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Grendalsh

NPC Food Consumption rates

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I've been trying to sort out the rates at which AI NPCs consume food, in order to manage feeding an army of them scattered across an island's defenses.

I've been able to sort out the following:

  • NPCs will eat the first food type available that will address their current hunger (missing food stat). This means they will eat berries (1.5 food value) before they eat veggies (5 food value) or cooked food (25-50 food value).
  • I observed that it took about ~2mins for an NPC in the Sweeping animation to reduce  0.1 food value. This would imply they lose 1 food value per 20mins, or 3 food per hour.
  • I left this same NPC on idle alone near a larder with a 100 stack of berries. After 80 mins, he had eaten 9 of the berries (accounting for spoilage). Berries are now 1.5 food. At roughly 6 berries per hour, this yields a food consumption rate of ~9 food per hour. 
  • So far, my unmeasured observations of consumption of the veggie stacks I've been stocking in the larders for NPCs on cannons has pointed towards a consumption rate of about 2food per hour. 

My hypothesis at present is that different activities have different food consumption rates, similar to the gold/hour costs. However, I've been unable to get consistent values for the same activities. I'm in an area with a lot of traffic, so it's difficult to have controlled experiments. 

Has anyone been able to get consistent values?

Edited by Grendalsh
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On 2/7/2019 at 2:18 PM, Grendalsh said:

I've been trying to sort out the rates at which AI NPCs consume food, in order to manage feeding an army of them scattered across an island's defenses.

I've been able to sort out the following:

  • NPCs will eat the first food type available that will address their current hunger (missing food stat). This means they will eat berries (1.5 food value) before they eat veggies (5 food value) or cooked food (25-50 food value).
  • I observed that it took about ~2mins for an NPC in the Sweeping animation to reduce  0.1 food value. This would imply they lose 1 food value per 20mins, or 3 food per hour.
  • I left this same NPC on idle alone near a larder with a 100 stack of berries. After 80 mins, he had eaten 9 of the berries (accounting for spoilage). Berries are now 1.5 food. At roughly 6 berries per hour, this yields a food consumption rate of ~9 food per hour. 
  • So far, my unmeasured observations of consumption of the veggie stacks I've been stocking in the larders for NPCs on cannons has pointed towards a consumption rate of about 2food per hour. 

My hypothesis at present is that different activities have different food consumption rates, similar to the gold/hour costs. However, I've been unable to get consistent values for the same activities. I'm in an area with a lot of traffic, so it's difficult to have controlled experiments. 

Has anyone been able to get consistent values?

I'd be interested in finding out but honestly I just toss 2-3k berries into a larder near them each day that I'm on since that's the easiest thing to get the most of for me.

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Before the recent Gold/activity changes, I finally nailed down food consumption at roughly 1/20 minutes, 3/hr. This would be 1 veggie per 1.67 hours, equivalent to an idle NPC at 1Gold per 1.7 hours. Since cannoneer NPCs want 1g/1.2 hours, it appears food consumption is not tied to duty. With the new gold wage changes, I'll be doing some more testing to see if food consumption has changed as well, as Idle NPCs now want 1G/2.7hr.

In regards to just dropping stacks of berries into the larder, consider the following. A stack of berries will decay in about 2 days. At 100 berries, 1.5 food each, that's 150 food value. At 3food/hr, an NPC will eat a stack of berries in about 50 hours, which is about the decay timer for any other stacks of berries in the larder. Result - only 1 stack/NPC will be eaten , the rest will decay before being eaten, and no matter how many stacks of berries you put in the larder you'll have to refill it every 2 days.

A stack of Veggies will take 960 hours (40 days) to decay. At 5 food each (excluding Wheat and Maize at 1.5 food each), and 3food/hr, a stack of veggies will feed one NPC for just under 6 days, and a second stack will still have ~80 veggies left. While it took some time get running, I have a farm with about 200 plots. It takes about 20minutes to harvest, and an hour each week to grind fertilizer. Each harvest yields enough veggies to top up about a dozen NPC larders. After getting 1 stack/NPC in each larder, it's only necessary to top up the larders every 3 days, and if I pre-stock 2 stacks/npc, they can safely go a week.

If you're just dumping a couple K berries on a ship's larder each day you take it out, then not such a big deal.
If you're maintaining a harbor with a couple dozen larders feeding a 100+ NPCs, unless you want to farm and run berries every day, veggies are the way to go. 

Edited by Grendalsh

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19 minutes ago, Grendalsh said:

Before the recent Gold/activity changes, I finally nailed down food consumption at roughly 1/20 minutes, 3/hr. This would be 1 veggie per 1.67 hours, equivalent to an idle NPC at 1Gold per 1.7 hours. Since cannoneer NPCs want 1g/1.2 hours, it appears food consumption is not tied to duty. With the new gold wage changes, I'll be doing some more testing to see if food consumption has changed as well, as Idle NPCs now want 1G/2.7hr.

