Remove Food/Nutrition in Stellaris?

[AG_Wittmann]

Hello Stellaris-Community,

do we really need the Nutrition-industry ingame? I think, its only an old relic from the first 4x games like Master of Orion or Imperium Galactica.

Mean, we can't export food to another planets ingame for some plausible reasons. When i give my girlfriend cakes, sausages and more food, she don't poop babies out in exchange. She will only get diabetus and fat or vomit or more worse, will slap me with delicious german sausages to stop forcefeeding her.

Why we don't expell the whole food branch, give the planets a fixed population growth by biome, you can get more or less with the traits and edicts. The growth for the planets will be slower and your empire will feel a bigger impact, if you lose your populations or slaves by wars/events/crisis.

Sure, if you hate the population of a specific planet, then we should get/use edicts to shrink the population of this planet.

Food shouldnt be visible in the consciousness/foreground of the game/player, it should be in the subconsciousness/background, because, every lifeform need to secure their nutrition first. No lifeform can exist without nutrition, its a constitution.

 

[Vlasta]

Personally, I take the "food" in a more abstract way, as general consumer goods. It doesn't make much sense to have ~1/4 of population allocated in agriculture industry even novadays, without future technologies, whereas having 1/4 of population producing all the consumer goods the planet needs is pretty much plausible. It's not ideal, given the techs required, but perhaps someone could/have already modded it this way.

 

[Anthropoid]

Yeah, it should be more of a bell-curve type effect: too low = low pop growth; just right = optimum pop growh; too high = low pop growth (to represent the increased morbidity and mortality related to obesity).

Or, as you suggest, just don't use it. DWU doesn't have food, rather pop growth is a matter more of "happiness" it seems.

Personally, I take the "food" in a more abstract way, as general consumer goods. It doesn't make much sense to have ~1/4 of population allocated in agriculture industry even novadays, without future technologies, whereas having 1/4 of population producing all the consumer goods the planet needs is pretty much plausible. It's not ideal, given the techs required, but perhaps someone could/have already modded it this way.

I also considered this, and I think it is a perfectly valid point.

 

[EscapeZeppelin]

Agreed. It seems like simply changing food to consumer resources and more of them means faster pop growth/immigration makes much more sense. Lewer consumer resources means less happy pops and slower growth. It would finally give you a reason to build more than the absolute minimum food tile too.

 

[Wouter445]

wel i don't mind "food" in any time of 4x game just need to be enable to transport to other worlds or have a sort of trade system.
they missed a chances to also make a mineral eating based lifeform without it.

also think a +5 food on any given planet should increase happiness.
should you not be happy to know food is endless?.

 

[Anthropoid]

Actually though . . . it isn't entirely accurate that "more food = obesity" at least at the population level. The presence of a variety and abundance of high-caloric foods does seem to be operationally important to the obesity epidemic in most populations. But it is more or less just a facilitator, not a mediator . . . To be more accurate:

S = threshold of "good nutrition" (Sufficiency)
H = threshold of "contentment" (Happiness)
a = actual food available (actual food)
m = actual happiness (mood)

Where a < S: m = [(a - S)*(1/a)] something like that
Where a >= S: some other function that would account for a diminishing positive effect on happiness for more food

On the other hand, not enough food when happiness is below the "contentment" threshold should exacerbate unhappiness.

 

[The Founder]

also think a +5 food on any given planet should increase happiness.
should you not be happy to know food is endless?.

Wait, I should be happy about the EU having to destroy massive amounts of food every year?

Seriously, Food is so low on the Needs Pyramid, the only time it even maters is if it is scarce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

 

[gdj]

Personally, I take the "food" in a more abstract way, as general consumer goods. It doesn't make much sense to have ~1/4 of population allocated in agriculture industry even novadays, without future technologies, whereas having 1/4 of population producing all the consumer goods the planet needs is pretty much plausible. It's not ideal, given the techs required, but perhaps someone could/have already modded it this way.

I wish it was so, the resource mechanics would be that much more plausible. An argument against this is that slaves have bonuses for producing food and minerals, and penalties for energy. Why would a slave be more more effective at producing consumer goods like textiles, toys or programming computer games(!), and less effective at making money (=energy credits)? I believe food represents ingame exactly what it says: food. Your slaves, if you have any, work on farms and harvest tomatoes, lettuce, grain or whatever fungoids eat. (What are fungoids supposed to eat btw?)

