---
title: Combined Energy and Time
tags: stardew
---

{%hackmd theme-dark %}

# Combined Energy and Time

Completely changes how the energy mechanic works. The goal of the mod is to stop penalizing slow players for taking their time, while also not penalizing min-maxers.

Sort of inspired by https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/6488.

## Energy Bar

(...|...|...|...........)|E

The base energy level is now half of the energy bar, and this is where it will be most of the time.

(###|###|###|...........)|E

To begin with, time passes somewhat slower.

Whenever your energy is below half, the time passes faster. The less energy, the faster the time goes. At the same time, your energy regenerates up to the half energy bar threshold, also increasingly faster.

:::warning
The below depiction may show several thresholds below half, but it's not yet decided whether there will be several thresholds or whether a math function will be used to increase the effect on lower energy levels.
:::

(###|###|##.|...........)|E

(###|###|...|...........)|E

(###|...|...|...........)|E

Whenever your energy is above half, time passes even slower than by default. At the same time, your energy very slowly passively goes down until it reaches the half bar threshold.

(###|###|###|######.....)|E

The energy percentage is taken into account, not the actual values. This means having more max energy (be it via Stardrops or buffs) is beneficial to the player when going below the threshold (and allows storing more energy above the threshold).

## Idle regeneration methods

Staying in the bed does not regenerate enough energy to go above the half bar threshold. Spa does regenerate enough energy to go above the threshold.

## Food

Food regenerates energy as usual. All the above rules still apply.

## Exhaustion

Energy will regenerate faster than the player could ever use it, so exhaustion is no longer possible with this mod.

## Sleeping

Sleeping between days is left as-is, and regenerates the same amount of energy. The following day, the player wakes up with energy above the threshold, meaning they get the benefit of time passing slower at the beginning of the day.

An exception is when the player goes to sleep late in the night. Usually, if the amount of energy the player should wake up with is lower than his current energy, then it's ignored. This is not true here -- the player's energy is always overriden after sleeping. Otherwise going to bed late would not penalize the player anymore.

## Multiplayer

The time passage scales with the number of players, in such a way, that if all players do basically the same actions, then their time passage should scale in the same way as if only one player was doing it. If only one player is doing all of the work, and the others are idle, then the time will pass only slightly faster.

### (Cutscene) Pausing

If a player is in a cutscene, the time should probably also slow down. TBD

## UI

At that point the energy bar does not have to be so prominent, so it could be displayed in a different way (maybe somewhere around the clock?) or removed altogether (not preferred, as the player may want to know how much over the threshold they are).

## NPC Schedules

Right now I have no idea how to handle NPC schedules with this mod. One way would be to just speed up the NPC move speed; another would be to carefully choose the time flow speed in such a way that would not disrupt the schedules *too* much.

## Machines

Machines should still be tied to the in-game time.

## Compatibility

The mod should be compatible with the following mods:

* [Automate](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1063) -- Automates machines next to chests.
* [Pause Time in Multiplayer](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/10328) -- Pauses time completely when all players pause.