Hungry Pathing

Hungry Pathing

Fed before the whistle, not after.

A Timberborn mod for working beavers. They eat and drink in time, at the closest stocked storage, with three hours to spare. No more working to zero, then crossing the map for a fancier meal.

  • Working hours only. Off duty the game's own behavior runs unchanged, so evenings keep their variety.
  • Closest stocked storage while working. A fancier food wins only when it costs at most a quarter hour more walking.
  • Same amount eaten. Only the timing moves.
  • Built for co-op, tuned in one file. Players stay in step on the same HungryPathing.cfg.
Download latest release Install guide

Beta. Latest: . One 355-beaver colony ran it for 36 in-game days, nearly all in co-op. The current release hasn't been played in a live colony yet. Try it on a copy of your save first. What is tested, and what isn't

One shift, one beaverHunger over a 16-hour shift
A working shift on the slate board A line for hours of food left falls through the shift. With the mod the beaver leaves in time, walks to the closest storage and eats with three hours still in hand. The game's own timing works until the bar is empty, then walks to food in the penalty. 04h8h12h16h whistle 0 3h 16h three-hour buffer hours into the shift hours of food left leaves 9:30 eats, 3:00 left penalty

It leaves 9:30 into the shift, walks 1:00, and eats with 3:00 still in hand.

The game’s own timing: it works until the bar is empty 13:30 into the shift, then walks 1:00 to food in the penalty.

An illustration drawn from the mod's rules, for one made-up beaver whose bar is 13½ hours from empty at the start of the shift. The white line is the mod; the dotted line is the game's own timing. Arrows mark meals; how far the bar refills depends on the food.

The canteen rules

In the base game a working beaver leaves the job only once hunger or thirst hits zero. Then it walks to whichever food scores the most, however far away. During working hours, the mod plans ahead and walks less.

  • Three hours to spare

    Hunger and Thirst get three hours of warning, a setting the game already uses for bots. Working beavers keep that buffer instead of running the bar to zero.

  • Leave just in time

    A beaver at a far site measures the walk to the closest stocked storage. It leaves early enough to arrive with the buffer still in hand.

  • Top off when it's near

    If food is within half an hour's walk and the beaver won't last the rest of the shift plus the buffer, it eats now. Think breakfast before work, or a hauler passing a warehouse.

  • Builders check first

    A builder who has just taken a site it would not last at lets the site go and tops off first. The site goes back to the pool for the next builder.

  • Nearest canteen

    The mod's trips, and the game's own penalty-state trips during working hours, go to the storage with the shortest walk for that need.

  • After the whistle

    Evenings and days off run the game's own behavior, so beavers still seek out variety and wellbeing buildings.

Measured in a real colony

A 355-beaver colony an hour before the end of the shift, read straight from the saves. Same map, same hour, without and with the mod.

Beavers and trips at the same hour, without and with the mod
MeasureWithout the modWith the mod
In the hunger or thirst penalty150
Within 3 hours of a penalty1170
Median walk per working-hour eating trip0.96 h0.72 h
Trips started in the last 4 hours of the shift4921
Beavers mid-trip walking past a closer stocked storage2 of 180 of 11

The walks that remain are distance to any stocked storage at all: the median beaver in that colony works 84 tiles from the nearest food. Method and full numbers are in TESTING.md.

How it works

The mod decides; the game does the walking, the reserving and the eating.

  1. A planner beside the worker

    Each adult beaver gets a planner. The game asks it each time the beaver is about to pick up its next piece of work.

  2. It measures, not guesses

    Hours left until a need hits zero, hours left in the shift, and the real walk to the nearest stocked storages, using the game's own path queries.

  3. It hands the trip to the game

    When a rule fires, the planner starts one of the game's own trips to a storage. A save records it like any other trip.

Good to know

Built for large colonies and for co-op, with a few deliberate edges.

Supported

  • Hunger and Thirst by default; any need met by goods in storages can be added
  • Every rule, threshold and cost bound is a line in the settings file, HungryPathing.cfg
  • One summary line per in-game day in the log, and optional per-trip diagnostics
  • Folktails tested; Iron Teeth expected to work, untested (see tubeways)

Not included

  • Carrying rations into the field
  • Predicting where a hauler is about to go (the shift rule covers them)
  • Changes to pathfinding or to the district system
  • An in-game settings screen, for now

Nothing is saved

Saves hold nothing from the mod. You can add it to or remove it from any colony, at any time.

Fails on its own

If a game update moves one of the five hooks, the mod stays off and says so in the log. If the mod hits an error, it switches itself off for the rest of that game and says so in a dialog.

A well-fed beaver isn't checked again until a rule could apply. A beaver near a trigger re-checks every half hour of game time, at most eight path queries per need. The daily log line reports the totals.

Compatibility

Game version

Timberborn 1.1.2.4.

Co-op

Built for co-op. Every player needs the same version of the mod, the same game version and an identical settings file. Compare the Simulation settings: line each log prints at startup (co-op setup).

With Timber Together and separate colonies, each beaver plans by its own colony's working hours. Beavers only use storages in their own district, so colonies never eat from each other's storage.

Other mods

Requires Harmony from the Steam Workshop. A mod that also edits the Hunger or Thirst blueprints can change the buffer, depending on load order. A mod that replaces how beavers pick food would overlap.

Language

No interface text, except one dialog in English if the mod switches itself off after an error. Log lines are in English.

What is tested, and what isn't

A beta: one colony's worth of play, plus offline checks. Try it on a copy of your save first.

Played

  • 36 in-game days in one single-district Folktails colony of 330 to 355 adults, nearly all as a BeaverBuddies host with a guest. The table above comes from that colony's saves.
  • Three days replayed from the same save gave identical counters and co-op hashes.
  • The one error found there, in the builder job check on a first construction day, is fixed.

Not yet

  • The current release in a live colony (offline checks only).
  • The builder rule's decisions on a construction-heavy day.
  • A Timber Together game where a colony set its own working hours.
  • The switch-off dialog in a real game.
  • Iron Teeth, and anything but Windows.

Two minutes to install

  1. Harmony from the Steam Workshop.
  2. The zip under Assets on the release page, not Source code, extracted into Documents\Timberborn\Mods.
  3. Enable both in the mod manager.
Download latest release Read the install guide