 

[Anthropoid]

(What are fungoids supposed to eat btw?)

If the diversity of fungus metabolism on Earth is any indication, "Fungoids" in stellaris can "eat whatever they want!" including radiation!

The fungi are traditionally considered heterotrophs, organisms that rely solely on carbon fixed by other organisms for metabolism. Fungi have evolved a high degree of metabolic versatility that allows them to use a diverse range of organic substrates for growth, including simple compounds such as nitrate, ammonia, acetate, or ethanol.[72][73] In some species the pigment melanin may play a role in extracting energy from ionizing radiation, such as gamma radiation. This form of "radiotrophic" growth has been described for only a few species, the effects on growth rates are small, and the underlying biophysical and biochemical processes are not well known.[32] This process might bear similarity to CO2 fixation via visible light, but instead uses ionizing radiation as a source of energy.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus#cite_note-Dadachova2008-74

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus#cite_note-Dadachova2008-74

 

[wergy]

Consider those the life support industry which includes thing from food to clothing, housing, sanitary equipment, hospitals etc. You're not just build farms but also places for the people to live.

 

[The Founder]

I wish it was so, the resource mechanics would be that much more plausible. An argument against this is that slaves have bonuses for producing food and minerals, and penalties for energy. Why would a slave be more more effective at producing consumer goods like textiles, toys or programming computer games(!), and less effective at making money (=energy credits)?

Why are individualist more effective at producing energy (money)?.
The answers are propably related, considering Collectivism and Individualism are opposite on the same axis.

(What are fungoids supposed to eat btw?)

"Food" is a abstract resource and includes genetic/animals crops for every diet imaginable in your empire. You can put every species group on the same Gaia Planet and do not need extra farms for each species group/habitability group.

 

[gdj]

OK, good arguments, but why, for example, do you get 100% extra food when you start hunting titanic beasts? What consumer goods would you produce out of a hunted down titanic beast? Leather corsettes and whips? The modifier is called "delicious titans", clearly insinuating that you actually eat them. And it´s just one of many modifiers that quite clearly state that food is "something that you eat". It´s the consumer goods that are strangely absent from the game (including all happiness effects consumer goods cause).

 

[Deantwo]

So, replace farms with "housing"?
Food tile bonuses could be nice living areas.

Should be possible to do that using a mod, replace all references to "food" with "housing" and maybe remove % bonuses.
Homelessness rather than starvation.

 

[Anthropoid]

Maybe replace farms with "Development."

 

[Deantwo]

Maybe replace farms with "Development."

That does sound better than "housing", I like it.
Kinda implies that the place also makes food for the population that live there.

 

[Wouter445]

Wait, I should be happy about the EU having to destroy massive amounts of food every year?

Seriously, Food is so low on the Needs Pyramid, the only time it even maters is if it is scarce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

do it matters if earth overflow in food?.

 

[N35t0r]

OK, good arguments, but why, for example, do you get 100% extra food when you start hunting titanic beasts? What consumer goods would you produce out of a hunted down titanic beast? Leather corsettes and whips? The modifier is called "delicious titans", clearly insinuating that you actually eat them. And it´s just one of many modifiers that quite clearly state that food is "something that you eat". It´s the consumer goods that are strangely absent from the game (including all happiness effects consumer goods cause).

Exotic food delicacies is a kind of consumer good ;-)

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

My name for the new resource would be "Planetary Infrastructure"... and could pretty much serve the same function food currently does.

Energy are pretty much covering food as a resource anyway, so why do we need it?
With technology such as in Stellaris you could pretty much produce any amount of food even in a space station as long as you have enough energy, a sun close by would do nicely for that. Some base materials and you can produce enough food to sustain whatever population you strive to support.
In this era there would probably be less than 1% of the population diverted to food production, and a rather low percentage of energy as well.

 

[Lt Loco]

I would enjoy "food" being a galactic resource, but I do not favor its removal. The purpose is to limit your growth, and to provide infrastructure for growing populations. It also provides a difference between synthetic life and actual life.

The use of "Consumer Goods" instead of Food is a neat idea. It pretty much boils down to the same. Hydroponics need not just be food, but could also be fibers, medical or chemical producing bacteria, etc. I'm okay with that name swap, but I like the mechanic.

 

[Soltan_Gris]

I'd like to see food as a global resource to allow for further planet specialization. A couple of Agri-Planets could feed an entire empire, but could be susceptible to attack. Could lead to interesting strategic situations.