I feel compelled to promote my take on this general subject matter, though I lean less on the conceptual side and more on the practical-mechanical aspects.
So, as to my opinions on this post:
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I am absolutely in support of a metabolism slider, but it shouldn’t be something you can change at any given time. If UII has a character creation process of some sort resembling games such as NEO Scavenger, Project Zomboid, etc. then I can see how it can be used to set a player’s metabolism in that respective life. Maybe a slider is too much though, and you could just have normal metabolism and the high/low extremes.
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Caloric values being measured in kilocalories (or alternatively even in kJ) would be nice for immersion and gameplay design - putting the focus on staying alive by managing energy reserves as opposed to filling a bar to 100%.
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I’m a bit iffy on the absorption mechanic, but perhaps it could be an optional feature much like durability in U3. While it does seem like a very good feature to have for balancing different food types, I can easily see how this’d be very daunting to learn for new players. Then again, Minecraft has saturation, and many shooter games have medical items that take time to fully swing into effect. Perhaps the biggest issue is how you’ll communicate information like this to the player.
Generally speaking, I do somewhat like your approach to metabolism but there’s a lot of room for tweaks to make sure it doesn’t get too confusing or go too overboard. Some of this vaguely feels like the infamous stereotype of complexity for the sake of complexity.