PS: I spent like three hours writing this, please read it
I think it is seriously considerable.If you are stranded on an alien planet, wouldn't you still need to eat? I thought about it a bit and I think that having a food bar that goes down 20-40 percent each factorio day, (or maybe the rate scales with how much moving, crafting, or other energy-taking tasks you do) and that you fill by eating food would be a good mechanic to add. Allow me to explain:
Factorio is a game about automation, right? So basically, the more you get to automate and create assembly form, the richer the game? I think this is a large part of why the food mechanic could be added. It adds just another thing that is unique but still necessary that requires thought to set up, like iron mines or energy generation stations. Generally I think this would take the form of large scale farms, but I'll talk about that later. As to the specifics of the mechanic:
HOW TO GROW
Let's say when your ship crashed you find a few herbs or plants aboard the wreckage. You can eat these and stay sustained for approximately 30-50 factorio days (The time would depend on how the mechanic was actually implemented). You notice that you are going to run out of food, so you need to grow some. The alien soil is inhabitable for the scraps you found on your ship, so you are forced to research ways to create sustainable food using the soil. This would involve probably a two stage research process for early game, one giving you access to search trees for nuts, berries, etc that naturally can grow in the soil here. The next would probably give you access to the hoe tool, watering can, and wooden fence (to border the farm). Eventually higher research might propose irrigation devices, fertilzers to boost soil quality, etc. One particular research would start perhaps a new chain of carnivorism, based on the animal life (biters, spitters, ...)-
WHAT TO GROW
Primarily my idea was to grow plants, but as I write this, more comes to mind. I'll start with plants. As I said before, the research would let you search trees for food scraps- I suppose that you would have a 30% chance to find some sort of growable seed or nut every time you mine a tree, and maybe a 3% chance to find a fruit. These seeds could range in a variety of forms, and you can basically make them up since this is an alien planet. They would be grown in hoed soil, and it would take a lot of these fully grown seeds to fill hunger. The fruit would grow into a tree which can be harvested every 15 factorio days (scaling based on soil quality) for 4-5 fruit and each would fill a good amount of hunger or could be planted. Then, the research gives way to meat-eating- how to clean the meat found on killed biters, spitters, etc. There could be one research for each feasibly edible animal form on the planet, or maybe just for the basic ones, and also a few accessory researches that would provide other features such as salt from chemical treatment plants. The research would give devices or facilities to clean the meat of toxins or posions. Supposedly, each biter corpse would take a while and a good amount of resources to process (it is an alien corpse filled with toxins), but would fill as much as 20 percent of your food bar.
WHY TO GROW
There would be no reason to grow foor at all if not eating had no detrimental effect on you. This is where I propose some of these. As your hunger gets lower, you could:
-Walk slower and craft slower starting at 60% and scaling as it gets lower, possibly to a max of 3x slower at 30%
-Shoot slower and take longer to perform other combat mechanics, starting at 45% and scaling to a max of 2x at 30%
-Lose slight control of character, starting at 35% and scaling to higher control loss (but not too high) maxing at 10% (This would take the form of having jitters when walking and driving, or something else I guess)
-Blacking out (probably death) happens five days after hunger bar hits 0% (Make sure to give warnings when hungry, the same way you are alerted of biters)
There are possibly more, but I don't know what the balance would be- hurting the player for not eating vs not allowing them to make food because of the effects.
WHERE TO GROW:
There are different soil types in factorio, such as the desert or the grass. In the real world, deciduous forests have very good soil, while deserts have bad soil. I would assume that hoeing the dirt in a forest would provide the best results, followed by grass not in a forest and finally desert. These are alien plants which could have adapted to live in the desert, but because there is minimal plant life in the desert and you find the seeds and fruits in the trees anyway, this soil quality chart is probably fairly accurate. There could, however, be research into growing plants better in the desert. Maybe, in a future update, there could be different biomes which each have their own soil value, promoting migration around the planet, which allows for more use of trains- setting up a farm in a deep forest and using a train to bring it back to your base. There could also be a research that allows you to judge soil quality- just as you can see how much iron is in a particular ore spot you can tell what the quality of the soil is. Or, it could just be a set quality per biome.
