discourage eating raw foods

[Rumaan]

I am talking of about 1% change per five years with respect to base limits. Let's say each character starts with 500 base points. Over five years, if the character eats enough each year his/her limit increases to 505. And the cap can be between 520-550 depending on genes. So, for a character to reach 550 it would take 50 in game years, assuming the character eats enough every year for fifty years.

So, I don't think it tilts the balance in favor of anyone anymore than regular sparring does. If you are still worried, genes for good fighting skill can result in cap of 520 while poor genes can result in a cap of 550.

[Arlequin]

In real life there are several problems that can appear when depending on raw food:

- Harvests happen only certain months. You don't just walk into Mordor and eat raw wild potatoes.
- Harvests are unpredictable year to year, so you always have to stretch the nutritional value of what you have harvested, just in case.
- You often save resources (water and fertilizer) making food easier to digest rather than farming more food.
- Sickness. You don't know where the harvester's hands have been or what water was used before the harvest.
- Too much raw fiber can make digestion a bit uncomfortable, which is bad if your job is very physical.
- Nutritional imbalance is more likely if you don't have a culture of cooking mixed foods.

[CrashBlizz]

In real life...

Can't be used as a convincing arguement. There are plenty of things you can do in cantr that you can't do in RL. And vice versa.

[Rusalka]

Cantr is a society simulator and exporting/importing food is a very important thing in economy. Probably every country could run on just bread, rice and patatoes, but it's not heppening. Even in poor countries they have variety of meals. So the question we need to ask is why people eat different kinds of food

All the answers are here:

1. It is tasty
2. It's easy to obtain
3. It cheap
4. It is healthy
5. anything i missed?

1. We can't do much about it, or at least I have no idea how

2. This works already. It's in the location so people eat it.

3. Same as nr 2. And because it is easy and cheap nobody bothers with trading.

4. This is the point we totally ignoring in Cantr, and I'll focus on it.

We know that some meals are more healthier then others, and the simpliest answer why is because of its chemical composition. It's written on almost every package. The amount of carbohydrates, fat, and proteins. There are also listed some special ingridients like vitamins, salts and other nutrients.

I don't want to make it extremly complex but I guess it would be enough if we just add 4 attributes tu every food in Cantr:

A: Carbohydrates
B: Fat
C: Proteins
D: Vitamins

Basically, everybody would still be able to eat whatever she/he wants but without proper diet which fill ABCD bars (to 70% on avarage) she/he would never be able to have 0% triedness. It could also affect character's strenght nad his physique.

That is just the beginning. If we menage to implement some kind of such system, then we can add other effects.

[SekoETC]

Vitamins could also affect natural healing. Currently nobody has natural healing so if you could get such with eating better, it would only be an improvement, not a loss. But vitamins tend to come from unprepared foods, I guess especially what is or was marked as dual action foods in Cantr, except that RD has been trying to eliminate those. If everything was made eatable with the eat button regardless of if you need the healing or energy, as long as you aren't too full, everything could become dual action foods.

Taste could be handled with a happiness bar, although some people have said they would quit if such a thing was ever implemented.

[Rusalka]

I just called it vitamins, but D attribute should cover all special ingridients like cellulose or Flavonoids. So we don't have to stick so much to real values. Game balance is more important.

[Piscator]

This sounds rather complicated. Not only would we have to assign nutritional values to every food in game, we also couldn't avoid getting regions with a deficit of one of the nutrients.

I'd prefer a simplified version on the assumption that a varied diet is a healthy diet, in other words grant a bonus to people who consume multiple types of food (even if it's just raw, baked and fried potatoes).

[CrashBlizz]

Taste could be handled with a happiness bar, although some people have said they would quit if such a thing was ever implemented.

You really can see their point. People haven't joined cantr to spend days searching out and cooking different foods just to keep the base attributes they started with.

[Rusalka]

It's all about balancing it properly. I believe that deficient of any nutrient shouldn't have a strong influence on health anyway. Adding values to everything is a longterm job, but we would start from having everything at maximum levels, and then carefully lower things down.

How would you code bunus for eating various food?

Having different types of nutrients means that cooked/prepared food will have much better values then raw food. It's not very realistic but would wok better in Cantr.

Let's try t make an example:

Every cantrian will be able to have 100 points of each nutrient. Every bar will fall down eg 5 points every day, doesn't matter if he eats or not.

