Improved survival food system. (look for, help, suggestion)

[komenabos]

Hello, after playing for a while in survival mode I realize that food is not a problem, it is everywhere, it does not expire and it is cheap or free.

However, in medieval times, it was just the opposite, it was not dragons or hordes of bandits that decimated the population but disease and hunger, peasants often had to abandon or sell their children to survive themselves and their other children, so seeing in Skyrim such an abundance of food at hand takes me out of the historical immersion.

Before starting, let me say that this is a mixed post of search (in case what I indicate is already done and you can tell me which mods implement it) help (since I have downloaded many mods and this community has given me a lot and I want to make my first mod, so if you could tell me how to do some simple things to start and then I will complicate it) and suggestion, in case some expert modder finds interesting what I propose and what is going to take me several months between learning and testing he can have it ready in a few weeks.

Next, I will put the points of what the mod should do trying to order them from what I think is simpler (I may be wrong since I have never created a Skyrim mod) to the most complex.

1. All food is expensive, very expensive, it should serve as a money sink (here I would need someone to explain to me how to modify the prices of the merchants' items) and it always has an owner, so it must be bought or stolen, no more serving yourself for free from the farms and having infinite vegetable soups.

2. To control this, entering a farm will be considered trespassing at any time of the day and night, during the day the farmer can see you steal and report you, at night when the farmer goes to sleep there will be guard dogs that will attack if you enter the farm and wake up the farmer who will report you and you will have a nice bounty.

3. No more having a rich vegetable soup in the middle of a fight, to eat you need tranquility and time a meal is not a potion and therefore, you must plan and take it outside of the fights, just as you cannot fast travel or certain actions with enemies nearby, that you cannot eat in those cases either, you eat before or after but not during a fight.

4. Food expires, it spoils, the days of creating 30 vegetable soups and having them tasty and nutritious 200 days later are over, food will have 3 states: Fresh, which will be the freshly harvested vegetable or freshly hunted meat and the one bought from merchants, fresh food will have all its properties and will be safe to eat. Past, the past food is the one that has lost some properties and is not so nutritious but is still safe to eat, this food is the one that is found around, on shelves and people's houses. Rotten, rotten food should not be eaten as it will not nourish the body and will cause diseases. Once placed in the inventory, the food will gradually spoil, that is, the first 2 days for example we will have fresh meat, from the 3rd to the 7th it will be past and on the 8th day it will rot. The idea is not to hoard food and that it has to be obtained constantly day by day in a struggle for survival just as the inhabitants of the Middle Ages had to do.
There will be ways to preserve food, salting and smoking which will make it last longer, my idea is that one can salt the food by putting it in a barrel along with piles of salt, just like the fish barrels that are found in Skyrim that have fish and salt, in this way one can put a piece of meat in a barrel and a certain number of piles of salt and after a few days, the meat will be salted and will last much longer until we need to eat it, to put a handicap to this system I had thought: That salt is also expensive and difficult to obtain and that a certain amount of piles of salt are consumed (representing the one that has been absorbed by the meat) and also that if the barrel is not watched or in one of our houses, there is a probability that someone will simply steal our meat and our salt and we will find the barrel empty when we return. Salted food has the advantage that it takes longer to rot but will have lost nutrients (think of it as past food that lasts more than 5 days) and will give us more THIRST which we will talk about in the next point. The other option is smoking which must be done by experts so the player will not be able to do it by himself but will take his meat to a merchant or tavern keeper and for a certain amount of gold he will return it smoked, the meat to be smoked must have been legally obtained as we will see later or not only will they refuse to smoke it for you but they will report you to the guard.

5. Implement separate THIRST system, right now there is only a hunger bar that decreases quite quickly when a person can be weeks without eating but no more than 2 or 3 days without drinking, it also serves as an incentive to consume wine and other alcoholic beverages to quench thirst and thus activate other drunken mods and have a reason to do so, the idea behind this is that in medieval times everyone including children drank wine and beer instead of water since at that time sanitation was non-existent, germs were not known nor boiling water and the safest way to hydrate without getting cholera or parasites was to drink wine as the alcohol it contained made it a safer drink at that time so we should consume alcoholic beverages often to keep thirst at bay, but activating in the process if we have them installed those mods that will penalize us or create "uncomfortable" situations. Thirst will gradually increase over time but consuming salty foods will make us more thirsty, as well as if we are constantly running or after a fight we will need to replenish fluids.

