Nerf frozen food

[b0rsuk]

Technically there's no reason in this game to refrigerate meals and raw food because you can just freeze them. Frozen meals get no penalty whatsover and they last forever except for solar flares. This is unrealistic and makes one game mechanic (refrigeration) pointless.

Proposal:
- frozen food can't be eaten or cooked
- unfreezing food takes time (if too much work this can be simulated by frozen meals taking longer to eat/cook)
- unfrozen raw food is less nutritious (10-20%)
- unfrozen meals are less untritious

Also, the opposite of refrigeration should be in the game. If temperature is above, say, 25*C food spoiling is accelerated. This would make hot biomes more challenging.

[Boston]

It is possible to refrigerate food in primitive conditions in real life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar

Anything dug underground, or in-game, into the side of a hill, will be cooler than it will be not underground. Therefore, refrigeration is possible without power. I use it in tribal scenarios all the time.

It also costs far less power to bring a room down to "refrigerator" temp than it does to below freezing.

[stigma]

Technically there's no reason in this game to refrigerate meals and raw food because you can just freeze them. Frozen meals get no penalty whatsover and they last forever except for solar flares. This is unrealistic and makes one game mechanic (refrigeration) pointless.

Proposal:
- frozen food can't be eaten or cooked
- unfreezing food takes time (if too much work this can be simulated by frozen meals taking longer to eat/cook)
- unfrozen raw food is less nutritious (10-20%)
- unfrozen meals are less untritious

Also, the opposite of refrigeration should be in the game. If temperature is above, say, 25*C food spoiling is accelerated. This would make hot biomes more challenging.

All these feel like good ideas. I especially think that you should have to thaw frozen food before you can use it.

Also, make requirements for freezing higher. Currently you achieve a frozen state at 0 degrees C I think? Proper real-world freezers typically do -20 C. That's a little more work to achieve. Make decay slow down significantly (50-60%) at -5 to +5 C, and then scale from -5 to -20 in decayrate until it hits 0 at deepfreeze.

I like your idea about food spoiling even faster in hot climates. If you are in a 35 degree jungle then don't expect raw meat to keep for very long... it makes perfect sense.

Another thing that should be easy to do but very useful (especially if frozen food needs thawing before use) is to visually indicate frozen food - simple: Just add a blue-tint to the existing graphics.

-Stigma

[kpsychopath]

+1 to the nerfing Walk in freezers.

Would make for more intersting concepts. like 1 room is the freezer room, and then you have another room with the stove in and thats just refrigiated

[Lightzy]

Unless completely automated, the process of allotting and monitoring she movement of foodstuffs from freeze to fridge would be the worst microhell imaginable.

How do you propose to set up the system?

[b0rsuk]

I don't know - I always set my freezer to 2*C because I find frozen permafood too immersion breaking. The result is I have to use up my meat within several days. Or make pemmican.

I'm just puzzled why the game even distinguishes between (refrigerated) and (frozen) when there's literally no advantage to refrigeration other than marginally lower power consumption. It feels like Tynan forgot to implement something.

[stigma]

Unless completely automated, the process of allotting and monitoring she movement of foodstuffs from freeze to fridge would be the worst microhell imaginable.

How do you propose to set up the system?

Wouldn't it be as simple as having a few (small) stockpiles outside your freezer for the various types of food you wanted to have quick access to? Those stockpiles would get filled up as they started to deplete, while your main stores would be kept refridgerated. The size of your thawed stores would be a tradeoff between extra food spoilage and being able to do large bulk-quantities for meals.

Also, if there was actually a difference between refridgerated and frozen (where frozen needed to thaw but kept super long but refrigerated was read to use at the cost of a little faster spoilage) then it would be vary natural to keep those secondary stockpiles in a small fridge somewhere (close to the kitchen probably).

In short, I don't see this being an issue. Seems like the stockpile tools we already have in the game would be quite able to solve this.

-Stigma

[Kegereneku]

While I agree with the logic that freezing food make the whole feeding aspect much easier than expected, that's just how awesome the process of conservation through low temperature is. It would be illogical for frozen food to not be preserved for a LOT of time.
Beside : TIME IS WARPED for Gameplay reasons in Rimworld, it wouldn't feel right to take 3 days to unfroze food despite access to oven technology.

So I infer the problem isn't in the freezing process (though you would gain a great deal of trouble by introducing the problem of COLD CHAIN).
To me, Rimworld's current mechanic only clash with survival because we have the ability to refrigerate right of the bat (as it come naturally with technology).

So i think a nerf would be better achieved by nerfing how easy it is to set up a cold room. I have not much proposal as to how to achieve this however... (Making a lesser-tech system with an hard-cap* to how low it can refrigerate ? Research for Air conditioning ? forcing 2 block-thick wall ? )

*this one is basically b0rsuck' "no bellow 2°C" self-challenge put as a the first technology you have

[Serenity]

I just had the same idea when I considered what kinds of stuff you freeze.

Why are you freezing potatoes? Raw potatoes can be kept for quite some time in a dark and cool room. Raw potatoes can be pre-cooked and then frozen of course.

Raw rice is even better in that it generally doesn't spoil (except brown rice), but you can also freeze it. To offset that maybe it could be made harder to grow.

Maybe there could be some mechanic where people prefer fresh food (higher mood boost). And that it takes a bit longer to cook frozen stuff because it needs to thaw first. You can definitely go from freezer to cook pot. I sometimes do that because I forgot to put stuff from the freezer in the fridge the day before. For that I'm then punished with waiting a long time.


And yeah, freezers are way too easy to build. You can do it right away and in a survival settings you wouldn't do that. But in the absence of other food preservation technology you sort of have to. Maybe only make refrigeration possible at first. And you have to research freezing technology. But right now that wouldn't make a difference.

[Pax_Empyrean]

I don't like this idea. At all.

There is no interesting decision to be made with a system like this. It's purely an inconvenience rather than an obstacle that can be approached and overcome creatively.

Now if you were suggesting that refrigeration take substantially less power than freezing, thereby giving refrigeration a place, I'd be on board with that.

[Goldenpotatoes]

I for one enjoy having a walk-in freezer that rivals the temperature of the ice sheets for my potatoes.

[CannibarRechter]

On the larger topic, there are food stuffs that are wrecked by freezing (e.g., eggs, milk), and foods that store well in cool room temperature conditions (e.g., cheese), but certainly don't need to be frozen. I like the idea, notionally, of foods having various ideal ranges. I also think it weird that fertilized eggs can survive freezing. Freezing should make an egg useless for both eating and hatching.