We could then divide meals for 3 basic levels:
1. raw food - eating just this will keep one stat on high level and others falling
2. easy prepared food - keeps 2 stats on high level
3. hard prepared food - keeps 3 stats on high level

Example: Patatoes (raw food) stats: (Protein, Fat, Carbohydrates) P:3, F:0, C:7

So eating just patatoes, after one day char will have P:98, F:95, C:100

It will take a while (1 year in example above) to have F stat on 0 level, and 2 years for P stat.

We can mess with numbers a lot to make it the way we want.

Another thing is when somebody continues to have more then one stat obove 100 he starts to get bold so we would also have to make some meals that keep stats on the same level.

[Piscator]

This really sounds like a lot of effort for a thing few people would enjoy. Many people don't even care what they eat in real life. Forcing our players to watch what their (up to 15) characters eat and create a diet plan for them (to exaggerate a little) sounds like a lot of needless micromanagement.

We also still have plenty of things that need balancing and number-tweaking, so adding a new point to our list is pretty much the last thing we need.

How would you code bunus for eating various food?

My suggestion would be to have a checkbox that allows chars to eat twice (or thrice) per day, provided that they eat a different foodstuff each time. (E.g. potatoes for breakfast, carrots for lunch and smoked meat for dinner.) As a reward, chars would for example work 5% faster per extra meal.

This would a) give incentive to acquire more than one type of food and b) increase the total consumption of food, while characters who can't afford the extra meals wouldn't be seriously disadvantaged.

[Arlequin]

In case anyone suggests that adding a penalty to raw food would make things even more difficult, in my experience the eating sickness has been practically erradicated, animals aren't at all as fierce as they used to be, and the most dangerous were replaced by weaker ones. The enviroment is an order of magnitude milder than it used to be.

[Rusalka]

If something is needless or not depends on point of view. I always think first about benefits that an implementation give. I guess my intentions here aren't clear. Making nutrition more complex has only one goal: to encourage people to trade food.

I don't even thing about any real penalties here. I would rather give some bonus to people eating better prepared stuff.

Many people don't even care what they eat in real life.

So do in Cantr. The concept is to let everyone eat whatever they want, but give possibility to have some benefits from struggling with all of that kitchen stuff we already have. And it is impossible to prepare some meals without traveling or trading.

I would love to see it more popular.

[CrashBlizz]

I think it comes down to the fact if you want to eat lots of different food then you go right ahead, nobody is stopping you, nobody cares if you do.

Don't, however, force everyone else to just to keep up with the benefits you're trying to give yourself. People don't want to stop what they're doing with every charrie every year to cook diferent things for two or three days so we have a balanced diet just like in RL. Or to be forced to have at least one of their people as a full time cook because every town now needs a full time chef. "But theres loads of food around already" - bull! Get out the main few towns and actually have a look around cantr. Lots of places are struggling for food at the moment.

The only suggestion here that made any sense was Piscator's:

My suggestion would be to have a checkbox that allows chars to eat twice (or thrice) per day, provided that they eat a different foodstuff each time. (E.g. potatoes for breakfast, carrots for lunch and smoked meat for dinner.) As a reward, chars would for example work 5% faster per extra meal.

This would a) give incentive to acquire more than one type of food and b) increase the total consumption of food, while characters who can't afford the extra meals wouldn't be seriously disadvantaged.

However, the problem with this is you'll need the extra work speed to catch up with the time spent making the extra food. It'll cancel each other out. So will people bother to do it?

[Rusalka]

However, the problem with this is you'll need the extra work speed to catch up with the time spent making the extra food. It'll cancel each other out. So will people bother to do it?

I thought the same However, everything depends on proper balancing.

People don't want to stop what they're doing with every charrie every year to cook diferent things for two or three days so we have a balanced diet just like in RL. Or to be forced to have at least one of their people as a full time cook because every town now needs a full time chef.

Nobody should be forced to do anything of that. I believe the benefits/penalties shouldn't be big, changing to more then 15-20% of efficiency - even less then you can lose having awkward skills. So probably only bigger societies would care.

Or to be forced to have at least one of their people as a full time cook because every town now needs a full time chef.

That sound actually as a good idea. There are full time cooks already, but with this change they would become more needed. I believe that more important jobs make more interesting game.


I'm still far from sure, how it could work, but sharing ideas I have, so somebody can point out weaknesses, or add something interesting.

[Piscator]

However, the problem with this is you'll need the extra work speed to catch up with the time spent making the extra food. It'll cancel each other out. So will people bother to do it?

Well, the numbers were just examples, but considering how easy it is at the moment to get food, the bonusses wouldn't need to be much higher. Chars rarely have to spend more than 5-10% of their time gathering food.