Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RadHazard]

Has anyone done any science on the effects of your adventurer's body weight on their speed?

I ask this because I have an adventurer who's speed appears to be gradually going up as his fat goes down.
To elaborate, I was waiting in a town until the full moon so that I can have some ‼Fun‼ with the local werecreatures.  Because I've been sleeping in eight-hour stretches and then eating, it appears my guy appears to be losing weight, as his description now reads "He has a thin body with very little fat".  At the same time, his speed appears to be increasing, despite not doing anything more strenuous than walking to the well and back.  He's not even sneaking to the well, so I don't think it can be from attribute gains at all.

I can't say for sure that this has to do with his weight at all, but it's the most likely explanation I can think of.  I'm almost certain the speed increase is not due to the lessening weight of his food supplies, as the speed increase always happens after the waiting/sleeping periods.  It's also about 3-4 points per wait/eat cycle, which is more than what a single piece of meat should weigh you down, I think.

[Shinotsa]

My question first is whether or not fat actually acts as food storage, absorbs blows, or if it's just aesthetic at this point in development. If it serves a purpose then this might be a very bad idea for life expectancy to get rid of it, but if not then I can't think of a more important stat to be able to raise than speed. See if you can't run some extra tests, I'll try as well if I can find the time. Maybe doing this outside a food shop or something where you could regulate the weight of food could help keep the results accurate. It might also help to grab a utility that can track your adventurer's exact stats, though I haven't looked for any this version so I can't help you there.

[Intro1827]

I noticed this in 31.x, where drinking people's blood would eventually get my character fat, and make him lose weight. Fat as armor should be overlooked if you have any metal armor.

[NW_Kohaku]

Fat layers do absorb damage, although they aren't nearly as good at it as muscle or bone is. 

Fat layers add weight to the adventurer, as well, however, and weight will slow you down. 

Hence, losing fat should make you faster but (mildly) more vulnerable to damage.

Try not carrying around your food until you are ready to eat it, however, as that should provide more stable results.

[squishynoob]

About the speed increase, it's more likely that it's caused by a small improvement in strength / agility.

If fat affects speed, it likely does so only mildly. You can carry a lot of heavy items and be barely slowed down.
Personally speaking, I think it's worth it to be fatter. Looking at the material properties, fat is indeed easier to cut than muscle, but it offers the same degree of protection against blunt impacts. Which is probably what you're dealing with once you're clad in heavy armor.

[Loud Whispers]

Fat as armour is worth the speed trade off, by far, especially when it comes to blunt attacks. Stacking.

[RadHazard]

Hmm, it turns out that the speed increase may not be caused by the fat after all.

I save-scummed my adventurer and repeated the waiting, but this time leaving my food on the ground, only picking up 1 unit to eat it immediately.  I noticed a zero speed increase this time.  Further testing shows that the speed increase did come from the weight of the food.  It seems that your adventurer's speed is not recalculated when you eat a piece of food from a stack.  It only gets recalculated when you either drop and pick up the stack, eat the very last item in the stack (thus removing it completely), or sleeping/waiting/fast traveling.  Dropping and picking up a different item doesn't seem to recalculate it properly either.

However, I would like to mention that there is still a possibility that fat has an effect on speed. The save I loaded was half-way through the waiting period, since I didn't have an older save.  The adventurer already had "very little fat" at that point in the waiting, so it will need to be tested with a fresh adventurer to confirm or disprove it.

As a side note, it is rather interesting that adventurer speed isn't recalculated after eating an item in a stack.  Perhaps this should be reported as a bug?

[NW_Kohaku]

That does sound like a minor bug...

I just tested it myself, dropping a stack of food, picking up exactly 3, and then eating all 3 at a time.

I had 1636 speed after dropping the food, 1628 speed after picking up 3 impala meat, 1628 speed after eating the first and second impala meats, and then 1636 speed again after eating the third.

Not a crippling bug, but something worth reporting, nonetheless, and something that probably is a result of Toady overlooking adding a single line to recalculate weight after eating, so it should be fast to fix.  If you don't want to do so, I can report it.

[RadHazard]

If you want to report it, feel free.  You already have a mantis account and plenty of practice with the bug tracker

[NW_Kohaku]

Hmm... I just tested it again on 0.34.07, one last time to make sure while using a new adventurer and a newly generated world, and the game behaved properly.

I was using version 0.34.05 when I was testing last time.  What version are you using when you notice these problems?  Maybe Toady stealth-fixed this problem before anyone else noticed...

[RadHazard]

That's odd.  I'm using 0.34.07

I went back and checked it, and the game definitely says 0.34.07 at the bottom.  I also know that the save I have was definitely generated in the same version, since I haven't copied any of my pre-0.34.07 saves into my 0.34.07 folder yet.

I do use Ironhand's graphics pack, and I do have some minor mods, but I don't think either of these things should affect that.

[NW_Kohaku]

I'm not sure what's causing the difference, either, but in that case, I guess it'll take a save, because if starting new adventurers from an entirely clean, vanilla game has appropriate behavior, then it must be something that's being changed by having longer-term adventurers, or by something we've modded into our normal games.

Can you try genning a new pocket world and starting a new adventurer in your (modded) game, and try picking up enough stuff that you start losing speed (like by picking up a bag of prickle berries from the town) and then dropping some of the food you have, picking up three at a time, and eating it, and telling me the results?

If this is something that doesn't happen on a new adventurer, but happens on older adventurers that have built up strange stat changes or have large amounts of equipment or something strange, then this might be a more complex bug than I initially thought.

[RadHazard]

Actually, I just downloaded a fresh copy of 0.34.07 SDL from the bay 12 website, genned a new world, and tested it out.  It's definitely happening in this version as well.  I'm not sure why your adventurer didn't experience it.

Here's the save.  The adventurer is sitting in town with a stack of 90 plump helmets in his inventory.

Speed without plump helmets: 1187
Speed before eating: 1118
Speed after eating 3 plump helmets: 1118
Speed after dropping 87 remaining: 1187
Speed after picking up 87 remaining: 1121

[StreetPizza]

Here's a point nobody's brought up yet: fat might make give you a stronger charge attack.

What I mean by that is that a charge attack, set from "C"ombat Preferences, seems to be affected by weight--I remember a few adventurers who were described as skinny and they bounced off of enemies all the time. That was usually fatal for them since it put them on the ground. But, and here's what I think about fat, if you have a fat character, you'll probably have more success charging against enemies of similar size/the same race, unlike those aforementioned skinny dead people.

So yeah, fat = more mass = charge attacks more likely to knock the opponent over. Thoughts?

[NW_Kohaku]

When you are uploading a save, remember to rename the folder from "region1" to something descriptive. 

When everyone uses "RegionX" saves, they overlap, and are hard to keep distinct.

Anyway, maybe it relates to the fact that I was only carrying 3 at a time?  It's strange, because I was definitely going up 1 speed every meat item I ate.

It is issue #5766


I'm noticing a new problem now, however...

When I pick up split stacks (like picking up only 30 out of 90 pump helmets if I drop the 90 stack) and then drop those split stacks, the split stack disappears.

Apparently, this bug is already listed: #5373