Survival Hunger Meter

Maybe some players don't have as much difficulty finding meaty monsters. Speaking for my own experience, I can't find enough, not even at night and not even in the mines (which I've not explored completely).

I'm sure it has to do with the monster generation code for garden biomes. I'm not the only one to observe these things. For example:

They really, really need to reduce the occurrence of Unique Monsters on starting worlds!

If you were your character and you were marooned on an alien planet, I think you would give staying alive a higher priority than fixing your ship.

I'm not the only one complaining on how fast food rots and how difficult it is to avoid starvation when just starting out. Look around and you'll find others. Though, by now, I'd figure many have installed one or more mods to fix those things.

No, I'm not expecting to find all the resources I need on my starting planet. Nor do I expect to build an "ideal" setup right away. All I'm complaining about is frustration in dying from starvation several times and having to spend most of my time trying to avoid it.

Fixing my ship enough to fly involves searching for core fragments and other important stuff. That means exploring further than I already have. I have to spend most of my time near my farm merely to avoid starvation. And I'm beset by hordes of Gleap and Nutmidge wherever I go. Hence my problem. Also, on my world, the gate is as far away from my start location as possible.

I would not call 4 cans of food a "bag full," especially with how fast that disappears. And there's a fine line between challenge and frustration.

Anyway, I'm not new to Starbound, by any means. I played the heck out of it back in 2014. This feels like a totally different game.

All I'm asking is for the devs to take a second look at the hunger system, especially with regard to the challenge posed to new players on their starting world. Please try to imagine, if only for a moment, that you've never played Starbound before and you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of what to do or not do starting out. Looking through that lens, this 1.0 version of Starbound is going to be a lot more challenging than it would be to a veteran or even someone who tried Nightly or Unstable for any length of time.

Except, I can't craft a simple wooden Kitchen Counter, a Fridge, or gain access to varied flora and fauna until I can get off the rock I was marooned on. To do that, I have to grow enough food to avoid starvation. Depending on how the RNG gods roll the dice, that can be a bitter, vicious cycle.

I've learned several things the hard way, such as how important it is to immediately start a farm, never start with Wheat (because we can't eat it), grow rice (because it never spoils), and get off your starting world as soon as possible. However, Metagaming - using knowledge that the player is aware of but that the character should not know - breaks game immersion. It rather ruins my suspension of disbelief, especially since some of these tricks to stay alive are non-obvious.

I have little doubt that I can get out of this rut if I can just get off this stupid starvation-trap of a rock. But that doesn't change how frustrating starting out can be to new players (or players who've been away for a very long time). And first impressions are very important to new players.

Also, I worry about how time-consuming it will be to feed myself even late into the game. I felt that the hunger system in the old Starbound was balanced just about right. This... this is too much.

Have you looked to see how popular the various hunger removal, hunger rebalance, rot removal, rot rebalance, creature rebalance, and farming rebalance mods are? Or, how about the popularity of automatic irrigation and automatic farming mods? The shear number and variety suggests that there are some serious balance issues that need to be looked into. I'm certain there would be a lot more voices complaining on the forms, here, except that many of them are using mods like these to "fix" the problem until the devs rebalance these things. (That, or complaining on Steam or Reddit, instead.)

 

You are not playing the right kind of game. If you want easy immersion watch a movie or play a rpg. If you want to enjoy survival in a sandbox game you want to learn and know everything, read a ton of wiki pages, design farm and share the designs with the community, and all. That is how minecraft survival is still interesting and popular, hunting pigs and cooking meat in a cobblestone furnace is not enjoyable very long.

 

I have made like four different characters since 1.0 came out in different universes. None of them have had a hard time finding meat. Maybe your one character is just unlucky Thundercraft?

 

I'll have to eat my earlier words (so to speak) and say that once you have a decent farm and can cook a few things, the hunger system really *does* seem more reasonable. I notice now that going around from place to place I am no longer constantly thinking about food, and now the management of it is about what I'd expect it to be. So, I still think it's insanely annoying in the beginning, and that it's *really* silly that you eat the amount of rich food you do, then can die in one day or so from starvation...but it does feel a lot less burdensome once you can make some semi-decent food.

