Make it necessary to use utensils when eating to avoid food posioning

[4R53N1C]

Would add another layer of realism to the game. Eating food with your hands covered in zombie guts, blood and dirt would probably be detrimental to your health. There should be a need to carry utensils when eating, and an need to keep them (relatively) clean. Maybe add accumulating grime on your body/hands when in melee combat with zombies, when performing first aid, foraging food, butchering, etc that needs to be wiped off to prevent sickness. Just adding wet naps would be enough (they also tend to be included in MREs).

[Erk]

Dirty hands, utensils, and handwashing would be pretty neat. It could go along with not using a jerrycan that just held diesel fuel to store your freshly made peanut butter.

I do wonder if this would be fun, or just annoying though. I’d personally want to see it automated, so if you have a “wetwipe” in your inventory you don’t have to remember to activate it before eating. Maybe you get prompted

[Trigon]

Probably not necessary. It wouldn’t really add anything to the game. I remember a suggestion for a morale bonus if you are at a table with a plate and silverware though which would probably be a more engaging version of this.

[Erk]

There are a ton of eating-related morale bonuses already, though. I second this idea, but I’d suggest it be done more like a morale percentage, and sorted by food type. Something like:

all food gets an “eat style” tag, with the default being “finger food”. Other flags could be “spoon” and “fork”.

If food is eaten in its preferred style, while sitting at a table, you get 100% of the morale bonus. Eating fork food without a fork or spoon food wihtout a spoon gives you 90% of the normal morale bonus. Having no table also reduces the moral bonus to 90%. Having no chair also reduces the morale bonus to 90%. The three stack, so if you’re standing by a campfire drinking soup from a tin, you get only about 75% the normal morale bonus.

Finger food is exempt from this. You can eat a chocolate bar standing up with no utensils and not feel like you didn’t enjoy it properly.

[Midas]

IIRC somebody (Coolthulhu?) said if a new feature, designed to complicate a player’s life a bit, can be automated with a script, then that feature would only annoy, nothing else.

[Krisu]

Well, it would give a use to spoons and forks and whatnot.

[Erk]

Sure, but midas’ point is that if all it does is require you to carry around spoons and forks and then it’s trivialized after, it doesn’t improve gameplay in any way.

I kinda dig the idea of dining spaces like we discussed there though. That does more than script automate, it encourages players to have designated dining rooms - that they use - in their bases. It could be another step in reducing the benefits of the Nomad Life

[Invalid_Username]

This belongs in the “terrible Ideas” thread. Either way, I collect cutlery anyway and sort it out into the food storage because that gets me off.

[kevin.granade]

I think it would be reasonable as window dressing, as you accumulate more “civilized” gear it alters the description when eating and maybe provides a minor boost to sanitation and morale.

Utensils and dishes would be used if simply present, instead of hand washing you’d just need a basin and water for hand washing, it would otherwise be automatic, etc

[Erk]

The sanitation portion could be represented with the Health attribute. Washing hands each meal gives a small health boost.

[kevin.granade]

I was thinking a much more direct route of chance of illness. For example a number of the diseases listed here: https://www.avma.org/public/Health/Pages/Outdoor-Enthusiasts-Precautions.aspx can be acquired by handling contaminated objects and then eating, both handwashing before eating and utensils would prevent this.

[Krisu]

Just add and get a dishwasher, human(menial labor in faction camps) or machine