Catering Rework Overview :D

[AwkwardDryad]

Before Reading:

This is still an ongoing project and subject to change as we work out the planning and mechanics that will be released in the final version of this patch or collection of patches.

- A concept marked as [WIP] is currently undergoing active development and will have semi-frequent public updates attached to it.
- A concept marked as [TBA] is still in the planning phase or in early development.

Bear in mind this is a full ground-up rebuild of the food system and a massive change to catering departments to a whole, so keep that in mind when posting questions as a lot of concepts may no longer apply. :)

Speaking of questions, we'll be posting updates and answering questions fairly regularly, but your questions and suggestions will eventually be answered as long as you're nice ❤️

Objectives:

Catering roles have been in a really strange place where food basically isn't a desirable thing and most kitchen and bar oriented roles tend to end up super isolated and remain mechanically unfinished. We plan on addressing this by:

• Creating a roundstart selection of catering-specific roles to allow people to work in the region of food service they choose.
  This is a combination of Barman, Chef, Waiter, Sous Chef, and finally, the new Head of Catering role. (Barman and Waiter will be renamed to Bartender and Server by default. Server will update to Waiter/Waitress depending on if the player selecting those roles is identifying as Male/Female). [WIP]
  

• Fully fleshing out the mechanics of each catering role. [WIP]
  We want food service to feel like food service. Basically constantly relaying information to each other, interacting with other players, and generally creating an experience that is varied and enjoyable.
  

• The cooking system will be completely overhauled to become more involved, realistic, and heavily oriented around player choice, custom foods, and mechanical interaction. Lots of kitchen equipment is planned and every food will feel unique to cook. Additionally, the framework will be rewritten to allow coders to easily add fully configurable food recipes.
  

• The gimmicky catering roles will gain some unique tools and abilities centered around their respective area, fleshing them out into proper roles. [TBA]
  

• The Head of Catering functions as a head chef and is the logistics coordinator of food growth, production, and distribution. They also have some fun toys of their own to play with as all heads should ;P [WIP]
  

• Adding flavor profiles and effects to food beyond the current system, forming them into something desirable to players beyond just the usual "How do I kill people with this?" approach. [TBA]
  

• Modifying the kitchen, cafeteria, and bar to be more user friendly to those in those departments and updating tools with more realistic and involved functionality. [WIP]
  

• Expanding the framework for what is possible when creating a new plant for botany, allowing for interesting and esoteric plant effects to spice up hydroponics with strange new flora [WIP]
  

Project Overview:

• Visual Updates For Food And Equipment [WIP]
  
• Kitchen Equipment Framework Overhaul [WIP]
  
• Reworking Food Recipes [TBA]
  
• Expanding Food Effects With Flavor [TBA]
  
• Catering Role Expansion [WIP]
  
• Full Borg Support [TBA]
  
• Botany Additions [WIP]
  
• Map Updates [TBA]
  

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Members:

• Alfredo Chicken - Code/Design
  
• Avatharian - Code/Design
  
• Awkward Dryad - Art/Code/Design
  
• Erinexx - Art/Code/Design
  
• Hokie - Art/Design
  
• UrsulaMejor - Code/Consulting/Design
  

[Erinexx]

OUTRAGEOUSLY ROBUST HEAD OF CATERINGS HAT

[aft2001]

ss13 is about to become flavortown

holy fuck

In all seriousness, I definitely think that catering being reworked is a *very* good thing - it has so much unused potential and seeing it fleshed out and turned into its own science will be hella interesting!

[Technature]

This is a good.

Just about everything you touch is a good I swear.

[Trustworthy]

Ehhhhh. I disagree with this personally, since firstly, if this happened, literally only staffies, janitors, and the chaplain would remain as civilian roles, making the HoP even less important, and botany doesnt always do catering either, so this is grouping them with something they wont necessarily help at all with. 

It's also adding more roles than science has to what will effectively only ever have at most 2 people, and need the support of botany to even function properly. I dont think adding even more complexity and necessary cooperation to the already complex and cooperating station is a good change, especially at this size. While its neat on paper, it would be dead weight in practice, I feel. 

We dont need an entire department to give spacemen who dont even need it food and drinks. Barman and chef are good as is, because they've got no responsibilities, on 2 at least, and are an entry point job for more complicated things, barman especially, and should stay as such. 

This may be my hottest take yet, but that's my take, I guess.

[AwkwardDryad]

Ehhhhh. I disagree with this personally, since firstly, if this happened, literally only staffies, janitors, and the chaplain would remain as civilian roles, making the HoP even less important, and botany doesnt always do catering either, so this is grouping them with something they wont necessarily help at all with. 

