Calorie consumption while starving?

[kurja]

Calorie consumption while resting is lower than while doing something, but is there any difference at all in spending little or much energy while starving? It seems that condition always drops at the same rate due to starving, irregardless of what the character is doing.

The game has a metric "calories expended" each day, but it seems to only show however many calories were eaten and then expended - energy spent while starving excluded?

[Mroz4k]

Nope, there is not. Which means that economically speaking, it is best to starve while doing things like breaking down furniture or proccesing carcasses.
Which is why most people, especially people on Interloper, will often starve intentionally for the whole day, taking the 12 % condition hit or so for starving, and only eat before sleeping to replenish and compensate for the condition lost.
But if I am to believe some talks around here, then soon enough we will suffer for doing this. Supposedly there is an affliction in works, called "malnutricion" wbich is something you will encounter if you are starving too often, and for too long. It will be treated by being with "full stomach" for 1/4th of the time spent starving, and while you have it, you will be unable to recover any energy while sleeping - you will recover condition, but you will never be able to get energy up so no sprinting of rope climbing. 

It supposedly got into the game already at some point, someone here on Forums reported getting it. So, take advantage of this, but be careful not to starve all the time.

[cekivi]

Starving is currently an easy system to exploit in order to survive a long time on very little food. Before the update that introduced cabin fever "starvation/hibernation" was a common exploit. 

That being said, careful use of your scant food resources is just playing the game well. If you ration your food you will quickly find that surviving gets a lot easier. 

[MarrowStone]

Why would hinterland add an affliction when calories should just go in the negatives and cause condition hits and reduced energy until positive again? That way you cant cheat the system by starving and stop just before you get "malnutrition".

[Mike in GA]

it might be like the cabin fever mechanic, and comes into play at different lengths of play for each level. I'm in day 65 of voyager run and starve daily from waking until sleeping, eating 800-1000 calories. Rinse and repeat with no sign of malnutrition. 

I attempted to be fed all the time when I started playing and I was burning through 3000+ calories a day. I mentioned it in the forums and was told most play as I have stated above. Since I started doing that I have food for weeks off the animals. I have been wondering about what actual survival would look like, and really starvation would be a part of that reality, and while the developers stress this is not usual life, starving seems like a realistic outcome, or say working from a calorie deficit all the time.

When keeping myself fed in those early runs the game was unmanageable from only looking for and cooking food. There was almost no exploring, because I was starving all the time. Finding enough food to keep the icon only marginally filled was an all consuming task. I actually stopped playing because I never made it out of mystery lake.

I understand that real living in such an environment burns thousands of calories per day, if that's going to be the case then the developmental team needs to allow for access to more calories in some fashion, especially on the much harder/leaner supplied levels like loper.

[cekivi]

8 hours ago, Mike in GA said:

When keeping myself fed in those early runs the game was unmanageable from only looking for and cooking food. There was almost no exploring, because I was starving all the time. Finding enough food to keep the icon only marginally filled was an all consuming task. I actually stopped playing because I never made it out of mystery lake.

I understand that real living in such an environment burns thousands of calories per day, if that's going to be the case then the developmental team needs to allow for access to more calories in some fashion, especially on the much harder/leaner supplied levels like loper.

It all comes down to balance. Consider that in real life a since deer would have ~60 kg of usable meat (not counting the organs) and would keep you easily fed for at least two months on 1 kg of meat a day supplemented with some scavenged food for vitamins and other essential nutrients. Starvation can certainly be added as a new mechanic to combat but things would need to be rebalanced elsewhere to make it "fair". 

[JAFO]

9 hours ago, Mike in GA said:

I'm in day 65 of voyager run and starve daily from waking until sleeping, eating 800-1000 calories. Rinse and repeat with no sign of malnutrition. 

I attempted to be fed all the time when I started playing and I was burning through 3000+ calories a day. I mentioned it in the forums and was told most play as I have stated above. Since I started doing that I have food for weeks off the animals.
...
When keeping myself fed in those early runs the game was unmanageable from only looking for and cooking food. There was almost no exploring, because I was starving all the time. Finding enough food to keep the icon only marginally filled was an all consuming task.

I generally work on eating 1600-2000 calories a day.. 1 meal when I wake up, and 1 before sleeping. It's at least somewhat more realistic, and at the same time, doesn't impinge too heavily on getting other things done.

[Mike in GA]

Going off of @JAFOmethod of eating, I was thinking that if you stayed fed regularly then your strength/carrying capacity should go up. This would be a reward for not playing starvation mode, at least in my opinion. Because a body in regular motion and activity being fed/rested should be increasing in capacity for that work. Nothing insane, but I would stay fed more often if I could gain say even a pound of carrying capacity a month of game time. Conversely, a penalty for not eating could being less carrying capacity. How many times have I been playing and the difference in that one pound of being over-encumbered is there? Even though I've finally started carrying the bow as the primary weapon I use, the extra pound for 30 game days would change some play styles, maybe not. I tend to packrat so I would take it.

I have started eating more actually because I've moved areas and studying books makes it necessary. So I eat enough to carry over in the morning for about 4-5 hours.

[Mroz4k]

4 minutes ago, Mike in GA said:

Going off of @JAFOmethod of eating, I was thinking that if you stayed fed regularly then your strength/carrying capacity should go up. This would be a reward for not playing starvation mode, at least in my opinion. Because a body in regular motion and activity being fed/rested should be increasing in capacity for that work. Nothing insane, but I would stay fed more often if I could gain say even a pound of carrying capacity a month of game time. Conversely, a penalty for not eating could being less carrying capacity. How many times have I been playing and the difference in that one pound of being over-encumbered is there? Even though I've finally started carrying the bow as the primary weapon I use, the extra pound for 30 game days would change some play styles, maybe not. I tend to packrat so I would take it.

