It has always struck me that the wasteland isn't such a bad place.
Feeling a bit peckish? Just pop into the nearest shop and grap a few cans of soda, a bag of chips, and a fancy lads cupcake or two.
Dont like the look of radroach meat?
Picky eaters can have salisbury steak and beans instead, with a tall mug of beer of course.

That strike anyone else as more than a bit off?

I use simple needs (the most intuitive and unobtrusive needs mod, imo) so food and drink is an issue. But in the stock game its so ridiculously common that you never get the feel that you are in danger of starvation.
I think packaged food should be rare, and game meat (mole, roach, etc) should be pretty radioactive.
Bought food should be a bit cleaner, but more expensive.

Also, in a dismal post apocalyptic enviornment booze should be rare as hen's teeth and just about worth its weight in gold, instead of being found just lying around all over!
Life in the wasteland should really be a struggle just to survive.

Any mods that do this?

Perhaps http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7695?: "Scarcity and the wasteland: Food, ammo, and medication are much more precious." It does a lot of other stuff as well so check the readme.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will have a look.
I was actually looking for something that didn't add so much other stuff, though.

Stevedog was working on adding food to his --savage wasteland, unfound loot-- mod, it sounds like what you need when he gets it finished

Someone recently uploaded a mod called "Nonsense Remover". According to screenshots it removes most of the food around.

WooHoo Free Advertising!!

Yes getting rid of a lot of the food items is currently on my list of things to get done. There is so much food in the game that it takes a little time to get it right, plus it's not the only project I've got going.

Stevedog,

Time's up - release your food remover - NOW I mean, how long are we supposed to wait to have to start a new game!

Mostly joking.... take your time as long as it isn't more than the next 3-4 hours.

What can I say I am a savage wastelands fan!

all I need is a T-shirt and cap

but really, like jwh said, lets pick up the pace, my character is currently over weight from all the iguana bits and fancylads snack cakes

Mmmm... Sugar bombs...
Nonsense remover pulls all the goodies off the shelf, but it also removes a lot of other stuff I would rather keep.
Looks like we are counting on you Steve, to save the wasteland from obesity!

If you could add rads to animal meat, that would be great also, as it would give a reason to actually buy food from the folk who make it theri livelihood.
Support the wasteland economy!

Well the good news is that I only have a few food items left to do, the bad news is that short list includes beer, whiskey, porkN'Beans, potato crisps and Nuka Cola, thats a total item count of over 1200. Plus I spent a bit of time playing with the idea of Random Unfound Loot. Those bottles of water you were hoping to find may or may not be there, but what if they are not always bottles of water when they are there?

Excellent Steve! Thanks for you hard work on this.
How are you working it? Are you just stripping the stuff out or is there a random chance of it appearing?
If the latter, then I am hoping its really slim.

Even assuming the food is so packed with chemical preservatives that it would still be viable after 200 years, it seems just about impossible that anything would remain uneaten after so long, unless it were locked in a chest buried in the DeathClaw nest!
Just look how fast stores run out of food/get looted even in much less cataclysmic events in the real world!

I remember you mentioning it in the last thread about food scarcity, and it sounds like what you're working on is exactly what I'm looking for!

Be sure to post a release thread when it's done, I don't want to miss it! :foodndrink:

SteveDog,

I vote for random unfound loot - but only with the misc. not the ammo,weapons,meds.... we need to find some of that occasionally and with the mods I run it makes sense to find only 1 or 2 bullets in a case b/c I always imagine those are the one or two rounds still firable after so many years out of the hundreds per case.

Having to hunt for food and drink the radiated, dirty water is most realistic and fun imho. Plus it makes the world more immersive - making buying a brahmin steak or molerat a necessity instead of a quaint little ho hum moment.

So, what time today will you be releasing?

J

My Realism Tweaks reduces the amount of food in the game . . . it is part of my Less_Is_More module. I've reduced the random generic food (but not the animal and hunter meat) by more than 50%.

In my next version, I'll be reducing this a bit more, while fixing it so that you'll always be able to get meat from the animals you kill (Antmeat, dogmeat, moleratmeat, radroachmeat).

If you're using a mod like Primary Needs, you're going to need to be able to find enough food to survive, so I'm trying to do this in a way that is balanced.

Geez, I've been using your 'Less is more' mod for ages, but I still seem to find more food than I could ever possibly use (I use 'Simple needs' which I find covers the needs bases very effectively). I actually didnt realize it reduced the food.
The vanilla version must be be ridiculous!
No wonder the super mutants are able to grow so huge. Its all the food they get to eat!

It also seems to me that wild meat is also just a bit too easy to come by. Heck you can't walk for two minutes without being charged by a waddling suicidal sausage with teeth! Hence my suggestion that bush grub should be at least slightly radioactive.
Currently its hard to imagine how the restaurants and food merchants manage to stay in business. In several hundred hours of play using various needs mods, I cant remember ever actually buying food.

Actually, I may just have a stab at modding this food situation myself. I have a feeling that I am probably looking for a somewhat more spartan menu than most players will have a stomach for.

I didn't know that, cool.

But like Gurachn I'm still getting much more food (looted and handplaced combined) than I'll ever need for Primary Needs. With your mod dealing with the looted food It would be nice to use a mod that reduces the handplaced ones along with it.

Part of the problem is that much of the default is hand-placed, so that isn't reduced by my mod (or by any mod that just alters the food_loot No Chance modifiers).