It's also adding more roles than science has to what will effectively only ever have at most 2 people, and need the support of botany to even function properly. I dont think adding even more complexity and necessary cooperation to the already complex and cooperating station is a good change, especially at this size. While its neat on paper, it would be dead weight in practice, I feel. 

We dont need an entire department to give spacemen who dont even need it food and drinks. Barman and chef are good as is, because they've got no responsibilities, on 2 at least, and are an entry point job for more complicated things, barman especially, and should stay as such. 

This may be my hottest take yet, but that's my take, I guess.

It's not adding necessary cooperation, it's adding the ability to effectively cooperate with each other and content to actually use. Goon 2 hardly ever needs food, but it'll be wanted after this :P

Also I keep seeing the "It's taking content away from the HoP" argument floating around. So that's what I'm going to respond to. The HoP Has basically zero mechanical impact over any department other than being the person that lets you open doors. IMO The HoP is a flawed role on it's own and not reworking a handful of even more flawed roles doesn't make HoP any less flawed. I have a few ideas for a direction to take HoP to make them an actual head, but it doesn't completely tie in to the catering department as the head of personnel is well...the head of people, so that covers far more than JUST the civilan role. Basically my idea is to make them a support role for well...General station needs of people doing things. This includes the catering department, but they aren't the dedicated head of the catering department, because the HoP has to be other places too. In other words, adding on to the catering department and making it a semi-separate entity doesn't take away from the Head of Personnel's content.

On the barman and chef having no responsibilities:
We aren't adding obligations to catering, we're adding a level of personal interaction and actual content. As harsh as this may seem, the kitchen and bar area has gone majorly untouched for years. Hell, until today, applying condiments to food spat out a runtime error literally every time. Making food is super unengaging, unrewarding, and all in all un-useful in most cases. This rework aims to change that. It's based around players being able to play around in the sandbox that is making food as both an art form and a mechanically supported benefit to the station on a level that's beyond eating food = buffs.

On this adding complexity:
Yes there will be more complicated interactions, but it has a curve to it. The kitchen isn't going to become a chemicompiler. There will be simple things and there will be more advanced things. Having complicated mechanics mixed in doesn't make the role any less inviting to new players. In fact, it may become a role people actually stick with more because of it.

[UrsulaMejor]

Seconding Dryad on HoP not being the "Head of Civilians"; They're the on-station Human Resources person, basically. Making sure departments are staffed properly and resolving interpersonal disputes that the Captain is too drunk to deal with.

[AwkwardDryad]

Mandrakes require a constant supply of compost in order to grow. harvesting takes a few seconds (action bar) before you uproot the mandrake, causing it to scream and damage the ears of all in the vacinity. You will only ever harvest one mandrake per plant. Mandrakes can be used in Sympathetic Blood Magic or can be extracted into Mandrake Extract which is a potent hallucinogenic, paralysis agent, and causes heavy kidney and liver damage in large doses.

Witch hazel requires a cutting tool to harvest branches and will periodically spit out seeds with an accompanying gunshot sound. The frequency and damage of these projectile seeds scales with yield and potency :P

I'm not entirely sure how these plants will be available yet, but they'll be a bit difficult to acquire in the first place.

[zjdtmkhzt]

Ok, when I read "Catering rework", sympathetic blood magic is certainly not even in the top 100 list of things that I would expect from this post.^^
Maybe consider submitting this separately from the Catering Rework? It seems a little far removed from the main topic of it.

That said, I feel like these plants would need some relatively hard to achieve mutation prerequisites, as just growing magic plants in botany by default strikes me as a little strange. (Or it could be strange seeds, I guess, although I am not a huge fan of adding rng like that.)
Alternatively, I guess it could be an antag only plant, because the utility of these as a non-antag seems a little questionable anyways. Also, the magicky stuff strikes me as a little "chaplain-y", but I suppose that's not a big issue.
Also, not sure how strong exactly the mandrake poison is, but care should be taken to make it so stuff like curare is not rendered obsolete, I guess.

That said, I do love the flavour and mechanics of that stuff, and I also love the whole witchy theme. And the execution looks very nice too, I love the text when harvesting mandrakes.

TLDR: Magic seems a bit weird for default botany, but I like the plants and stuff and hope they get added in some form, maybe as traitor stuff. Maybe make a separate post from catering rework for it?

[AwkwardDryad]

Ok, when I read "Catering rework", sympathetic blood magic is certainly not even in the top 100 list of things that I would expect from this post.^^
Maybe consider submitting this separately from the Catering Rework? It seems a little far removed from the main topic of it.

