Catering Rework Overview :D

[Sundance]

Hello!

Bit caught up with the whole viral shenanigans due to the fact my job is both essential and political so I haven't had much time to commit to Goon, but i'll make an exception here to post some thoughts on the topic.

I'm super excited to see the sprite reworks, my wandering eye caught glance of it on #imspriter, some jolly good work there.

In terms of the direction, I might offer some advice:

- The restructuring of the Catering role is a bit confusing on how it might be implemented. If the issue that catering is left unmanned for many rounds, then i'm not quite sure how additional job vacancies, particularly the Head of Catering, would be beneficial in this regard. It might end up in another unmanned role.
That's not to say it's a bad idea, far from it - there would just need to be a fundamental shift in firstly how catering is done and why the crew would even bother eating in the first place, to warrant the need for more hands. Granted - both of these are being addressed in the rework, it's just something to keep in mind.

- Output. This one is simple. In the current method, making a single burger takes up not only a relatively large amount of time, but is extremely resource wasteful (1 meat = 1 burger) and taxing on the machines around you (one burger in the oven takes up space in the entire oven). All this when you want to produce food for a hungry 40+ crew station isn't particularly viable. ...or fun for that matter, as it is repetitive. And probably demoralizing as nobody will eat the 40+ burgers you've made apart from the clown who's spam clicking, occasionally barfing up undigested food. This might be something to address in the rework.

- I would agree with Gogorow in that there could be some form of device in the kitchen that acts as a mini/stunted hydroponics tray. In an ideal world, this is hydroponics job to deliver produce, however that may not occur on some (cough, most) rounds. Which means you may have to rely on the head of catering to resolve this, or you might have a plan C. The plan C could be that hydroponics tray, or more like a 32x32 unit (call it GrowFriend), that stores 3 miniature trays for plants. While this sounds buff and makes hydro redundant on paper, there are a number of caveats that you could add, such as the unit cannot accept chems other than water (so you cannot crank up the harvest) and/or severely reducing the output or quality of the harvest and/or locking it behind QM. This will give you stunted (you'll be running short here if you rely on it) output of produce.

- These changes would need to made in conjunction with some neat oddities to Botany too. For it to work fluidly, you need bodies at botany, even with the above suggestion, you'd still want a friend in botany. It seems that you're already kind of doing this with that Mandrake, so keep adding more odd stuff like this. More lethal stuff, stuff to backfire and blow up in your face. However, there also needs to a be a reason Botany will want to trade with you in the first place. Which leads be onto my last and most important point..

- The need for catering in the first place. I have made a number of suggestions in the past on how to tackle this, and a big ol' rework is a good time as any to raise it again.
Bioeffects was and still is a good idea - in that food gives background benefits. There needs to be a closer look on how this is implemented in the rework. I might suggest tieing this in with quality, if that's something you have planned. I do think the "timer" aspect of it is currently a bit misplaced - quality should affect the scale of the bioeffect, while the amount of sustenance (not a thing in code yet I don't think but it would be the difference between a bite of chips and a cheeseburger) should affect the time it stays in the system.
Ideally in my head, a chef cooking up a grand meal would have a niche but great benefit to the player while also staying in their system for at least 25 minutes or 1/3 of the round, but would be slower to eat than a bag of chips which you can effectively inhale.
Additionally there needs to be more bioeffects.

- I lied, one more point. There needs to be a larger nerf on spam eating. Currently, you could run into the bar and consume everything on the table so long as it isn't poisoned, while barfing up undigested chunks along the way, which you promptly and grossly eat also. While this can be humorous, if the rework is something putting more emphasis on meals, then you might want to remove the factor on one shithead eating entirely everything that was meant to be for the crew. Perhaps, like sustenance above, if there's too much food then you simply can't eat anymore. Or you could link it into the organs code where eating too much causes blocked intestines, requiring surgery or even possible removal of the stomach.

Anyway that's my 2c. Well, given the length more like 12c.

[Erinexx]

Hello!

Bit caught up with the whole viral shenanigans due to the fact my job is both essential and political so I haven't had much time to commit to Goon, but i'll make an exception here to post some thoughts on the topic.

Ahh I hope you're ok, do stay safe! D:

I'm super excited to see the sprite reworks, my wandering eye caught glance of it on #imspriter, some jolly good work there. 

