Food balance and traps

[blaster182]

Hi!

I found that morsel meat and cooked morsel restores less hunger than berries, making traps way more demanding in time and resources.

Still, you can use ground traps with seeds to catch birds, so why the trouble of building a bird one?

Well, that's what I thought while playing last time anyways.

Thanks!

[NeedPants]

Hi there and welcome to the forums!

The bird traps have 1 huge advantage:

U will never capture anything but birds.

It is useful when ur camp is surrounded by rabbits and u want to catch birds only. To me it makes sense u can still capture birds with a normal trap, considering how the trap looks, a bird can get stuck under a box if u pull away the twig holding it up right? Its a game ofc, so realism isnt 100% necessary, but since this game usually feels very intuitive, i have no problem with it whatsoever.

Besides, grass, twigs and spider silk are all renewable and infinite resources. So does it really matter that much? My 2 cents.

[bwafflez]

you can also catch bees with regular traps, which doesn't make sense to me.

I'm on day 40 in my current world and i noticed once you build up a good stockpile of grass and twigs to build traps you can build up a giant surplus of morsels with traps. It's even easier now that traps last longer. I think they should add a mechanic where certain foods go rancid after too much time has passed.

[mobius187]

I think they should add a mechanic where certain foods go rancid after too much time has passed.

Yes, food rotting was actually a topic that Kevin has discussed in the past as being included in the game. However, and this was some time ago, the difficulty was how rotten food would impact stacks. Say you have 10 meat morsels, 4 were from rabbits you caught 3 days ago and 6 were from that very day. Now the 4 meat morsels from 3 days ago are going to go rotten first, but they're stacked with the 6 other meat morsels that are just fine (for now). How would this be resolved?

I suggested that rotten meat stack with normal meat and it was up to the player to manage their food and not eat rotten food. If stacked food also was ordered with newest at the top, the rotten food would always be at the bottom of the stack and be the easiest to determine how many are rotten when you reached the first one, so you could dispose of them.

[Dom-Sithe]

Instead of meat going rancid, I would suggest just adding a fresh state with a % timer. With fresh lasting just 20 seconds or so before becoming just a normal meat. That way the stacking is fairly easy. Could even add an extra limiter where you can only eat fresh raw meat, have to cook non-fresh. Meh, just an option.

Edited December 3, 2012 by Dom-Sithe
non-raw changed to non-fresh.

[winddbourne]

Another way to balance food is to have a food triangle of meat, fruit, and vegetables, and as you use one more it becomes less effective at feeding you until you use a different food strategy. So you need a balanced diet. This way if all your eating is berries from 30 bushes then you need to eat a lot more berries to equal just one rabbit morsel. I think I may expand on this idea in it's own suggestion post . . . it has potential in my head.

[mobius187]

Another way to balance food is to have a food triangle of meat, fruit, and vegetables, and as you use one more it becomes less effective at feeding you until you use a different food strategy.

But... but... what if you're a vegetarian?

[winddbourne]

lol a vegetarian could always balance different vegetables and fruit which is what they do in the real world along with eggs. Unfortunately I don't think DS has soy and other high protein beans so it might be more difficult for them if things worked realistically, also your lacking milk for that vegetarian lifestyle. Maybe we could add a steam achievement for vegetarians and vegans? ::Grins::

[blaster182]

Thanks for the reply!

It makes sense to need a balanced diet, and the gameplay this way seems better than managing rotten food...

I guess vegetarians and vegans would prefer to eat meat than die, but that's just me. lol

The game is about survival, so it's logical to eat everything you find.

[ZaCormyr]

a balanced diet, agreed

[Jonah Hollow]

I like the idea of spoiling food better.

If you are starving, and desperate for food, you're not going to take the time to eat and manage a balanced diet, you are going to eat whatever is available. Especially like something when Winter is added in.

I think food should just spoil, and the spoiled food can be moved to a new stack. Maybe all food that is rotten can be moved to one stack. A rotten morsel would just be labeled as rotten food, and the same for a rotten carrot. That way it saves stack space. And if your inventory is full, you automatically drop it onto the ground. Since it is rotten, it will disappear over time (decay), maybe once the day is over.