starbound
I was playing Starbound single player, and had to step away from the computer for a while. I hit Esc button and wandered away – a menu came up and so I assumed this had paused the game. When I returned, I was starving to death!
Can you pause the game in Starbound? If so, how?
Go to Steam\SteamApps\common\Starbound\player. There you find your character and world files. At a first glance, there is no way to tell which one is which though, since it uses some sort of hasing to create filenames. So you should look at the file creation date and also make a backup before deleting it.
Alternativly, you can open the file with notepad and have a peek inside. Your name is there on the top after the "ACK" Symbol:
My character name is Gordon, so I know this is the right file.
Weapons are all up to preference.
I've found that swing speed doesn't matter much as timing your attacks is more helpful than just spamming attacks.As for the spear vs. warhammer, the warhammer would be easier to hit with since it does an overhead swing, whereas the spear does a forward thrust.
Another thing to look at when comparing weapons is armor penetration, as that seems to be more important than straight damage.
Best Answer
On the Starbound forums there are several complaints about the lack of this very feature. See a couple here and here (note the forums seem under a lot of stress at this time so you may have to reload a couple times).
It appears that as of this time in Beta Stage 1 - Progenitor on 12/7/13 there is no pause feature, but I was not able to find an official developer response to this.
UPDATE (5/11/14): It appears that this has still not been implemented in the game, but I looked for a work-around when a comment was made. This link led me to a suggestion that you always keep a chair around. Apparently you do not get hungry while you are sitting (or apparently sleeping) so you can wall yourself in and just take a seat. I put this to the test and it seems to work.
I took this picture before going to lunch and ate up to full at 12:29PM (Sorry if that's not readable). I made lunch for myself and ate and came back to see if my little Stitch was still doing alright. I clicked the Alt key to see how he was doing at 1:05pm and:
Still full. I left him a fire so as not to freeze to death, but with this chair and a few blocks I feel this could suffice for a pause-like feature. You might also consider carrying a bed with you so you can not only not starve, but also heal.