• Every merc now has 2 new values, 'food' and 'water'. Every hour, these values are lowered (we 'digest' food and water). The amount digested depends on a base value, the kind of activity we perform, and (for water) on the temperature of the current sector.
• If food or water levels are too low, we suffer from it. There are the following penalties:
  
  
  • Maximum possible morale is capped. Mercs aren't exactly happy if they starve.
  • Energy regeneration by sleep is lowered.
  • Our breath regenerates slower.
  • Our performance on assignments (repairing, training, etc...) is worse.
  • There is a chance that our health and strength stats will be lowered.
• The more hungry and thirsty we are, the more severe these penalties will be. Until we die. Yes, you can and will die from not having food and water long enough. A some point you lose several health stat points every hour, condemning your merc to a slow and agonising death.
• Stats lost by lack of food and water can be regained by doctoring. However, they can only be healed if the patient is well-fed again.
• With stock values, you can survive about 3-4 days without water, and about three weeks without food. This is the time until you die, you will suffer much, much earlier
• Eating food works just like using a canteen: drop the food on the body in your inventory. Food can restore food and/or water points.
• Some kinds of food can decay over time. A coloured bar indicates the status of the food (green -> good, brown -> bad), the item description gives a hint as well.
• Decayed food gives less food and water points. It can also poison you.
• Food can alter morale. Drinking a fine wine can improve morale, while eating the rotting carcass of a cow might lower it.
• If your merc is low on food, indicators on his portrait will show you that. You can also see the exact food values if you hover of the life points bar.
• Of course your mercs wont silently die if you don't pet them. once they get hungry, they will auto-feed: They will search their inventories for food and eat if necessary. That way, you can just place some food in their inventory and let them deal with it.
• Your mercs will refuse to eat any more food if you try to fill them up. The aren't bears you know, they don't eat tons before going into winter-sleep.
• Canteens are now truly refillable (just like the description always said). You can fill canteens by pressing 'Ctrl' + '.'. The following will happen:
• Canteens now don't disappear if you drink from them. They will stay at 1%, this simulates them being 'empty.'
  
  
  • If there is any water tile in this sector, all canteens in the sector and in your team's inventories will get refilled.
  • Note that water in a sector can be poisonous (like in swamp sectors). Your canteens will be filled, but the resulting watermix will be unhealthy. You can get poisoned by drinking poisonous water!
  • Otherwise, the game checks if there are any water drums in this sector. Canteens will be refilled from that as long a it has any water in it.
  • A water drum is a very huge barrel of water that exists solely for this purpose: Fill a drum with water and store it in your HQ to replenish your squads water supply.
  • Only food that has any drink points can get refilled.
  • This only works if there are no enemies in the sector.
• You can buy food at merchants all over Arulco. Best sources are the Santos brothers. Some types of food are also available at BRs (military rations and conserves).
• Some food can drop as random loot from enemies.
• You can now gut dead cows and bloodcats to get their flesh. It is nutritious, but your mercs will not be happy about eating raw meat...
  
• Food also works in conjunction with drugs. You can set up an item to be both drug and food, both will work. For example, energy drinks work both as an adrenaline drug and lower your thirst. Note that this way, you can also allow a drug syringe to be used multiple times
  
• This feature only works for the mercs of your team. It doesn't affect anybody else.
• As Alma currently has no mechants that could sell food, your mercs can now eat in th Alma Barracks cantina, it's a new kind of facility.

• takes an UINT32. This determines the specific kind of food this item is
• New -tag flags:
  

  #define WATER_DRUM	0x00000010	//16		// water drums allow to refill canteens in the sector they are in
  #define MEAT_BLOODCAT	0x00000020	//32		// retrieve this by gutting a bloodcat
  #define COW_MEAT   	0x00000040	//64		// retrieve this by gutting a cow
  

  
  If you want an item to be a water drum, do not only set its ItemFlag to 16, but also set to 1.

	7                -> the food type (set this in Items.xml) (UINT16)
        EPA                -> description (not game relevant, purely for orientation in this file) (CHAR16, length 80)
	450      -> eating the whole food gives 450 food points (INT32)
	0      -> drink or 'water' points are here (INT32)
	50   -> one eating action will use up 50% of this items status. So we can take 2 bites off of this item here (UINT16)
	1          -> morale modifier if we eat this (food decay can lower this, even negate it) (INT8)
	0        -> the rate at which the item decays (FLOAT)

• 0 - no water here at all
• 1 - drinkable water (rivers, water supply from houses)
• 2 - salt water, can't drink that (until something gets implemented...)
• 3 - there is water here, but it is poisoned (swamps and polluted sectors)

Hmm Perfect for the DayZ zombie survival style mod

I tell you what's wrong with eating enemies, there is no mayonnaise or hot sauce in Arulco.

Nothing.

Quote:

Nothing.

Then that's a huge advantage handed to the enemy . Can not a system work where they have to forage also ?
If not , then I think this'll suck lemons , unfortunately .

Just assume that the army is either well fed, or requisites food from the poor peasants.

How about a merc assignment - 'forage' - where the assigned merc will automatically gather food from available resources within the sector?