WHAT TO EAT:
Potentially there could be research into what exactly your body needs to thrive. This could lead to a cooking station where you can combine meat products and plants to produce balanced meals which fill a good percentage of hunger. These types of research could also allow you to get more out of each food morsel you eat in general, up to +10-20% of it's original value as you understand more about what parts of food you should eat. I thought also about how eating mass amounts of the same food would decrease it's nutritional value, so that the player doesn't just eat fruit the whole time. For example, Each time you eat a certain morsel, it's nutritional value decreased by 5%. All specific products would do this except the balanced meals created in the cooking station. I really think this is an important mechanic, as it would be too easy to farm just one food type
WHAT TYPES OF FOOD:
This is a list of what types of food I have come up with and their eating value based on how hard it is to make them. Keep in mind the value decreases by 5% every succesive time you eat each one in a row (unless it is a salad or a meal)
-Seeds 2
-Nuts 2.5
-Berries 1.5
-Alienfruit1 5
-Alienfruit2 5.5
-Cured biter meat: 15
-Cured spitter meat: 16
-Salad: 1 Fruit and 1 seed/berry/nut. Add the values of each (@ day 1) and multiply by 1.2. Value decreases by 3% each successive eating of the exact same salad
-Meal: 1 salad and 1 Meat product. Add the values of each (@ day 1) and multiply by 1.5
I am sure you can come up with more but this I think is a good place to start.
HUNGER DECREMENTATION RATES:
The hunger bar is a dynamic mechanic. It is important to get the hunger decrease rate just right. I thought that it would be nifty if the hunger rate increased as the game went on, because that would allow for not as much wasting- you would end up producing more food as time went on anyway. I think tying it to the pollution value may be a good idea; the more pollution, the faster you get hungry. So I think that at the start of the game, going down by 5-8% each factorio day would be good, and increasing based on pollution. I thought about instead of a constant rate, taking hunger every time you perform an action; but then in late game you would barely have to eat at all, and you would probably have a ton of food. In essence, the hunger bar needs to be rather hard to fill, because otherwise people may just try and get by by hacking trees until they get a fruit and eating it, which takes away from why it was added at all: more automation.
GROWING RATES:
I'm not going to pick specific rates, I just wanted to add that the amount of time it takes to grow the plants would be based on the soil quality and the amount of water the plant recieved. There could be researched specifically for telling how much water exactly a plant takes to minimize growth time, and as I said earlier, fertilizer could decrease growth time as well.
FOOD DECOMPOSITION:
In theory the food products would go bad after spending time in a chest. Therefore I think there would be research on how to make food storage containers. Particularly the refrigerator for Berries, Fruits, Meats, Salads, and Meals. Nuts and seeds don't need to be stored, especially because they are more of an early game dynamic. The refrigerators would be powered simply by electricity, probably made of some circuits and iron plates two iron chests, and therefore would have the inventory of two iron chests.
PACKAGES (Walsy):
In order for the food to be of use- it would suck to have to drag around tons of seeds- there would be pouches for toting large amounts of seeds, berries, nuts, and maybe fruits in one inventory slot.
EDIT1: ROCKET LOADING:
In order for the food to be of use, I think- and thank you to Walsy for showing me just how great this mechanic could be- that a mass of food should be loaded into the rocket in the end game. Read EDIT1 at the bottom if you want to know why I think it would be so great. Also, I thought that this mechanic could be used to totally replace the need for an increasing hunger rate, as you would need to make more food for the rocket either way. Cool!
WATER BAR?
If there is a food bar, why isn't there a water bar? Well, if one were so inclined, a water bar would probably just be filled by an offshore pump and researching a water purification facility, and maybe being bottled in plastic or simply filling up a metal bottle.
