New Meal System

[zambasshik]

Ive been entertaining the idea of growing spices as a concept and game mechanic. This is how i think it should work.

First, spices would be hard to grow and take a long time but not as long as devil strand.

Then an overhaul of the meal system to take into account two quality factors instead of one. Simple to complex AND bland to lavish. Simple and complex would only take into type of actual food used to prepare the meal ie having a veggie and meat. But then spices and cooking skill come in to make a bland, fine, or lavish meal.

So the base no cooking skill cook would be making simple bland meals, and they would probably have a mood debuff like -3 for eating them.  Then as the cooking skill goes up and ones acquisition of spices they could start making tastier meals which i would probably cap at 12 cooking skill for a complex lavish meal giving a +6 mood boost. Then all the other combos would fall somewhere between those.

What are your thoughts?

[Lowkey1987]

I only eat pemmikat. Mhmmm...
If you make the simple meals worse, the start would be harder (for new players).at the moment your idea seems nice. But only makes the game harder. And you habe to learn the concept of spicy food.
You cannot grow this spices in cold bioms. So you have to buy them (even for corn the time is to short to grow). I dont talk about late game here.
So spices must be cheap to buy if you need them because of the debuff of the bad food.

I like the idea of spices for lavish meals.
Have a nice day!

[zambasshik]

I didnt avtually think about the impact of the early game. Unless the debuff for bland food has a threshold similar to cabin fever. So every 4 or so days of eating bland food you get -1 up to -3. Because itll be like eating a baked potato with nothing else. The first time isnt so bad, maybe even enjoyable. By day two or three though it might take real effort to finish it. By day 4 or 5 youd probably do down right cranky for it.

Though it would be humorous for a food binge to trigger off of it!!

[Lowkey1987]

Perhaps, if there where two seperate spices. Like normal garden herbs which grow fast. And pepper on the other hand.

The idea that you can get dull of the meals is nice! My tribesman eat the same meal everyday, day after day, month after month. And to counter this you can use garden herbs to make simple meals more appeling.
And for better meals you need pepper.

When the debuff is very small, like -1 and -3 at max (after 3 Month or so) "Eating the same dish", would have time to develope a way around it.

But it is very specific. Now, you can live on an icesheet only with meat. It is hard, but you can pull it off. Same for cold bioms in general. The plants had to generate great stacks of spice, because you only need very little for every meal, and you cant put 1/5 of a spice into a meal.

It should have a stack size like other small items.

[zambasshik]

I was thinking it stacked to 75 like everything else. Because even for a long supply of them, a couple hundred wouldnt take up much space and would last the average sized colony a long time. Now if you get to the point where your turning out lavish meals like theres no tomorrow, well i think storage of large quantities of spices Should be a burden for balance

[Lowkey1987]

I thought about: You need some spice for every spicy food. But you need only 1 for every meal.

It would not take much space. Its a very small item. Like silver, you can store 500 in one place.

But you have to grow it. I dont know the numbers for potatos or so, but you didnt make the farm as great. A little garden for garden herbs, some pepper. But to make this count, the plants have to drop many items. To compare: If i make 10 fields of potatos i need one for spices.

It shouldnt be a pain, because you already have 2 foods to store (plants and meat), perhaps other (like eggs or milk). Now you need place for spice because of...
The main mechanic shouldnt be "i have to make room for it". You have to plant/carry it, store it, produce it to differnet meals to get a benefit. And there is already a problem with space.
(ATM i try to digg into a mountain to build a storage, but also cool the hall, because if infestations).

[stigma]

If you were going to expand on the meal system then I think a good thing to add would be some sort of "taste fatigue".
If you minmax this game then the only logical thing is to do a total monoculture and only make 1 food.

But how long do you think it would take you to go crazy only eating 1 thing?

I'm not saying you should be too harsly punished for have no meal variety - but a small negative for "no variety" and a small bonus for "good variety" would be cool. I think the game tracks what ingredients are in each meal, so you don't necessarily have to add a lot more meals for this. A lavish meal with rice and boar meat is different from a lavish meal made from corn and rat =P

Just give us a small game-mechanics reason to not minimize the food system and actually use some more crops and such.

-Stigma

[jamaicancastle]

If you were going to expand on the meal system then I think a good thing to add would be some sort of "taste fatigue".
If you minmax this game then the only logical thing is to do a total monoculture and only make 1 food.

It already does this with joy effects, so I could see it applying to better meals: if you repeatedly eat the same ingredients, the mood benefit is lessened until it's only marginally better than, or the same as, simple meals. (I would set "I have plenty to eat but it's the same thing every day" as the neutral point and balance all the moodlets around that, but that's a matter of personal taste, no pun intended.) Perhaps there would still be a small benefit to represent the added time and attention, and the better presentation, but the best way to maximize your mood would be having a diverse set of ingredients.

Then work in a bunch of different types of foods and spices, make them only grow in certain biomes or under certain conditions, maybe season with a few specialized cooking techniques or stations, et voila - high cuisine.