I'm super happy to hear that <3 Your input is always welcome on anything I make, an artist thrives on feedback!

- I would agree with Gogorow in that there could be some form of device in the kitchen that acts as a mini/stunted hydroponics tray. In an ideal world, this is hydroponics job to deliver produce, however that may not occur on some (cough, most)  rounds. Which means you may have to rely on the head of catering to resolve this, or you might have a plan C. The plan C could be that hydroponics tray, or more like a 32x32 unit (call it GrowFriend), that stores 3 miniature trays for plants. While this sounds buff and makes hydro redundant on paper, there are a number of caveats that you could add, such as the unit cannot accept chems other than water (so you cannot crank up the harvest) and/or severely reducing the output or quality of the harvest and/or locking it behind QM. This will give you stunted (you'll be running short here if you rely on it) output of produce. 

I do like the idea of the mini hydro tray, it could definitely help as a stopgap for if botany are being lame - but itd need to be cleverly designed to avoid stepping on botany's toes

- These changes would need to made in conjunction with some neat oddities to Botany too. For it to work fluidly, you need bodies at botany, even with the above suggestion, you'd still want a friend in botany. It seems that you're already kind of doing this with that Mandrake, so keep adding more odd stuff like this. More lethal stuff, stuff to backfire and blow up in your face. However, there also needs to a be a reason Botany will want to trade with you in the first place. Which leads be onto my last and most important point..

I agree there should be some consideration given to what catering can provide for botany and I think there's absolutely a lot that can be traded, it'll just need some discussion and designing 

- Output. This one is simple. In the current method, making a single burger takes up not only a relatively large amount of time, but is extremely resource wasteful (1 meat = 1 burger) and taxing on the machines around you (one burger in the oven takes up space in the entire oven). All this when you want to produce food for a hungry 40+ crew station isn't particularly viable. ...or fun for that matter, as it is repetitive. And probably demoralizing as nobody will eat the 40+ burgers you've made apart from the clown who's spam clicking, occasionally barfing up undigested food. This might be something to address in the rework.

One thing I would love to get done is to make cooking MUCH more accessible - currently I have to just sit on the wiki 24/7 whenever I want to cook anything, which isn't optimal.

Things I'd like:
-Cooking dough on its own turns it into a burger bun that can be cut in half to make proper modular burgers (all sprite work is done for this already)
-Using dough on a breadtin makes cookable bread-in-tin
-More modular cooking recipes
-More easily understandable recipes (no more microwaving dough + mystery meat to make meatballs for example)

That will go a LONG way to solving the problem of resource-intensivity and time taken to make stuff like burgers, and work should be done for example to make one steak produce (for example) 3 meatpastes, which can then be turned into 3 burger patties, which would make it a tonne easier to make a lot more food in a lot less time

- The need for catering in the first place. I have made a number of suggestions in the past on how to tackle this, and a big ol' rework is a good time as any to raise it again.
Bioeffects was and still is a good idea - in that food gives background benefits. There needs to be a closer look on how this is implemented in the rework. I might suggest tieing this in with quality, if that's something you have planned. I do think the "timer" aspect of it is currently a bit misplaced - quality should affect the scale of the bioeffect, while the amount of sustenance  (not a thing in code yet I don't think but it would be the difference between a bite of chips and a cheeseburger) should affect the time it stays in the system. 
Ideally in my head, a chef cooking up a grand meal would have a niche but great benefit to the player while also staying in their system for at least 25 minutes or 1/3 of the round, but would be slower to eat than a bag of chips which you can effectively inhale. 
Additionally there needs to be more bioeffects.

I would love bioEffects, but also honestly I would love to see at least the need to eat to be added in some capacity to Goon2 - I doubt I'm in a majority with that opinion but it definitely gives people more of an impetus to not just sit in their department all shift (eg. genetics)

I definitely agree that it would have to have bioEffects since just saying "fuck you, you have to eat now or youll suffer consequences" would be lame after however long not even having to eat

- I lied, one more point. There needs to be a larger nerf on spam eating. Currently, you could run into the bar and consume everything on the table so long as it isn't poisoned, while barfing up undigested chunks along the way, which you promptly and grossly eat also. While this can be humorous, if the rework is something putting more emphasis on meals, then you might want to remove the factor on one shithead eating entirely everything that was meant to be for the crew. Perhaps, like sustenance above, if there's too much food then you simply can't eat anymore. Or you could link it into the organs code where eating too much causes blocked intestines, requiring surgery or even possible removal of the stomach.

