meal plan is op!

[adventist]

meal plan is really op! if you have 3 people your food needs drop to ridiculous numbers as 4.5 or something like that.

for the newbies my advice is:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StateOfDecay/comments/12cw4qb/all_traits_that_can_give_the_meal_plan_bonus/

start a new game and roll for characters who has traits above. they dont need to have 5th skill. even not to have 5th is great bcos up to your need or map and final base you can teach something. at beging of a new game you can directly see their hero bonus. if you find one send to legacy pool and you can call from your main game!

for example at strip mall there wc so you may teach plumming or no enough bed there so you can teach sleep psychology etc. on the other hand at province ridge fortified truck base has enough bed so you dont need to teach sleep psychology.

when i change map i send and bring some characters like these from legacy pool up to my need.
anyway... meal plan is really great! no need for food out post etc. makes a lot diffirence. after a year i did learn that :)

[konstantinoskountousias]

5th skill chemistry for sure, cooking is cheap to learn and you need both early game in high difficulties. because its hard to find ammo outpost free to claim without killing a heart + its pretty expensive to get the skill and ammo is cheap (6 ammo per rucksuck is same price to 5 materials or 4 food)
and i agree rationing is OP and sometimes i use it in late game because food is money.... and you need the kitchen to craft stamina drinks.
hygiene is usefull but you can go without it and in the middle game you can use the primary care and early hearts dont have a lot of feral so if you are carefull and patient you dont get any infection or minimal the most

[Protectron]

I'll point out that unless you roleplay the game, the only thing beds do is to prevent a -7 morale penalty. So after a year you learned that as well, possibly.

Watchtowers are the second most useless facility. It actively makes base defense worse. Roleplaying using these make no sense, as they are inside the base - literally the last place you want one.

Meal Plan is great, though. It's universally useful.

Some of my favourite Hero Bonuses, in addition to Meal Plan, are Lights Out, Analytical Methods/Seminars, Hygiene Standards, Formal Recognition, Pre-Packed Gear, Tough Negotiation and Frequent Check-ins.

[Logid]

Meal plan is good, but mind it basically prevent you to expend 0,25 food per day and per survivor, which is 2,25 food with 9 members or 3 food with 12 members. A Farm working at full capacity may give you 11-12 food per day and hydroponics 8-9. Enact rationing basically doubles that (4,5 with 9 members and 6 with 12, tho it stacks with meal plan so you can do both).

Also on lethal the effect is less noticeable for how the numbers scale. On lethal each level of a food outpost gives you 2 food, so just a level 2 outpost gives more than that hero bonus at 12 population (4 food vs 3 food) and a level 3 just outclases it (6 food vs 3 food). Also on normal each survivor go from 1 food per day to 0,75 (25% reduction), while on lethal they go from 2 to 1,75 (12,5% reduction).

I've used it, but on higher difficulties I've been leaning more towards things you can't get as easily in game and that make them more likel to survive like Hygiene Standars (+100 Plague resistance, invaluable on Lethal), Dossage Control (Consumables heal more), Morning Yoga (with 2 of these and a surgeon the entire community is close to immune to injuries with primary care active), extra stack size (Logistic/Demo RT or Sewing), Pre-packed gear (extra light carrying to keep survivors on light carrying, way better than plain stamina bonuses) or Tough Negociation (more influence by just playing the game, without having to do trading shenanigans).

Also as said above don't bother with getting enough beds, those are a waste of space (both from slots or from 5th skills/hero bonuses); with a letrine (early game) or a lounge (late game) the morale should be covered (you'll have to hear them complaining all the time tho).

[Protectron]

Yeah, but if you make Ethanol from Food to create Strong Painkillers, Meal Plan AND everything else you said is still worthwhile.

I personally don't really get my character hurt that much when playing on Lethal, so I don't really see the need of going that hard on making my characters "invulnerable" or carrying lots of stuff in my pocket.

Currently starting a community without Hygiene in the starting trio, so let's see if I don't even need that. Bloaters will become more dangerous when driving, but that happens rarely.

Edit: but of course, if you lose a lot of characters on Lethal, all of that protection is going to help. Doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skill either - if you refuse to "cheese" at all, for instance, all of those Hero Bonuses you mentioned will be helpful.

[konstantinoskountousias]

some like to play lethal and even say its easy but they spam survivor choosing to find the Rambo one's. why not choosing ordinary ones?

[Logid]

I'm pretty confident with the game at this stage tbh so it's more about minmaxing than neededing all that stuff to survive on lethal. 3 food per day on the best scenario isn't that noticeable in late game. It's hard for the still to go through the food that fast (even at enthusiastic morale), and I can still buy food from allies/traders to feed the still, that's why I don't like commiting one hero bonus to that.

TBH I did lose a few very good survivors when started to play on lethal, but I got better; it has been a while since I lost one and I stop using the sniper tower a while ago. Also for players that are still learning the ropes on that difficulty it'd be much better going down that "tanking" route imho, as it'd make mistakes less punishing.

I still like going overkill with those defensive traits for multiplayer too, those are lifesavers if I run into griefers or the conexion is pretty bad; plus that also let me be more agressive and take some punishment if I need to dive into some deep ♥♥♥♥ when other player needs help. It also gives me more wiggle room if I'm a bit sloopy, yes I don't like to cheese tbh.

