Food Stockpile Suggestion:

[Mr_Rieper]

It seems like every settlement has a massive excess of food, and that it isn't very desirable as a resource to gather and sell.

Food is probably one of the most vital aspects to any community, and most societal functions can probably be chalked up to obtaining food or money (which is used to ensure you can always buy food). It just seems odd that it has such a tiny effect on settlements, as a resource.

At first I had the idea that food stockpiles would decay, because no pile of food will last forever. It rots or becomes inedible. So the original idea was that in a certain quarter of the year, a portion of food would be removed, above and beyond the normal use of resources in a settlement.

But I think I have a better idea. Is there any way to tie the purchase of food at merchants in a city, to the consumption of food in a settlement? So if somebody buys rations in the Nomad, it uses a few points of food resources? Given the relative ease that food is obtained, it might be a good idea to have additional factors that drain the stockpile.

[Nitro]

That sounds very easy to abuse. Want to bankrupt Cordor? Just empty your inventory and blow 200k on rations. Not to mention the weird situations it would cause of governments telling people to go buy their food somewhere else because they don't want the burden on their food stockpile.

[Mr_Rieper]

Well it would be miniscule amounts of the food resource deducted with each purchase of food. Hardly enough to bankrupt a settlement when they just farm the food back up again. It is very easy to produce food. Which is part of the problem.

Not so much the ease of production but rather the fact that nothing is diminishing the stockpiles. I'm pretty sure the Sharps has subsisted on nothing but imperishable rat meat for RL years.

[Kreydis]

imperishable rat meat for RL years.

I guess the question I want to ask is if farming food to sell to settlements is fun. Or if there's really any reason to farm for settlements outside of gathering drives? There's not much /to do/ with the stockpiles. Even recently it's mostly for the new clean wells / no food/water loss past a point effects. Even then I'm not sure how much that drains.

[Cerk Evermoore]

I feel like Arelith could benefit from more player run farms. I think it has a lot of potential for a nice peaceful life for people who don't enjoy that much PvP and just want to RP having a family.

[Drowble Oh Seven]

I feel like more mechanics isn't the answer here. Ideally, most of the (NPC) citizens aren't going to be off adventuring. They're the farmers, the potters, the miners, and so on; but nowhere do you see the baseline production of these citizens factoring in to settlement management. We're expecting roving adventurers to supply all these demands (Granite! Food! Wood!) which would presumably already be met by the existing population; if only because the city couldn't exist without them.

I'm not saying this to discourage people from RPing things other than the typical adventurer, only to drive home my feeling that having a lot of mechanical hoops to jump through detracts from enjoyment of that role. Standing in a field for three hours RPing farming is wonderful if you're doing it because you want to do it. If you have to do it because the settlement won't function without it, I think I'd rather pull out my own fingernails.

Then again, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about how grindy the whole settlement resources business is, so take it with a grain of salt. Memelord pretty much captured my feelings on it:

The settlement resource system sucks. It's annoying and boring and generates no significant or appreciable RP beyond providing people with something to point at and go "UR BAD AT LEADING" because you didn't want to spend 6 hours hitting Granite deposits, or you're short on STR-builds.

[Memelord]

That sounds very easy to abuse. Want to bankrupt Cordor? Just empty your inventory and blow 200k on rations. Not to mention the weird situations it would cause of governments telling people to go buy their food somewhere else because they don't want the burden on their food stockpile.

It's worth mentioning that most of the purchasable food rations/travel provisions in the game don't actually generate their GP value in units of food, but instead give a vastly truncated amount (and can be sold to the city for said vastly truncated amount) purely because of this.

Also, that's not really a weird situation at all. A lot of places restricted access to food for outsiders due to that reason. Look at the First Crusade - a lot of towns refused to sell their surplus to the various armies on the march (and were subsequently sacked), or refused to sell to subsequent armies because they'd already sold to previous ones (and were subsequently sacked.)

[Nitro]

Also, that's not really a weird situation at all. A lot of places restricted access to food for outsiders due to that reason. Look at the First Crusade - a lot of towns refused to sell their surplus to the various armies on the march (and were subsequently sacked), or refused to sell to subsequent armies because they'd already sold to previous ones (and were subsequently sacked.)

Yes, but that's incredibly special circumstances. Point me to a nation that encourages people to use the market of other nations instead of their own while actually having an economy. If anything most states would want to promote more people to buy domestic not less.