That said, I feel like these plants would need some relatively hard to achieve mutation prerequisites, as just growing magic plants in botany by default strikes me as a little strange. (Or it could be strange seeds, I guess, although I am not a huge fan of adding rng like that.)
Alternatively, I guess it could be an antag only plant, because the utility of these as a non-antag seems a little questionable anyways. Also, the magicky stuff strikes me as a little "chaplain-y", but I suppose that's not a big issue.
Also, not sure how strong exactly the mandrake poison is, but care should be taken to make it so stuff like curare is not rendered obsolete, I guess.

That said, I do love the flavour and mechanics of that stuff, and I also love the whole witchy theme. And the execution looks very nice too, I love the text when harvesting mandrakes.

TLDR: Magic seems a bit weird for default botany, but I like the plants and stuff and hope they get added in some form, maybe as traitor stuff. Maybe make a separate post from catering rework for it?

Oh it is separate, but the plant effects are a result of the framework changes to botany that is part of the overall catering rework

Also I plan on botanists having to jump through a few hoops to get them.

[Erinexx]

Seconding Dryad on HoP not being the "Head of Civilians"; They're the on-station Human Resources person, basically. Making sure departments are staffed properly and resolving interpersonal disputes that the Captain is too drunk to deal with.

I agree wholeheartedly

Also to those saying Botany should remain civilian, I actually agree honestly, I instinctively lumped them in with Catering and in retrospect I definitely think that it's a conversation worth having as to whether they should be Catering or Civvy, and also whether Head of Catering should have access there

[Caro]

It all sound really good and promising
But I have a suggestion: creating a small 3-tray botany zone in catering area and adding a separate "Gardener" job that would have access to bar, kitchen and catering zones but not hydrophonics would be a good idea
Right now if I want to go creative with my cooking I have to set up botany in the kitchen myself because you can't really rely on botanists who are usually too busy making weed or explosive tomatoes. Well sometimes they'll throw some wheat and potatoes at you if you're lucky but that's really it
Let the botany nerds do nerdy hydro stuff but also make a job slot for a botanist who would actively participate in catering business

[Frank_Stein]

Two ideas for catering roles and a mechanic to tie along with the role and food consumption. Both roles wouldn't actually need an official position and could exist as gimmick roles or simply have the equipment around for someone to assume the role.

Delivery Driver: Just a delivery person, for running food orders outside the kitchen. They have a box that helps keep the food at the temperature it was at, a little scooter for fast transportation, and a pocket sized credit transfer device for card payments, plus a spiffy set of clothes

Dish washer: They clean soiled kitchen utensils and plates. They have pallets trays they can load dishes in to run them through an industrial washer for large batches, as well as your common sponge, cleaner bottle, non slip boots, etc. Like a kitchen janitor

Which gets me into the new mechanic, dirty dishes. Dishes and utensils will become dirty with repeat use. Once dirty, it slightly decreases the quality of things prepared or served with it. It can be the difference between a 5 star meal and a 4 star.

[polivilas]

How will mandrakes work in regards of borgs?

[AwkwardDryad]

Two ideas for catering roles and a mechanic to tie along with the role and food consumption. Both roles wouldn't actually need an official position and could exist as gimmick roles or simply have the equipment around for someone to assume the role.

Delivery Driver: Just a delivery person, for running food orders outside the kitchen. They have a box that helps keep the food at the temperature it was at, a little scooter for fast transportation, and a pocket sized credit transfer device for card payments, plus a spiffy set of clothes

Dish washer: They clean soiled kitchen utensils and plates. They have pallets trays they can load dishes in to run them through an industrial washer for large batches, as well as your common sponge, cleaner bottle, non slip boots, etc. Like a kitchen janitor

Which gets me into the new mechanic, dirty dishes. Dishes and utensils will become dirty with repeat use. Once dirty, it slightly decreases the quality of things prepared or served with it. It can be the difference between a 5 star meal and a 4 star.

Dirty dishes are 100% already planned, but I feel like adding extra roles for it would be unnecessary and a bit inflated :P

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How will mandrakes work in regards of borgs?

Borgs don't have blood :P

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Seconding Dryad on HoP not being the "Head of Civilians"; They're the on-station Human Resources person, basically. Making sure departments are staffed properly and resolving interpersonal disputes that the Captain is too drunk to deal with.

I agree wholeheartedly

Also to those saying Botany should remain civilian, I actually agree honestly, I instinctively lumped them in with Catering and in retrospect I definitely think that it's a conversation worth having as to whether they should be Catering or Civvy, and also whether Head of Catering should have access there

The HoC could easily be THAT GUY and just kinda...steal plant pots from botany and that would be an unintended side effect which actually makes me agree that botany should be separate access-wise.