Famines, Droughts, Over-farming, etc

[Surly]

I've always thought the way food is handled now makes life way too easy, as well as keeping trade and specialized occupations from developing.

I will smack he who disagrees with this.

You want some? Come on then. Let's settle this in a pointlessly brutal fashion...

Like any new addition, you need to balance it first! This the key point that makes new, even wanted additions, unwelcome and unappreciated. When tiredness was added, productivity should have increased to make up for it, and the once-a-day hit limit should have been removed. If you're going to increase the amount of work to be done on food, then you should be able to gather more of the raw stuff.

Well, that would be okay. But I've been arguing for balancing for ages, to no avail. I dpn't mind greater processing, but if it means I end up with vastly less food than I used to... that isn't good.

There are too possible repercussions from this:
1) Food production becomes a viable industry. We get professional farmers, and this would stimulate trade with others who trade in other areas and create a more rounded economy.
2) Trade stops. Due to the now pointlessly low food production rates, traders spend all their time on food production and repairs. As a result, trade dies away, leaving Cantr in an even worse position than before the supposedly positive change.

Unfortunately, Option 2 is the current trend in Cantr. Hopefully this proposal would follow option 1. But I won't hold my breath...

[Nick]

It's sort of like how after combat skills, I assumed about half the people would become better warriors, and about half would be worse.

But no, everyone was made worse. Some MUCH more so.

[Surly]

Some people got better.

None of mine though. And statistically, you'd imagine at least one of my characters would be good with weapons...

[Pie]

to balence this perfictly, you would need an alternative food sorse, like, some, pine...cone. heck, i don't know, but you would need another food sorce that no one knows about, like, some sort of grasses, or plants. so when a drought or famin comes around, and all of the corn dies, then you can just eat that tree over there, or that blade of grass when your hungry, but it takes longer to harvest those, so you would only use those in case of emergensy.

like, cacteses. In the desert, you need a good trading sourse, so if that trading sorse has a faman, then you can just eat that cactise, but if you don't want to be pricled, then you would use a knife.

[formerly known as hf]

I say yay to the original post - as long as the only swap is food for food, and not an edible food for healing food... That way, it wouldn't change things too drastically.

And bring on the cooking... I don't see it making things that unbalanced - a long as being able to eat raw things still exists - then cooking will simply be a bonus, without affecting the current system. Those with time can cook to make things more useful as food source - e.g: Cooked potatoes eaten at the rate of 60g a day or something - would be useful for sailors maybe...

[El_Skwidd]

Have you ever eaten a raw potato? Don't do it. It sucks.

I think that some foods could fit Farmers description: you can still eat them raw, but eating them cooked allows you to eat less of them daily. However, some others should go with what Jos mentioned... you can only eat them cooked or salted or smoked or whatever. Potatoes especially... I feel bad for every character of mine eating 100 whole grams of raw potatoes daily.

But it's low priority. Fix what's broken first

[Antichrist_Online]

I eat raw potato. It doesn't taste that bad. Then again I eat all vegetables raw, I prefere the taste. How ever even though Jos idea was a good one, I'd prefere to see farmer's modification.

[wichita]

I'm all for requiring more cooking, but I agree that I fear that food prep would become prohibitively more difficult. Now if the rumor of a new healing system is going to be implemented involving natural healing, bed rest, and medical treatment then the fruits, berries, and nuts would become special because they could still be eaten raw. Apples would be an inefficient food, but would keep you alive until you can walk to, farm, and boil up a batch o' taters.

And I never have understood why we can eat rice raw, but have to grind and bake wheat...but that's just me!


But now we're starting to mix apples and oranges here. I'm still convinced that a resource reallocation program would effectively shake up trade, as long as things aren't hopping from town to town every other day. If it is slow and rational, it could go a long way to maintaining dynamic economies.

And I agree, we need to but more emphasis and motivate people to become farmers. I think the biggest problem now, is that the industrial people can sit inside and just pop out to gather a years worth of food in a few days before hopping inside. If more effort was required to prepare food, or at least make effective food, then it would surely boost the development of true trade and economy.

[Nick]

I'm quite sure raw potatoes are poisonous if you eat enough of them...

[mortaine]

If famine/droughts/etc. are implemented, the game should be programmed to allow Cantrians to eat ANYTHING.

"You see a man in his twenties eat a dung-fork."

The man in his twenties would take damage, no doubt, from eating a dung-fork. Similarly, some poisonous materials would crop up, like, I don't know, eating raw chromium, perhaps. But then, if you were in a famine, you could eat "hide" and still get some hunger relief from it.

People do not seem to realize that humans are amazingly good at eating just about anything. I'm shocked that one needs to cook corn in Cantr, and not rice-- seems wrong, to me, but then, I also think you should be able to eat raw meat. Not without possible consequences, but yeah.

[Nick]

People do not seem to realize that humans are amazingly good at eating just about anything. I'm shocked that one needs to cook corn in Cantr, and not rice-- seems wrong, to me, but then, I also think you should be able to eat raw meat. Not without possible consequences, but yeah.

Actually humans are quite bad at digesting plant matter, but your point still stands, we're quite versatile.

And you can eat raw meat IRL as long as you eat it within a certain ammount of time before it dies. Same as a wild animal. It's the blood pooling and whatnot, which happens postmortem, that requires us to bleed/cook our food. That and, most of us don't have the time to kill an animal every time we're hungry for protein.

[wichita]

Actually humans are quite bad at digesting plant matter, but your point still stands, we're quite versatile.

Yeah...I ate too much summer squash over the past week, and let's just say the thought of a rocket came to mind yesterday.

[Lumin]

What wichita said (EDIT: Not the "rocket" part... ) - that's the way to implement major changes like this and actually have them balanced. Put in the healing system first, and then make all the healing foods into regular foods, but very inefficient ones. (Inefficient doesn't mean bad, just difficult to live on. For people with an alternative food source they'd be delicacies, like rainbow trout is now.) Once that's in place, make potatoes and other regular foods require the extra processing before being usable. (And please make it possible to do something with corn besides pop it.).

This way the short-term damage caused by the abruptness of the change will be minimal, but in the long-term I think this will have major ramifications, and all for the better in things like trade and creating jobs.

[Surly]

WE DO NOT NEED MORE *@%&£$# JOBS! IT'S HARD ENOUGH TO FIND RELIABLE EMPLOYEES ALREADY!

*coughs*

Ahem.

[Lumin]

Maybe reliable employees are hard to find because everyone would rather do everything for themselves? (Heck, I'm guilty of that too, but as long as the game allows me to keep doing it...)

I think that "loner" characters should be able to make it on their own, hunting or farming with a few simple tools. But anything beyond basic survival should require team work, trade, organization...and yes, specialized jobs.