Eating should always be a single-turn action

[duvessa]

Recently eating was made interruptible, presumably so that default autoeat stops killing people. While this makes autoeat no longer suicidal to use, it also results in a lot of prompt and message spam.
In the past, eating was kept multi-turn so that there was a larger penalty for doing it in combat. However, now slices of pizza, beef jerky, and fruit can be eaten in a single action, so this penalty no longer meaningfully exists; one would have to run out of pizza/jerky/fruit altogether for multi-turn eating to have gameplay significance. Which simply doesn't happen.
Since this has been the status quo for many versions now, I assume the devteam is okay with eating in combat having only a 1-turn penalty. Therefore, eating chunks, rations, and royal jellies should also take 1 turn, because it would be a big quality of life improvement without affecting balance at all.

(Note: replies containing "remove food" are off-topic and will result in a 1000 year ban)

[removeelyvilon]

I reckon this would make it largely irrelevant to have different nutrition levels of rations (full rations, half rations, fruit).

[archaeo]

(Note: replies containing "remove food" are off-topic and will result in a 1000 year ban)

I don't regard it as off-topic to note that autoeating reduces the already paltry impact and consequences of food, and this change would reduce those factors even further, and at that point why do we even have food? If eating is always a single-turn action, why bother having different types of food at all? If it's always a single-turn action, how is it fundamentally different from a single-turn paralysis with endless special cases caused by fighting/casting for too long? If a game mechanic requires "quality of life improvements" that effectively make that mechanic invisible, why is the mechanic still in the game?

If devs want to keep food, they should make it a consequential part of the game. Effectively hiding it from players through continued simplification and automation seems like the worst possible way to go.

[Siegurt]

I am under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that the idea is to winnow it down until it literally (as opposed to *practically* or *nearly*) has no impact, when it can actually be removed. Taking away its superfluous impacts leaves us with a clearer picture of what still actually needs to be dealt with.

Personally i would like it if it had a real impact, and was interesting, and wasn't tedious, in short it if was a completely different thing than it is now, i haven't seen a good, real proposal for what that would look like, so i guess i am good with it taking up less of my time and attention for as long as its impacts aren't usually important.

[genericpseudonym]

(Note: replies containing "remove food" are off-topic and will result in a 1000 year ban)

Implement this suggestion and then remove all food except pizza and fruit.

The only meaningful distinctions between food types is single-turn vs. multi-turn and veggy vs. meat (plus fruit being fedhas ammo), but the unnecessarily large variety in food types creates annoying inventory clutter.

Just have one universal food (pizza is cooler than rations) and give carnivores and vegetarians a penalty to nutrition from picking out the inedible stuff.

Other stuff like cheese or royal jelly can just be changed into weird "fruit" tiles, and then you can give vaults the option to specify which tile their fruit uses.

[duvessa]

I don't regard it as off-topic to note that autoeating reduces the already paltry impact and consequences of food

Except it doesn't. Autoeat was originally a piece of lua that went in your rcfile. It's like autofight: it is solely an interface feature and involves no actual mechanical changes to the game (except when it was bugged to let you eat two pieces of food at once, or eat food while changing armour, etc).

[ydeve]

...the already paltry impact and consequences of food, and this change would reduce those factors even further,

No it doesn't. In-combat eating already takes one turn. This change would make out-of-combat eating also take one turn, the only impact of which is reducing message spam.

Actually, you're right, since the main impact/consequence of food is message spam.

[infinitevox]

This would get rid of the somewhat meaningful interaction with Hungry Ghosts.

If you're in a fight with a Hungry Ghost and another monster, your choices are:
1. Eat fruit for a little satiation at the cost of 1 turn, which could end up as a net gain of zero if the ghost hits you again
2. Eat a ration for lots of satiation at the cost of giving up free hits on yourself, but gaining a couple turns with which to attack and not starve to death

[ydeve]

There is no meaningful interaction with Hungry Ghosts, since they are speed 10 AND deal very little damage. Even if you can't kill them they're less dangerous than goblins and kobolds. At least goblins/kobolds can carry dangerously branded (distortion/chaos) weapons and zap wands.

[HANFGEIST]

So you can skin a quokka in a turn and carve a chunk of raw meat from its gizzard, but eating that foul slab will take you twice as long.
And if you double hungry ghosts hunger attack or half the nutrition gained from eating all is well.
Just get rid of the damn "continue eating YES or NO" prompt, it makes me HULK out.

[nago]

There is no meaningful interaction with Hungry Ghosts, since they are speed 10 AND deal very little damage. Even if you can't kill them they're less dangerous than goblins and kobolds. At least goblins/kobolds can carry dangerously branded (distortion/chaos) weapons and zap wands.

They actually make my finger move from tab to e and then linger to ctrl-q so I'd say their brand is at least as much as dangerous as them

[Utis]

If devs want to keep food, they should make it a consequential part of the game. Effectively hiding it from players through continued simplification and automation seems like the worst possible way to go.

I beg to differ. If anything, I'd like to see nutrition fully automated and hidden behind a "food" resource comparable to how gold works. The point of food is to make excesses in high-hunger casting prohibitive.

Re OP: Would be nice if at the same time the amount of food items would be reduced to two: One vegetarian, one carnivorous.

[jwoodward48ss]

Oh. My. Pakellas.

How incredibly obvious! It's a literal food "clock" (counter).

IT IS THE PROMISED ONE! THE SOLUTION TO ALL FOOD DEBATES!

...unless there's a problem with it and I missed something. Is it as good as I make it seem?

[genericpseudonym]

Oh. My. Pakellas.

How incredibly obvious! It's a literal food "clock" (counter).

IT IS THE PROMISED ONE! THE SOLUTION TO ALL FOOD DEBATES!

...unless there's a problem with it and I missed something. Is it as good as I make it seem?

Just having a counter that goes up whenever you find food would be a great way to preserve the pointless and irrelevant part of the food system (the theoretical potential to actually run out and starve, which almost never happens) while ditching the part with an actual gameplay effect (hunger costs on spells and abilities, which are less a "you will run out of food" thing and more a "you have to spend a turn in combat eating" thing)