6. Meat is a luxury, all big game hunting is owned by the Jarl, hunting deers and similar is forbidden and you need a special license from the Jarl for each piece, that is, no buying a license and hunting whatever you want, each license only allows you to hunt 1 deer, this point implies several subpoints:
    6a. Attacking a deer without a license is considered a crime just like attacking a person and killing a deer without a license is the same.
    6b. To watch over the deer there would be a new NPC (elite ranger of the Jarl) that would arise where the deer usually are and they would have sharpened senses to watch over the whole area so they would see you much earlier than you them and if you hunt without a license and without making sure there is no ranger in the area you can get into a mess, because even if you hunt in stealth, the deer will not be in stealth and the ranger will see it die and come to investigate (needless to say that the rangers ride on horseback and in pairs) and it will not be like the bandits that you put an arrow in the head and they surrender saying "it will be my imagination" these rangers do not surrender so easily so run away quickly or face them. Here I would like it to be realistic, that is, if you kill a deer and you are in stealth the rangers see the result (the dead deer) but not the cause (you) then they cannot put a bounty on you, if you manage to escape remaining hidden at all times you will not have a bounty, but if they detect you they will remember your face and you will have a nice bounty when you return to that area.
    6c. Even having bought your license, there are requirements to meet, the deers will now have more life so it will be more difficult to kill them with a single shot, also the license you have is linked to the first deer you attack and wound so do not let it escape and chase it and finish it off because if it escapes and you go for another one for that one you will not have a license and you will get into a big mess.
    6d. If hunting becomes too complicated you can also buy the meat from a merchant, but this will be more expensive than a hunting license since the merchant has to amortize the cost of buying his license, pay the hunter and his profit, so the price of the meat will be very expensive.
    6e. If you manage to steal a venison or hunt a deer and escape before the Jarl's rangers arrest you, do not sing victory yet, as you can still be caught, if you think of cooking your piece in some city the peasants can smell your cooked meat and out of envy they can warn the guard to check if you have a license to possess that meat, either having hunted it legally, or having bought it, if they catch you cooking illegal meat they will take you to prison, so if you have obtained your food in a slightly legal way, better cook it in places away from nosy noses.
    6f. If after all these inconveniences your reaction is: I pass on the meat, I feed myself on carrots and tomatoes, the idea is that later on it will be necessary to eat meat to have an adequate intake of proteins, that is, if you are a skinny mage you may not need meat, but if you are a warrior who is waving a heavy mace over your head with 2 hands you need muscle, a lot of muscle and to create and maintain that muscle you need a diet rich in animal protein so either in your daily diet there is meat or your level progress can be slowed down or penalized losing levels that represent the loss of muscle mass due to lack of adequate nutrition.

7. Food sources outside the cities. In old ruins forgotten for centuries, you might be able to find wine and drink but never food, as it will either be rotten or have disappeared over time, you will be able to hunt and find berries, but you will have to look for a place to cook the meat. The most likely way you will have to feed yourself during your journey will be looting enemies and bandits that you come across who probably carry some piece of bread or some vegetable or raw rabbit leg, so if you avoid confrontations to not waste energy and resources you can find yourself short of food, obviously the draugrs and other undead will not carry food on them just like the dwemer animunculus and the falmer will carry a disgusting food that should only be consumed in case of extreme necessity.

At the moment this is all the idea is to do this little by little and I don't know if everything can be implemented, I would like to know if of everything I have put there are already mods that do some of this and as I would like to start with the basics if there is not already a mod that does it how can I use the CK to make the food from the farms the property of the farmers and change the price of the food.

Thank you.

[BlazeStryker]

Many if not all of your concerns can be handled with the utilization of iNeed - Continued. Food can cost more, it can be made to spoil, you NEED to eat, drink, and sleep regularly, and it (in conjunction with Campfire and Hunterborn) make the entire business of hunting, camping, and surviving a bit sensible and significantly more involved. Oh, disease is included, too. So hook in Keep It Clean while you're at it!)