FOOD!!

[Tarragon Rill]

I find that food is ruining the game.


I like the idea but the implementation is not working.

1) I am ALWAYS starving
2) food is too expensive to buy
3) growing food is too slow
4) not enough methods to acquire food in the wild


Basically it boils down to this:
I spend 100% of my time killing dogs to cook, selling bandit loot to buy food, and even so my characters are always fainting from lack of food. It all comes down to 2 things. You get hungry too quickly and buying food is far to expensive.

I cant even go looking for a place to setup my outpost because I will starve to death if I stop focusing 100% of my time on getting food.


is this a common problem or am I missing something here? I cant even play the game anymore because I hate the food part so much. I really like the idea of making us eat and starving to death but seriously it is over the top.

I kill a wolf and get meat from it. this will feed 1 person for half a day??? A wolf should have enough meat on it to feed a single person for several days. realistically speaking 1 wolf would feed a single person for 5 to 7 days. if not more. So assuming these wolves are starving like all my faction members are maybe we could at least expect 1 wolf to feed 1 person for 2 or 3 days?

either reduce the hunger rate, increase the amount of food collected from animals, decrease farming time, reduce the cost of food in stores, or add in more harvestable food sources. or ideally a little bit of all of these. just a small tweak in all these areas would make a world of difference and make the game playable again. I do not want to play "The Hunger Games" I want to play "Kenshi"

[Mattk50]

i do think some animals should drop more food than they do, but other than that the food system is pretty much fine. You sound like your only source of food is hunting dogs, maybe that will change but for now i advise that you have two solid options open to you and a third desparate option. First, mine near a town, sell the ore in-town. If you want the hauling automated, buy a shack and put an ore storage in it. At first you will make just enough money to feed yourself, but as your laboring skill improves you will quickly make a profit. More characters will go faster. The most effecient town (though most dangerous) town to do this near is mongrel, thanks to its rich copper deposits.

The second and more fun/faster option is to become a petty thief. Sneak around town, steal food, items, equiptment, sell to the fence or just try to sell it back to the shopkeeper. if you get caught in town, its your lucky day, because you get a free toughness increase as well as a stay in a luxurious prison cage, free food included! While your staying, you can keep practicing your lockpicking skill and become a hardened criminal. If you work on your assassination, you'll be able to mug shopkeepers and guards outright, and take them for everything they're worth. Eventually, youll be making a tidy profit, enough to decide to move up in the world and hire some people who don't have their hands tainted by petty burgulary.

The third, you can always just send yourself into slavery. Its a good low effort way to gain laboring and athletics skills with free food, though leaving it is a bit high effort.

[Hedgehog-of-Fog]

I don't see here any problem with food, too. I've started as thief - so now (day ~30, including all imports) I have enough cats and legally acquired food (and also stolen blueprints - for further frauds).
When my 5 teammates are hanging on the base, idle ones of them are sleeping to eat not so much, others are working or fighting with prisoners.

Kenshi has a beautiful and realistic scheme:
you need food - buy it, you don't have money - work hard and craft/cook/hunt or steal it, you don't have skill - then starve and die, because you deserve it, lazy ass.
In two words - earn it!

[swillo]

I love the food system. It works well and gives you a real purpose. At the start it's hard to make it. But once you start learning to forage in different places it works much better.

As stated above mining is a great start to earn money and get enough supplies to head out in search of a place to put a base. But you shouldn't be able to just walkout into the wilds with out some training and supplies. You would die.

Once you gets some supplies I like to visit the farms. They are good bases to extend your roaming.
Get some supplies and sell some stuff.

My basic plan at low levels is never return to a city or base without some things to sell. and copper tends to be better then iron if you can find a 100% pure source. But iron will mine faster then a 40% copper source.

Most my games have advanced to the point now where food is not an concern. I can load up at base before heading out or I have enough cash reserves to buy things when I need to. I also stock up on meat when ever I stop for a night to have special reserve.

