Wednesday, 9th November 2011, 10:00 by greepish
I haven't played the food reform, so I'm afraid I can't comment on it, however, I do have an idea that will
A) make food more interesting and
B) simplify it!
at the same time.
It's pretty simple. there's two parts:
Buffs: Anyone can eat any food at any time. Yes, even poison/rotting/mutagenic corpses will give satiation, and even when full or very full.
However, you also make satiation much more difficult.
Nerfs:
A) Chunk satiation is drastically reduced, according to herbivore/carnivore. Carnivores get slightly less than as of today, normal players get much less, herbivore get drastically less.
B)Sickness has no limit, and potion of healing doesn't CURE it, just reduces it (usually completely, but not if you ate a whole stone giant for example). Both saprovore and herbivore/carnivore affect amount of sickness.
C)Herbivore/carnivore don't affect when you can eat, they just affect sickness. Carnivores get little if any sickness, herbivores get sick from even eating clean meat
D)All early game food sources are reduced. Sustenance gives a single lower metabolism, gourmand only reduces sickness, Hive's food stash is drastically lowered (instead of ~30 combs, 20 jellys, perhaps 10 combs 4 jellies). Really, I enjoy OgFEs, supposed to suffer food problems from low int, but once I hit hive I'm saved from food problems for good, just have to hold out for necromutation without really worrying too much. That shouldn't happen.
Result? Much easier on newbies AND more varied! Now food becomes a real issue, and if you're particularly suffering for food throughout the game you can make the choice of harmful effects if you have to. Newbies, and better players will have food become a problem, but the difference is less life and death so much as choosing between stat loss,rot and mutation (or if you're a very good player, none of the above), and using potions. Furthermore, since it's simple and you can eat any time you like, adding extra tiers (clean/yucky/contaminated/really contaminated/freaking gross), is perfectly fine without needing a tutorial.
Lastly, while some of you might think people would would sit at very full throughout the game under this system, you haven't thought it through. It's much better, with increased sickness, to try and wait until getting clean corpses, so it's still the game of risk of "how far to starving do I go before I give in to contaminted/permafood" and "should I waste heal potions on sickness"
Really the only major problem I see are a few areas with massive clean meat, like yaktaur packs. Smaller packs of clean food like blink frogs would be fine since chunks give less satiation. One other problem would be only carnivores would have an easy time as berserkers, but hey berserkers are too easy anyways. Also kobolds and high int caster species might be a lot stronger relatively. But again, since that tends to be their only strong suit, it's somewhat balanced already.
Anyways, that's just my thoughts on the matter.
Edit: This would fit perfectly with cjo's post as well.
Edit: And to increase strategy further, have food cost more at stores (needed anways), bee vaults give less food like the hive would (needed anyways), and have acquirement give MORE food (since rarely used).