I have started eating more actually because I've moved areas and studying books makes it necessary. So I eat enough to carry over in the morning for about 4-5 hours.

This is an idea I also presented some times ago. I went a little bit further then you as well  - in order to increase carrying capacity by 5 kg, you would have to (for an extended period of time, say 30 days) be well fed (not starving a lot) and doing a lot of physical activities (exploring, hunting, harvesting, etc.) Alternatively, you could also lose 5 kg of carrying capacity by doing the reverse - starving a lot, sitting around in the cabin most of the time, doing extensive crafting, sitting around and simply fishing, etc.

[Mike in GA]

@cekiviI totally agree about the balance aspect. It's a hard line to walk in this game, because it's all a network of thin margins to make it "fair." Since I eat less in game, I find that I'm actually traveling and exploring more. And very much agree about living off deer in reality. That kg of deer also would have ~250 grams of protein, not to mention 2000 kcals. In game I was scarfing deer steaks daily to stay out of the red zone, not to mention fish I was downing.

[Mike in GA]

+1 then @Mroz4kbecause if they do tinker with the starvation method, it would make sense to change behaviors with a reward, rather than just the stick for punishment. You long timers keep us newer people in the loop of whats been suggested, one of the reasons why this game is awesome. My .02

[Mroz4k]

7 minutes ago, Mike in GA said:

+1 then @Mroz4kbecause if they do tinker with the starvation method, it would make sense to change behaviors with a reward, rather than just the stick for punishment. You long timers keep us newer people in the loop of whats been suggested, one of the reasons why this game is awesome. My .02

hehehe, not a long timer here, joined the forums in June (but was offline reading forums for a long time)  (unless you mean game long timer which I guess I am, started playing sometime in early 2014,)

Dont think this was really pushed as an idea, though - Thrasador told me that supposedly, suggestions around increasing carrying capacity are not that appreciated by the dev team (I can see why, since its a pretty powerful buff just to carry 5 kg more) - but well demanded by the community. But I agree with you, some sort of reward instead of just punishment would be great.

If you would have more opinions on the matter, PM me any time - I am looking for feedback and ideas in this line of thinking, to maybe eventually formulate some Wish list suggestion.

[cekivi]

Personally, I'm also against carry limit increases (I don't think they're necessary). It would be really nice to have a more robust food system though. One of the features left on the cutting room floor was "enhanced cooking". Several forum members such as myself and @Scyzara were hopeful that this would be the solution to the current way food is handled. A more robust food and heating system would certainly help the game and address long term survival which gets very repetitive after a while. 

[Mroz4k]

9 hours ago, cekivi said:

Personally, I'm also against carry limit increases (I don't think they're necessary). It would be really nice to have a more robust food system though. One of the features left on the cutting room floor was "enhanced cooking". Several forum members such as myself and @Scyzara were hopeful that this would be the solution to the current way food is handled. A more robust food and heating system would certainly help the game and address long term survival which gets very repetitive after a while. 

I stand somewhere in the middle, really. 

I would like to see that kind of an increase, but in a moderate way. I would like to see the "30kg limit" be put up to 35kg, which would mean you get to walk a bit faster with more gear, but if you wore 50 kg while having the limit at 30 or at 35 kg, it wouldn't actually make any difference. 

The only notable difference would be that in a better physical state, you would be able to climb ropes with more equipment, and while carrying around 40kg, you would go a bit faster. But that's where the difference would end for me. 

I agree with your take on the improved cooking - this is something that is very necessary. Especially if we were able to integrate some renewable plant cooking resources into the mix, it would be a great countermeasure to that repetitiveness of late games. Not everyone is able to handle the routine of lengthy life.

[Cray]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think going 20 hrs or so without food limits your energy recovery - you get a little red minus (-) above the eye and cannot become fully rested. I've only had it when I'm really short on calories. As others have said, you can recover the 12% or so loss with only 6 hrs of sleep on Interloper (see here), however most of the time you need more sleep and/or more recovery than that to get by. So far in my Interloper run I've starved myself while my condition is good and consumed more calories when it's bad to limit further loss or aid recovery. So while it's still possible to starve through the day it's not as much of an exploit as in other modes.

[Mike in GA]

That's the reason I went for a more modest 1 kg gain for a month, but @cekivinow that I'm carrying the bow instead of the rifle, i'm rarely encumbered, except at the end of the day. I was thinking of a positive reward to change behaviors, rather than the stick that was implied. Regardless, eating less has made the game more fun in terms of exploring, hunting, fishing. But I am going to start eating some morning and evening. Meat piles up after only eating one steak at a time. With cooking lvl 4 even a wolf steak is over 800 kcals. Also harvested my first bear, hello I think it was 30kg of meat  

Not to be redundant on topics, but what was the idea "of a more robust" cooking/food variety solution.

[cekivi]

6 hours ago, Mike in GA said:

Not to be redundant on topics, but what was the idea "of a more robust" cooking/food variety solution.

It was a roadmap item from the beta testing stage of the game. Essentially, it would introduce recipes and the ability to put something on the stove/fire to cook while you do something else. The big challenge, of course, would be that food could now spoil from over cooking. Unfortunately, the system was never implemented but it would have allowed for things like making stews and really expand the potential foods in the game by combining ingredients. This would further allow the food mechanic to be extended to malnutrition (potentially) due to the increased options available. 

However, because such a system would mean a fundamental rethink and rebalance of the food/starvation/cooking mechanics it is understandable that the dev team was unable to pursue it. I remain hopeful that it may one day be modded in.