I'm thinking maybe they should add in some "layers" to starvation, lower the price of canned goods for the new players/people who want simplified survival..and call it good.

Another fringe benefit of farming is the money, I have made more money farming than anything, it is pretty easy money once you can make things that sell for 100 pixels or so easily...I am not far along in the game either.

Until I was on other planets and decided to bother with farming, I just hunted with spears - really annoying but it seems like the only choice early on.

 

I'll concede that the game could give you a few more cans of food to start and place a sterner imperative on getting your food supply situated first and foremost.

While most people shouldn't have a problem managing hunger, it is conceivable that the procgen nature of the game can potentially make it more difficult than intended. if you start on a world with nothing but cotton and wheat and none of the monsters are butcherable, you're going to have a rough go of it. That not to say the hunger system doesn't work but, it does expect certain requirements to be met (flora and fauna that can immediately be processed into edible products) and randomly generated worlds can sometimes produce unexpected results.

Earlier builds of Starbound would start you with a small assortment of seeds to bootstrap your farm and give the player the subtle-not-so-subtle direction that eating and establishing a reliable food source are important. I don't think this was the most elegant solution but, it worked.

 

IRL, it can take a couple weeks to starve... in Starbound, we starve in a day... what the hell is wrong with the Starbound Races's Metabolisms...?

 

Yep, I guess they are all part tapeworm.

 

I had no issues with food or finding it I never actively hunted and I always traveled with a companion so we had to share all our food I do admit it was close at times but we had no issues and after we got out the first solar system and build a base we got a small farm which is really easy to attend to and very efficient. Then again maybe I was lucky? Cotton was really hard to get by though

 

One tip that might help.
In the outpost, on the ground level there is a kitchen table you can use (but not move).
So as soon as you get to the outpost (i.e. once you get 20 core fragments) you can cook bread at the outpost without titanium, or beating any bosses or leaving the first planet.
There is also a fridge there next to it which looks usable; but I've not bothered to try stocking it.

 

To all the people who complain that farming is hard en hunger meter depletes to much here is some advice,µfollow these steps and you will have like 4 fridges full with higher tier food!
But what about watering your plants you ask ? No need anymore ! just craft sprinklers they water your plants for you!

Here is my setup atm still need to make a water basin for my water plants and add like way more layers to the farm, still have a chest filled up with seeds



Step 1:
- Loot all plants you come across completely (meaning with your MM so the plant is destroyed and you get the fruits+ seeds.

Step 2:
- Play through the game until the point you can make durasteel bars ( Should be after the you obtained the 2nd keystone mission)

Step 3:
- Upgrade all your crafting benches that are possible, specially the foraging tools one.This is required to be able to make some sprinklers.

Step 4:
-Look for some planets with monkey people on them and kindly ask them to hand over the fridges they have (like 6 fridges will be enough to start with)
If anyone knows where to find bigger fridges that have more then 32 slots let me know pls
Fridges are most important since you need to be able to keep your ingredients and food fresh.

Step 5:
- Look for a place to build your farm. ( I choose for a barren planet without any weather effects or enemies, basically an empty planet)
For layout make sure you have an height of 9 blocks minimum and 16 blocks to the left and 16 to the right. Sprinklers can be placed in the middle so you end up with 15 blocks left and right.

Step 6:
-Craft a kitchen workbench and start making yummy food.

I got to this point without having to farm ore's, just played on a casual base until right after the 2nd keystone mission and had enough mats to make all this.
I have almost 6 fridges full of fresh ingredients and all the food i make even gives me stat boost ( HP+ / Energy + / DMG+ / Runspeed +/ Regen)
The only thing i need to do now is go by my farm once in a while loot everything (and replant if needed like carrots and potato's)
Craft food, fill fridges and go out again

The food doesn't rot in like forever once kept in fridges and if it does just toss it away you will have plenty.
You can keep 2 fridges on your ship and just transfer food from farm to ship fridge.

Hope this was helpful

 

Nice farm ! What meal are you cooking ?

 

Mostly juices tomato / carrot / avesmingo.
The spooky pie thing and mash potato's.
Trying to make alot of different stuff until end game then i will probably only grow the good stuff

And i got some coffee to O.O