[Sol Lignum]

I absolutely love and agree with what Mattk50 and Hedgehod-of-Fog said I imported into beta with 8 squaddies and some gear and cats in my pocket. Easy start i though. But then i've seen the hunger bar and there was "@#%$^!" I've spend about half of my cats on food before i realized i won't live another week if i don't grow my own. So i started. First harvest of Greenfruit eliminated the basic need of meal, then i started to research advanced recipes, through cooked vegetables to current foodcubes, and i'm doing well. Although i will agree that if outpost building isn't quite your style, you will have hard times feeding your greedy bellies. It's actually quite like irl though: consuming homemade meal is way way cheaper then eating somewhere, even more so if you produce your own raw stuff. Suggestion for you: get yourself a shack, build a cooking stove, and start stocking with raw ingredients like greenfruit and water, research some recipes and cook at home! After all, if you have any base of operation it'd ease your time in game

General suggestions: Perhaps it'd be reasonable to slow starvation speed, lower the farms output and raise nutrition values of food to some degree? I think anyone should be able to endure 3 days of starving with no significant consequences, although it heavily depends on your way of life. Maybe speed of starvation should be bind to phisical activity?

[Hedgehog-of-Fog]

General suggestions: Perhaps it'd be reasonable to slow starvation speed, lower the farms output and raise nutrition values of food to some degree? I think anyone should be able to endure 3 days of starving with no significant consequences, although it heavily depends on your way of life. Maybe speed of starvation should be bind to phisical activity?

Agreed! And another one - when your mate starved till he/she falls down then he/she can't move, no even crawl. That's totally wrong - in these two-three days which past till <100 starvation points every simple man could get some kind of stats debuff, maybe random swoons, but even after that - hey! - not just a laying useless brick (or useful but heavy bag with goods, hehe).

[Zeal]

General suggestions: Perhaps it'd be reasonable to slow starvation speed, lower the farms output and raise nutrition values of food to some degree? I think anyone should be able to endure 3 days of starving with no significant consequences, although it heavily depends on your way of life. Maybe speed of starvation should be bind to phisical activity?

Agreed! And another one - when your mate starved till he/she falls down then he/she can't move, no even crawl. That's totally wrong - in these two-three days which past till <100 starvation points every simple man could get some kind of stats debuff, maybe random swoons, but even after that - hey! - not just a laying useless brick (or useful but heavy bag with goods, hehe).

At first, i was thinking "Well, sleeping slows the speed of starvation, so it's longer than three days", then i realized... Oh yeah.. None of your characters have an actual sleep cycle. They are working their butts off 24/7..

I think that if starvation is going to be slowed for the affects of "realism", i suppose it would be reasonable to demand sleep as well. Frankly, between having a sleep cycle, and slower food consumption, vs the way it is now, players would get a lot more done with the way things are now.

[Hedgehog-of-Fog]

At first, i was thinking "Well, sleeping slows the speed of starvation, so it's longer than three days", then i realized... Oh yeah.. None of your characters have an actual sleep cycle. They are working their butts off 24/7..

I think that if starvation is going to be slowed for the affects of "realism", i suppose it would be reasonable to demand sleep as well. Frankly, between having a sleep cycle, and slower food consumption, vs the way it is now, players would get a lot more done with the way things are now.

Maybe we all need to remember it's a game, preferently RPG+RTS, not Sims. Starvation, dehydratation, sleepness, etc. are good, but only when they're don't disturbing the whole gameplay.
Starvation is ok for now, but it could be better (see posts above) IMO.

As for the sleep - yeah, maybe it'll be good, but if it'll be "slowed down", i.e. mate could work fulltime about 3-4 full ingame days before he fall down unconcsious on 1-2 real-time minutes, and there is also debuffs are presenting after 1st and 2nd days of fulltime work. Then he awakens, but debuffs and chances to fall down are staying till he sleep about 5-6 ingame hours. Also after 8-9 sleeping hours he could gain some buffs for work and fight skills...

Main thing here is to rebalance all those basic needs with ingame and real time flowing.

[Sol Lignum]

In fact, as i think of it, i'm starting to understand that it's somewhat nicely balanced even at the current state. When you got, say, <10 chars, it's okay to micromanage them from time to time, distributing some basic food, and all (although now they're a bit more free-willed and grab what they need from a barrell) but still, you got to think about provision stock. As your party grows, if it does, indeed, you learn how to produce more lasting food items in a meantime, i.e. foodcubes or food rations, which slowly detracts the need of that micro management. Although i would call a starting curve rather steep. It's like there's only one research between you live and you die trying... eh, it's complicated.

[MaGGoT]

Sorry I haven't read through the whole thread so this is most likely covered already..

I find the best way to start a game is to mine a natural ore resource close to a town. This will net you enough 'cats' to buy food and followers. Keep doing this until you have enough food and 'cats' that you feel comfortable heading out honing some other skills. Repeat this is needed or start your own farms but make sure you have a buffer of food before you do as it will take some time to get them running. Once they do start producing you will be fine, as long as you've made sure that you farm in an area suitable for that type of crop. Oh and build several of each type so long as you have enough people to actually work them.

