Hey all, I was wondering about this and I think it's time it changed. I pick a Mushroom, it eventually spoils giving me Spoiled Food. Fine. However if, just before that Mushroom spoils, I pick another mushroom that's fresh and has a long time left before it spoils, it will stack on that first Mushroom and BOTH will spoil in the same time. Really, what should happen is only the oldest Mushroom should spoil, creating a NEW stack of Spoiled Food, whereas the fresh Mushrooms persist. It seems like a short-cut has been taken to apply the spoil timer to the entire stack, rather than the individual items. An example happened just now. I had a couple of mushrooms I'd picked early-game, but they still had some time left. I then go and pick 20 more Mushrooms that get stacked with the existing ones (not my choice) then, as I'm returning to base the ENTIRE STACK spoils, despite most of them being quite fresh. This is particularly irksome early-game, where the player is collecting a lot for levels and for food / meds preparation a little later. If you've picked a stack of 20 Mushrooms over the past fifteen minutes or so of play, then the entire stack spoils, that's not good. Basically freshly picked items lose there freshness when they (automatically) stack.. Is this going to be changed?
I think they could still stack, but the spoil time shown would be that of the oldest item, with other items not shown, but still recorded. Then, that item alone would spoil, giving one spoiled food, while the rest of the stack is ok, but the spoil timer would then show the next oldest item of course. Sure, it's more to keep track of, but fairly simple in the scheme of things. Other survival type games I've played work a similar way. While "fresh" something can remain in a stack of identical items, but on one spoils at a time. At the end of the day, something totally fresh spoiling just because the game forces it to stack with items collected earlier isn't so good.
I mean they would have to change how items are stored to keep that info. Currently, a stack of items must all have the same metadata. So they'd need to add a new mechanic for this and that's not always simple to do.
Oh yeah, I get it that the current mechanic would be unable to support this currently. Still, we finally got the ability to crouch, so anything is possible
It would be pretty easy actually, just have the stack overwrite the spoil time with the freshest ingredient. I agree the current setup makes more sense realistically, but it is absolutely frustrating for sure.
While I'm of course long-familiar with the mechanic and how it works, I can imagine is particularly frustrating for a new player. I mean, they're "surviving" and have plenty of food / medical items collected for crafting, then a whole stack of one ingredient expires at the same time, despite only having collected much of if recently. It very much reinforces the whole "picking flowers to learn how to build spaceships" thing, as a lot of early-game resources are collected just for the XP needed to learn items. I do personally often try to rush a BA or HV-class Fridge to preserve much of what I collect, while crafting what food I can right away, and keeping in the suit constructor inventory (no spoiling) but that's not so intuitive. I did raise this question likely a couple of years ago now, but it is funny how stuff I collect spoils yet I'm in an environment that never got above freezing... I wish environmental temperatures could be a factor in spoil times. So, a lush, hot swamp might have lots collectable plants but those, and any animal meat, would spoil quickly. Anyway, that's a separate topic...
Taking one off the top is how Conan Exiles does it. It's a different economy, though. Food preservation is a high-end thing involving a lot of climbing on frozen mountain ridges. Meanwhile, you can toss a minifridge onto any old H/SV five minutes into the game, and access it wirelessly.
Note: If you have a food item that expires in 1 minute and you add a fresh one to the stack, it averages their expiration time. The more fresh items you add, the higher the average. You can keep adding fresh food to older stuff to extend the lifespan of the stack. The stack does NOT inherit the lowest expiry time. It's also worth noting that if you have one rotten apple and ten fresh ones in the same bag, the rot will spread to the fruit it's touching; so shared expiry isn't too farfetched.
Hmm, that's odd then as I lost an entire stack moments after collecting a load of fresh Plant Protein from corn dogs. Literally, I had a stack of about 10-15 that were near expiry, collected a good 10+ more then, before I'd walked the (very short) distance back to my base, the entire stack had expired. I'd estimate that I had items picked under two minutes prior expire with the stack. Expiry time did not appear to increase as I added fresh items to the stack. Heh, yes re: one apple rotting a basket of apples, sure. But mass compression and wireless teleportation of items exist in this universe. So, it's plausible that everything rotting at once is mitigated against. Basically, I don't think this core feature is as good, or as fun as it could be. Food expiration needs to be done differently in my view.
