Something odd about the hunger/supplies mechanic: as your crew numbers increase, your rate of Supplies consumption doesn’t increase gradually. Instead it levels off for a while and then jumps sharply, with the jumps becoming bigger as your crew increases.
For instance: if you have 26 crew, your Hunger increases by 13 points per "tick". It takes four ticks to get past 50, at which point you feed the crew and the excess hunger is lost. If you have 33 crew, it increases by 16 points per tick, but it still takes four ticks to reach 50, and the excess is lost, so there’s no difference in food consumption.
But when you pick up Zailor #34… now you’re gaining 17 points per tick, it only takes three ticks to hit 50, and suddenly your food consumption increases by one-third. In other words, #34 eats as much as eleven other crew put together!
So if you’re running larger ships and don’t want to spend half your hold space on Supplies, it may be worth keeping a little under full complement. 34-40 crew will eat every 3 ticks (well, 34-49 if you can find a ship big enough), 26-33 crew will eat every 4 ticks, 20-25 crew will eat every 5 ticks - although if you’re running a Dreadnought on 25 crew, stay away from Lorn-Flukes unless you enjoy limping home at half-speed.
Edit: is it sometimes rounding the halves up rather than down? Or am I just unable to do simple mental arithmetic?
edited by GeoffreyBrent on 8/11/2014
edited by GeoffreyBrent on 8/15/2014