I mean, the rate at which your hunger,thirst, and sleepiness increase. Personally, I make the thirst grow at about 400 a day, food 350 a day, and sleep 200 a day, because I find them to be not "forcing enough"

According to wiki, in vanilla:
thirst increases at 240/day, death after 4-5 days
hunger increases at 96/day, death after 11 days
thirst increases at 48/day, death after 23 days

I find that there are enough drops from Legionnaires for water, and enough bighorner for steak

For my values, I heard you'll die after 3 days of no H2O input, so that's the basis.

I'd go for 900 a day for FOOD, so I have to eat three times a day, but the prospect of death is a bit too much :/

As for sleep... one good sleep a day

Of course, I have the luxury of PC mods to do all this, but I just wanna hear your opinions

Im not satisfied. I feel that its too unrealistic. Going days without sleep naturally; thts ridiculous. But it is what it is. Im on PS3 and the devs are done working on the game from what i hear.

I don't mind it how it is; on the one hand it's not very realistic, but on the other I wouldn't want to be hassled every minute or so with a new penalty I had to deal with. Maybe food and sleep could have been a bit harsher, but water is fine how it is IMO.

Yeah at the beginning H2O was the only one that got me sometimes, now I have endless water saved up, I did think I would struggle but it is relatively easy to maintain and not much harder in combat if you plan your attack

I'm pretty sure there was a mod that changes these rates to be more realistic. Also adds new things to keep track of. Don't remember what these new things were, but it had something to do with eating too much raw meat or having a diet of only gecko steaks.

I'm fine with the rates. It would be to crazy to have to drink something every 2 ingame hours. That's only a few minutes irl time. I'm not saying that we couldn't do it, but it's way to much of a hassle that way.

I could deal with a harsher limit at first but mid to late game..no.
Now if they had auto injector systems that gave you glucose, vitamins, stimulants etc like they do for Stim Packs.
Maybe PA could have a recycling system that needed to be serviced once in awhile. Topped off as they say.
Or you had to scrounge ( or Quest ) for the parts to build one for not having PA.

So at first it makes sense...hot desert...need 2 quarts a day in RL. Makes sense.

But then again I have the Vault 13 canteen so I couldn't imagine stopping every 5 minutes to drink water.

I like it the way it is.

If you are not happy with the HC Mode provided by the retail version of the game, then you should try the JSawyer mod

I have Project Nevada and the Rebalance module, among other things, allows you to change your rates, make food items rarer and gives you audible recognition when you get close to 200 in each(a yawn for Sleep, stomach rumbling for Food and a cough for H2O). I changed my rates to:

216 - Food
432 - H2O
216 - Sleep

H20: 500
FOD: 150
SLP: 300

The default values are too low for me, so I use a mod to adjust them. A number of mods over at the nexus can help

I can't really say I'm a fan of the rates right now tbh. Still trying to find a mod I like for it, or at least a way to tweak them myself so I can find the butter zone.

I wasn't. So I got a mod to increase them.

Its pretty satisfying that now I have to make sure I have enough water before heading out into the Mojave.

As it should be. If I may; what mod are you using for the rates?

Hmm, I must be one of the few who found the rates far too fast. It just turns into too much busy work, mostly because I'm never actually at risk of dying. Very early into the game I've more than enough water, food, and radiation meds to last several lifetimes. If I somehow do find myself out of supplies, it's just a five second fast travel to the nearest watering whole and I'm back on my way. Maybe if this was an actual survival sim, with the gameplay built around that instead of around a very story driven game, it'd be different. Maybe if the game would automatically consume my rations as they were needed, only warning me when I began to run short, it'd feel less tedious.

It's too bad. I do like some of the other elements introduced in hardcoe mode---more fragile limbs, doctor bags for healing crippled body parts, ammo with weight, mortal companions, med effects over time rather than immediate---but I always end up just playing normal cause I can't be bothered to deal with what amounts to chug a gallon of water after every fast travel.

I can say that perhaps you're one of the few. But I think I also have to emphasize the role of project Nevada. It introduces "rates based on Survival", so at 100 survival one bottle of Pure Water reduced thirst by a whopping 170 points, and a Bighorner steak reduces hunger by 300 points (Gecko steak by 150!)

