The base metabolism of characters is too high

[anoobindisguise]

Describe the bug

Characters appear to have overly high metabolisms. A standard character (default settings, 175 cm, 8 str, no XXXL/XS trait, no fast metabolism) weighs ~170 lbs at a BMI of 25. Their base metabolism is about 3500 kcal/day, at rest. This seems wildly too high, probably close to by a factor of 2. If the character lies in bed doing literally nothing all day long that's their caloric expenditure, which is far beyond anything normal for a human.

Attach save file

n/a

Steps to reproduce

1. Spawn a default character.
2. Use debug "check game status".
3. Observe high bmr.

Expected behavior

at-rest caloric expenditure should not be as high as that.

Screenshots

Versions and configuration

• OS: Windows
  • OS Version: 10.0.19045.4170 (22H2)
• Game Version: 7fece1f [64-bit]
• Graphics Version: Tiles
• Game Language: English [en]
• Mods loaded: [ Dark Days Ahead [dda], Disable NPC Needs [no_npc_food], Slowdown Fungal Growth [no_fungal_growth], Bionic Slots [cbm_slots], Portal Storms Ignore NPCs [personal_portal_storms] ]

Additional context

No response

[Nebnis]

Basal rate for average person should be between 1000 to 2000

[PatrikLundell]

Base metabolic rate is defined to be 2500: constexpr float base_metabolic_rate = 2500.0f; // kcal / day, standard average for human male, but game does not differentiate genders here. in itype.h.

It is indeed high given that it's actually the average rate value rather than the base one. The game uses the following factors: constexpr float SLEEP_EXERCISE = 0.85f; constexpr float NO_EXERCISE = 1.0f; constexpr float LIGHT_EXERCISE = 2.0f; constexpr float MODERATE_EXERCISE = 4.0f; constexpr float BRISK_EXERCISE = 6.0f; constexpr float ACTIVE_EXERCISE = 8.0f; constexpr float EXTRA_EXERCISE = 10.0f; as multipliers for various levels of activity.

But yes, it's a struggle to stuff enough calories down the hatch of the PC (and companions empty the larders at a very high rate as well).

I have no idea how the screenshot values are generated, however.

[Vane79]

You know what? Active exercise upping caloric intake to 8x is WILD. Look at this calculator here. It shouldn't be more than 3x. If an average man would need to eat 8x calories after a day of physically straining work, that'd be like 12000kcal, which is nearly a week's worth of food for an average male. Societies would collapse.

[kevingranade]

Weird, it's almost like the game lets you maintain a way-too-high activity level for most of the day and that results in extreme calorie expenditure.

We're working on this, the fix is your character needing to take breaks to even things out, not artificially reduce the amount of calories expended because you don't like the outcome of running full tilt all day.

This is an entirely separate issue from BMR getting evaluated in what looks like an erroneous way resulting in too-high calorie expenditure when at rest.

[github-actions[bot]]

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