For example, on the community that I have for multiplayer I have 1 Pre-packed Gear, 2 Hygiene Standards (plus a Gut packing Red Talon), 2 Morning Yoga, 2 Dossage Control, Hard Determination, Demo and Logistics RT (so +2 item stack) and Tough Negociation; I wouldn't trade any of those for a meal plan.
I think I have +80 to community health having 3 surgeons, 1 nutritionists and 1 Hard Determination (without counting other HP bonuses as those don't apply when playing in multiplayer), +400 to plague resistance between HS, Gut packing and pathology (and most of the time the real one is +500 if I'm playing with a Hygiene Standars/Diehard Veteran), plus +40 to Stamina with 2 plumbers.
Now the synergistic magic, both Morning Yoga and either endurance or Heroism make those survivors almost immune to injuries so no need to carry First aid kits and 2 Dossage control make a strong painkiller heal for around 112 (187 for the dossage control survivor), so one stack of 8 is around 900 HP healing, which is nuts.

I agree that's absolutely overkill and I also enjoy challenge runs without all that craziness, but man it's fun to minmax XD.

[Settlersgod]

While I do always keep my resources tapped, because resources = influence.
The effects of having no food for a long period of time isn't really that bad.
Your survivors will get the ''hunger debuff'' which is just a flat stamina decrease, but nothing major.
After an hour it turns in the starvation debuff which is just a slightly worse version of the hunger debuff which also effects health. (Can't remember if it continues to increase in severity like fatigue)
Though having a rucksack in your truck to just dump once in a while in your base to immidiately take out again basically prevents that.

The effect of no medicine is the removal of passive health regen which doesn't matter if you don't have a tier 2 infirmary.
Effect of no materials is a random breakdown once in a while which you can just repair.
Lack of ammunition reduces the safe zone size to it's original state without passives.
Lack of fuel just deactivates the outpost and or mods which require fuel.

The main problem of lacking resources is the morale penalties that causes people of your community to become frustrated and threaten to leave, which can be solved by intentionally getting hit and dump them in an infirmary bed for a pretty big morale boost.
Might need to kill a hordes, freaks or infestations if you lack multiple resources.

But in the end it's just a morale problem, which can be solved with some good mods (white noise machine), lounge, resting in infirmary, latrines ect.

I see meal plan or food consumption reduction more as a way to get more booze than loosing the resources I ''need''.

[adventist]

Originally posted by Logid:

I'm pretty confident with the game at this stage tbh so it's more about minmaxing than neededing all that stuff to survive on lethal. 3 food per day on the best scenario isn't that noticeable in late game. It's hard for the still to go through the food that fast (even at enthusiastic morale), and I can still buy food from allies/traders to feed the still, that's why I don't like commiting one hero bonus to that.

TBH I did lose a few very good survivors when started to play on lethal, but I got better; it has been a while since I lost one and I stop using the sniper tower a while ago. Also for players that are still learning the ropes on that difficulty it'd be much better going down that "tanking" route imho, as it'd make mistakes less punishing.

I still like going overkill with those defensive traits for multiplayer too, those are lifesavers if I run into griefers or the conexion is pretty bad; plus that also let me be more agressive and take some punishment if I need to dive into some deep ♥♥♥♥ when other player needs help. It also gives me more wiggle room if I'm a bit sloopy, yes I don't like to cheese tbh.

For example, on the community that I have for multiplayer I have 1 Pre-packed Gear, 2 Hygiene Standards (plus a Gut packing Red Talon), 2 Morning Yoga, 2 Dossage Control, Hard Determination, Demo and Logistics RT (so +2 item stack) and Tough Negociation; I wouldn't trade any of those for a meal plan.
I think I have +80 to community health having 3 surgeons, 1 nutritionists and 1 Hard Determination (without counting other HP bonuses as those don't apply when playing in multiplayer), +400 to plague resistance between HS, Gut packing and pathology (and most of the time the real one is +500 if I'm playing with a Hygiene Standars/Diehard Veteran), plus +40 to Stamina with 2 plumbers.
Now the synergistic magic, both Morning Yoga and either endurance or Heroism make those survivors almost immune to injuries so no need to carry First aid kits and 2 Dossage control make a strong painkiller heal for around 112 (187 for the dossage control survivor), so one stack of 8 is around 900 HP healing, which is nuts.

I agree that's absolutely overkill and I also enjoy challenge runs without all that craziness, but man it's fun to minmax XD.

that makes sense. my community n map is on lethal action is on nightmare tho. im kind of self sustaining base person. 2 or 3 meal plan hero with 5th skill which i need up to my map and final base. food need drops to between 4.5 to 6 or something like that so any food slot covers enough food and med by switching. i mostly use outposts for ammo bcos i like to use guns. since action level is on nightmare i dont die bcos of infection bcos also i always carry cure and scentblock for worsth case stuations etc.

but on lethal your picks make sense and i ll consider that. thank you for ideas.

[Logid]

Glad to help! :) As long as you are having fun there is no right way to play this.

But just to be sure you noticed, Farms can produce up to 11-12 food, gardens and hydroponics up to 8-9 with the right mods (Tressie Huerta's mod or compost bins) and knowledge (basically having agriculture or Herbalism/lychenology for food or meds respectively and use the seed buff).

In lethal wtih a maxed food outpost (6 food), a maxed farm with the Tressie huertas mod (12 food) and the enact rationing buff (6 food) you basically cover the needs of a 12 members community, any extra from that is profit.

To get a lot of ammo the trade depot works well, each 90-120 min you can get 18 ammo (and if you get some CDR for radio you can call the trader much more, being able to call one each 45-50m is quite easy to get)

[konstantinoskountousias]

yea 30 ammo every 2 hours in total. i used trade depot in standard and i was gaining 500 influense per day and i haven't see a market paying me just by existanse (except building sims). Why do we get influense passive this way?

[Blockhead]

Originally posted by konstantinoskountousias:

Why do we get influense passive this way?

You're essentially offering a safe, neutral ground for traders to come and buy/sell goods to each other. That's pretty big, and nets you a lot of influence with people. Obviously none of this is animated or explicitly shown in your base due to limitations of the game engine and also the need for enclaves to always be together (except for when missions require them to be split up).