In regards to just dropping stacks of berries into the larder, consider the following. A stack of berries will decay in about 2 days. At 100 berries, 1.5 food each, that's 150 food value. At 3food/hr, an NPC will eat a stack of berries in about 50 hours, which is about the decay timer for any other stacks of berries in the larder. Result - only 1 stack/NPC will be eaten , the rest will decay before being eaten, and no matter how many stacks of berries you put in the larder you'll have to refill it every 2 days.

A stack of Veggies will take 960 hours (40 days) to decay. At 5 food each (excluding Wheat and Maize at 1.5 food each), and 3food/hr, a stack of veggies will feed one NPC for just under 6 days, and a second stack will still have ~80 veggies left. While it took some time get running, I have a farm with about 200 plots. It takes about 20minutes to harvest, and an hour each week to grind fertilizer. Each harvest yields enough veggies to top up about a dozen NPC larders. After getting 1 stack/NPC in each larder, it's only necessary to top up the larders every 3 days, and if I pre-stock 2 stacks/npc, they can safely go a week.

 

SO I would have 1 crew member,  So i can safely drop 2 stacks of potatoes in food larder + enough gold in chest. And be gone for more than a week?

Now try with eggs 😛  That would probably go really long.

 

Also other slightly unrelated, crew do contest/refresh the claim timer right? 

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36 minutes ago, Pietje said:

 

SO I would have 1 crew member,  So i can safely drop 2 stacks of potatoes in food larder + enough gold in chest. And be gone for more than a week?

Now try with eggs 😛  That would probably go really long.

 

Also other slightly unrelated, crew do contest/refresh the claim timer right? 

Eggs last ~30days each in a larder, so a 100stack would last forever..
However.....
An egg only has 3 food value. This means that NPCs will eat eggs before Veggies, and 1 NPC will eat 1 egg/hr, finishing a stack in <4 days, vs <6 days for a veggie stack.
Unless you have a  couple dozen chickens, it will take a while to collect a stack of eggs.
Conversely, 1 crop plot will yield a couple dozen veggie per harvest, even without Tilling.
In the time it takes to pick up a stack of eggs, one could harvest a dozen or so stacks of veggies. 

At this point, I just save the eggs for cooking player food. 

Edited by Grendalsh

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1 hour ago, Grendalsh said:

Eggs last ~30days each in a larder, so a 100stack would last forever..
However.....
An egg only has 3 food value. This means that NPCs will eat eggs before Veggies, and 1 NPC will eat 1 egg/hr, finishing a stack in <4 days, vs <6 days for a veggie stack.
Unless you have a  couple dozen chickens, it will take a while to collect a stack of eggs.
Conversely, 1 crop plot will yield a couple dozen veggie per harvest, even without Tilling.
In the time it takes to pick up a stack of eggs, one could harvest a dozen or so stacks of veggies. 

At this point, I just save the eggs for cooking player food. 

Very interesting. I had been using berries to feed the NPCs on the ships, and now I see why that is not the best choice.

I also put celery in the larder. I have a ready source of it and can just harvest it in the wild without having to grow it in a crop plot. So that should be a better choice than berries, right?

Edited by wildbill

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Allow salt to be put into a larder to slow down the decomposition why this isnt allowed makes no sense.  Or remove it from the captain skill and place it under Cooking.  A few to many skills that intersect with others , on the areas of food I just have a few chickens so i have a few 100 eggs makes it easy to deal with

 

Edited by Luxfere

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@wildbill Will need to research this.The ATLAS wiki data is unclear on the food values and decay timers of the Cooking and Healing herbs.

However, as long as 1) NPCs are eating it, 2) it has the same decay time as vegetables (9:36 in Larder), and 3) provides the same 5 food value as veggies, then it's a valid alternative to crop vegetables. 

I previously noticed that NPCs weren't eating the Cooking or Healing herbs in their larder, but that may be due to them eating the stacks of berries first due to their lower food value. 

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25 minutes ago, Grendalsh said:

@wildbill Will need to research this.The ATLAS wiki data is unclear on the food values and decay timers of the Cooking and Healing herbs.

However, as long as 1) NPCs are eating it, 2) it has the same decay time as vegetables (9:36 in Larder), and 3) provides the same 5 food value as veggies, then it's a valid alternative to crop vegetables. 

I previously noticed that NPCs weren't eating the Cooking or Healing herbs in their larder, but that may be due to them eating the stacks of berries first due to their lower food value. 

I checked the celery in the larder, it was decaying (on a private server) around 10 times slower than berries and when I eat it, it has 5x the food value of berries. I haven't had the time to test whether they will actually eat it or not. I hate it when they run out of food, as they want to mutiny 🙂

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