Is there a way to disable the stomach contents system?

[Blightbug]

I update my game daily and when the changes took effect, I genuinely thought it was a bug. It seems to me to just be needlessly confusing without adding much of anything to the experience. I really hope it’ll eventually be toggleable, if nothing else.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

I also did not know it was a feature and thought my character was broken. That was deeply frustrating (I now have about 5 recordings where I’m complaining and confused) and I was pretty upset about it.

However, now that I’ve looked into the PR, I genuinely think this is a good change. I do think it needs work – your character should still prompt you when eating or drinking a lot (to prevent wasting tons of calories). In real life, if I’m hungry and I eat, I usually stop being hungry around the time I take my first bite.

Keep the stomach contents/calorie stores system, but update hunger and thirst ‘statuses’ (hungry, thirsty, dehydrated,etc.) immediately upon consumption. That’s my opinion and I get it if that’s not an option.

For those who really want to turn it off – I think this is a major change that I really don’t see them allowing an alternative for. It’s part of the game now and though it may get refined, it isn’t going away. Best learn to accept it.

All just my opinions. Not trying to aggravate anyone.

[Krisu]

I thought the feature would decrease the food/drink needed to become full/sated to keep you from overeating/drinking, and it would not actually show true nutrition/thirst and you wouldn’t know whether you were still malnourished or dehydrated.

[Blightbug]

So far it seems to make my character famished near-constantly despite eating enough for several people. It seems to skip hungry and go to very hungry instantly, and I don’t have any parasites. Debug meddling says I have 7,000 “stored calories”, though?

Maybe I’m just missing something obvious

[Midas]

Just my two cents.

Currently it’s really weird that if you’re starving to death you can eat like 10 hamburgers to fill yourself up

We already have the starvation system and a counter that slowly increases and slowly drops when starving or gaining food after starvation (aside from the normal hunger counter). Is there a real need to move that system away from abstraction? It’s a game, after all.
And IRL I definitely can tell, had I ate or drunk enough and definitely can keep myself from overeating. I think it’s just an overcomplication now.

[crazykiddeath]

It seems to me to just be needlessly confusing without adding much of anything to the experience. I really hope it’ll eventually be toggleable, if nothing else.

So much this

For those who really want to turn it off – I think this is a major change that I really don’t see them allowing an alternative for. It’s part of the game now and though it may get refined, it isn’t going away. Best learn to accept it.

Maybe but I hope not, I think having the Simplified Nutrition Mod was one of the better decisions that was made, it gave the best of both worlds. I doubt I would of given the game much of a chance when I first started playing if it wasn’t included because I’ve never been a fan of over the top micro managing in games. I like complexity but micro management and complex game mechanics aren’t synonymous.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

Simplified Nutrition Mod

I didn’t realize the main gripe was about nutrition. That can be worked around, I assume, through modding, probably. Given how many people hate change, that even seems pretty likely.

I was speaking more to the people who want things to be the way they were before, or who at least want the option. It’s a healthy bit of hardcoded change. I don’t see this happening. I’m not in charge, though, so what do I know.

[crazykiddeath]

My gripe is about systems that require too much micro management, the new mechanics are the equivalent of me having to aim and knock in each individual nail on a construction project. You have to wait between portions to avoid over eating and to leave room for fluids so you aren’t dehydrating because your survivor is apprently too brain dead to know when they filling themselves up with food until they have a distended stomach, you have to track nutritional values, you have to track calories. How many people actually do this in RL? what percent of the populous? I’ve never done this and I’ve never known anyone but bodybuilders and weightwatcher attendees to do this either and I’ve almost always had active, labour intensive jobs. According to the PR you get hungry around every four hours, that’s 4+ (4 for the time spent awake and 2 for the time spent asleep) meals a day for your standard 16 hours spent active a day. On top of the fact (I’ll say once again) there is no mechanic to simulate your survivor getting used to eating habits. It’s another example of pushing tedium and negative drawbacks without the mechanics that IRL moderate them. Again, I don’t know any but bodybuilders that eat 4+ meals a day.

