Balancing food day 1-2

[marble barn]

The last cycle and this one shows there is a famine around days 1-2. WT draws a large amount of players that need to feed, but getting plants started takes around 24h (book research and crop growth). During this time, the server is limited a lot.
If a solution is provided to have a day1 gov, it could set laws to restrict wild harvesting to gathering only and thus maximize the not-really-renewable initial food.
But I think given the player count, the amount of wild plants should be doubled.
After day 2, it's a player problem if they can't manage their food.
Some might say the map is too small, but I disagree with them.

[split haven]

Personally, I'm against a government solution on day 1 versus a configuration change. This issue is a base game challenge we all have to overcome. Just automatically introducing a law in the first minute of gameplay removes intended game challenges.
I'd recommend doubling the number of wild plants as you suggested. I'd also recommend starting WT on Wednesday. This gives farmers and gathers more opportunities to collect food on day 1 and have the time to build up food stability before the weekend. Otherwise, most players could just wait until the weekend to really start playing in earnest as we all wait for the food production to get up to speed.

[steel token]

Doubloing the food will merely mean a handfull of people horde it. If anything you'd need to speed up growth and/spwn of wild food

[marble barn]

Probably right...
Also probably change the distribution of ripeness so that only 20% is ripe. This way, those who connect at the very start cannot have everything, the plants might even get to reproduce instead of going extinct!
There's a bunch of wild beats in Unica that seems to be growing before it reaches maturity

[west shuttle]

We would probably run into the issue of crops growing more while we do setup, so not sure how easy that would be to make reality

[marble barn]

Maybe a script can set the current growth to a random value just before starting

[craggy osprey]

As an idea can the scrip increase for day one seed chance like 40%, this would help initially for gatherers to farm less viable options and then revert on day 2 to default

[marble barn]

We unlocked farming day one, I don't think we need to increase seeds yield, just need to save some crops to replant

[lucid ether]

This can definitely be achieved through script. And possibly through some layer regen and initial plant file swapping?

Id honestly like to see their growth on start deliberately staggered. A big issue that occurs, is that on day 1 some things become completely unforagable within a couple of hours. So even farmers / gatherers may have 1-2 days without access to a given species if they don't nab it in time.

[marble barn]

Absolutely, that's why I went to make seeds directly, so we don't extinct vital plants. But clearly, after like 4 hours, the chances of finding a wild plant are very slim

[craggy osprey]

I had an issue finding seeds which I wanted day one and day two so even if farmers were working on producing them, and from field sizes I saw yesterday the demand for the product was sky high and not enough supply.

[marble barn]

It's a fierce battle between eating now and eating tomorrow

I am more than welcome to turn any plant into seeds tho (but the issue will be there for the next cycles too)

[mystic shoal]

I personally think a part of the problem is the nutrision gates WT has. If you want to strat of with one of those skills you really can't afford to eat anything besides salads which increase demand on those. If you could eat some charred food it would already lower the demand on campfire cooks

[craggy osprey]

Yep I want to say do it each cycle but you are right next next cycle we have the same issue

[slim horizon]

You know you can make constitutional laws that only are valid on specific days via referendum as well?

I just dont know how well it goes for new players that touch a plant for their tutorial and see "Nah, fuck you"

[slim horizon]

Hey, I voted for 20!

So did LForward.

But the rest didn't.

[marble barn]

But salads are more calories per raw crop, so it actually lowers the demand of the already rare crops

[mystic shoal]

Ah didn't know that. Than that doesn't effect the food shortages that way

[split haven]

I agree with this. If all nutrition gates were reduced by 5, there would still be demand for the best foods but some room for occasional "junk food" without fear of loosing your ability to run your business.