Burnt Meals

[Zombull]

Currently, meals prepared by "incompetent cooks" just have a high chance of food poisoning. Higher even than eating the raw food would have been, which doesn't make any sense at all. Instead, I propose adding a new meal type Burnt Meals and let novice cooks have a higher chance of producing those. Instead of food poisoning, they should cause a mood debuff and only provide half the nutrition as a properly cooked Simple Meal.

[Call me Arty]

 I'm of two minds about this. We already have a penalty for bad cooks with the aforementioned food poisoning. On the other hand, I really like the idea of burnt food.

[Klomster]

A simple (but a bit odd) way of doing this would be to simple give bad cooks a chance to produce nutrient paste instead of a meal.
I can imagine it.

*Blip*
Jonny tried his best, but the meal turned out so poor it's no better than paste.

[Call me Arty]

A simple (but a bit odd) way of doing this would be to simple give bad cooks a chance to produce nutrient paste instead of a meal.
I can imagine it.

*Blip*
Jonny tried his best, but the meal turned out so poor it's no better than paste.

You see the size of the nutrient paste dispenser, right? That's like saying you went to make a steak and accidentally made beef sausage.

[Zombull]

It just doesn't make sense to me that the end product would be even more likely to cause food poisoning than the raw ingredients. A bad cook is likely to make an ugly and unpleasant tasting mess on a plate, but if it's using good ingredients it's still probably going to be mostly edible. Hence burnt food.

[Call me Arty]

It just doesn't make sense to me that the end product would be even more likely to cause food poisoning than the raw ingredients. A bad cook is likely to make an ugly and unpleasant tasting mess on a plate, but if it's using good ingredients it's still probably going to be mostly edible. Hence burnt food.

Actually, it's more common than you think. Even if the kitchen is spotless, some jackass who cuts the fruits or veggies with the same knife as they did the meat, don't cook the meat at an appropriate temperature (there are actually three key temperatures for the safe storage and preparation of various meats, each different), or even forgot to wash their hands after visiting in the hospital or cleaning animal filth could bring some pretty bad germs into the mix, doesn't matter what the ingredients are.

- A former cook

[Zombull]

It just doesn't make sense to me that the end product would be even more likely to cause food poisoning than the raw ingredients. A bad cook is likely to make an ugly and unpleasant tasting mess on a plate, but if it's using good ingredients it's still probably going to be mostly edible. Hence burnt food.

Actually, it's more common than you think. Even if the kitchen is spotless, some jackass who cuts the fruits or veggies with the same knife as they did the meat, don't cook the meat at an appropriate temperature (there are actually three key temperatures for the safe storage and preparation of various meats, each different), or even forgot to wash their hands after visiting in the hospital or cleaning animal filth could bring some pretty bad germs into the mix, doesn't matter what the ingredients are.

- A former cook

But that doesn't factor in when the ingredients are just berries. And if they're not washing before cooking they're not washing before picking berries. Food poisoning being worse for cooking still wouldn't compute.

[Klomster]

You see the size of the nutrient paste dispenser, right? That's like saying you went to make a steak and accidentally made beef sausage.

The reasoning i used was that to get away from the need to make a new item with a sprite and stats, one could just use the nutrient paste as a stand in for burnt, shoddily prepared and otherwise failed meals.
Since nutrient paste is a meal that gives a mood drop representing a poor meal.

Just imagine someone completely crap at making food.
That person is making steak, from animal cuts. Cuts that person made themselves.......
Just imagine all the fat, bones and things in all the wrong places.
Cut by someone completely worthless.
That's low cooking skill.

I can just see in front of me a barely cohesive mesh of meat, with cartilage in it. With unsightly holes in it.
Made in a pan on massive heat, not flipped.
It's cooked through.... it's just soooooooo SOOOOOOO baaad.

The only reason for using nutrient paste meal is to not have to make said "Crappy meal" object which would possibly clutter things in the game.
But crappy meals would make more sense.
I'm not saying the person made an actual nutrient paste meal, that machine is basically a massive mixer which make food slurry.

Overall though, i think crappy meals should be a thing.

Problem is it would probably need 3 levels, since 'Simple meal' 'Fine meal' & 'Feast' have different nutrition levels.
Although one could get away with 2 since someone who can make feasts are pro enough to not fail on such a level.
One could also only have one, which is a poor simple meal. Which is why i suggested paste to begin with.

[Zombull]

A low level cook can't make Fine or Lavish meals anyway.

I don't think there'd be a need for several levels of "burnt food". Just one is adequate.