Suggestion on feeding & health

[Jur Schagen]

Suggestion on feeding & health.

Game rule changes:
- remove the 100% max from the health;
- automatically eat a proportiante mixture of the food types in inventory;
- change (the majority of) the healing foods into regular food.

At feeding time, the character eats a proportianate amount of food types available (when he has potatoes, carrots, and rice, he would eat 34 potatoes, 14 carrots, and 30 rice). Based on the food eaten a "target health" is calculated, for example 75 + (15 * no. of food types eaten). Thus if you eat 3 food types, your target health is 75+(15*3)=120.
Your current health is adjusted 10% of the difference between current health and "target health". If you are at 100 and your target is 120, you gain (120 - 100) * 10% = 2 health points. The other way around is also possible: if you are at 120, and you run out of food types so your target drops to 90, you lose (120-90)*10%=3 health points. Round up so if your target health is constant your actual health will eventually become equal to target health.

Effects of "no food at all" wouldn't be changed, or maybe a target health of zero could be considered.

Advantages:
- realism (food diversity increases health);
- chars get an incentive to look for different food stuffs; trading of food will be more usefull;
- military use of healing foods is decreased (it is currently ridiculous how a sabre wound can be healed immediatly by eating vast amounts of onions); however they are still usefull in increasing target health and thus healing rate;
- body building bragging possibilities ("Hey look my health has reached 170!");
- expandability of this system, i.e. in the future different elements could be incorporated into target health calculation:
--- clothing in realtion to climate;
--- type of labour;
--- resting and furniture;
--- etc etc.

What do you think?

How about the smileys, would we need more of them or just change their meaning?

I do not think labour efficiency should be further raised after reaching 100.

[Appleide]

I didn't exactly read all that since its late here... If you keep eating in Rl you only get fat and *weaker* because you have to carry your fat with no extra muscles... so it should be eating too much creates a substance called "fat" it stays in your inventory and count towards the limit, ti cannot be taken off unless you "starve" and at that point your health dcreases normally AND your fat amount decreases, but maybe make it your health decreases at half rate, that'll make fat a "little" useful

[trage]

He was talking about if you eat a diversity of food you get more health (kind of) and I don't think he mentioned fat... or were you just suggesting this now?

[Anthony Roberts]

Disadvantages:

- Large amount of code that needs to be changed.
- The game has been set up like this for a long time, changing it would be confusing for the players
- Too complex of a system.
- Things are already planned, I think, that are contrary to this proposed system.
- A person in can not be healthier than 100%. How can you be 120% healthy? Or 170% healthy? Now it's sounding more like a video game.

Although, in the end, I do agree that some food diversity system should be put in, but it's not important. If that happened, then it might turn into a food group and vitamin thing down the road, and then the game would be even more complicated. It's meant to be simple.

[Jur Schagen]

Code change? Well I think the current system is something like:

fullyFed:=false
for each item in inventory
..if item is foodstuff then
....eat (max daily amount)
....if daily amount eaten then
......fullyFed:=true
......break loop
if not fullyFed then
..hunger


should be changed to:

foodCount:=0
for each item in inventory
..if item is foodstuff then
....foodcount:=foodcount+1

for each item in inventory
..if item is foodstuff then
....eat (max daily amount / foodcount)
if not fullyFed then
..hunger

If this would result in hunger on the turn that one of your foodstuffs runs out, the original loop might be kept before the "hunger" check, to allow the char to eat the remainder of a "random" food like it is now.

All in all, not too much of a code change I'd say.

Confusing players? The players have to constantly adjust to new circumtances. Not being able to dig for iron any more, needing salt in the steel tree, it is al there. Besides, since feeding on a single food will only result in a health drop to 85, players don't need to care about it; all they need to know is "if you wish to increase health, increase your food diversity".

Complex system? How's that? There's so many systems in the game that are far more complex (needing resources, tools, and machineries to produce items, for example). This system is basically very simple. Players don't need to know the exact math behind it...

Already being planned? I'd like to see those changes. Is there a design document for Cantr 2?

170 % health a problem? Well drop the "percent" behind the figure when reporting health. If it needs a unit just call it "health point" or something like that.

I don't think, in the end, that the game is intended to be simple, otherwise we wouldn't be constantly adding things to it. Isn't it intended as a society simulator and thus constantly adding systems makes it more and more "real"? Although I do agree that playability should always remain an issue. I do not see how this system overly complicates the game. Again, players don't need to know the math, "increase food types to increase health" would be enough.

[Appleide]

yay! would this be implemented? (I still don't understand the code properly...)

[Anthony Roberts]

I'm positive there would be much more code than that. A lot of things to check.

About confusing the players... This is different than Iron or Steel making. Those are things that require to be found out in the game, and worked upon from there. But, a person already knows how to eat, but they know nothing about having to eat a variety of foods to stay healthy. New players, especially, will wonder why their health is constantly dropping, and they'll assume something is wrong - Since, everything in game needs to be found out, in game.

They don't need to know the exact math? Reading what you propose, I think you're wrong. If they're missing even enough of one resource, they'll lose health. They'll need to figure out how many of each resource they eat a day, then find the proportion if it in relation to the two others they'll eat. Sounds like they'll need to have fun figuring that out, let alone knowing what three foods the system will choose for them to eat.
"Increase Food types to Increase Health" isn't good enough. It would need to be more like "Increase Food types and food Quantities to Increase Health" - Which is useless. Who wants to waste 10,000 grams of their room on holding Carrots, Potatoes, and Rice?


I feel Cantr is supposed to be simple. If it were too complicated, nothing would get done in game. If Iron were made with all the resources that it actually is, in real life, with all the tools and machines... people would have a hell of a time making Iron. But it was condensed, to three resources, and one machine. Simple and basic. It is a society simulator, but not a "Real Life" society simulator. As to why it's a "simulator" - Not a "clone". It's not mimicing real life issues at all, it's making its own issues.

[The Crazed Sheep]

As much as I hate to agree with Uber-Elitist-Demi-God-Mod-Authority-Figures, I have to agree with Anthony if only for the sake of simplicity.

[Anthony Roberts]

As much as I hate to agree with Uber-Elitist-Demi-God-Mod-Authority-Figures, I have to agree with Anthony if only for the sake of simplicity.

You act as if I'm an evil person! I'm not THAT bad.

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

You act as if I'm an evil person! I'm not THAT bad.

psst anthony hide the horns pointy tail and pitchfork when saying that mate

[Appleide]

But your health never drops below 80 with that system... Isn't that right?

[Jur Schagen]

But your health never drops below 80 with that system... Isn't that right?

Sure does... the original hunger loop stays in if you haven't got any food at all... let alone wild boars and sabre maniacs...

There don't seem to be much support for the idea though.

[Appleide]

Yea well i was talking about if you don't eat enough food types it wont drop below 80... is that right?

[Jur Schagen]

In fact, you don't even drop below 90:
75+(15 * one food type) = 90.

The formula was just a suggestion though, the parameters (75 and 15) are very much open to debate... it's just that people don't debate it, probably because they feel it's a bad idea...

,

[Doug R.]

Bump. It's an interesting idea, and it would make trade in food necessary, which would be a welcome addition to the game.