Board Thread:Suggestions/@comment-24108228-20140713003210

My last hunger overhaul got mostly support, but then scar made a joke about "Cooking with Daisy", and it died. Taking in previous criticism into account, this is my new strategy for making cooks awesome. =Saturation= Saturation is a new stat that is shown on top of the hunger bar. It is an orange bar, which will overlap the yellow one once hunger is maxed out. It serves as a buffer for hunger, and has positive side effects.

Effect
If you fill up your hunger bar to full, there is no point in eating anymore. The issue is, most cooks, farmers, or fishers, would be perfectly fine eating off the landscape, or hardly need to try to feed their tribe. Its easy. Hunger doesn't really mean much. Saturation is the solution to this.

Once you have 100 hunger, consuming certain items will increase your saturation. The amount of saturation is worked out as follows: If I have an item of food with a max saturation of 50, and a base saturation of 5, cooked by a player with cooking 6, that means the food restores 5 + 6/2 (which is 8) saturation per portion. If however, I was already at a saturation of 50, I would reduce that value by 1 on consumption, therefore I would only get 7 saturation per portion. If I was at 55 saturation, I would reduce it by 2, 60 would reduce it by four, and so forth. Therefore, once I am at 85 saturation, eating that item of food would no longer improve my saturation (although it would already have expired it's usefulness far before that point, by the time it is only restoring a couple saturation, it's probably not worth the food you are consuming).

For some more examples, if I had an item baked by a baker of level 10 and a base saturation of 10, with a max saturation of 100, and my saturation was at 130, I would do: 10 + 10/2 - (130 - 100)/5 15 - 30/5 15 - 6 To get a result of 6 saturation per portion.

However, since a buffer isn't all that useful when put into practice, and would generally just be a little boost for cooks who hardly even needed it anyway, there is another perk to saturation. Damage buffs.

If my saturation level is at 10, I would divide that by five to get to 2. I would add this to my current base damage, resulting in an extra 4 damage on headshot. This caps at 25, meaning that a player with 125 saturation is actually over one tier higher (damage wise) with tool they are using. However, owing to the way saturation works in terms of the soft cap, and how most mithrilites usually don't double up as a master chef, it would be very uncommon to see this being abused, and would mostly be just an excuse to buff up well fed tribes, allow a chef to defend themselves, and most importantly, interlink survival and combat (the thing that should be important, and the thing that is important) together.

Saturation Tables
I'll regret doing this, but here is a list of every single item's saturation value: Yes, the meats are supposed to be underpowered. They're far too easy to mass produce. If it seems like I missed something, let me know. I probably did.

Why this should be added
Normally I write this bit before the suggestion, as it puts people into a better mindset for thinking its a good idea. However, since this is complicated and extremely thought out, knowledge of the mechanics are required for me to explain all the hidden trinkets.

Firstly, this was designed to tackle the following problems: No Incentive for High Level Cooking Occasional Raiding Single Dimensional Combat All of these I feel make the game seem less fun, or less immersive. Taking single dimensional combat as an example, our current system is rather revolved around trying to get good weapons for cheap, high damage values, and most importantly, who can it instantly kill? This is a rather mathematical and analytical approach, and while that's still a good thing, the game is more immersive if you can just sink into it and take intuitive steps towards becoming better. If hunger plays a part in combat, it is no longer all about smithing, nor is the iron sword forever doomed to not kill anyone instantly (or rockma armour protecting you from being killed instantly by even the highest damaging attack that can be done).

Cooking Incentive
Firstly, the lack of incentive for higher level cooking. This is something that bites me in the butt a lot when doing food suggestions, as I have an awesome food (chocolate for example), which everyone likes, and editors have said "I'd be happy to add this, but there isn't all that much incentive to make it.", but nobody can actually find one good enough that doesn't make it really OP. This also applies to things like cheese, pies, and other foods. Sure, I'm a mithrilite and I could trade some steel with the master cook on bento for a load of pies, but why do that when I could just kill cows for a couple minutes?

