Hunger as a cost for mutation use


So a few mutations ( Mycus Sporogenesis,Mycus Bloom,Burrowing,Insect Wings,Web Weaver,WEB_ROPE,Omnicellular, and Vine Sprouter) use hunger (and thirst, and rarely fatigue) as a cost when activated.

It seems that every other physical activity in game uses fatigue, at one point clearing wreckage also used hunger/thirst but I think it was removed, so why does using mutation uses hunger ?

Wouldn’t it make more sense if it uses fatigue only, and then fatigue consumption would affect hunger/thirst ?

If its for balance reason, because stamina recovers too fast, this PR would make it more viable I think.


Just weighing in my opinion, I think it’s to do with the fact that mutation abilities are usually fairly extreme. Digging or running is a normal human action, and would probably be balanced out by the time spent standing in place crafting or reading. Buzzing wings, growing spores, popping out slimes, making webs, those are all going to be massively energy intensive, especially the ones that actually generate mass. Compare it to something like using the hydraulic muscles bionic, and that uses a fairly substantial amount of bionic power to achieve something similar.

That said, it would make far more sense for there to be an exertion level based on what you’re doing, and have food/water requirements based on that. There might even be room for an athleticism/labor skill or an endurance stat.


Short version? Caloric intake against exertion and anything that is physically active.

edit- oops, I forgot your query to fatigue. Fatigue is the short term strain due to a general lack of oxygen and “air” in your blood. You fatigue when running due to this reason. Yes you burn calories and need water. But you bounce back after you catch your breath. Eating is the fuel in which your body burns.


Depends how you define fatigue, but it’s generally more longterm than being out of breath. It can include soreness of muscles from overuse, mental exertion, all kinds of stuff.

That said, when OP said fatigue, did he mean using up stamina or is there some sort of status effect I don’t know about?


Sorry I meant stamina.

Yes but there should be some uncoupling between burning calories and hunger, and it’s what this PR begins to introduce I think with a stat for Hunger and one for starvation.

Buzzing wing and burrowing are physical activity so it would make sense if it worked like other physical activity, albeit being more stamina intensive.

And for the ones that generate mass it might make sens to have a dedicated pool of energy, similar to CBM energy, that would fill itself from the hunger (or starvation) pool and represent the actual accumulation of mass and energy necessary for spinning web or growing vines.


It’s a possibility, but it seems overcomplicated to me. Giving those kinds of mutations a flat hunger cost seems like the way to go.


I didn’t actually know this was a thing. That’s good for future reference!



Not sure what you mean mate. Yes your body will pass food that it doesn’t need in regard to energy. But in terms of the game. I’m not certain I follow why you would uncouple calories and hunger. The player character moves almost all the time in the game. I suppose driving may make the character less hungry. But on foot or bicycle should make the character pretty hungry like a person really would feel.



A basic reading of the PR he linked suggests that the idea is to separate energy stored in the body from food currently in the stomach (or lack thereof), instead of just having a simplified hunger value. When you eat you gain food in stomach, food in stomach is slowly converted to energy in body. Energy use is taken from the body. It’s neat because you can do things like have foods that fill your stomach but don’t give that much energy, and it makes starvation and malnourishment far more realistic.


In game it seems that Hunger is both a measure of available energy AND the feeling of hunger. Which feels wrong to me, you could be the fatest man alive you will still be hungry at least 3 times a day ( and probably more than that because obesity tend to disrupt the way your body senses the available energy).

The feeling of hunger is a cyclic thing that operate on at least two time scales. On a short time scale it’s regulated by the time of the day, the fullness of your stomach and the amount of calories you ingested, on a longer time scale it’s influenced by the amount of fat stored in your body.

The way the game works right now hunger is just a measure of what you last ate, it feels a bit like you’re always starving, or like every calorie intake you have is consumed.
Sitting still reading book all day long can also be a big part of a play through, and yet even if you feast in the morning and do nothing of your day you’ll be famished by the end of the day. It feels especially weird with the extrem metabolism mutation, where does all those calories go ?

I’m not sure I made my point clearer but anyway this should be mostly fixed by the introduction of the starvation variable.
I guess the main thing I meant is that Hunger is an approximation of your available energy and not your actual reserves

To get back on topic it would make more sense if matter consuming action would actually pull from your reserves : Starvation stat. And the exhausting ones should pull from Stamina.


An interesting point. But something not really to counter it…more of a “food for thought” :wink:

When sitting and reading not doing much of anything at all. Your body will process the food and pump it into your bowels for disposal. You would still feel pretty starved after you just ate if you were tense maybe?

You can build an appetite by sitting if you were frightened the length of the sit. So if you add fear to the game. That would be a lovely idea!

Actually…I’ll go add this idea to the idea section. This would be a cool function in game.


How the hell do you model FEAR ingame?


You start with a company without scruples taking in a psychic little girl…


Took me a minute, but I got it. And to be fair, they didn’t really take her in…


–Adding fear is ‘easy.’ Especially if you make enemies of young, forced-to-be-bald, physic little girl that was ‘adopted’ by the government.
Balancing fear is the problem.