Imp's More Complex Needs



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Description:
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This mod adds five additional levels of nutrition to Hardcore mode's original 3, increasing both the immersion and challenge of the hunger/thirst/sleep portion of the game, and tracks all levels in ways that were modeled on human physiology, using real numbers. I'm well aware that this was a completely over the top, bordering on insane thing for me to do, but the end result became one of most popular needs mods for Fallout 3, so it was most likely worth it.

The New Vegas version has been substantially overhauled, with the addition of new nutrition levels (mood and stumilants), new food effects (fat, carbohydrates, stimulants and appeal) and several other new features (beverage chilling, time always passes, dynamic bed time, power armor benefits, and survival skill dependent animal loot drops - see the feature section for individual explanations). There are also several new customization options - all rates now have their own independent multipliers, so if you find something is changing too quickly or slowly, it can easily be fixed. Your height can be adjusted manually in the Height and Weight menu, in addition to the optional SPECIAL based player height that was a part of the original Fallout 3 version. You can pick and choose which portions of this mod are active. Food healing is disabled by default, but can be enabled if you prefer it to, or in addition to, IMCN's default health regeneration. You also have the option to display your needs levels in the original percent form, or in real units - grams, ounces and calories.

This mod also includes pretty much all of the functionality from Imp's TimeScale Adjuster. The two should not be used at the same time. The timescale management features will prevent several bugs related to using a non-vanilla timescale, and there is also a dynamic timescale feature based on Forevernomad's Immersive Timescale mod from Fallout 3. It's a simplified version, but lets you select different timescales for interiors, exteriors, and combat. The idea is to make exterior distances seem larger by having a higher timescale when in these areas, and to make interiors and combat more realistic by having a timescale closer to 1:1. This feature is disabled by default, but I highly recommend it.

Also new to the New Vegas version is the Time Always Passes feature. I added it because all gambling and Caravan games take place during menumode, which normally stops the passage of time. Your character's likely to spend a fair amount of time in these menus, so this feature causes the sun to progress across the sky like it should, and causes your needs levels to deplete at the rates they should. It's somewhat integral to the way the mod's coded, so it can't be disabled. The menumode timescale will always be 1:1, and takes effect in the pipboy, during gambling, and during conversations. If you really want to completely pause the game, hit escape rather than just entering your pipboy.


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The Basics: How to not die
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As with Hardcore Mode, you'll need to stay fed, watered, and rested. You run the risk of dying if your calorie or hydration levels remain too low for too long. The levels will bottom out after about a day, and from that point you have roughly 3 days to raise them before death from dehydration, and 8 days before death from starvation. This is realistic, although a bit more forgiving that hardcore - but this mod is challenging in other ways (how hard is it to reload a save?)

In addition to starvation and dehydration, you can also die from alcohol poisoning and stimulant overdose. Keep your Blood Alcohol Content below 0.42% and your stimulant level below 5000mg per 160 lb. of body weight, or you will die instantly. Keep your hydration level below 100% or you will suffer water intoxication (painful but not fatal). If you're close to the limit on any of these, visiting a doctor will restore you to a safer state. The same goes for calorie and hydration level.

Try to avoid eating raw meat. If it says "steak" its ok, but if it just says meat, or you just hacked it off of some dead critter, it's raw and can cause food poisoning. This goes for raw eggs as well. If you have a food sanitizer in your inventory you will not contract food poisoning, but the appeal of raw foods is very low, which will adversely effect your mood.

Your goal should be to get your calorie and hydration levels up to about 30% to 60% after a meal (note that this is roughly a third of the target percentage from the Fallout 3 version - 100% now represents a day's worth at rest rather than 8 hour's worth.)

You should keep your protein level above 40 grams per day, per 160lb of body weight, or 0%, to avoid penalties. 160 grams per day, or 300%, will earn you the Carnivore bonus, though you have to maintain that level long enough to raise your running average, which can be checked in the Average Levels section of the needs checker menu. Nutrients should be kept above 0%, and reaching averages of greater than 50% and 100% will provide bonuses.

This must all be done without your fullness reaching 100% - anything greater and you will suffer a penalty, and above 125% you will no longer be able to eat.

