Goonhub
08-10-2014, 02:30 PM
I do feel like there's a lot of unrealized potential in the botany/chef/barman jobs to be useful to the station. Right now foods only heal you a bit depending on their quality, plus the effects of whatever horrific chemicals have been added in. I propose an expansion on two fronts.
As I understand it, poor preparation causes a food item to be ruined, so it tastes bad. Instead of that, give all ingredients a "nutrient" value, depending on the ingredient and its quality level. Just like in the current system, higher nutrients will heal more. Maybe let extremely high quality food items give a bit of slow health regeneration that lasts for a while. Food items of that level should be buyable, but very expensive. Cooking should reduce the amount of nutrients, just like in real life, (particularly with repeated use of the deep fryer) but in exchange it lets you combine ingredients together into a single food item. Added all together, a collection of raw food items should have the highest nutrient value in total, but since you have to eat them one item at a time, it won't give you the top-tier benefits until it's been combined in a recipe. To balance this, and avoid chefs simply loading tons of crappy ingredients into everything they prepare, perhaps food items should have a "bites" variable that increases for every x number of ingredients are added. The more ingredients, the more food there is, and the more bites it takes to eat the item. Each bite gives you 20% of the maximum benefit. At five bites you're full, and any subsequent eating averages out the effect (so, if you eat something of lower quality, it'll go down) but won't increase it any further until you digest a bit. But digestion should be on a delay, and take a while, so the benefits last. There should also be a "calories" value, which determines how much of a bonus to your stamina, stun resist and stun recovery you get. This should work the opposite of the nutrient value. Heating food basically pre-digests it, increasing the amount of energy our bodies can absorb. So, cooking decreases nutrients, but increases calories, by a capped percentage. And, of course, overcooking makes the food inedible to the point that you'd puke if you tried to eat it.
The second expansion proposal I have is to add a more complex taste system, for the purpose of increasing "morale". Morale can affect a lot of things. Separate from stun resistance, it gives a bonus to critical recovery, that is, the time it takes you to regain consciousness when you pass out due to being in crit, as your high morale makes you fight harder to stay alive (normal space station life is so soul crushing). It acts as a natural painkiller, so you don't slow down when injured. It should also reduce the effects of illnesses, so you cough less, flail about less, and survive longer for the nastier ones. Of course, depending on their symptoms, certain diseases should reduce your morale- if you have a fever or cough it should be a small amount, and if your skin is sloughing off, it should be very large. On the other hand, space madness might send your morale straight to the top. Being around corpses, particularly rotting ones, or people with the foul body odor mutation should reduce it as well.
So how would taste work? Just like ingredients have nutrients and calories, they should also have values for the five or six tastes that humans are supposed to have- saltiness, sourness, sweetness, bitterness, savoriness, and fattiness. As part of character creation, give players the ability to set their character's taste preferences. There should be a default, which favors saltiness and sweetness very highly, savoriness and fattiness moderately, sourness a little, and bitterness not at all. But we should be able to set it in any crazy way we want. Boost to morale should be determined by how closely the ratios of the food item's six tastes match our personal tastes. All ingredients should have a mix of tastes, so you won't get optimal results by just putting all your taste into a single category... unless you put it all into saltiness, but pure salt will give you no calories and no nutrients- that value should represent vitamins and such. And lest you think you can down a ton of salt, and then just eat a separate food item for the other two benefits, eating foods you hate should lower morale to balance it out. Also, about salt, some chemicals should have tastes just like food ingredients. Cyanide should be extremely bitter, for example. But most chemicals that don't occur in nature should have no taste. Also note, generally speaking, cooking food makes it more savory, sweeter, and less bitter. Something to keep in mind when choosing your spread. A lot of really healthy veggies are quite bitter when raw, so if you want to adopt a raw food diet, you might want to jack that up. On that note, raw food options, like salads and... fruit salads should also be added to the menu.
So there you have it. A chef could get by with having no skill with this system, but the crew will love them if they can whip up a perfect meal that makes a crew member nigh super-human. And I suspect this won't decrease chef/barman shenanigans. In fact, I think it will probably increase them, since people will have much more reason to come to the cafeteria and try their luck.
Tldr: You have a stomach that holds five bites of food. Each bite gives you a boost through nutrients, calories, and taste, depending on the ingredients and how it was prepared, which in turn benefit you in various ways. Raw food has more nutrients, cooked food has (effectively) more calories. The tastes your character likes are determined on the character setup screen.
