Calorie expenditure is off

[midflyer12]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Hello, I'm playing on 0.H stable and the calories that you expend during, for example crafting, feels way too high and unrealistic. When crafting an object that is labled as "active" such as for example a large space heater, the calorie expenditure from what I could tell is around 6 kcal/min.

This is approximately akin to a normal person jogging 6.4 km/h continuously for the duration of the crafting time. This is highly unrealistic, as welding work is not as metabolically intensive as jogging 6.4 km/h continuously. The very upper limit of realistic would be half of this calorie expenditure to something like 3 kcal/min but even this, is quite high.

Solution you would like.

I would like to suggest decreasing the calorie expenditure for certain crafting activites that are labeled active to better match realistic levels of calorie expenditure, a more realistic calorie expenditure level would at least half the amount currently.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

No response

Additional context

No response

[PatrikLundell]

In order to change this two things would probably be needed:

• More exertion step: The existing ones are SLEEP_EXERCISE, NO_EXERCISE, LIGHT_EXERCISE, MODERATE_EXERCISE, BRISK_EXERCISE, ACTIVE_EXERCISE, and EXTRA_EXERCISE, or at least allow for direct floating point values in between these (game_constants.h).
• Someone willing to review every activity in the game, including recipes and adjust them honestly (not a blanket "cut everything in half"), weighing the various crafting steps to end up with an average for the whole duration.

In addition to that you'd need the approval of the lead developers (and I don't know if the above would be approved).

Also note that the game currently doesn't really have the support for reducing time and/or effort when using power tools. You'd need duplicate recipes to do that, so it's only done in fairly extreme cases.
There's a desire to allow recipes to be broken up in steps where steps can be selected e.g. based on more efficient tools, but that's not a current option, and there's no defined time plan for it.

An alternative would be to just try to adjust activities that seem to be assessed incorrectly using the current limitations. In that case you'd have to explain why the new (lower) value would make more sense for each change. I agree "active" is probably overused (possibly because others may have the same impression as me, a non native English user, that "active" sounds somewhat average, while it's actually ranked over both "moderate" and "brisk".

[GuardianDll]

I don't think we actually need to diverge much from our integer activities, what we actually need is to define what each activity level represents, and, yes, review the recipes activity levels. I absolutely believe we have a lot that has should be lighter, and a lot that should be harder, so no issues with adjusting

[midflyer12]

Yes, lowering the activity level of specific recipes from "active" to "moderate" and "brisk" is what I'm ultimately suggesting, I can come up with a list of recipes and the respective activity level for each one I would suggest lowering, as well as data backing up each claim. Is there a fixed calorie cost affixed to each activity level (LIGHT_EXERCISE, MODERATE_EXERCISE, BRISK_EXERCISE, ACTIVE_EXERCISE)? Like for example does MODERATE_EXERCISE always cost 4 kcal/min, and if so what are these values so I can use it as reference.

[PatrikLundell]

Yes and no...
The number is a multiplier to base metabolic rate, which can be modified by various things, such as traits and, I think height (and bulk).
This means that for practical purposes you can treat it as a fixed resulting value (0.85, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0, 6.0, 8.0, and 10.0), as you're presumably basing it off a somewhat average human (the game doesn't distinguish between men and women in this (and most) respects as it doesn't take the slight human dimorphism into consideration).