By default, this mod will also track your body weight, in the form of overall weight, skeletal muscle, and body fat percentage. You start out with stats that are average for a normal person, but you can achieve bonuses by increasing your skeletal muscle or lowering your body fat percentage. This takes time. In general, if your amount of activity is high and your calories are low (they can still be above zero if you're running around with a heavy pack) your fat will gradually decrease. Muscle building is based on 3 factors: your level of activity, your calorie level, and your protein level. A muscle building rate is calculated for each of these three factors, and the lowest one is applied (it can be negative). So not eating enough protein, not being active enough, or not eating enough will cause you to lose muscle. These features are difficult to balance given the amount of time it takes to notice an effect, so I pretty much just had to rely on math. If you notice anything is out of whack, let me know.

The muscle related bonuses are more traits than pure bonuses. Having a lot of muscle increases your strength but lowers your AP slightly. Having little muscle (the Lithe trait) will increase your ap but lower your strength.

All applied bonuses/penalties will be displayed in the Stats/Eff tab of your pipboy. I'll put together a list and the conditions that cause them, but there are a lot of penalties and bonuses, over 30, so it takes time.

As for sleep, you are more or less required to sleep 8 hours per day. Every waking hour, 1 half hour is added to your sleep debt. It takes 1 hour of sleep to remove that hour. A debt greater that 10 hours will result in increasingly severe penalties. You can also "bank" up to 6 hours of sleep, but sleeping longer than 11 hours at once will result in a Groggy penalty that lasts for 2 hours. Sleeping less than 3 hours will not reduce your sleep debt, but will not increase it either. You must also follow your circadian rhythm - your body becomes accustomed to waking up at a certain hour each day. At the start, you'll suffer a penalty if you are awake between 1am and 7am. Every time you wake up though, the hour is averaged with your current wakeup time, so over time you can become a night person or an early riser just by repeatedly sleeping during the same hours each day.


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The Levels: A bit more detail
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Fullness:
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When you eat something, the amount that it fills you up is calculated from its carbohydrate, fat, protein, water, and alcohol content. Fat is the most filling, followed by protein, carbohydrates, alcohol, and water. Being too full will prevent you from eating, so don't go hungry for too long, or it could take multiple meals to get caught up.

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Calories:
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The calorie content of foods are calculated from their fat, carbohydrate, protein, and alcohol contents. You can check to see how many calories a food had after eating it by checking your needs levels - the amount shown in parenthesis is currently being consumed. Having too many calories (more than 83%) will cause the Food Coma penalty. Having less than 0% will also incurr penalties, prevent health regeneration, and begin to decrease your mood. Adequate calories are required for muscle building, and excessive calories will cause your body fat to increase. Your rate of calorie consumption increases with how active you are - running versus walking versus standing still versus sleeping. Your inventory weight increases your activity level while moving. Power armor will decrease your activity level by 40%.

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Hydration:
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The water content of foods is among those listed on mouseover in the Pipboy. Anything that has water in it will improve your hydration, including food, alcohols, and caffeinated beverages, though being drunk or on stimulants will increase your rate of dehydration. So will having a high hydration level - anything above 0% will begin increasing your dehydration rate, as well as depleting your nutrients more quickly. Excessive hydration (above 100%) will cause Water Intoxication, and low hydration (below 0%) will incurr penalties and prevent health regeneration. Like calories, your rate of dehydration increases with your level of activity (see Calories).

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Protein:
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A high daily protein intake improves your rate of muscle building, and can earn you the Carnivore bonus if it gets above 160 grams per day per 160 lbs. of body weight. Penalties and bonuses are based on a running average over the past 24 hours (so one meal won't suddenly boost you from malnourished to healthy). The average can be checked in the Average Values section of the needs checker menu. The rate of protein consumption is proportional to your protein level, but is independent of your activity level - so a level of 160 grams means you're currently digesting 160 grams per day.

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Nutrients:
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The nutrients stat represents the vitamins and minerals found in foods. Fruits and vegetables tend to be high in nutrients, things like junk food low. The Entemologist perk will boost the nutrient content of insect meats and foods crafted from them. Like protein, its penalties and bonuses are based on a running average, though over the last 72 hours versus 24. Bonuses will be applied at average nutrient levels above 50% or 100%, and penalties below 0%. Like protein, your rate of nutrient depletion is based on your nutrient level rather than how active you are, though it is also depleted more quicly if you have a high hydration level.