Hope it helps.

[Sol Lignum]

Well, seems like you wasn't the only player, troubled by hunger, cuz " -Added an optional "no hunger" mod for those who don't like starving to death cold and alone. " Steam upd topic quote! I say - a perfect solution, and i cannot lie )

[imdare]

Try killing some holy nation cows before you set up a farm.

[Berzerker Jay]

I have to admit, since food prices went up it seems a bit looney-tunes to me. People don't look so wealthy in Kenshi, and yet the amount of food it costs to fill 250 Nu is comparable in value to buying real estate?

I think that's a bit nonsensical. Surely food should be less of an economic burden, not so much a defining aspect of the economy.

I get the sense a lot of this was changed to make hunting more commercially viable, but it seems that this is a bit backwards in thinking. Like has been mentioned already, the amount of nutrition we get off an animal is pretty miniscule. I would suggest raw meat needs to be more readily available. The River Raptors should offer up a chunk, and the dogs are good now. The beaked things should provide an amount of meat that is at least mildly comparable to what one gets from a bull, no?

I just think meat should be more of a matter of fact, and not the game itself.

[Berzerker Jay]

Like, the rations should never be over 1000 credits. It completely unbalances the whole market.

[Sol Lignum]

Like, the rations should never be over 1000 credits. It completely unbalances the whole market.

You have a point. Although with a few "but": How to cook a ration pack? Maybe price is high because pack always demands something that is rare in any territory, like rice is hardly available for Holy Nation, and greenfruit won't grow near Hives, etc. I mean, as map grows and caravans start to roam, which is a thing i hope, and economy gears are grinding, maybe then prices will tweak themselves? And maybe there will be a region where everything grows, may imperfectly, and prices there would be reasonable all the time?

[Berzerker Jay]

And ration packs are also only 2x2 in the inventory.... Maybe not the best example, but probably still overpriced.

Some of the simpler items, like bread, should be much cheaper. What is it, five loafs of bread to hit 300 Nu? And that's going to break over 3000 credits? Umm...ouch?

It actually got me thinking, we need to make cooking profitable, for sure. More variety of foods might be a better way to go, not too dramatically different but some with more rare ingredients and higher Nu value. Dare I say it, what if we gave cooking a small tech tree? Secret recipes could be stashed in remote villages, yada yada.

I think that might be a better way to open up the profession a lot, especially if hunger is going to be such a fundamental part of the game. I think this will really improve the player-hunger relationship.

One last thing.... If we're going to improve cooking's profitability, can we give some consideration to the notion of batching? With a large oven one could conceivably be cooking quite a lot of bread in a short amount of time, so I think it makes sense that one cook should be able to keep up with a fair number of wheat fields.

[swillo]

if prices are bothering you, you can always mod them to what you feel is correct.
But remember that this is a survival situation. Food is the number one priority!
Shelters are easy to come by, but food is not, and you need it more then you need shelter. So while I don't think the prices seem quite right yet, I would still expect them to be high.

The one thing that I would like is if hungry squaddies would complain more. If I saw them saying "I'm hungry!", "OMG I'm hungry!", "Damn it man I'm starving!!!!" it would be very helpful to know who isn't automatically getting there food. Think I will pop over to the requests thread

[Berzerker Jay]

For sure they should be high. But why would someone trade an Industrial 004 katana for a couple ration packs, right? They could conceivably use the sword to get their food, one way or the other, and for a lot longer than the couple rations would keep them fed.

[Tarragon Rill]

Don't get me wrong. I want the hunger in the game and I like the way it is going...

However; I just think the hunger rate needs to be slowed a bit and the amount of food you get from dogs a bit higher (which it now is). And some other things like farming should be faster but maybe give less food. as I have had my squad starve to death while farming on the river bank. and even when you get the green fruit it is all gone before the next harvest is ready. it is a never ending cycle of 100% of your time is spent trying to delay starvation... And I say delay because it seems it will be inevitable. I can't kill Bulls and dogs fast enough to keep my squad healthy while also trying to farm and get a mine going.


I do not want the hunger aspect gone I just wish it was toned down a bit so there was more to the game than hunt/farm/eat. Just the simple aspect of dogs dropping 3 meat may be enough to offset this. but I really think reducing the hunger rate a bit would be great. And reducing the price of food so that selling the stuff looted form bandits is enough to keep you alive is also needed.

[swillo]

they slowed down the hunger rate in the last update. .91.18.