Automatic NPC feeding?

Game Talk The Bunker
#1

A while ago I read a thing about something being done to make the care of NPCs, particularly the nutrition of them, better so that the player won’t have to spoonfeed them all the time. Something about a food zone. That was months, if not around a year ago if I’m not mistaken.

My question is: Are we capable of doing so yet?

I’ve seen the basecamp food zone but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything, the food and water in it isn’t being consumed and I’m starting to think I’m going to have to actually start a basecamp to make use of it, and my herd of sla- err followers isn’t quite big enough yet that I feel like wanting a basecamp.

I’ve also tried to give them a jug of water and some meat to keep in their inventory but they aren’t consuming them either. It’s like they can’t actually see and make use of the ingestible items in their inventory.

Excuse me if there’s something obvious I’m missing and this post isn’t necessary.

#2

Just to double check: Did you remove the “Disable NPC Needs” mod?

#3

Yes, I always play without it. Was actually pretty manageable a while back, despite needing to give them a pile of ingestibles stuff to last a while. Now they won’t use them. Checked their effects and saw they were thirsty but they had an entire jug of water in their inventory. They’re also not eating the sandwhiches I give them, preferring to let them rot. Was peeved enough to just give them cracklins to live off but saw that those weren’t being eaten either.

#4

Hm, interesting…

Did this change in behavior happen before or after the inventory overhaul?
As in: Did you see them still consume stuff after the 10614 build?

#5

Last time I had NPCs was before that so I suppose my only truthful answer would be no. Though I did suspect the nested inventories thing, I didn’t want to jump to pointing the finger at it.

#6

Well, I do not actually expect the new inventory system to be the culprit.
I was just hoping that we could rule out one possibility that way.

I suspect it has something to do with the changes lately to the “digestive system”.
Let me run some tests…

Edit:
Some tests later…:

  • NPCs automatically consume food in their inventory in Build 10600.
  • NPCs will not consume food and drinks from their inventory in Build 10733 10678.
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#7

Did you distribution the food into your basecamp? Because the last time I tested that code - about 2 months ago - it worked fine if you distributed the food.

#8

Don’t have a basecamp yet. I thought the zone by its own would do something, like npcs would recognize it and ingest anything in that zone that they needed, but alass not. From the sound of it, it looks like I’m going to have to build one if I’m going to be sustaining them in ways that are not tedious.

Anyway, thanks for confirming @Valase .

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#9

You only need to set up a minimal basecamp to be able to distribute food.

It’d be nice if NPCs could eat food from designated zones, but I couldn’t figure out how to get them to do it. Hopefully I can take another pass as it someday.

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#10

I haven’t actually seen the relevant code but I had a thought concerning the failure of npc’s to eat food in their inventory. It’s easy to imagine them checking some nebulous, now deprecated ‘general inventory’ for food and failing to go the extra layer of looking inside specific containers. The jug of water is especially suggestive of this sort of issue. An npc might recognize that they have a jug, but fail to locate the water inside it. The same issue could apply to backpacks, trench coat pockets, or whatever else. Just a brainstorm.

#11

I gave them some candies with no container and a hamburger in a wrapper, so they should have saw at least the candy as food.

That’s possible the cause, but as I’ve said, it also might be that they see that eating something would cause them to go from “hungry” to “engorged” and don’t eat the food therefore.
I’ll test a version after the inventory change but before the changes to the food system if I get the time - maybe tomorrow, unless it’s fixed until then or someone else does that test.

Edit:
Some more test later…:
NPCs will not consume food and drinks from their inventory in Build 10678, which, as far as I know, is before any changes on the food system happened.
Therefore it’s very likely that the Container changes also broke NPC behavior.
I gave one some clean water in a plastic bottle, aside from some honey combs and hardtack with no container around them, and she still complains about hunger and thirst…

Second edit: She will not even consume stuff if I take everything from her and force her to hold food/drinks in her hand. But that’s quite possible just the NPC code not checking the wielded stuff for edibles.

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