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[IDEA] Settlement Food Overhaul


Athanasa

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FFS: Fallout Food Storage

unlocking delicious potential

 

Excess food production is stored in your base for use in times of low production, supplied to other settlements, or potentially traded for caps.

 

 

The creation of an accumulating 'food resource' within a settlement gives potential for other interactions in between settlements and the outside world. It all started when someone commented that they felt the current system of 'supply lines' between bases was a bit lacklustre, especially in regards to where the food actually goes.

 

"When you send a new caravan out, shouldn't it decrease the settlement your sending it out froms resources? And if the caravan has to travel all the way across the map, why is it instaneous that the receiving settlements supplies go up. What if we could do something like increasing the receiving ends supplies by a certain amount (Choose the amount to send via a terminal?) and then have it tick down every hour or so."

 

So, this made me think. The way the current food system works seems to be if FOOD >= SETTLERS then HAPPY. If you link two settlements with supplies, as far as the game is concerned it then calculates the SUM of food with SUM of settlers in the same way. But there is no storage in this. Food goes direct from the fields to settlers. There is NO benefit to growing more food than your settlers eat, except to buffer for potential new settlers. And that excess food doesn't go anywhere, because the food never WAS anywhere in the first place. PS: Please excuse my mutant pseudo-code.

 

By making FOOD a stored resource, it gains modding potential

 

 

 

 

Potential Consequences, Interactions and Mods

Storage Fridges

Past a certain point, food won't be stored without specific objects being built for it. Food storage would require the building of fridges - household fridges, or even (with Science perks) industrial fridges/freezers found in ruined supermarkets. These fridges will need power to function, meaning that they are an investment - not something that can be plonked down in a settlement's early days. The industrial fridge costs double the resources of the normal fridge to build and requires double the power, but has triple the storage capacity. This means that you can upgrade and replace your fridges as your settlement expands, with larger fridges being more efficient for large settlements.

This also gives potential for settlements with no ability to feed themselves through farms. Instead, they rely on supplies from other settlements and the Survivor to maintain their stocks. Such settlements would likely benefit from large fridges to reduce the necessary frequency of deliveries.

 

 

Settlement Supplies

This links in to the suggestion that started it all. To send supplies to a settlement, you remove food_resource from Settlement A and put it on a Brahmin to Settlement B. This depletes the food in Settlement A, making it worthwhile to have storage there, to allow you to have enough to give to a Brahmin. The caravan then travels to Settlement B and passes on their food supplies there. This also requires Settlement B to have enough storage place for the supplies, or they merely return back to Settlement A with the caravan. Because of this, there is no instant travel - there is a time where the food is out of Set A, but has not yet arrived at Set B.

This would add importance to any mods introducing attacks on caravans, or removing their invulnerability (but making them tougher than normal NPCs, probably). It would also work fabulously if any of those mods allowed you to send security with your caravans.

 

 

Raider Attack Modifier

I don't support the whole, "Enough defenses and raiders will never attack" thing. I'm also not a fan of raider attacks being governed by if {FOOD + WATER =< DEFENCE} then RAIDERS thing, not if there's potential for it to change. Having a high amount of stored food in your settlement would increase your chance of Raider attack. The more food, the greater the motivation for the raiders. Eventually, regardless of your defences, they hear about how much food you have and try to take some of it. A successful raider attack would take as much of your food as they can carry (maybe influenced by how many survivors they have).

 

Raider thieves may spawn as random events (or not, depending on how Raider Attacks are handled currently) and steal some of your food, although if settlers spot them doing this they will shoot them down. However, I suspect this would be harder to code modifying existing raid events.

 

 

 

 

 

Mechanics

how it might work

 

Accumulation

First, we need to translate the existing mechanics of Food into something useable, and into actual existing objects in the game. Every day the settlement produces a certain amount of food_resource, dictated by the food production level. Every day, your settlers consume a certain amount of food_resource. When the food production and food consumption are equal, you neither gain or lose food_resource. Your settlement can passively store up to twice (or more, configurable) the amount of food required for a day, on top of the passive daily food stocks. Further storage requires the building of specific food storage objects.

A settlement with 5 settlers and a food production of 7 will continue to store an additional 2 food_resource every day, until it reaches the storage cap. If the storage cap is double the population, it will cap out at 10 food_resource in storage (if storage is double the population). It would take the settlement 3 days to reach this cap, as all food is added at once during the day. After this point, additional food will not enter into storage and will basically disappear into the ether like food currently does - the extra 1 food_resource from day 3 will not count.

A settlement with 5 settlers, a food production of 4 and full storage could go for 5 days (losing 1 food_resource from storage per day) before they start being unable to take the required 5 food_resource from the stores to feed everyone.

 

Food Value

A more complex, but probably outright BETTER system than the simplistic system described above. Every food item within the game is assigned a food value. As you may have noticed, different crops in your settlements give more or less food. This would replicate that. The Food Value of a single fruit would be equal to its production value divided by the average harvest quantity, or something. Either way, values of foods are set. This applies to the Storage Fridges, which store up to a set amount of Food Value. This then means that you could then deposit any food you find in the wasteland into Storage Fridges, boosting your settlements food reserves. Wasteland food (ready meals etc) would have a very high food value in comparison to other food resources. Ideally, settlers would also tend to eat these high value foods last.

