Right now, supplies are automatically consumed when hunger hits 50. But there is no way to consume supplies manually at a hunger below 50 (as far as I know).
This ability would matter in two scenarios:
You’re at a relatively high hunger, but under 50, and you’re about to dock in a port. You need that extra 1 cargo space for something (particularly London where you’re planning to leave on a long cruise, and you want to use all of your cargo space). Right now, optimal play is to sit and wait for your hunger to tick over to 50 so that the supplies are consumed, and you get the 1 cargo space back. That’s silly. Just let us manually eat the supplies in that circumstance instead of sitting and wasting time.
Less common: Your hunger is above 50 and you have 0 supplies. You manage to make port and buy supplies. However, when you undock, the supplies won’t be consumed (and hunger won’t be reduced) until the hunger tries to tick up again, and the game realizes you have Supplies, and eats one. During that time period, you’re still vulnerable to all kinds of bad events based on your lack of supplies - despite the fact that you actually have supplies. If we could right-click supplies from the hold, I could have let my crew eat before we even left port. Because, after all, we actually did have food.
Right now we’re at the mercy of the game’s periodic checks for consumption of supplies, and it doesn’t always make sense. Adding the option to manually eat the food would fix all of these problems, without adding any exploitable advantages.
(This ability to consume supplies from right-click "use" should also be accessible from the dump cargo screen so that we’re not automatically dumping supplies when we could just eat one to get the cargo space.) edited by grisamentum on 3/6/2015
I actually suggested something similar to this a while back, in the form of a "slider" where you could adjust the hunger-level where you would consume supplies. Of course, anything over 50 would increase the rate where you accrue terror – but in some voyages that’s the only way you can string out your supplies if rations come up short.
This would also allow you to lower the slider and consume the supplies right away, which would help in the two situations you mentioned.
I had originally suggested this idea because I was tired of killing crabs, sailing up to their bodies, and watching my crew consume yet another unit of previous supplies a split-second before dumping a feast on the deck that would be completely wasted. I figure any captain with half a brain could say "hold on a minute – we’ll feast within the hour" and the crew could get a meal that would set them back a while before they’d need to consume more supplies. Even if the crab only replenishes 50 hunger, it would be better than using up the supplies and then letting the extra meal go to waste.
[quote=WormApotheote]2 should be pretty rare, seeing as you’d have at most 10 seconds before hunger ticks.
(also I don’t recall the hunger events being especially punishing one their own? They seemed to be mainly punishing because they popped up a lot.)[/quote]
Yes, (1) is much more common than (2). But there events at higher hunger that, for example, kill your crew.
I second this notion if only because it trains the player that green paneled cargo cards are more fully interactive objects.
Since the green border only showed up on one common card in my hold - Strategic Information - I didn’t realize that the green border was general concept to be "right click this for more options" for quite some time, and so it took me far too long to figure out how to combine Strategic information cards as a result.
We can divide this generic problem into two more specific lackancies:
-Capacity to voluntarily spend a fuel/suply unit to reset the gauge at any given time. With hunger this would tie in with the slider idea, and with fuel with a rework of the Full Power mechanic so pressing F spends one fuel unit (for whatever efect). Or, alternatively, make these two usable from the Hold tab like StratInf is.
-The unshakeable imponence of the "Overcapacity" window. Making it so fuel and/or supplies being among the thrown stuff reset their gauge is a nice compromise, but if the Overcapacity pop-up were to pop-up not hardcodedly immedieately, but on the next routine Qualities check (like the Scion’s letter I conmented on another thread), and then THAT triggered the "What to throw overboard" window), we’d be able to be overcapacitated while at port (and at mid-zea events), giving players the opportunity to get rid of their stuff in more lucrative ways if possible… or to sink their own ship in yet another way, if they so desire. edited by Mr. Mister on 3/9/2015
[li]That’s a good idea, too. If I suddenly am giving more cargo than I can hold, I should at least have the optiont to use the shop tab to sell it (if one is available).
[quote=Mr. Mister]-The unshakeable imponence of the "Overcapacity" window. Making it so fuel and/or supplies being among the thrown stuff reset their gauge is a nice compromise, but if the Overcapacity pop-up were to pop-up not hardcodedly immedieately, but on the next routine Qualities check (like the Scion’s letter I conmented on another thread), and then THAT triggered the "What to throw overboard" window), we’d be able to be overcapacitated while at port (and at mid-zea events), giving players the opportunity to get rid of their stuff in more lucrative ways if possible… or to sink their own ship in yet another way, if they so desire. edited by Mr. Mister on 3/9/2015[/quote]
Agreed. Particularly annoying at isle of cats where I suddenly get dozens of cargo units dumped on me.
[quote=grisamentum][quote=Mr. Mister]-The unshakeable imponence of the "Overcapacity" window. Making it so fuel and/or supplies being among the thrown stuff reset their gauge is a nice compromise, but if the Overcapacity pop-up were to pop-up not hardcodedly immedieately, but on the next routine Qualities check (like the Scion’s letter I conmented on another thread), and then THAT triggered the "What to throw overboard" window), we’d be able to be overcapacitated while at port (and at mid-zea events), giving players the opportunity to get rid of their stuff in more lucrative ways if possible… or to sink their own ship in yet another way, if they so desire. edited by Mr. Mister on 3/9/2015[/quote]
Agreed. Particularly annoying at isle of cats where I suddenly get dozens of cargo units dumped on me.[/quote]
I cannot state the importance of this enough. It is not simply frustrating, but arbitrarily frustrating, to find fuel/supplies (when the tank/hunger is at 1%/4-%), and be forced to throw them overboard while there is clearly a practical use for them. Fill the tank, and feed the crew, before tossing the "remainder".
Further, it makes sense lore-wise that a zee-captain would not (willingly) abandon essential materials without utilizing as much as possible first. Perhaps, it might be easier to amend the capacity window to automatically refresh current fuel/hunger gauges when fuel/supplies are thrown away. That would also help in the event of someone turning in one too many port reports. ;)
[quote=Sigred]
I cannot state the importance of this enough. It is not simply frustrating, but arbitrarily frustrating, to find fuel/supplies (when the tank/hunger is at 1%/4-%), and be forced to throw them overboard while there is clearly a practical use for them. Fill the tank, and feed the crew, before tossing the "remainder".
Further, it makes sense lore-wise that a zee-captain would not (willingly) abandon essential materials without utilizing as much as possible first. Perhaps, it might be easier to amend the capacity window to automatically refresh current fuel/hunger gauges when fuel/supplies are thrown away. That would also help in the event of someone turning in one too many port reports. ;)[/quote]
Agree that at those moments there should be another option. I’d like to see an options box (such as feast, donate to the port, drop into the sea, etc.)