As I understand it, poor preparation causes a food item to be ruined, so it tastes bad. Instead of that, give all ingredients a "nutrient" value, depending on the ingredient and its quality level. Just like in the current system, higher nutrients will heal more. Maybe let extremely high quality food items give a bit of slow health regeneration that lasts for a while. Food items of that level should be buyable, but very expensive. Cooking should reduce the amount of nutrients, just like in real life, (particularly with repeated use of the deep fryer) but in exchange it lets you combine ingredients together into a single food item. Added all together, a collection of raw food items should have the highest nutrient value in total, but since you have to eat them one item at a time, it won't give you the top-tier benefits until it's been combined in a recipe. To balance this, and avoid chefs simply loading tons of crappy ingredients into everything they prepare, perhaps food items should have a "bites" variable that increases for every x number of ingredients are added. The more ingredients, the more food there is, and the more bites it takes to eat the item. Each bite gives you 20% of the maximum benefit. At five bites you're full, and any subsequent eating averages out the effect (so, if you eat something of lower quality, it'll go down) but won't increase it any further until you digest a bit. But digestion should be on a delay, and take a while, so the benefits last. There should also be a "calories" value, which determines how much of a bonus to your stamina, stun resist and stun recovery you get. This should work the opposite of the nutrient value. Heating food basically pre-digests it, increasing the amount of energy our bodies can absorb. So, cooking decreases nutrients, but increases calories, by a capped percentage. And, of course, overcooking makes the food inedible to the point that you'd puke if you tried to eat it.
The second expansion proposal I have is to add a more complex taste system, for the purpose of increasing "morale". Morale can affect a lot of things. Separate from stun resistance, it gives a bonus to critical recovery, that is, the time it takes you to regain consciousness when you pass out due to being in crit, as your high morale makes you fight harder to stay alive (normal space station life is so soul crushing). It acts as a natural painkiller, so you don't slow down when injured. It should also reduce the effects of illnesses, so you cough less, flail about less, and survive longer for the nastier ones. Of course, depending on their symptoms, certain diseases should reduce your morale- if you have a fever or cough it should be a small amount, and if your skin is sloughing off, it should be very large. On the other hand, space madness might send your morale straight to the top. Being around corpses, particularly rotting ones, or people with the foul body odor mutation should reduce it as well.
So how would taste work? Just like ingredients have nutrients and calories, they should also have values for the five or six tastes that humans are supposed to have- saltiness, sourness, sweetness, bitterness, savoriness, and fattiness. As part of character creation, give players the ability to set their character's taste preferences. There should be a default, which favors saltiness and sweetness very highly, savoriness and fattiness moderately, sourness a little, and bitterness not at all. But we should be able to set it in any crazy way we want. Boost to morale should be determined by how closely the ratios of the food item's six tastes match our personal tastes. All ingredients should have a mix of tastes, so you won't get optimal results by just putting all your taste into a single category... unless you put it all into saltiness, but pure salt will give you no calories and no nutrients- that value should represent vitamins and such. And lest you think you can down a ton of salt, and then just eat a separate food item for the other two benefits, eating foods you hate should lower morale to balance it out. Also, about salt, some chemicals should have tastes just like food ingredients. Cyanide should be extremely bitter, for example. But most chemicals that don't occur in nature should have no taste. Also note, generally speaking, cooking food makes it more savory, sweeter, and less bitter. Something to keep in mind when choosing your spread. A lot of really healthy veggies are quite bitter when raw, so if you want to adopt a raw food diet, you might want to jack that up. On that note, raw food options, like salads and... fruit salads should also be added to the menu.
So there you have it. A chef could get by with having no skill with this system, but the crew will love them if they can whip up a perfect meal that makes a crew member nigh super-human. And I suspect this won't decrease chef/barman shenanigans. In fact, I think it will probably increase them, since people will have much more reason to come to the cafeteria and try their luck.
Tldr: You have a stomach that holds five bites of food. Each bite gives you a boost through nutrients, calories, and taste, depending on the ingredients and how it was prepared, which in turn benefit you in various ways. Raw food has more nutrients, cooked food has (effectively) more calories. The tastes your character likes are determined on the character setup screen.