Improvement of the food system!

Suggestions
1

Right now I have the feeling, that it’s not really worth getting better or even cooked food. Yes, your hearthlings feel more comfortable when you give them enough luxuary like housing, comfortable beds/chairs and a good viarety of food. But at some point you easily manage to get 7+ comfort (have forgotten how that stat is called) and it will take very long until you need more then that in order to get more hearthlings.

So I thought: How would a cool food system look like?

I think there should be food achievements and as long as you fullfill the requirements for the food achievements, your hearthlings should have certain benefits. To give an example:

Food Achievement:

Vegetarian: Have your hearthling eat 3 or more different vegetables

  • Hearthling gets 10% movement speed

Meat Eater: Have your hearthling eat 2 or more different meat types

  • Hearthling gets 10% slower hungry

Balanced Eater: Have your hearthling eat 3 or more different vegetables and 2 or more different meat types

  • Hearthling gets 15% movement speed and 20% slower hungry

Advanced Eater: Have your hearthling eat 2 different cooked food types

  • Hearthling gets 20% movement speed and 30% slower hungry, needs 20% less sleep and recovers health double as fast when recovering/sleeping

These achievements do not stack! Only your best Achievement will work.

Those numbers and stats are just examples, but it would make it really worth to have a cook or two, since those stats can really make a difference!

edit:
Another option would be, that every food type has it’s own buff and that these buffs last 2 days. For example:

Carrot provides 10% more movement speed
Corn provides 10% more health

At Day 1, hearthling eats a carrot. Buff lasts 2 days.
At Day 2, hearthling will prefer to eat corn, since he already got the carrot buff
At Day 3, hearthling will eat carrot since the buff is gone and corn buff is still active

This way, food buffs can stack, but only to a limited amount. It also gives the player the chance to focus on specific food types to get those specific buffs. If you are a military focused player, having carrots and corn at the beginning is very useful, since movement speed and health is really nice. On the other side, other food types could enhance building/crafting speed etc., which is better suited for players who focus on ernlarging their town and have a focus on producing products.

4 Likes
2

I have to agree Food right now is Meh at best, or even giving each food a benefit and cooked/Heftier foods give better stats or something.

3

Are these buffs stackable? 10%+15%+20% movement speed would mean end game Usain Bolt workers, imagine the possibilities -

4

ok… throwing a long range suggestion :wink:

would be nice if food as effects.
But won’t be nice if it is implemented “canned”. (e.g. stacking buffs becomes a problem).

Should be done through a system which ultimately affects a physiological simulation for a hearth which ultimately determine how much “buff” he has, regardless of the “source”.

e.g. an ingestion system that keeps track of how much calories, fat, protein, vitamins (various types), water a hearthling has at a time. This is like a “resource pool” for the physiological system.

At the physiological level, if the resources satisfy certain conditions (esp with other factors like rest, happiness etc), it will trigger the “bonus”. This will me mainly “food-based” if the conditions uses the good-related “resources”. These conditions could be modified by hearthling specific traits (e.g. a vegetarian will actually get ill if meat is congested)

Food, instead of simply stating what effects they have, should just state what components they provide when ingested. And leave it up to the physiological layer to “resolve” the bonus/penalties. (which means even food added by mods will be resolve in similar manner, giving the “effects” that food supplies consistent)

poisoning (ingested) can be simulated using same system, depending on where the poison enters the body, how much of what type and whether there are other factors that will react to poison etc.

yup, “long range” :wink:

5

I agree with you except for the Food achievements which i dont think are completely neccessary.

6

No, not stackable. As soon as your hearthlings start eating more then 2 different types of cooked food, they get the advanced eater buff, even if they eat additional vegetables and meat. Otherwise it would be to OP. And it would be hard for the game to decide which types of food each hearthling has to eat in order to get all food achievements. For example:

To get all achievements, your hearthling had to eat 3 different vegetables, 2 different meats and 2 different cooked meals. These are 7 different food-types your hearthling had to consume regulary to get all achievements. And since the achievements will only last a given time (for example 3 days before it checks if all requirements are still met), it would probably be to hard to keep eating 7 different food types.

Therefore you can’t stack them. Only your best achievement counts (which is advanced eater in this case).

Evolutionary speaking it would make sense. Our ability to eat vegetables + meat, to preserve food and to cook it gave us serious advantages over animals. Evolutionists say, that this is the reason why our brain could develop so fast, because our body had to use less energy to metabolize the food and therefore can use the energy for other things like brain development. And it’s no secret that healthy food is good for our stamina and well-being. So needing less rest, having less hunger and recovering makes sense. If the movement speed makes sense is questionable, but I think good food also raises your fitness at least a little bit. :slight_smile:

7

An easier to implement way that would add a great benefit to cooked foods would be to have the bonuses be based simply on the ingredients and last to their next meal. Cooked meals would confer the bonuses of their constituent ingredients, and for single ingredients, scaled up by 1.5x - so if vegetables give you 10% faster movement, a cooked meal of only vegetables would give you 15%, and if meat gives you 10% faster health regeneration, a meat stew with meat and vegetables would confer 10% movement speed bonus and 10% faster regeneration. A cooked meal of just meat will give you 15% faster regeneration. Maybe brewed drinks could also be consumed at mealtimes, allowing you to add other bonuses, such as beer increasing strength, wine increasing spirit, or mead increasing defense.

I think that’d require some form of hearthling management, though, and better micromanagement capabilities in general, to be worthwhile. Adding these bonuses when your hearthlings will just grab whatever means it’s pointless to stock up on meat meals since you can’t even guarantee your soldiers will eat them. Probably something to do with rooms and assigned beds (place bed, assign to hearthling, place other trinkets to influence their behaviours - fur rugs and stone furniture to make them prefer meat over vegetables, for instance, and decorative tankards, mugs or wine glasses to make that hearthling drink beer, mead or wine at meal times) would be ideal and encourage you to actually make dedicated living spaces for different jobs and the like.

8

Well, there could be an algorithm for how hearthlings consume food. If they eat a vegetable in the last 3 days, they will go for meat to unlock more food buffs and if there is anything better then raw meat and raw vegetables (cooked meals for example), they will prefer to eat that and gain the advanced eater achievement.

1 Like
9

Another option would be, that every food type has it’s own buff and that these buffs last 2 days. For example:

Carrot provides 10% more movement speed
Corn provides 10% more health

At Day 1, hearthling eats a carrot. Buff lasts 2 days.
At Day 2, hearthling will prefer to eat corn, since he already got the carrot buff
At Day 3, hearthling will eat carrot since the buff is gone and corn buff is still active

This way, food buffs can stack, but only to a limited amount. It also gives the player the chance to focus on specific food types to get those specific buffs. If you are a military focused player, having carrots and corn at the beginning is very useful, since movement speed and health is really nice. On the other side, other food types could enhance building/crafting speed etc., which is better suited for players who focus on ernlarging their town and have a focus on producing products.

2 Likes