Actually this is totally believable, since whenever the human population is greatly reduced, the wildlife undergoes a population explosion. And if you kill an animal, their meat would not just disappear. The unrealistic part is that you get like one meal from an entire Yao Guai, and a full grown bear in real life would yield at least 100 pounds of meat (not just enough to make one "quarter-pounder").
Perhaps a better solution would be to make the meat in old kills unedible . . . as in spoiled), and ad a higher amount of radiation to all the "wild-game meat" . . . perhaps the restaurant owners and food merchants have discovered a way to prepare the meat that greatly reduces the amount of radiation.

Agreed, but until then, I can still make much of the loot food (and drinks) a lot less plentiful. I didn't want to reduce food too much when I first released my Less_Is_More module (and I never touched drinks). But the very fact that users of my mod, like you and Gurachn had not even noticed my reductions, tells me that I can up the no-chance modifiers quite a bit more.

So that's what I've now done. There should now be roughly 60 to 75% less loot food and roughly 40% less drink loot (liquor and non-liquor) in v.4.2.

If enough people are interested, I can post the beta 4.2 version of my Less_Is_More module on FO Nexus(when it comes back online). But this will be the full module, that also makes your Bartering skill a MUCH greater factor in what you pay and receive for goods; and makes weapons and ammo loot a LOT less plentiful; and reduces caps loot.

Loss of human population would generally cause an increase in wildlife, but in this case there was also a massive loss of vegetative cover/forage also, which the herbivores (and by extension, top predators like Yuo Guai) require, so I still think animal pop densities are way high. I use MMMs decreased wasteland spawns too.
You are right about the amount for each kill though, but not sure I would be in favor of uppin it. Perhaps the critters of the wasteland are so covered in festering sores that most of the carcass is too scabby to be appetizing?

Anyway, more rads for beasties definitely seems in order.
I am guessing that reputable food sellers are dealing mainly with farmed animals, raised on less contaminated fodder/water.
This of course will raise the cost for 'clean' food.
The need to spend hard earned money on healthy food strikes me as a nice immersive touch, though.

I'm hoping to have something for those of you who like to roleplay starvation out in the near future. Due to the popular demand I'll release a single plugin that makes the chance for hand placed food and drink to appear at 1% per point of luck. The followup will be a single plugin that reduces Food, Drink, Chems, Ammo and Weapons, each will have a seperate luck modifier that can be adjusted. So far the Random Unfound Loot is only in testing and only on Chems and Ammo. The way it's working is that if you go into the Springvale School hoping to find on of those two stimpacks in the closet you may get lucky and one will show up, but it will be Rad-X or Mentats or some other chem. I will apply the same method to drinks so that Water, Beer, Liquor and Nuka Cola are all interchangable in hand placed locations. Of course this feature will be optional.

Sounds awesome, Steve.

For my own $.02, I'd love to see it where the "_% per luck point" is adjustable. Also with the random possible replacement of items... would love to seem them somewhat weighted towards at least the category of what had been there.

Ie, assuming you're having a list for drugs with a 95% chance of not spawning anything, split that into two lists -- one for "Drugs_medical" and one for "Drugs_buff" --- where the medical list would have two listings for stimpacks, rad-x, and radaway... but only a single listing for each of the other drugs. Might help maintain a little bit of the "feel" of what should be found/placed in certain locations.

Also might help to have things a bit weighted for areas like the three quantum delivery sites - since having tons of the cola placed there suddenly become beer/whiskey/etc, would be a bit odd I'd think. (Well, OK, I guess two of those areas it wouldn't be too out of place, based on who is inhabiting the building... but still)

Hey Arwen, that would be great! as I also use your mod,

thanks for helping us overweight wastelanders



Good to know Stevedog thanks again for your hard work

I just uploaded my version 4.2 Beta release of my Less_Is_More module (under Files/Updates): http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7565


This is simply a beta release of my Less_Is_More module, which includes the changes that will be included in version 4.2 of my Realism Tweaks. It futher reduces the amount of ammo, food, and drinks that is just lying around in the Fallout 3 game world.

Details (changes from v.4.1):
====================
- Reduced the amount of 10mm ammo found in Vault 101 by ~ 66% of the default amount.
- Reduced the amount of generic food (loot food) in the game to 60 to 75% default amount (was ~ 50% of default in v.4.1)
- This should now effect ALL food loot (I missed some in v.4.1)
- Increases the chance that most killed animals will provide meat (from 75% default, to 100%)
- Reduced drinks (which were untouched in v.4.1) to roughly 40% less drink loot from default (includes liquor and non-liquor).


Installation:
=========
If you're using the Arwen_Less_Is_More.esp, just replace the v.4.1 one with this new one. If you are using the Arwen_FULL_Tweaks.esp, just put this new Arwen_Less_Is_More.esp below it in your load order (so that it will load later, and the new reduced amounts will overwrite the earlier version).


Note: this module also makes your Bartering skill a MUCH greater factor in what you pay and receive for goods; and makes weapons and ammo loot a LOT less plentiful; and reduces caps loot.

Alright, downloaded it. I don't know when I'll be able to test it but I'll post my experiences (if they're interesting) in your thread.

Yeah if you don't use stimpacks there tons of other alternatives if you don't like radioactive food theres tons of stimpacks and if don't like either theres lots of beds lol.