Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
7/30/2018 7:40:55 AM
Subject:
RE: mountain lions
I had an idea for a Fallout 4 food mod.
The common unit of settlement food in FO4 is .5. If you plant a carrot and assign a settler to farm it, that carrot is worth half a food unit. The same goes for corn, tatos, and vine plants like gourds and melons. I think the only food with a full 1 unit is mutfruit.
For proper happiness, a settlement needs at least one unit of food per settler per day. Each settler you assign to farming will generate up to 6 food units. So if you have 10 settlers, two of them will need to farm at least 10 mutfruit plants. Variety has nothing to do with anything. The whole place will happily subsist on nothing but 10 mutfruit plants.
But . . .
You don't always have 10 mutfruit plants. Sometimes all you have are 20 carrots or, even worse, 20 gourds. And even 20 carrots take up more room than you think. I ask you to imagine the sprawl you would get with 20 gourds or melons, with their inefficient vinage creeping all over the place.
Plus, each point of Charisma you gain adds another settler to your place, and really, you need high Charisma for various settlement-building duties. It's not uncommon for builders to have 20+ Charisma. Since the base settlement population is 10 (even if you have 1 Charisma), a Charisma tally of 11 would force 21 settlers on you. Considering the small area of most sites in the game, that's a lot of people. Your 20 carrots become 42 carrots. You can see the implications.
Therefore, I have the ultimate solution to FO4 farming. I envision one plant to feed the entire population -- one plant to tend instead of 42 -- one plant to rule them all.
I propose a single melon that would satisfy the needs of all inhabitants in the settlement. It would be a super melon or megamelon, increasing in size along with the population. A location with 10 people would have a melon about the size of a large appliance, e.g., a stove or washing machine. Twice that number would have a car-sized melon.
Why a melon? Why not a carrot? Because even with a car-sized melon, you're getting a big advantage in terms of space. The challenge would be how to accommodate the vines, but this could be overcome with some ingenuity. Also, you still only need the same number of farmers, regardless of the food units.
I think this would take off. People would be enthusiastic about the efficiency of a single megamelon. Since it's the only plant, they might even develop an affection for it. I foresee megamelons in every FO4 settlement. People would give them names and treat them like pets or mascots. Instead of building doghouses, they would construct melonhouses and might even design cunning melon clothes.
I think this would work. I don't know why someone hasn't thought of it before now.