I thought that hardcoe mode is just an annoyance too, but after seeing lumps of tens of water on my bag, I thought of actually using 'em instead of... y'know, dumping 'em somewhere (and I did dump 'em in my Novac fridge, as I had too many pure water)

.
I find hardcoe mode satisfying enough, with the current level of abstraction regarding vital needs. If we increase these requirements any further, I fear they’d start to overshadow the rest of the game. At some point, the game would become little more than an eating and drinking simulator.

You might consider the possible undesirable side effects of enhancing the H2O, food, and sleep requirements.

If fast traveling a long distance, one could arrive at their destination severely impaired. This would necessitate hopping shorter distances, stopping to hydrate, eat, and sleep. This increases the monotony of travel, without an appreciable increase in enjoyment. I suppose we could banter around the word “immersion,” but my counter argument would offer that some immersion is merely tedious.

Would this new complication add to, or detract from, the rest of the game? Since acquiring food and water doesn’t present any particular risk, at this point, what kind of pleasure or immersion are we actually netting from the added logistical work?

Wouldn’t the added requirements merely compel me to add more points to survival, to counterbalance the additional requirements? So, in essence, we’d be ensuring that every character would require a strong emphasis in the survival skill. Do we want every character saddled with that permanent sinkhole of 25-50 skill points?

Also, the game already moves at a “snail’s pace.” Adding more requirements would slow it down even further. I already find the game painfully slow at times. Adding several extra days to each trip, to gathering supplies, and stopping to rest, seems tedious.

I’m all for modding the game to enhance the experience, but before increasing the needs, you might reduce the availability of resources — all resources except junk. Specifically:

1. Make purified water largely only available from merchants, or from your own work with the survival skill.

2. Decrease the radiated nature of dirty water, as in its current state, everyone would be dead of radiation poisoning in a couple of weeks. +6 radiation is quite high, considering that most people drink several bottles of it every day. If I must drink many more bottles per day, then +1 or +2 seems more reasonable.

3. Drastically reduce the availability of the higher level drugs, such as rad away and rad-x.

Anyway…just my two bottle caps. Whatever increases your enjoyment of the game; by all means, indulge yourself. I present a contrary view, only to help you test your ideas.

Cheers!

It's way too slow. I thoroughly enjoy HC mode but I feel like it's pointless now.

hardcoe mode is a joke in my opinion and the rates are poor.Honestly you can't call something hardcoe mode then make some cake walk easy changes like they did.

It's really just tedious mode to be frank there's nothing "hard" about it.

Well, it was hardcoe in the first 5-10 hours of the first play through.

Hahahaha. Tedious Mode

Its not meant to be hard, its meant to be hardcoe. As in with Sleep, H2O, Food, ammo having weight, not being able to apply stimpaks directly to limbs; its all meant to be more realistic. Difficulty doesn't enter into it.

I feel like had they divided the Mojave into various zones with the classic Fallout overworld map, the hardcoe mode might make more sense. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue would not increase while in these town zones---or at least, rates would be drastically reduced. When traveling between these zones on the world map, however, you'd need to focus on your vital status. At this point, the game could take on an almost Oregon Trail element. You set the pace, how often you stop to rest, how often you forage for food and water, how often you seek shelter. A faster pace can get you from one location to another more quickly, but costs more vitality. A slower pace will cost less vitality, but you might suffer other effects from prolonged exposure to the wasteland---desert fever, for example. Things like random encounters might also occur.

A low survival skill means you're less successful at foraging for supplies along the way and your vitality decreases faster. This leaves you a few options: stock up on a larger number of supplies before each trip, make short hops between safe zones, or travel with a trade caravan. The last could offer two options of it's own: travel with the caravan as a passenger--pay a fee and avoid all danger---or travel as a guard---potentially face a raider attack, but receive a pouch of caps for your services. Higher survival skill means you can find more supplies while traveling and your vitality decreases more slowly. This means you can travel with fewer supplies on hand, and can reach your destination quicker. You'd also be given the option of avoiding some random encounters should you choose.

-----

I realize that Bethesda's thing is a large continuous world, and that Obsidian pretty much followed the same of design in New Vegas. But I don't really see a system like this substantially limiting the amount of playable area. You'd sacrifice maybe five to ten percent of the current while drastically increasing the perception of the world's size. When it takes a week or more to travel between different settlements or points of interest, it can really instill a sense of scope, even if the player isn't actually making that journey in real-time.

This one I believe:

http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/39165