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Alcohol:
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Your blood alcohol content (BAC) is tracked by IMCN. Rather than getting a single, fixed bonus per alcoholic drink consumed, the effect alcohol has will change depending on how drunk you are, and will last considerably longer. It is not an outright bonus though. One beer will get you buzzed, providing a +1 boost to charisma, and -1 penalties to intelligence and perception. Drinking more will cause you to progress through the five stages of drunkenness. They are:

Buzzed - similar to the default alcohol effect
Drunken Master - as above, plus bonuses to unarmed combat
Drunk - similar to buzzed, but doubled
Hammered - serious penalties to sneak, intelligence, and perception, but bonuses to melee combat
Blackout Drunk - try to avoid it

Anything above 0.42% BAC will kill you - a fifth of vodka will just about kill a lightweight character, so you will only drink half of it at once. The higher your BAC, the faster your rate of dehydration. Activity will not effect how quickly alcohol wears of.

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Stimulants:
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Stimulants are reported in equivalent milligrams of caffeine. They deplete at a rate proportional to their level, similar to nutrients and protein, and are unaffected by anything else. The bonuses, in ascending order, are Perked, Wired, Amped, and Fried (Fried is more of a trait, and also means you're close to dying from an overdose). They provide bonuses to intelligence and speech, and will also dispel reduce your sleep or calorie penalty level by 1 for Perked, 2 for Wired, and 3 for Amped and Fried. That doesn't mean those levels are actually effected, you just don't suffer the penalty. Your mood will continue to decrease if your calories are inadequate, as will your muscle and fat levels. Expect some interesting effects resulting from long term stimulant use in future releases, this one's going to be fun to play around with.

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Appeal/Mood:
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This statistic was introduced to give the Survival skill some teeth after I did away with food healing. Eating foods with high appeal will improve your mood. Having a less than adequate calorie level, or eating foods with low appeal, will lower your mood. The appeal of a food is averaged with your mood, meaning a food with appeal higher than your mood will raise it, a food with lower appeal than your mood will lower it, and a food with roughly equal appeal will maintain the status quo. In general, raw foods, or anything that you think would be sort of gross in real life, will have a low appeal, while the high level crafted foods and tasty stuff will have high appeal.

Having a positive mood enables health regeneration, and the higher your mood is the faster you will regenerate health, up to double the base rate with a mood of 100%. There are also mood based penalties that come into effect below -20% and -60%, and bonuses above +20% and +60%. They effect luck and charisma.

In future releases, other actions will effect your mood, like being crippled, drugs, sex, murder, and good deeds. It's an experimental feature, so ideas and feedback are welcome.




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Features:
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8 independently tracked needs levels:
Fullness - prevents you from eating too much in one sitting
Calories - analogous to hardcore mode's FOOD stat
Hydration - analogous to hardcore mode's H2O stat
Protein - provides strength based bonuses/penalties, improves muscle building rate
Nutrients - ranges from Chronically Malnourished to a Paragon of Health
Stimulants - mentats-like bonuses, plus alleviates hunger and tiredness penalties (mmm... coffee)
Alcohol - BAC based effects with visuals both help and hamper you, like traits
Appeal - eating tastier foods improves your mood, improving health regeneration

Activity level based needs rates
different rates for running/walking/standing still/sleeping/wearing power armor
also effected by inventory weight

Circadian rhythm - dynamic bedtime with penalties if you're up too late
6 hour "down time" each day when you should normally be asleep
Down time adjusts to your sleeping habits - wake up at 3 in the afternoon frequently, and your downtime shifts to 9am to 3pm

Power Armor waste recycling - Lore appropriate armors will capture lost moisture and store it in a reservoir

Time always passes
Time will continue to pass in most menus, so if you stay up all night gambling, the sun will be up when you leave the casino, and you'll be tired and hungry
Gametime will now truly match real time if you're using a timescale of 1
Pretty sure this feature is a Fallout first

