NPCs need to be able to eat/drink and walk at the same time. about cataclysm-dda

[kevingranade]

At a guess, the NPCs were hungry when you enabled the no NPC needs mod, and now they're stuck in that state.
If so this is a great example of "we don't support changing mods during a game" as you guessed.

That aside though, if you hand a bunch of hungry people food, they're gonna eat it, though in practice it shouldn't take long at all before they're sated enough to start walking again instead of eating.

[O1OOO1O]

The NPCs that did this behavior had not joined me and I may have not even existed in the game yet at time I re-enabled the mod. I add in the mod early on within the first few in-game weeks, and these NPCs were ones I picked on a couple months in. At least one was from an evac center I had previously visited and had no NPCs present at the time of the first visit. (which is why I think they didn't exist).

Regardless of the above, I'm still of the opinion that NPCs ought to be capable of the simple task of eating/drinking and walking at the same time.

[RenechCDDA]

This capability would have to be added to the player as well.

[O1OOO1O]

Adding it to the player too would be a good thing.

[TheSaddestGoomba]

Isn't this how smokeables are handled? I believe smokeables are comestibles too.

[fairyarmadillo]

In the past I have noticed situations where NPCs are spawned into the game severely underweight, even with NPC needs disabled. In these circumstances they will eat whatever they can get hold of.

I am not sure if this is an issue caused by updating my game while playing the same save (and thus a non issue) or if it's an ongoing problem. It may warrant further investigation.

[IdleSol]

Confirmed. Several times I've taken NPCs into followers who were exhausted. Despite me playing with a mod that disables their needs. Something like 25k calories or so. But I thought it was such a feature of their appearance or a flaw in the NPC modifications.

Is it necessary to track such cases and make reports?