A lot of tribes I join/own/visit don't actually pursue pies unless they actually have apples or berries growing on their island, despite the fact they collect wheat from abroad anyway. This is because things like bread are far easier to make and mass produce than pies, which require apples or berries, and let's face it, making five bread will provide a tribe of 6 with enough food to last over ten minutes. It takes roughly a minute to create six bread, and with the amount you can collect at natural wheat spawnpoints, you could quite easily make 20, and not have to do any work for well over half an hour. Being a cook is easy, requires little to no skill, and gets you into effectively any tribe you like.

Now let's say we have this new system. Pies and such are what your tribe will want you to make, and they will want you to make much more of them. They'll also want you to have a high cooking skill, otherwise your food will be terrible and not particularly saturating. To meet these demands, chances are you will need to set up a farm. You will also want to do a little preparation before you go to a mithrilite tribe and say "Hey, can I be your cook?". This is what the cooking skill should be like. Taking advantage of the intricate farming skill, requiring you to practice, and most importantly, being a large part of life as a survivalist. No longer is hunger that little thing nobody cares about. It's now a valuable combat mechanic, and one powerful enough to completely turn the tides in a swordfight.

Not only this, but as we all know, a lot of people will have to miss out on all the fun over at Daisy's kitchen. Does this mean they don't want the perks? Of course not! This will mean that bluesteel gods will have reason to negotiate, befriend, and trade with people who haven't yet made themselves a forge. Anyone who played the P2P servers will know, when the mithrilites help you instead of kill you, the game is so much more fun.

Occasional Raiders
Next on the agenda is how to deter Occational Raiding. Well, this may not be the only part of the solution, but its a great leap on the way there. The concept is that despite the fact soloist mithrilite raiders will have access to saturating foods, and will most likely eat a couple steak before they start to kill your poor iron tribe, your iron tribe has an advantage. They have the power of pies.

Because when you think about it, the only reason a tribe is slower than a mithrilite is because they spend more time on luxuries than tools. If the entire tribe was mining iron and coal, and hunting down bluesteel resources, it would be a different story, but since the tribe is busy making themselves a nice cottage with lots of pies on the table, they don't have time for mining. Should the fact that they specialise in bakery affect their ability to fend off a bored mithrilite? Well, that's debatable, but it is certainly more fun for the majority group if it shouldn't.

When people say, "Nerf Raiding", they often try to do it in robust ways such as "Make armour suck.", "Make tribe members deal extra damage." or "Make fire spread REALLY slowly.". The issue is that a lot of tribes don't actually deserve to be saved from raiders. If the bottom line is "They're lazy", then they shouldn't get free protection. If they're hard at work, they should still be able to hold their own, even if they're not hard at work mining mithril. Plus, in real life, a starving knight on horseback would most likely be defeated by a village full of well fed, healthy, and fit villagers who were armed with primitive weapons.

Fortunately for people like Kincaid, this doesn't completely eliminate raiders. Sure, your opponent that is using stone and iron weaponry has now been promoted to using steel and iron weapons, but if your prepared too, your steel weapon is now a mithril weapon, and your trusty mithril sword is now a super speedy bluesteel sword. It only creates problems for those who say "Bored. I'll go raid that tribe, sounds like fun.", as they are unlikely to get a high saturation, or have particularly good tools to make up for it.

Single Dimensional Combat
Ok, when I say combat is single dimensional, I tell a lie. There is a huge number of factors to consider. However, they still all follow the same basis. Better Smithing = Better Weapons This is both unrealistic and boring. A well fed and fit soldier is capable of killing someone with slightly better weapons, who doesn't have such good health or physical posture. If there is one skill that determines if you can beat someone in PvP, that makes it rather linear. By adding what is effectively a potion of strength, it makes combat more interesting, as if you use your food at the right time, you can defeat opponents stronger than you, and by choosing your cook wisely, you can have the upper hand against people with a similar mindset. It makes combat much more interesting, as there is more factors than who has the better weapon.

Epilogue
I do hope you agree, post opinions into comments and the poll below. This took a while to write, and posting a reply could help keep this active for just a little bit longer until one of the editors decides to finally give an opinion. Saturation? Yes. Yes, but different to what you said. No. Remove hunger altogether.  