Incorporates Imp's TimeScale Adjuster
Dynamic timescale option based on forevernomad's Immersive Timescale mod lets you select a higher timescale for traveling across the Mojave, to simulate longer travel distances
Prevents the deaths from starvation/dehydration usually associated with hardcore mode and low timescales
Prevents the crashes that sometimes happen when sleeping/waiting for long periods with a non-vanilla timescale
Prevents problems associated with quests that immediately advance the clock (will no longer crash the game/cause needs levels to skyrocket)

Weight Tracking
Total overall weight effects food requirements
Body fat percentage (long term stat penalties/bonuses)
Skeletal muscle percentage (long term stat penalties/bonuses)

Variable player height
Manual adjustment mode - specify your height in feet and inches (or meters)
SPECIAL based mode - height is calculated from SPECIAL
Option to have it effect in-game player scale (your character will look taller or shorter if enabled)
Height effects weight

Fiddly menus applenty
nearly all features can be disabled/enabled
all nutrition related rates have independently adjustable multipliers

Optional health regeneration - an alternative to the vanilla food healing

Option to disable food healing

Refrigeration - add a RobCo Cold Fission Froster to any non-living container (or ED-E) to turn it into a refrigerator
Chill beverages in 1 hour to improve their appeal
Prevent food spoilage (unrefrigerated raw meats go bad in 12 hours, cooked foods in 24, eggs in 48, and fruits/vegetables in 1 week)
Food spoilage has not been 100% implemented - at best, one of each type of item in your inventory will spoil rather than all of them. I've figured out a fix, but it will have to wait for the NVSE version

Improved food crafting
New recipes (thanks to Joe Shrapnel)
Beer Bread Roll
Nuka Roll
Sunset Roll
Bighorner Stew
Spicy Pickled Ant Egg
Rattler Chili
Desert Salad Plus
Hardboiled Gecko Eggs
Lakelurk Cake
Rat On A Stick
Braised Roach In A Red Wine Reduction
Giant Rat Steak
Ant Ramen
Lakelurk Scramble
Vodka Victory Shots

More realistic recipe yields

Water bottling

Food Poisoning - cook your meat and eggs, or carry a food sanitizer, or there's a good chance you'll get sick (you don't want to get sick, trust me)

Compatible with Harcore Mode

Takes advantage of Hardcore mode's HUD and stat readouts
Calories, hydration, and sleep are reported in the same way that they were in Hardcore mode

Interdependent needs rates
Alcohol and stimulants will increase dehydration rate
Stimulants cause you to digest more quickly (fullness decreases more rapidly)
Hydration will increase water and nutrient loss rates (drink more and pee more)

Cure nasty/potentially fatal conditions with visits to the doctor

Creature death loot changes
most meat yields have been increased (there's a lot of meat on them big horners)
but its proportional to your survival skill



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Installation:
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This mod should load late in your load order. All of the changes that it makes, particularly the ones to ingestibles and hardcore rates, are required for it to function correctly. This version does not require NVSE.

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Uninstall:
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Important: Before uninstalling, use the timescale adjustment menu to set your timescale back to STATIC 30, and select "Disable and Dispel All For Uninstall" in the Pause/Reset/Uninstall config menu. Failure to do so could result in somewhat permanent changes to your stats. After doing so, save, then exit and delete the .esp.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



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Compatibility:
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Any ingestibles added by other mods will not satisfy your HTS needs. I've made compatibility patches for popular food mods in the past, so let me know if you'd like something added and I'll try to make time for it.

This mod will conflict with any mod that alters timescale, Hardcore needs rates, water actor effects, and hardcore penalty effects, and should be loaded later or made compatible with a merged patch.



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Credits
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Thanks to Forevernomad for letting me recreate the dynamic timescale feature from his Immersive TimeScale mod.

Thanks to Joe Shrapnel for most of the new recipes.

Thanks to Joe Shrapnel, thrandisher, Adelus, robber804, Jerom, cobra428, akbaa, Miko19, Ta'Lyn, Gtab, Dynastia, KayneOP and foudelou for help with the beta testing (I think that's everyone).

Thanks to everyone else that helped contribute ideas and feedback for both this and the FO3 version.