Some lessons that may be learned from Don't Starve. 1) When an area is no longer getting actively updated it could be given a last update timestamp... then upon reactivating the updates in an area an update would occur to update the area based on how long ago the last update was. For example, If I plant corn and immediately beam to my ship then explore a new world and return my corn is still in stage 1 of growth... using a long update when I return the corn would grow the proper amount based on how long ago I left... as it stands, I have to sit there and babysit my farms and Tree farms. Ore smelting and refining could also benefit from this mechanic. 2) Perhaps playing Don't starve skewed how I expect basic survival to work... but as it stands now, I don't even see why the hunger bar exists... In the time I have played I had to eat maybe three cooked meats before I started farming wheat which allowed me to create hamburgers... now I have a stack of 50 hamburgers with enough wheat and monster meat to replenish that 5 times over... even if hamburgers wasn't such an amazing food (Full hunger refill for 1 monster kill and a coupe minutes of wheat farming) I would still have essentially infinite food in the form of grapes, corn, and all the other crops. Either hunger should be removed, or add a mechanic to make food rot over time or add a benefit to changing up what you eat (more complex foods give different buffs?)... another option may be to make growing crops take substantially longer and make the climate affect ability/speed of growth. (Of course lengthening the growth time would not be a good idea unless long updates were also added). Also, regenerating with a full belly also puts a sever damper on the need for food.