I absolutely agree with this - I'll write it into a design document at some point then we can potentially work to refine this fully in future

[AwkwardDryad]

EDIT: Erin's response was better :P

Basically I wanted to say that we're keeping all of these things in mind and that these features really can't be thought of in relation to existing catering and food code because what we are doing is a complete ground up rewrite in a different direction.

[zjdtmkhzt]

The kitchen having a shitty little produce machine that can only slowly grow default produce without doing plant modifications sounds like a great idea to me, in order to make some foods more accesible. (Although most of the time I haven't had any trouble getting hydro to make produce for me, they are usually very cooperative.)

Also, in regards to what polivilas mentioned about borgs, I was wondering how witch hazel/mandrake/etc. *harvesting* was going to work with those?
(Not even sure how it works with other plants right now, I don't exactly play civilian borg a lot.)

[Frank_Stein]

Two things in relation to stuff Sundance mentioned that I think is worth considering.

The idea of batch cooking. Instead of making 40 burgers by running 40 flours through the sink and combining them with 40 meats and running them individually through the oven, instead you could cook 40 burger patties in one oven and 40 buns in another and then combine them by hand later.

The second is how to deal with mass consumption, and benefits stacking. I think it would make sense to place a cap on how much food was able to be in a stomach at any given time, and require either using a toilet or vomiting to make room for more, which would also purge any existing benefit food was supplying at the moment

[Sundance]

EDIT: Erin's response was better :P

Basically I wanted to say that we're keeping all of these things in mind and that these features really can't be thought of in relation to existing catering and food code because what we are doing is a complete ground up rewrite in a different direction.

Yes, Erin's post does cover the guts of my post!

But also, a complete ground up rewrite is interesting too as I assumed that this more an expansion than "back to drawing board" scenario. In that instance, many of my suggestions may actually be moot.

Nevertheless, my point of casting a keen eye on the need for food remains and would advise that it be a core point when developing.
The average spessmen are inherently selfish, borderline feral creatures, particularly on Goon 2. It is a zoo half the time while the other half it's on fire, so there is a natural inclination to this behavior as in the average spessmans eyes it's not selfishness - but survival. 

The challenge in developing this would be reaching out to those players who otherwise are too busy with the round shenanigans to even bother eating. 

This might be introducing an interesting take on needing food or by introducing benefits to food, that remains to be seen. To be frank, I've was never in the camp of "don't add food needs on goon 2", as to me, the need for food isn't really any different to me than the need for medicine, which the average player would avail of many times throughout a round. If it is engaging, then why the fuss? But a topic for another time..

[AwkwardDryad]

The kitchen having a shitty little produce machine that can only slowly grow default produce without doing plant modifications sounds like a great idea to me, in order to make some foods more accesible. (Although most of the time I haven't had any trouble getting hydro to make produce for me, they are usually very cooperative.)

I love this idea :D  It would help clean up the food vendor quite a lot actually...And of course it would give the chef a lot more breathing room to make recipes at roundstart!

Also, in regards to what polivilas mentioned about borgs, I was wondering how witch hazel/mandrake/etc. *harvesting* was going to work with those?
(Not even sure how it works with other plants right now, I don't exactly play civilian borg a lot.)

It would require some more testing. Mandrakes are a super deep rabbit hole and I'm still working out the interactions and balance, so I haven't done borg integration on it yet, but it's on my testing list.

---

The idea of batch cooking. Instead of making 40 burgers by running 40 flours through the sink and combining them with 40 meats and running them individually through the oven, instead you could cook 40 burger patties in one oven and 40 buns in another and then combine them by hand later.

This will be possible, but with a bit of skill required on the part of the chef *wink

The second is how to deal with mass consumption, and benefits stacking. I think it would make sense to place a cap on how much food was able to be in a stomach at any given time, and require either using a toilet or vomiting to make room for more, which would also purge any existing benefit food was supplying at the moment

100% yes.