Don’t get me wrong, malnutrition can be a major problem IRL but it is the kind of problem that usual takes ages to manifest without going to extremes and even longer to actually kill you.

Boy thrives on jam sandwich diet

[Krisu]

This is probably gonna confuse new players.

[TheZoneWizard]

I have yet to test this out. But by the sound of things. It seems in flux…well, maybe. Hardcoding…welllll…hehe. I think I get it though. It sounds like the major problems are:

• No immediate knowledge of sated hunger/thirst (as real life, you do know really quickly; missing feature?)

• Starvation and Dehydration are extreme in how fast they come on, whereby the deficit to this speed is how much room in the belly your toon has. Which makes even less sense, congruous to the speed.

I think the immediate knowledge of sating hunger and thirst would clear up a lot of confusion. Then add a 3 day stretch/spacing of time to starvation and dehydration. IRL, you need more water than food. You can still be alive and also be kinda stuck dying anyway if you hadn’t had food or water after 3-6 days.

…which gives me a great idea for this system. Transfusions and Saline and/or Sugar drips. Also, Coconut Water(not milk, NOT MILK) can be sifted through cheese cloth(or equivalent material) and injected in place of 1-2 bags of blood. No joke. WW2 in the south pacific. This actually is a IRL thing that saved lives on the fly. The stuff is so similar to blood that it actually works. We have it in grocery stores and convenience stores and pharmacies and gas stations. Really common crap in New England.

New items?
-Blood packs
-Saline packs (salt drip can give debuf, Hyper Tension; High Blood Pressure etc)
-D5 Dextrose (sugar drip in stead of saline/salt)
-Coconut Water
-Coconut Water Drip
-IV tubing

All you survivalist junkies go stock up on the unflavored standard 100% stuff. Never know when the end being nigh that you will need it xD

[Erk]

I have no idea why people figure this is such a pain. I’ve been playing with it for some time, and notice very little difference. You eat a reasonable amount of food, your character stops being hungry. Thirst needs to disappear faster, and there should probably be a bit simpler of a way of knowing how much you’ve eaten, but korg’s already aware of that. Most people know how eating works. Have you somehow been eating so much that you throw up?

4-5 hours is a normal time span to get hungry. People eat around 7-8 am, noon, and 5-6 pm for a reason.

You really don’t have to track nutritional values. Try a few plays through and see if you get vitamin deficient. It takes weeks to months, you’d have to work quite hard to get scurvy and that’s pretty much the easiest one to get. It’s meant to be a mid to late game hurdle to keep you from living off smoked spider meat forever, it honestly shouldn’t be affecting you in the early game, and if it is then rather than complaining conceptually, you should report it because it’s not working as intended.

Your complaints sound greatly like you’ve read the blurb on the PR and not attempted to play the game because it sounds too scary. If you’d like to actually offer feedback, offer it on what happens when you play.

[crazykiddeath]

You out lined it yourself, delays on feedback for eating don’t make sense. When you are eating are you telling me you can’t tell how much you are eating or drinking until after you’ve over eaten? Maybe if you’ve ganeted down your food but that isn’t normal.
If you’ve read what I’ve already put you’ll know I gave it a quick run, I never claimed anything else but as it’s currently handled it simply doesn’t feel realistic, maybe I’ll give it another go once it has been rebalanced so you aren’t waiting around to get stomach updates but I’m not interested until then.

4-5 hours is a normal time span to get hungry. People eat around 7-8 am, noon, and 5-6 pm for a reason.