MISCELLANEOUS:
This is a section for things I though of while writing this, but didn't think were big enough to give their own section.
-Heating after refridgeration:
I think this would just waste time and be annoying, honestly. you would just stand by like a microwave until it finished and then eat it. It would take little power, one research, and a too much time. Not worth it.
-Sanitation:
Yes, food has to be sanitized. I suppose it could play a minor role but could probably just be written into the description of the cooking facility and others.
-Robots:
I don't know, I thought robots would be a way of combinint the foods. Maybe?
-Harvesting seasons:
I thought about having a harvest season, but that would involve the planet having seasons, which would invoke too many other things. Also, the planet most likely doesn't have seasons anyway, it's an alien planet. Right?
-Art for character getting hungry:
Maybe the character could start to shrink as he got hungrier. but only at like 20% and below.
-Alien spawners providing meat:
Maybe there could be research that gets the spawners running again and you could make a meat farm out of that. It seemed a bit gruesome to me, but it may be the only way to sustainably farm meat.
-Other types of food:
Food other than meat and fruit and grain? Dairy, vegetables... I guess vegetables could work but I don't see dairy working any time soon.
EDIT1:-The good guy:
Now this is very out there but I couldn't help but write it, especially after ssilk opened my eyes to the fact that we are the intruder here. Have you ever played Undertale? I think an option to instead of kill the natives, to befriend them- starting with giving them seeds could be cool. They eat these anyway as they are the primary food on the planet. This way, you could use their help in your endeavors and access other dynamics.
CONCLUSION
I haven't played factorio that much, only about 10 hours. So it is very possible that I missed an obvoius mechanic. But that's what you guys are for! Comment and tell me what I missed. It is also possible that I have built this into something it isn't, but I seriously want you gusy to consider it. I think it'd be great! Automation is literally the reason every single other mechanic is in the game, why not have another big one? It's a deep, realistic mechanic for a deep, realistic game.
EDIT1: If it seems that this would be better as a mod, I can totally understand that opinion. However, I think it may be partially fueled by small idiosyncrasies between my specific version and their ideal version, which they may not even know yet- it could just take the form of things they don't like about my version. I include such specific details so that you have a deeper understanding of the material when reading it, and by no means think it is accurate to the subject, but I do believe it is a good guideline. So I ask:
Before you disclose this as a mod or to be added, just in a very small form, think about this:
This is by no means a final product, and if there is something you don't like about it, tell me! I'm actually sure your opinions can be used as a great fix to the problems you see. Also, I would like to show that this could be another entire branch to the game. I.E; To make the rocket and win the game, it takes many factories and plants and logistical cooperations. I think that this food mechanic easily has the potential to become one of those. Think of the food as iron plates; you need both of them to take off. It just increases the depth of the game, so I suppose the only concern would be if it gets tedious to automate so much, but I don't see that as a problem.
If your concern is that this is not automation, but is farming, I want to reassure you that there are machines unlocked via research that can be used to fully automate harvesting. This would go back potentially to the Biter spawners being used to farm Biter meat. So yes, it is easily possible to create a food factory if one sets up a good system to.
If you still think that it should not be fully implemented, I propose a compromise
SURVIVAL GAMEMODE
Basically the main mode except invoking the hunger (maybe thirst) mechanic, and requiring a mass of food to be loaded onto the rocket at the end of the game.
I'm not exactly a fan of this, but it would be a good start in my master plan to get this implemented
Thanks to Walsy, daniel34, and ssilk for providing me a baseline to write off of, as I had no idea what to expect. They are great people!
TL;DR
A new food bar to be filled by eating. Food grown in farms and meat harvested off of biters. Meals can be made for more nutritional value. Not eating results in detrimental causes, finally death. Soil has a quality value that affects growth time. A ton of other cool stuff I wrote about, please read
~Resident ENTP,
Debuff