---

The challenge in developing this would be reaching out to those players who otherwise are too busy with the round shenanigans to even bother eating. 

This might be introducing an interesting take on needing food or by introducing benefits to food, that remains to be seen. To be frank, I've was never in the camp of "don't add food needs on goon 2", as to me, the need for food isn't really any different to me than the need for medicine, which the average player would avail of many times throughout a round. If it is engaging, then why the fuss? But a topic for another time..

We're still working on this aspect, but I'll go over the general thought process.

I also personally wouldn't mind adding food needs to goon 2, but making them a survival necessity that players have to worry about would be a hard no for a lot of players. So I'm thinking something more on the benefits for eating side for 2, but I'd like it to go a little beyond just... food = buffs, because that feels a little too...Combat adventure I guess if it's the only system present. I'd like players to want to eat food, not just from a power standpoint or a need standpoint, but from a genuine enjoyment perspective. Take Deep Rock Galactic beers for instance. Dwarves don't NEED to drink, but sometimes it's genuinely helpful, other times, it's just fun to play around with all the neat effects they can have. This is the direction I personally would like to take food. A nice mix of food = buffs and food = fun (depending on the food).

Another idea I haven't mentioned yet, was perhaps a unique status effect for when you've recently eaten your **favorite food** which would be a thing players can select in player prefs. (I'm not entirely sure if this will be implemented though)

Also Neen on the goon discord mentioned food cravings which would be super neat to see.

[Kak0phony]

Super excited to see the fruits of your collective labors! In my experience, the reason catering roles are so understaffed is because it can be very unrewarding to play those roles. I know I'd personally be playing chef much more if there was actual stuff they could do!

[AwkwardDryad]

Update 4/14/20


Hiiiii...so life kinda happened and I've been a little reluctant to do much lately. Buuuuut, currently, pretty much all of the spritework is done.

And I'd just like to mention how amazing Erin has been doing on sprites. It's like they go into a haze and come back with beautiful things and it's made this entire project SO much more manageable and pretty and I'm so happy they enjoyed it as much as they did :D
Thank you so much Eriiiiin!

Personally, I'm working on Code Maiding* and porting old pull requests to the new repository, so new features will be a little on the slow end for now.

Additionally, we came up with some of the basic math for the handling of interactions between the various aspects of food quality (player flavor preference, food flavor profile, food quality, and their impact on the effects food gives the player) Eeeeee it's happening :D



*The act of cleaning up code

[Admiral jimbob]

this is what will finally bring me back on a semipermanent basis, honest. Spigot the Bear needs to don his big hat once again. godspeed AD

[GORE]

Hey - I do not know if this idea has been uttered yet but I still wanted to present of input of my own.

A few months back someone wanted to implement a machine so that mining can easily sell ores to the whole station via a terminal. Why not do the same for botany? Most of the time they harbor their goods, sell them to QM or weed to the space diner.

A 1 in 100 occasion might lead to some nice botanist delivering stuff to the kitchen but that is usually a rarity - which is sad to see. Because as a chef I love to indulge in using strange foods and food extracts to spice up my dishes.

[AwkwardDryad]

Hey - I do not know if this idea has been uttered yet but I still wanted to present of input of my own.

A few months back someone wanted to implement a machine so that mining can easily sell ores to the whole station via a terminal. Why not do the same for botany? Most of the time they harbor their goods, sell them to QM or weed to the space diner.

A 1 in 100 occasion might lead to some nice botanist delivering stuff to the kitchen but that is usually a rarity - which is sad to see. Because as a chef I love to indulge in using strange foods and food extracts to spice up my dishes.

I was thinking about a produce cart at one point, mixed with custom shops and stuffs, but a terminal based interface would hamper player interaction and general gameplay, so it's not really something I'm willing to work on.

[AwkwardDryad]

The catering rework is abandoned on my end for all intents and purposes right now due to personal reasons.

[Technature]

Damn shame.

Whatever is happening, I hope for the best for ya.

[Sundance]

Indeed, a shame. I was looking forward to some attention to a rather overlooked part of the station.

If ever comes a time where you would reconsider - instead of an entire rework and perhaps release some big ideas as small ideas, I'd feel that would be most welcome.