As for this, it depends entirely on the individual and their eating habits, it’s no different then saying “most people sleep at night”. If you spend time eating 2 meals a day, you get used to eating 2 meals a day, you eat 1 meal a day, you get used to eating 1 meal a day the original system did a marginally better job (imo) of simulating this as you could pick up the slack when you had time/felt like it/have food available. Though in fairness I think the original system was far too quick to dump you in the “famished” status and begin the process of dropping your stats, it was far from perfect but at least it wasn’t fiddly. As for nutrition? if what you say is true then it’s been rebalanced since I last tried it and I withdraw my objections on that point, I’d like to know what time frame you consider “endgame” though. I don’t usually attribute a time frame to it personally as I tend to see it as more of a state of available resources.

[Erk]

Are you saying that in your “quick run” you actually developed some kind of nutritional deficiency?

Most of your constantly reiterated concerns seem to be either problems that are already known, in which case too bad, it’s experimental, nothing is perfect out the gate; or, niggling concerns about a system that encourages players to eat three times a day and doesn’t have an excessively complicated adaptive system based around trying to eat at different frequencies. I have no idea why you think we’d program something that complicated into the game. If it bothers you to eat three times a day, eat twice a day. As long as you get a reasonable amount of food you’re not going to starve to death.

What’s a reasonable amount of food? As much as you’d need in a day in reality. We’re not good at guessing that based on hunger alone, that’s why obesity is an epidemic. It gives you a rough estimate though.

Adding a stomach system enables a huge amount of other stuff to be programmed in, so forgive me if I’m not deeply sympathetic to your concerns that “it worked great before” when you could eat 30,000 calories in a sitting and then read books for a week.

[crazykiddeath]

You aren’t reading what I put, again.

[Erk]

Yes, I am. You asked if it’s been rebalanced, I just want a straight answer because it directly relates to bugtesting the feature: did you actually get a nutritional deficiency, and if you did, how far into your game were you?

[crazykiddeath]

I gave it a quick run and quickly got annoyed with delays in the feedback from eating and drinking

If it actually makes me keep track of nutrition and calories on top of that I have no interest at all, the game has IMO always been a bit over the top in this regard, It’s why I used simplified nutrition in the first place

As for nutrition? if what you say is true then it’s been rebalanced since I last tried it and I withdraw my objections on that point,

So no, obviously. The last time I played the game outside of simplified nutrition was when I first started playing. Are you sure you have been reading what I’ve been writing?

[Erk]

Why would you think it’s been rebalanced if you hadn’t observed any problems? Saying you think it’s rebalanced means you think this is a change from when you played. It’s not, so if what I’m describing differs from your experience please stop quoting things that don’t answer the question, and just say why you think that’s a rebalance, so I can make sure it gets fixed. If it’s not a rebalance, then maybe be more precise with your wording instead of making inexact claims to avoid admitting you just didn’t know what you were talking about.

[crazykiddeath]

Yes, I had trouble balancing nutrition when I started playing, I started playing quite a while before I joined the forums, the version of the game I was playing at that time was very outdated. Yes I got scuvy in that version of the game. Anything else?

[Erk]

Okay. So when you said “when I past tried it” you were referring to the old completely different nutrition system. Thank you for clarifying that.

I think most of your objections, besides the ones that are already going to be fixed come down to you overvaluing “hunger”. It takes a very, very long time in game for hunger to affect you negatively. If you don’t want to eat three times a day, don’t. Nothing bad will happen to you. You can go many days without eating without significant adverse effects now, just as in real life. Hunger isn’t the same as malnutrition and starvation.

[crazykiddeath]

That’s honestly good to hear, like I said, I’ll probably give it another try once it’s been adjusted and not having to worry about quickly (relatively speaking) picking up malnutrition based diseases is nice. It was pretty frustrating and at the time it really gave me the impression “I’ve coded this in so SOMEONE is going to get it”.
I know I’ve given you the impression that I just want to eat easy stuff over and over again but it really isn’t true, I tend to lean towards dieting my survivor on pretty balanced food that would be realistic, as an example from my recent playthrough I’ve been eating a lot of woods soup and pennican because that covers protein, dairy, veg and fats quite nicely and would be a perfectly valid option long term IRL. Once summer hits I’ll have more options open up.