Daily Starvation Penalty?

[techActual]

Awesome thread, great suggestions. I'm new to TLD but I've been pushing the limits on starvation and I feel this is currently an overlooked exploit.I really enjoyed @Muk_Pile's concept, my only suggestion would be to simplify it. Simplifying it would means players quickly comprehend what's happening/the mechanics while Hinterland can introdruce some much needed balance.

On 6/16/2017 at 7:43 PM, Muk_Pile said:

IMHO, your daily calorie consumption and expenditure should be used to determine your encumbrance capacity

I think this is great, the longer you go pushing your limits.. then the higher the price you pay. I think a multi stage affliction would be a cool mechanic. Stage one are some minor annoyances, stage two, semi-permanent effects, and third an affliction. To resolve any stage requires maintaining an increasing number of calories for "x" amount of hours and or days.

The negative effects make exploration more difficult, slows progress, and tanks efficiency performing tasks. @Honor mentioned effects on movement, I think that'd be a great addition to mildly annoy the player. So many great suggestions in this thread.

[Honor]

On 6/26/2017 at 2:57 AM, techActual said:

The negative effects make exploration more difficult, slows progress, and tanks efficiency performing tasks. @Honor mentioned effects on movement, I think that'd be a great addition to mildly annoy the player. So many great suggestions in this thread.

Even @Kraelman has a rule in his mega hard mode that would be brilliant and he has never even been asked about this. He simulates a calorie debt, for every 1% of condition lost to starvation, you need 100 more calories, in this scenario we simply throw away 100 calories of food to simulate this.

At this point maintaining oneself with food is too easy.

[JoE Smash]

If not eating enough makes your character weaker and able to carry less, then eating properly and regularly while hiking and chopping wood should increase muscle mass and allow you to carry more. I would eat more regularly if there was some benefit other than being able to read the research books...

[liam]

You could put in negative calorie count in which if you are starving you still burn calories and you have to replenish if you want to stop starving.

Example: if you're starving and burn 400 calories you need to eat 400 calories to stop starving

[Reahs]

On 2017-06-16 at 6:11 AM, Wasteland Watcher said:

If a male is eating less than 1000 calories a day, wouldn't that cause them to lose muscle mass? 

After daily starvation (only 810 calories at dinner with nothong else eaten during the day )  day after day, wouldn't someone's max carrying weight decrease?

this is just what iv'e sead before but no reaction when i wrote it

[JAFO]

3 hours ago, JoE Smash said:

If not eating enough makes your character weaker and able to carry less, then eating properly and regularly while hiking and chopping wood should increase muscle mass and allow you to carry more. I would eat more regularly if there was some benefit other than being able to read the research books...

I like this idea a lot.

3 hours ago, liam said:

You could put in negative calorie count in which if you are starving you still burn calories and you have to replenish if you want to stop starving.

Example: if you're starving and burn 400 calories you need to eat 400 calories to stop starving

I've been wondering for a few weeks now, if this isn't already happening, at least partially. If I'm starving, it seems like when I eat, the food meter takes a while before it begins to fill up again.

[Miniwizard]

4 hours ago, JoE Smash said:

If not eating enough makes your character weaker and able to carry less, then eating properly and regularly while hiking and chopping wood should increase muscle mass and allow you to carry more. I would eat more regularly if there was some benefit other than being able to read the research books...

However, one could also equally argue, that if the player is too full, with that bloated feeling.. then you would equally be unable to carry such a heavy load without getting a nasty stich or belly cramp.  hehe 

I agree though, it would be nice to have some actual 'benefit' from eating well, and keeping yourself from starving.

 

46 minutes ago, JAFO said:

I like this idea a lot.

I've been wondering for a few weeks now, if this isn't already happening, at least partially. If I'm starving, it seems like when I eat, the food meter takes a while before it begins to fill up again.

Yes, I have noticed that too, but I think it's just that the icon is so small (especially at the bottom) that it is just a visual thing. Watching the calorie count rather than the icon, this idea is somewhat disproven.

[JoE Smash]

Well I can give you a true story based on my real life as a point of reference on what the human body can endure as far as weight loss with exercise and starvation. The only difference between my story and the characters in the game is the effect of subzero temperatures.

So after senior year of High School I was a fat bastard. I weighed about 250lbs and was 5'9" to 5'10" or average height. I wanted to be thin and reinvent myself for college. Without doing any research on nutrition and what is healthy I started starving myself to a degree that was unhealthy and dangerous, and if my parents were paying attention they should have gotten me psychological help.

So I started eating one can of Progresso Tomato and rotini soup, which had two servings totaling 260 calories. I ate one piece of multigrain bread for another 110 calories with the soup and a glass of milk for about another 100 calories. My daily total calorie intake was about 470-500 calories. I drank as much water as I wanted/needed.

I then started jogging/running (about 6.5mph on average) on the treadmill for one hour burning 800 calories (or so the display said at least). I would then bike for another hour or more on the recumbent bike for another 800 calories.

So some would argue without exercising my diet alone would burn 1500 calories a day due to needing approximately 2000 calories a day to survive. Then I was doing my best to burn at least another 1500 calories on top of that everyday by exercising, totaling about a 3000 calorie deficit a day.

I had read somewhere that to burn a pound of fat, you need to burn 3000-3500 calories. I was trying to burn a pound of fat a day.

I did this everyday, because I am a stubborn Taurus and I have more willpower than most people on the planet. I was sick of being picked on, and I was sick of being fat. This was going to change, or I was going to die trying.

After three to four months I weighed 185 pounds. The last month I had barely any energy to do anything, I didn't even want to get out of bed, but I did. I ate my soup and then I went and exercised for two hours even though I felt like I was dying.