Bulk import of food, yes that makes sense. Telling your citizens to go across the border to buy food, not so much.

Well it would be miniscule amounts of the food resource deducted with each purchase of food. Hardly enough to bankrupt a settlement when they just farm the food back up again. It is very easy to produce food. Which is part of the problem.

But would you want to go out and grind some more food because someone had a macro to purchase 200,000 rations for pennies, which they might repeat every single day just to empty the city stockpile?

More to the point, why add any more pointless resource grinds? It's already mind-numbingly boring for settlement leadership to grind up the necessary resources to keep the stockpile afloat. If you could actually do something neat or interesting with resources instead that would be way better than just instituting a drain for the sake of a drain.

[Mr_Rieper]

More to the point, why add any more pointless resource grinds? It's already mind-numbingly boring for settlement leadership to grind up the necessary resources to keep the stockpile afloat. If you could actually do something neat or interesting with resources instead that would be way better than just instituting a drain for the sake of a drain.

The point of this would be that food is probably the easiest out of all the resources to "grind". To the point where you don't even really need to grind them. Most people just toss the meat and fruit they find. They are, however, useful for new characters to generate a bit of extra money safely, to keep themselves afloat.

The reason for the suggestion wasn't to make food a resource of dire importance in a settlement, or something that needed to be focused on. Just to balance out the overflowing stockpiles of it in every settlement. And it makes sense, from both a narrative and mechanical standpoint. Narratively, a city would not use as much food each year as it does stone or wood, it would use far more. Mechanically, it would be nice if food wasn't beyond worthless to settlement stockpiles, because the supply drastically outweighed the demand.

Maybe the decay idea would be better. Just increase the rate of decay of food stockpiles, to the point where it's still easy to maintain but not always overflowing. I don't really see how this would inconvenience settlements, having been a settlement leader myself in the past. We always seemed to have a food stockpile that was 3 times bigger than the 2nd biggest stockpile after that. For example, you'd have 30k stone, 40k metal, 44k wood and 134k food, with stone steadily decreasing, food steadily but quickly increasing and metal being dumped in huge spikes of materials. Why not implement some sort of measure so the food stockpile would instead be comfortably hovering around 70-80k in a populated settlement?

I guess the question I want to ask is if farming food to sell to settlements is fun. Or if there's really any reason to farm for settlements outside of gathering drives? There's not much /to do/ with the stockpiles. Even recently it's mostly for the new clean wells / no food/water loss past a point effects. Even then I'm not sure how much that drains.

Answering this as well, the resource stockpiles are a good way of allowing characters to generate an income in a dynamic way, while interacting with the settlement. The only real issue with them is how easily they are abused when nobody is online to watch them. If there was a way to dramatically decrease/increase the price of something to prevent overbuying or overselling, it wouldn't be such an untrustworthy mechanic. Like diminishing returns when you decide to sell 200 000 units of something, versus 200 units. Or a mechanic that only allowed 2000 units of resources to be sold per day. Then you'd probably see settlements offering more reasonable amounts of money for things.

**EDIT** Corrected a mistake.

[Kreydis]

Then you'd probably see settlements offering more reasonable amounts of money for things.

Money is such a. . . strong incentive to make people go out and gather stone. Though like mentioned above. Some of it is just plain restricted to strength based characters because of how heavy things get.

As for preventing buying, honestly there should just be a toggle to turn off selling of specific settlement resources. Or a threshold value minimum, that can't be bough from after.

Really, I think the best solution to the settlement resource mechanic is just making more and more things you can do with the stockpile. The more citizens and people benefit in general. The more willing they are to go out and gather for the town. Not to mention resource drives. I swear every time Bendir has a stone drive I make like 100k. Not much, but for side / casual stone gathering? EZ PZ.

[TimeAdept]

As for preventing buying, honestly there should just be a toggle to turn off selling of specific settlement resources. Or a threshold value minimum, that can't be bough from after.

There already is a threshhold minimum. Settlements will never let themselves go below what they need to make it through the end of the year. You'll just be flat busted after.

Really, I think the best solution to the settlement resource mechanic is just making more and more things you can do with the stockpile.

Totally agreed. I love the new mechanics and would love to see more. Pay resources and a random merchant comes to town! Pay resources and you get a minor rested buff when you rest in taverns. Pay resources and you can do XYZ neat little thing or get XYZ neat little perk. Make it so that having all of them on is difficult, let people make choices and prioritize.