Increase insect food source spawns or tweak insectivore diet stats

18 votes

The insectivore diet for Deinonychus and Struthiomimus is really nice and one of my favourite ways to play, however the food/water drain feels too high, taking into consideration of how rare and difficult to spot ant hills, termite mounds, and insect flowers are. If these food sources were made more common, or the food drain tweaked a little, I think it could feel a lot more rewarding to play.
At the moment you're encouraged to stay in one location once you find food and water, especially since the food sources replenish quickly so are rarely depleted, and home caves are difficult for these creatures, as staying in your cave for even just 5 minutes can make your food dangerously low.

Under consideration Game Balance and Stats Suggested by: SmaViking (28 Oct, '21) • Upvoted: 20 Jan • Comments: 4

Comments: 4

29 Oct, '21
Aion
I agree, but it may be a balance of the amount of food available to an insectivore is greater than berry bush eaters since there are far fewer creatures eating bugs.

So even though there are many bushes, the insect mounts will nearly always have food whereas the bushes may be eaten from a large area.

It could also be due to creature speed that it is so high, the struthio and deinonychus is very fast and we know that different creatures have different food depletion rates for the same Metabolism. Perhaps if there was a larger creature that ate insects the diet would have a slow drain.

Currently it does feel a little bit higher than it should for both of these creatures
13 Nov, '21
Shenv
My biggest issue about it draining so fast, is that you have about 10 minutes tops for doing anything before you're critically starving. This makes editing homecave impossible. Can't even use the cave and edit a skin or ability without leaving at near death.

I suggest adjusting thirst at least so that I'm not literally going back n forth repetitively from water to ant mound.

Another option could be having meat reduce hunger speed. This would encourage hunting before setting out for quests.

All in all, it's an unenjoyable playstyle after caves were added.
1
30 Nov, '21
JM
As someone returning to check out the update who was used to the old Deinonychus who could eat meat & insects, I found myself baffled when I grew enough to get the 1 Metabolism slot. I took one look at the free Hypercarnivore, then looked at the pay-marks-to-unlock Insectivore, and thought why would anyone do that? Corpses are everywhere, hunt if you're lucky, and we'll have critter AI in the future... AND it offers slower food drain.

I would only consider paying to select Insectivore if it offered the same slower food drain, or a better benefit. We are fast enough that it's not that risky to visit the same corpses other carnivores may know about, that's not enough to incentivize me to want to buy Insectivore. Or even consider the other options available. The default FREE Hypercarnivore, to me, seems the best choice... which was disappointing, and limiting. I miss being able to do both, which gave me variety and choices in diet.
01 Dec, '21
beebee73
I think the insectivore metabolism (and others) would be more valuable in the whole if they didn't change tour base diet. (Like fisher on conca)

Soo instead in locking you into one diet (in this case insects) it would instead EXPAND your diet to include insects. The food drain can stay the same (faster than if strictly meat) and to compensate for added food source the price in marks can be increased.
1