True story. I figure if I can do it, our game avatars can do it for a while, their fat reserve is probably lower than mine was though.

Moral to the story: Don't pick on fat kids, it's mean...

[Miniwizard]

Here's a quick questions/suggestion that just occured to me.

What if eating didn't immediately give you those calories to burn. But rather, those calories didn't actually become available for an hour (allowing for digestion time etc). The colories from the food just eaten would still count toward the max calories (still enabling the 'you are not hungry' situation) but those calories sit in an 'unusable pool' which is released for use about an hour later.

This would mean that players wishing to do activities requiring calories - would need to plan ahead somewhat. Eat - do something else for a while - then do what they intended. Or, they would eat small amounts at fairly regular intervals to ensure they always had some calories available for whatever they needed to do on-the-fly.

Eating right before sleep, would end up meaning that the first hour or so of sleep would not have any restorative bonus. (unless you already had a couple of hundred usable calories available). Yeah, it's pretty uncomfortable and unhealthy to eat directly before sleeping. After an hour or so, all the food you ate directly before bed would then be digested and the calories would be usable to enable condition gain.

It would mean that it would be more disandvantageous to run around all day on an aching and empty stomach. If you needed to pass time, you would be unable to use that time in a fruitful manner (reading etc). Yet by always ensuring you have at least some calories, you would be much better suited to address any task.

 

 

2 hours ago, JoE Smash said:

Moral to the story: Don't pick on fat kids, it's mean...

Yeah, but they make an easier target for people with a low bullying skill, as they are harder to miss

[JoE Smash]

I think everyone here has very interesting and well thought out ideas, but I feel in the end many of us are actually making everything far too complicated. We have to remember this is a game. I mean it IS a survival simulator, and they are trying to add elements to make it both difficult and realistic. Which I feel it is already.

I feel the main issue certain people are having which caused this debate is that starving all day long lowers less condition (health) than you are able to recoup by eating and drinking before sleeping and thusly healing all the condition lost through during the day while starving.

I think the simplest solution to this is to increase the rate of condition loss while starving if exerting yourself. For instance starving while doing nothing remains the same. Starving while chopping wood, hiking, running, increases condition loss faster. You will lose it faster while tearing up cloth, sewing, crafting, etc. but not as fast as you do while heavy exertion like running or chopping wood.

Either that or make every action in the game like reading skill books...."you are too hungry to read." Replace read with whatever the activity is.

Lastly as someone earlier in the thread mentioned the calorie burn during activities should be lowered before implementing this, as the calorie burning amounts for a majority of the activities in the game are unrealistically high, including reading a book.

 

[Miniwizard]

Yes, I am a big fan of keeping things simple whenever possible, and I think the condition loss should be higher doing strenuous activities (chopping limbs, bashing furniture, climbing etc) when starving and without any calories stored.

I would also suggest possibly reducing the 'max calories' from 2500 to only around 1000. This would also encourage periodic eating rather than pigging out on 3 steaks all at once. You would still easily be able to get through a few thousand calories per day, but would need to eat more than once.

A second benefit would be that any food consumed would actually show as an impact on the hunger icon, as it would (percentage-wise) fill you up that much more. At the moment, eating a couple of hundred calories does not even show on your hunger icon - perhaps only adding a pixel or two to it.

[JoE Smash]

2 minutes ago, Miniwizard said:

Yes, I am a big fan of keeping things simple whenever possible, and I think the condition loss should be higher doing strenuous activities (chopping limbs, bashing furniture, climbing etc) when starving and without any calories stored.

I would also suggest possibly reducing the 'max calories' from 2500 to only around 1000. This would also encourage periodic eating rather than pigging out on 3 steaks all at once. You would still easily be able to get through a few thousand calories per day, but would need to eat more than once.

A second benefit would be that any food consumed would actually show as an impact on the hunger icon, as it would (percentage-wise) fill you up that much more. At the moment, eating a couple of hundred calories does not even show on your hunger icon - perhaps only adding a pixel or two to it.

Agreed....

[Miniwizard]

It would also mean you couldn't just eat the whole buffet for breakfast and not worry about packing something to take with you for lunch and dinner. You would need to think about taking food with you on a journey to replenish youself throughout the day.

[Wasteland Watcher]

@Miniwizard+1 to your max calorie count count idea, but I'd hope that it'd be realistically added:
- If food is liquid form then no limit (like me on a typical night out).
- If food is protein and/or fat, then add the calorie limit you suggest. Most folks I know can only eat 2 pounds of meat in one sitting before they become full. They have to wait a few hours before they "have room" for more.
-Increased calorie limit for simple carbs: I know folks who eat two fairly large bowls of spaghetti (probably about a pound) before becoming full, and it has a lot more calories that meat.
 

@JoE Smash I like your ideas but don't think accelerated condition loss is the answer to starving oneself all day just to eat at night (I actually know a lot of people that do this every day IRL).
I think the answer lies in a combination of accelerated loss of energy (which will affect their max carry load weight) and denying people the ability to concentrate on reading any books or crafting anything that takes longer that 10 minutes until they've stuffed some food down their throats (as you've suggested).
That's what happens with the people I know who do this...they're okay in the morning but come early afternoon they are useless. Then they eat a late lunch and can function again.
Also, thanks for sharing your weight-loss story. That's quite an accomplishment despite the risk you took. It's a good thing your health wasn't negatively impacted
Did you change to a 'healthy eating' lifestyle afterwards so you wouldn't pizza yourself back to having an unhealthily fat body? I use pizza because it's my personal dietary bane...steady, good dieting all week long and then Friday night hits and it's pizza and beer, and wine, and whiskey night!