So, now that we know radiation works by directly reducing your maximum health, that has some really interesting implications for food and water. The Fallout 3/New Vegas way of handling food/water(+HP and +Rads) would be downright contradictory in Fallout 4's radiation system; you'd be healing your HP and lowering your max HP at the same time. So, what do you think they'll do with it?

Maybe it will heal your health at the cost of radiation, but at a value (or regeneration rate) that makes it worth it if Stimpaks are scarce enough. Or maybe most food doesn't irradiate you at all - or you can cook versions of it that don't. Or maybe food offers different kinds of buffs at the cost of being irradiated. At any rate, I just want food and water to be useful.

As much as I like the *idea* of bio needs in sandbox games, I have found them more burdensome than anything. Call me dumbed down, but I prefer the abstraction of simple health bar.

BUT... I do wish food and water had significantly more wasteland value. If I could have one wish-feature it would be to have some kind of material rating in each settlement: food, water, shelter, spare parts, energy, arms, munitions, and luxuries. Then the Wanderer could sell / donate to the material stockpile of a settlement to gain favors such as better prices, occasionally free services, followers, new side quests, lodgings, etc.

I think you're spot on about being able to cook food to reduce or eliminate radiation, especially considering something I discovered today. It would seem that one of the perks allows us to start fires!

EDIT: I believe that starting a camp fire would allow us to cleanse both food and water, by cooking and boiling them respectively. But this would also draw attention due to the fire itself, and so we would need to exercise caution

Hopefully it will be improved. I hardly ever use food in any Bethesda game. Only New Vegas gave food a true purpose with "hardcoe Mode". Whether that was good or not is a matter of debate.

Oh, I don't think hardcoe Mode was a good way to make food useful. It was more "This stuff is important because we said so", which isn't really a good way to make something fun. I'm just wondering what kind of effects food is going to have, since radiation directly reduces your max health.

Seeing as how the Lead Belly perk is confirmed on the perk chart, I imagine that food and drink we find is still irradiated.

I'd like a more refined hardcoe system, better weights, more balanced with rads and health and food and H2O

I'd like a system that incentivises the consumption of food and water without making it compulsory, much like how the Well Rested perk incentivises sleeping. You could have Well Fed increase maxiumum HP for a time, for example.

It might also be interesting to have downsides for sleeping or consuming too much, like a Bed Sores, Bloated or Bursting For a Piss 'perk'.

In games where eating wasn't necessary, I still always brought 'supplies' along with me because I like to pretend it matters. Having it matter as in NV or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. really made it more fun to me.

That' would add a pretty fun element to gameplay.. .. I wonder if we'll have to cook nuka cola? Yuck!,, flat, warm, cooked nuka cola.

I'd love it if stimpaks were expensive and rare, and that food would indeed lower your total max health while restoring your lost health. You would still gain health through food, just not your full health. A little trade, kind of like witcher 3 has the potion "swallow" which regenerates your HP but makes your toxicity higher. Too high toxicity and you start to lose health.

Assuming food and water are still irradiated this would turn them into less of a poor man's stimpak and more of a desperation healing item. If you're down to 5 HP and low on stimpaks you're probably still going to drink that irradiated water but now it will mean keeping yourself from dying immediately at the cost of being more vulnerable long term.

I'm sure there will be many ways of removing rads, doctors can probably still remove all your rads, maybe the Institute has some high-tech anti radiation tool, and of course there's still (almost certainly) radaway.

The main problem is the economy rather than any specific element such as food, water, etc.

For example, radiation chems should be quite common and cheap because the demand is very high and they are needed as a regular part if anyone's daily intake. Stimpacks should be fairly common due to the harsh nature of the environment and the frequent need for treatment of various injuries (they should not function instantly as in FO3, though, as that was pointless). On the other end of the scale, purified water should be incredibly rare and very expensive (unlike FO3 or FONV). Same with good food. However, some form of both items must be available for average daily use and not be too harmful as long as basic precautions are taken (see radiation chems as the first example I offered).

In short, the various items need to make sense within a workable economy, not be arbitrary in use, function, or price as they have been in prior games. Otherwise, you have a completely unbelievable setting which sort of defeats the purpose of any RPG.

Well, I kind of like how they did sleep in Skyrim where they gave a bonus rather than a punishment. I'd like to see food that gave you a buff for a while and maybe a slow heal. The buff might last until a reasonable next meal time. The radiation trade off is interesting but it would be nice to see non radiated non pre-war food also as well as clean water sources.

I also want eating and drinking animations but that's a different issue.

I would think all these items would be extremely rare and valuable.. just because there's nobody out there (that we know of) producing mass quantities to circulate to the larger public. There are plenty of factions that might have the technology to produce these items but they would most likely only be made to serve themselves.

I always love the beginnings of these games because you're just so weak and vulnerable.. finding things like radaway and rad-x usually takes some time. We only end up building a massive stockpile because we are apparently the nosiest person the wasteland has ever seen.

^ This. Demand is only half the equation.

It would take the series in a different (though interesting) direction if food and water were modeled to be as rare as they ought to be in the wasteland. It would make it a little more understandable why raiders are so common... as raiding would be orders of magnitude less effort to find potable water and hoard-able food.

Hope to see ingestibles on the caliber of Imps IMCN or PN or FWE. Else what's the point of having night/day cycle or even weather cycles now that we're getting rain and radioactive rain? Jury's still out on whether we could be getting snow in the colder climates. But this may not happen as it could be a performance constraint on the consoles.

IMO diurinal cycling implies an indication of the passage of time in the game. Which strongly suggests a need to sleep and/or regenerate health in the process. It would be painfully dull if it were 100% daylight the entire time. The fact nights (and dynamic weather/climate) exist, imply the hardcoe needs mode could be a hidden feature on the pipboy. Being within the vicinity of that radioactive sea area is definitely going to impact the PC health. And it would be very limiting game mechanic wise to restrict PC healing to use of instantaneously healing stimpacks. So I suspect hardcoe mode does exist, but that it will work the same way it did back in NV. Basically where it had to be enabled first in the menu before the needs were visible on the pipboy.

The game play is really going to svck if Beth leaves out the basic hardcoe FOD/H20/SLP needs. Additionally this should be an option as with NV to satisfy the achievement gamers and those of us who prefer greater sandbox immersion.

edit: By including the RTS feature, Beth definitely took note of the best talent the modding community showcased in FONV and F03. Hopefully they paid note to other immersion mods from other franchises like TES as well. Because it would be great if they included an enviornmental feature the likes of Chesko's Frostfall for Skyrim. This required the PC to drink and eat nutritious foods on a daily basis to avoid fatalities from dehydration, illness from disease, starvation, and environmental exposure.

I would like to se

Since demand for radiation chems would be high it would stand to reason they would be expensive based on supply and demand (not a lot of individuals or groups have the knowledge or materials to make these chems, or the inclination to share/trade them with others if they do).

Eh, interesting question.

With us not knowing if or not there is a Harcore Mode involved, food basically becomes low-output healing items unless they amped it a bit, but not enough to outshadow stimpacks.

I'm not thinking I'm wrong that they might remove the rads from food this time around because of the effects of radiation this time around.

My guess it will be like the crafting system we've already seen...

Kill a dog.

Collect dog meat.

Take dog meat to cooking station, gain raw meat.

Cook the raw meat.

YUMMIE