Lantern Fruit and Food / Water / Hunger / Thirst Mechanics
Coranth
Join Date: 2015-06-02 Member: 205160Members
Join Date: 2015-06-02 Member: 205160Members
Something needs to be done with the Lantern Fruit--or the consumption of Food in general. I just watched Markiplier's latest video, and - due to the Developers 'nerfing' the Fruit - instead of using the big filtered waters, Mark just has FOUR grow beds on his Cyclops with a truckload of Lantern Fruits which he chomps down with no consequences! In other words... NOTHING HAS CHANGED! "Oh, the Devs nerfed the fruit. Hah, shows what they know; we'll just make more!"
There must be some sort of severe penalty imposed for 'eating too much' of something, or not using / drinking actual WATER BOTTLES; simulate the effects of over eating by a severe loss of health, or a screen fading effect for not getting enough fluids; you're dehydrating! Ideas:
1. Severe penalty for overeating one thing or eating only one thing.
2. Introduce some sort of balanced meal mechanic. Eat two cooked fish, one or two different fruit, and then drink a water, your health is topped right up
3. Hunger / Dehydration mechanic.
Currently, the whole food / water mechanic is treated more as an annoyance or a joke that gets in the way of exploration. People don't take it seriously, they just chomp down lanterns / chinese potatoes / marblemelons without consequence. Subnautica is a SURVIVAL game--but certain mechanics - the effects of overeating, the effect of severe hunger and dehydration, or even perhaps water intoxication - just... aren't there at all, and they should be.
..........
Cue people whinging about the effects of realism in games, I guess.
There must be some sort of severe penalty imposed for 'eating too much' of something, or not using / drinking actual WATER BOTTLES; simulate the effects of over eating by a severe loss of health, or a screen fading effect for not getting enough fluids; you're dehydrating! Ideas:
1. Severe penalty for overeating one thing or eating only one thing.
2. Introduce some sort of balanced meal mechanic. Eat two cooked fish, one or two different fruit, and then drink a water, your health is topped right up
3. Hunger / Dehydration mechanic.
Currently, the whole food / water mechanic is treated more as an annoyance or a joke that gets in the way of exploration. People don't take it seriously, they just chomp down lanterns / chinese potatoes / marblemelons without consequence. Subnautica is a SURVIVAL game--but certain mechanics - the effects of overeating, the effect of severe hunger and dehydration, or even perhaps water intoxication - just... aren't there at all, and they should be.
..........
Cue people whinging about the effects of realism in games, I guess.
Comments
Diet Variety
Food comes in categories, for example: Fish, Fruits, Vegetables and Fungal.
Each category has a nutrition efficiency ranging from 0-100%
Eating one category reduces efficiency based on the nutrition value of the portion while increasing all other categories by a similar amount.
Nutrition value gets reduced with lower efficiency.
Switch between categories to make the most of your food supply.
There's already a "stomachache" mechanic where, if you eat too many food items at once, you'll lose health, food and H2O.
But it doesn't work; you just eat some more... it's useless. The sad thing is that as soon as you build a base and some grow beds, the whole "survival" aspect sort of stops. "Carar? Nah, screw that; I'mma stay in my base and study my Stalkers, etc. Rocket Ship? Leave? Meh, screw Alterra; now where's that Reaper...?"
"Transparent"? You mean apparent, right?
Of course, there are foods that help you avoid stomachaches if you know where to look. Reginalds and Filtered Waters are a prime staple for filling up your hunger bar quickly, and once you start farming them and get a Filtration Machine, you're set for life. Overpowered...
If we're talking about penalties... maybe a diminishing returns from repeated foods would help? I remember this from The Spice of Life, a Minecraft mod that added a reduction in food value when you ate the same food over and over again with little or no variety in a given time.
So, for example... eating a Reginald may give you 44 Food at first, but then it would give you 40, then 35, and so on until it gives you just 4 Food, forcing you to change your diet to Peepers, Spadefish, Eyeyes, Lantern Fruit and everything in-between... at least for a while.
Water would remain unaffected because all living things depend upon it. So, for instance... Marblemelons, though depleting in food value, would still give the same amount of hydration they did when you first ate them (barring spoilage or drying out after being plucked, of course)
So why make eating and drinking overly complicated? I personally know people who eat very one sided and only face a few consequences in the real world. And as @Phoenix223 already mentioned, SN already has a system in place that costs you health and water if you eat too much from one fruit.
I'd rather not see a too complicated system in place which punishes for not eating "balanced" enough as long as I don't eat only one thing it should be ok. Ok they should make that system a little bit more obvious. Maybe by letting your PDA say something if you eat "wrong" or after you got your first "bloodloss" event from eating only lantern fruit for example. Maybe something like "Warning you are about to eat too one sided, change your diet immediatly or risk bloodloss! If you ignore this warning try not to puke on the PDA please.".
I use the Bulbo Tree and a mix of Chinese Potato + Marble Melon for my "close to base or Cyclops" food needs and prepare cured Reginalds or Peepers with Big Filtred Water bottles for a longer trip. They should maybe add the possibility to make the Nutrition Blocks later in the game as the equivalent to the Big Filtered Water or maybe let us make dry fruit for longer trips instead of just cured fish.
But adding penalties for not eating like 1 fresh fish with two potatos besides a light koosh/kelp salad and a filtered water just seems too much for me (and yes I exeggerated that example). It is after all a suvival situation where you eat what you can get and human beeings can survive with a one sided diet for a very long time.
Currently it seems you take damage after about 9-10 food items eaten consecutively (at least in the case of Lantern fruits). This should be nerfed to about 5-6, and make it so that water items such as Filtered water and Big filtered water don't affect the total at all (thus preventing those annoying cases where a final sip of water sends you over the edge). You shouldn't be punished for drinking water, anyways, since there is no way to fully exploit such items.
While this wouldn't be a perfect method, I think it would go a long way.
All one has to do is catch and farm Reginalds, and from what I've seen, they're far easier to catch than Peepers and you don't have to go toooo far to find them. Two or three of them cooked or cured is all it takes to fill you up.
Of course, the Large Fish Tank (I still hate the name Alien Containment) needed to farm fish is mid-game content so... yeah, overeating still presents a danger, even moreso if you're restricted to 5-6 food items before puking, before you actually find the Tank Fragment to scan...
...and, incidentally, it's very easy to get lost in the biome the fragment located in.
I think @Dracobomba is right, that the count before bloodloss could/should be slightly lower. And I fully support the idea that water should never count to the limit at all.
A human beeing can drink alot of water before it actually becomes dangerous. A human that is very active (working hard/doing sport and so on) should drink up to 3 liters/101oz per day. That would be slightly less then 7 bottles "Big filtered Water". Iirc you can even drink up to 10 liters/338oz (22,5 BigFilteredWater-bottles) before it literally waters down your blood too much. So yeah pretty much drink all the water you want.
If you're working hard, though, drinking too much water at once while still in that state can definitely have side effects such as throwing up. There's a reason they tell you to sip water during cooldown exercises in the military, and it's not that they like wasting time (that's reserved for standing in long lines waiting to get required paperwork done, lol).
EDIT: Although, as long as you go slow at first, you can drink as much water as you want until you're full, so there's that to think of as well.
A lot of streamers do, lol ("oh, I'm thirsty? Here we go!" 'Glug-glug-glug-glug' "4 oughtta do it!"