won't "waste" the majority of it (again easier to do due to the lower amount they restore). Cuts down on those items taking up so much of your loot space, especially in the larger exploration sites, which means fewer trips back to the ship to empty your pockets.

[Snackrat]

Yep, food/water is the reason I'm playing on Easy. I like feeling like a living person and maintaining a lifeship, but fast drains are too disruptive.

For me I think realism is the problem - specifically because a lot of games balance hunger around the character, trying to get them to eat an appropriate amount about three times a day. But they ALSO play at an accelerated timescale, typically around 1:30.

Well, when your timescale is 1:30, that's every IRL ~15min. Our character might realistically need to eat several times a day, usually as do we - but we AS PLAYERS don't want to eat every 15min! It's disruptive to anything else we're trying to do. I get annoyed enough as it is having to stop what I'm doing to go figure out what dinner is. Who wants to do that 30x a day??

Hunger and water can be interesting limits that stop you bunkering down too long, and some games lose all stacks if you disable them. But they should have minimal busywork IMO. Let us 'store' more calories at once - give us a much larger hunger bar, that drains AND fills more slowly. That way we're still having to worry about scavenging and growing, but not stopping every 15min.

And if a game has hunger debuffs, wait until we're <20% to apply it, not <80% - otherwise its as good as making our bar 1/5th the size.

[Sasheria]

I usually start eating moth early in the game (remember you have high resist early) so you do not get poison in the beginning. I usually make sure the basic needs are met and gather and carry water/food at all time (at least 1 stack and bottle of water)

To me, it is not much different than Green Hell or other survival type, but the big thing is the disease at later game that could cause problem when caught off guard.

It would be nice that certain food have longer "hunger resist" or something similar like satiety vs hunger. Some hearty food can stave off hunger longer vs other food (something to think about - note: this is NOT in game, just a suggestion)

[FrontenStuermer]

Originally posted by Cyanade:

Tabbed out came back shortly after 20% of food and water missing

Its a normal simulator and its easy to get food.
One of the best foods are melons.
They give you water and food.
I have my plant room in the lower section and always enough.

In the beginning i used the moths for my food but dont need it anymore.

[ShiroNeko]

Originally posted by FrontenStuermer:

Originally posted by Cyanade:

Tabbed out came back shortly after 20% of food and water missing

Its a normal simulator and its easy to get food.
One of the best foods are melons.
They give you water and food.
I have my plant room in the lower section and always enough.

In the beginning i used the moths for my food but dont need it anymore.

Thank you. I've finished the game already but it'll be useful while i build out and decorate the zeppelin.
Melons are truly food of the future!