Additionally, cooked food would provide more value than its constituent parts on their own.

 

Existing Items and Storage

Now comes a potentially awkward part. Does the food_resource actually manifest physically in the world? Do your fridges actually contain food objects from your settlement? I would suggest making it so that food_resource is actually NOT something that spawns items in the food storage containers. This is simply because it's probably a lot easier that way. While I agree having your fridges fill up with tatos would be immersive, it may result in more trouble than it is worth to get it to work that way.

This would also relate to the ability to deposit food into the designated food storage containers. When the items you deposit are consumed (non-physical food_resource is consumed preferentially) in order, starting with the items worth the least Food Value first. Consumed items are deleted from storage. Depositing food into storage yourself would 'live' update the store tally. Removing items from storage would reduce the quantity of stored food.

 

Harvesting

Harvesting from your farms does not affect the food resources at all, the same way it does not affect anything like that in-game currently either. It does, however, mean that you can harvest your plants then deposit your harvest into food storage (if built). On other words, you help around the settlement with the harvest and give them a boost while you're there. Yep, you can visit every single settlement to help with the harvesting to give them all a little boost.

 

Food Trading
So, all your settlements are churning out more food than they can possibly use. This has to be good for something right? Correct! You can trade away this food for caps. This gives long term benefits to building Food Storage within your settlements and producing more than you need, even those settlements aren't supplying other settlements. It probably isn't worth much per settlement, but if every one of your settlement is pumping out produce, the money starts to mount up. Then you can go out and spend it on resource shipments, trader stalls... or weapons for yourself.
To trade, settlers leave with a Brahmin caravan, similar to supply routes, and return with caps. Trading makes your settlers happier, and increases the recruitment boost from the radio beacons. In fact, there might be potential for your caravan to return with additional settlers seeking a new home.

If settler skills are overhauled, it may be that settlers gained in this way have a higher chance of increased skills.

 

Compatibility Potential

As it would likely take its food_resource value directly from the pre-existing food production value in the game, any mods that change the production of your plants would potentially integrate well with the food overhaul.

 

 

WIP SETTLEMENT INTERFACE OVERHAUL

 

http://i.imgur.com/CVhhLD8.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/Os4WG0O.png

The second example shows the UI of a settlement producing LESS food than it consumes a day, and therefore running off storage. 7 days from now, it will be at 21 food. On the 8th day, settlers will get unhappy as the food will sit at 16, less than the current settler count. (Except, I overlooked something... as food output is greater than Settler count, so the resource would NOT be depleting. But it's proof of concept, right?)

 

Current Issues: I want to be able to show what of your defence is from turrets / guards, although that might not be useful. However, I've had a mental blank for what the icon could be there.

 

I was also contemplating having the top right box logging what settlers were on what... but then I realised there were more than 4 settler roles, and they wouldn't fit in the box. And I'm sure modders will add MORE settler roles, too.

 

 

Edited by Athanasa
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Updated the WIP UI concept, complete with annotations.

 

Updated with 'Food Trading' idea. Sell off excess food for caps! Spend caps on materials for your settlement, or portable nuclear warheads.

 

 

Why is Nexus so slow? Is nobody interested?

Edited by Athanasa
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IF you can make this alongside a menu to manage settlers (assignment, bed, weaponry and armor etc...) it would be abso-f***ing-lutely perfect...

I was looking into something like that with another post somewhere. But, that's potentially more complex than this mod and way beyond my fledgeling modding attempts.

 

Although, I had thought of a menu for that. A special desk you build in your base (immersions). You sit down at it (E to activate) and a UI comes that is built to resemble a paper folder filled with info on your settlers. Sort of a population census or something. Of course, you'd also need a mod that gave your settlers actual names to be any use. That way you know that Todd needs some armor and a bed, rather than "Settler" needs armor and a bed.

 

 

Also, people replied! I'd given up and was going to repost this on Mod Talk once it slipped past the 6th page.

Edited by Athanasa
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If you want something similar right now there is a mod that makes simply feeding your settlers a difficult endeavour and supply lines become very important.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1486/?

 

I wasn't looking for something making it hard to feed them at all. I was looking to create something that allowed for more potential depth to the Settlement system, something rewarding people for investing time and energy into making settlements any more than just liveable. Because, apart from the 100% Happiness Perk, there really isn't any mechanical point investing excessive amounts of time into making your settlements awesome.

 

EDIT: Or even gearing your settlers, as they apparently auto-fail any raids if you aren't present. "Dear leader's away. Turn off all the turrets, lads. Let's just stand here and die."

Edited by Athanasa
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If you want something similar right now there is a mod that makes simply feeding your settlers a difficult endeavour and supply lines become very important.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1486/?

 

I wasn't looking for something making it hard to feed them at all. I was looking to create something that allowed for more potential depth to the Settlement system, something rewarding people for investing time and energy into making settlements any more than just liveable. Because, apart from the 100% Happiness Perk, there really isn't any mechanical point investing excessive amounts of time into making your settlements awesome.

 

EDIT: Or even gearing your settlers, as they apparently auto-fail any raids if you aren't present. "Dear leader's away. Turn off all the turrets, lads. Let's just stand here and die."

 

Annoying as hell...i have to fast travel and just sit there watching as the missile turrets blow everything to pieces before the group of mercs. get to the entrance XD... lovely to see but it becomes annoying fairly quickly

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