BAKING, CHEESEMAKING & WINEMAKING [Graingrass -> Flour -> Meals!] etc.

[Swarx]

I think these two processes would fit very nicely into vanilla rimworld, and offer some nice variety to food and alcohol production methods.

BAKING

Grain/wheat could be a cool crop to add. It should be more complicated to turn into actual food, but ultimately more efficient in the long run compared to some other things. Bread doesn't need to be its own meal type or anything. After turning the raw grain to flour, it could just be directly made into the simple, fine, and lavish meals. The ingredient would just be listed as "bread" instead of "flour" when you click on the meal.

The process could be like this:

Grow graingrass field (maybe requires growing skill of 4 or something)
v
Harvest
v
Get graingrass bushels (cannot be eaten raw)
v
Build gristmill (a production station for grinding graingrass into flour! perhaps corn could be ground up as well, but would be less efficient)
v
Make flour (cannot be eaten raw)
v
Flour can now be made into meals! (counted as a 'plant' rather than a 'meat', and can be loaded into a nutrient paste dispenser to produce nutrient paste meals with 'porridge' as an ingredient)




WINEMAKING

Wine could also expand our alcohol. Berries would definitely be less efficient than growing hops, since berries are a potentially useful food source. However, it could sell for more silver to traders, as well as be made from natural berry bushes early on.

The process could be like this:

Harvest berries (grown or wild)
v
Build brewery
v
Make must
v
Ferment must in barrel for however long
v
Get wine

Perhaps the value of a wine bottle increases each quadrum as it "ages."


CHEESEMAKING

I think the shelf life of milk is a little long. I feel like it should spoil around the same time as a standard meal. But this would give a good reason to turn it into cheese! Hard, dry cheese keeps longer than milk. Perhaps you could get more food/nutrition from cheese than simply drinking milk.

The process could be like this:

Obtain milk (from animals or purchase)
v
Put in fermenting barrel (maybe 5-7 days)
v
Cheese is ready
v
Cheese is its own food, rather than being part of a meal


Anyway, those are my suggestions!

[sovantse]

super interested in the wine making concept!! wish someone would make grapes implemented into the base game. i know the blueberry mod adds blueberry wine, but if you could have a whole vineyard and production facility that would be amazing 

[vzoxz0]

It's a matter of time before this game becomes Stardew Valley and cannibalism is removed. God damn it.

[Swarx]

It's a matter of time before this game becomes Stardew Valley and cannibalism is removed. God damn it.

These two things are not much more than a French peasant would have at their disposal

I'm not too interested in going full "Vegetable Garden" myself either, which is why I'm suggesting two more simple things that I think would fit nicely into vanilla.

[Third_Of_Five]

I like these ideas ('Graingrass' is quite clever, a very rimworld-y name), but from a practical standpoint what would be the advantage of making bread? It doesn't seem to have any benefits over other food sources and it's much more difficult to make.

Will flour preserve better than other raw foods? What's the upside?

[Swarx]

I like these ideas ('Graingrass' is quite clever, a very rimworld-y name), but from a practical standpoint what would be the advantage of making bread? It doesn't seem to have any benefits over other food sources and it's much more difficult to make.

Will flour preserve better than other raw foods? What's the upside?

Basically, the bread industry is supposed to have more steps, take a bit more time to set up, but become more efficient in the long run. A plot of wheat would ultimately yield more food (once it's processed) than an equal plot of potatoes/rice.

It's like how corn takes longer to grow than potatoes/rice, yet yields more food. Graingrass would take longer not necessarily from growing time, but from processing time, as it needs to be ground into flour before it can be cooked into meals.

It's the same idea as the wheat industry in the Stronghold games, if you've played them.

[Thane]

Interesting and sort of fits into the crop matrix that Tynan has been going for. Seems like an offshoot though. Not sure if it'll be added except as a mod though.

[Third_Of_Five]

It's the same idea as the wheat industry in the Stronghold games, if you've played them.

Oh god, the nostalgia...

[Swarx]

Good old stronghold.

Also, I added cheese.

[AileTheAlien]

Aside from the different names for ingredients (a meal listing "porridge" or "bread", rather than just listing "grains" as an ingredient), this would be very easy to add to the game. In fact, I'm sure it could be done entirely with XML. If I have time after Thanksgiving tomorrow, I might take a crack at it. I've already got so many unfinished small mods though... Anyways, this is a pretty cool idea, since it fits the game very well - not too complicated, and uses most of the same systems and items that are already in the game!

[Boston]

I like these ideas ('Graingrass' is quite clever, a very rimworld-y name), but from a practical standpoint what would be the advantage of making bread? It doesn't seem to have any benefits over other food sources and it's much more difficult to make.

Will flour preserve better than other raw foods? What's the upside?

In real life, grain its various regional forms (wheat, rice, corn, etc) is pretty much the sole foodcrop that allowed for civilization (meaning: permanent settlements of more than 100 or so people) to develop.

The reason for that is twofold:

1) grain crops usually give comparatively-large surpluses of food.

Grain is rather efficient at producing lots of food with regards to the amount of area of farmland needed to grow it, much more than other vegetables. This surplus allowed for families to "be able to afford" (read: have enough food to not starve to death) to be able to have many children, and the surplus of food allowed for the diversification and specialization of labor.

Since grain produces large food-surpluses, it is important that....

2) grain is exceptionally easy to store, even for long periods of time.

With other foods, you generally have to do something to it in order to prevent it from going bad, and that something is usually pretty involved, difficult and expensive in time, materials or both.

With grain, all you have to do is make sure it is dry, then put it in a pot somewhere, and it will stay good for *YEARS*.  During the excavation of the pyramids, archaologists found stores of grain and honey that were perfectly edible *thousands* of years later.

So, the fact that grain gives a lot of easy-to-store food is the reason why *overwhelmingly most civilizations* based their agriculture around it in some form. With the possible exception of the potato, grain is *the most important crop* ever cultivated. It is called "the staff of life" for a reason.

[AileTheAlien]

this would be very easy to add to the game. In fact, I'm sure it could be done entirely with XML.

Dernit! I forgot that I faced basically the same problem when I was first trying to change how the nutrient-paste dispencer works. The fermenting barrel can't be changed in XML, to use different ingredients, or give different products, and spawner buildings can be made to require power, but not be made to use up ingredients. Comment in / upvote this feature request, if you want this stuff to be easier to add into the game (it would open up a fair bit of modding ability to, without people needing to decompile / inject code into the game).

[Swarx]

Maybe a wine fermenting barrel could be made separately?

[mcduff]

It would be good in general if there were more "set and forget" sources of food. When you're dealing with large numbers of people you never make individual meals one at a time, you make huge pots and often slow cook, slow roast, or do something else that doesn't need constant intervention.

[BasileusMaximos]

All of this can already be achieved via the Vegetable Garden mod.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really make a difference gameplay wise. At the end of the day, it is more efficient and less of a headache to just process raw food into lavish meals than to set up these elaborate, time and space wasting supply chains that give you the same or lesser benefit. Why do in 3 jobs what can be done in two?