I usually turn down the time scale in these games, but I have run into a problem with changing the time scale and how it effects dehydration and starvation. The lower I turn it down, the more I gain of both in any given amount of time while waiting or sleeping. For example, if I turn it down to 10:1, I might gain about ~36 dehydration in 1 hour of sleeping. At the standard time scale, it is much less. The end result is I'll go to bed for 6-8 hours and wake up dehydrated and starving.

I feel like how much you lose during the normal 30:1 while sleeping is perfect, does anyone have an idea of how I can fix this issue with the GECK without changing the base modifier for each? I plan to do that anyway to better fit the timescale, but I don't want to make it too easy just so I can sleep or wait without dying.

This might apply to fast travel too, I haven't tested it yet.

I'm running with timescale 3:1, and the rate of dehydration still seems appropriate.

Hmm.. perhaps it is only me, then. Some sort of bug. My dehydration and starvation is normal otherwise, I just seem to lose absurd amounts when I wait or sleep specifically. Would you mind saving, checking your level, and waiting 1 hour and let me know the difference? It would be greatly appreciated. I'm about to load up a new game here, set the time scale, and see what happens.

Thanks for your time.

Edit: I loaded up and had the same problem still, here are some numbers - timescale at 6, waiting 1 hour: gain 60 dehydration. timescale at 30, waiting 1 hour: gain 12 dehydration. the numbers seem to add up right at least. Still not sure why it would work like that though, shouldn't it go off of game time passed?

Edit 2: Ok, I figured this out. The dehydration rate is the same as far as I can tell unless the timescale is at 1 or 0. In real time this means the rate will seem the same as you go along no matter what. The problem is that when you sleep, wait, or fast travel as well I assume, that it calculates how many times your dehydration is hit by your time scale. It goes in increments of 6, so if your timescale is at 10, you would be hit 6 times in a hour for 6 each, or 36 dehydration. If your timescale is at default, you are only hit 2 times per hour for 12 dehydration.

I suppose a mod could be made to dynamically change your timescale when you try to sleep, wait, or travel and then change it back to your desired setting. Or you could just alter the "needs" rates in the GECK to match the new multiplier you chose in game. This would result in slower paced needs as a whole, but maybe thats not such a bad thing considering you would change the timescale just for that kind of slower paced game in general.

I would personally prefer to keep the difficulty intended intact and simply have days that aren't over in a blink, but I don't have the know how to fix this myself.

On further inspection, my timescale setting is being ignored. Set through mod or console, it still goes 30:1 no matter what.

The way the dehydration/deprivation/starvation meters work with sleeping/timescale is this:

How fast Dehydration/Starvation/Deprivation 'points' are accumulated is based upon a single game setting for each need. The base values are 10, 25, and 50, respectively. Those values are the interval (in real-life seconds) between when you gain a need point (so once every ten seconds for Dehydration, once every 25 seconds for Starvation, and once every 50 seconds for Deprivation). During normal game-play, these values ignore time scale - they're based entirely on real-life time.

The game's original time scale is 30:1 (TimeScale is set to 30). That means every 1 second in real-life translates to 30 seconds of game time. When you sleep or wait (and possibly when you travel, though I haven't tested that), the amount your needs accumulate is the same as they'd be if you had spent that amount of game-time just standing there doing nothing. That means when you set TimeScale from 30:1 to 1:1, you also multiply the amount the needs gain within a single game-time span by 30 - which means you'll almost certainly die if you sleep even one hour.

You can figure out how much a need will raise per hour of sleep via this calculation:

3600 * HoursRested / NeedSetting / TimeScale

This means 1 hour of rest at the default time scale will give you 12 dehydration, 4.8 starvation, and 2.4 sleep deprivation. 1 hour of waiting around in real time, on the other hand, will result in 360 dehydration, 144 starvation, and 72 sleep deprivation. You'll note that these are just thirty times larger (the default TImeScale) than what you get if you rest 1 hour.

Thanks Langy, I guess that means that there is something else to improve about hardcoe mode. Besides the strange (and really not very detrimental) choice in stat loss with each stage, and the very general linear approach to the stages of dehydration, starvation and sleep deprivation.


Looking at the game world and after some experimenting with travel speed and the size of the real world area, a time scale of 15 would be most fitting, which would give the Courier an approximate travel speed of five miles per hour.

Which means we'd have to double the rate of deprivation ticks for this timescale. (original rate*[30/new time scale])
And that is just for those that actually make sense. The water timer will make you die after four days, which is fine. Sleep and starvation, on the other hand, are way off.