Sauces cooking expansion

[Brixx79]

Had mentioned this idea on discord and think I could implement a basic version of it (I no code gud), so thought I'd try and get some feedback.

Adds the Saucepan
Is used on the stove top and ideally your ingredients would cook down over time into your sauce(s) via a timing minigame where you have to decide when to turn it off by checking the description.  Since I don't know how to do this, I'm going to implement it as each time you cook it, it'll take it up a stage in how the descriptor would look.
eg. TomatoSauce1: Diced tomatoes, mirepoix, and herbs sit in a pool of cold broth.  
TomatoSauce2: The broth takes a red hue as the veggies begin to break down.  
TomatoSauce3: The bubbling red sauce has a few large pieces floating around still.  
TomatoSauce4: The thick red sauce emits a rich and deep aroma.  
TomatoSauce5: Tiny black flecks float in the overly thick red sauce.  
Next step would just be your typical kitchen burnt mess screw up

Why is this needed?
Potentially adds a lot more depth to the things that could be cooked up.  Angler seems to be moving towards a bit of a visual prize (biggest fish!) for the round, and this might allow some 'most creative dish' or such award.  And chef could use more of a push than 'the guy you might eat some food from if you even hit the bar that round'.  Buffs for final dishes could have higher potential with all the extra work involved.

Why do it in stages like that?
Because some sauces are actually useful in the pre-post stage!  Slowly cooking butter makes a tasty brown butter (beurre noisette) that goes great with pasta. Taking it a stage further gives you 'blackened butter' (beurre noir) which goes nicely with fish!

What sauces are you thinking of adding?
Hollandaise
Tomato Sauce
Bechemel (Mac n' Cheese)
Veloute
Espagnole
Tempura Batter (use with any veg, meat or fish!)
Fish/Chicken/Beef/Pork/Veg/Synth Broth
BBQ Sauce
Soy Sauce is more of a fermentation process but could be added
Dolce de Leche
Creme Anglais
Fruit Coulis
Salsa
Buffalo Sauce
Bolognese
Teriyaki
Chutney (it's in cooking but could easily be moved here)


Possible mixer (no cooking) sauces
Pesto
Cocktail Sauce
Mignonette
Vinagrette
Bacon-aise
Aioli
Tartare


And I'm sure there is a ton more I'm not thinking of!  The amount of recipes that could get expanded out with stuff like this is boggling but I'd like to see some deeper method/goal all this could work towards too

[Kotlol]

I have 3 simple questions. Not to diss idea but I love it.

1: How will it interact with food? Kinda like ketchup and mustard?

2: Wrong ingridents? Do you get disgusting sauce? will it make a great dish taste like ass?

3: Chemicals in the sauce? Will they effect anything? Can you make a poison sauce?

Though these ideas aren't bad at all. We have dips and sauces to some degree and the "Soup engine"
I am just curious if you thought of this.

[Lord_earthfire]

I think adding additional steps to sauce making needs a tangible feedback and effect for doing so.

Sauces current use is adding chems and improve the food effect of your dish. And most do a bad job at it (the exceptions are chilli/ghost chilli sauce and syndicate sauce)

You got no visual indicator (sprite changes?) and the only information you get is a message telling you when there was no sauce on an item you normally expect it.

So, before thinking about which steps to add to sauce making i would suggest thinking about what tangible effect sauce should have for the item you are putting it on.

Fishing e.g. got a bunch of decorative, very nice looking, fishs. And on a mechanical reward, you are fishing to get loot from e.g. fishing in cloners or dimensional rifts.

[Waffleloffle]

it's a fun idea but it seems like a lot of work for middling-to-meager rewards. do you have any concept of if/how this would affect the reagents of a meal or its sprite? if it doesn't affect either, it could be difficult for chef players to feel like they've concretely accomplished anything when engaging with this system

[Brixx79]

1: How will it interact with food? Kinda like ketchup and mustard?

My initial thoughts were to treat it like a normal food ingredient where it would be combined with other things to create dishes. It could also be put into a bowl and eaten by itself, but the benefits should be lower if just consumed straight imo. It's not really like adding a hot sauce packet. More of 'what if I coated/marinated this chicken in hot sauce'.


2: Wrong ingridents? Do you get disgusting sauce? will it make a great dish taste like ass?

There should certainly be some version of 'burnt mess' for sauce if you just toss in a random mix. Some mixes I'd like to be more flexible (eg. vinegar and any veggies might give you a mignonette). Sauces should have a baseline of what they're to be used with and stepping out of that would result in an unpleasant dish.


3: Chemicals in the sauce? Will they effect anything? Can you make a poison sauce?

It would be wonderful if I could find a way to implement it like the ice cream machine where you pop in a beaker to use it's contents considering things like water would be involved. And really the oven should work this way too (Why does milk have to be in a bottle instead of a beaker if it's the right amount?). Currently though you'd have to inject it like other food items.


4. Sprites?

Ideally there would be a lot of new food items we could add with these injected into the system. I'd love to pair it with a pasta maker version of the ice cream machine so you could create different types of pasta that were color shaded to their ingredient. Many sauces could be added as color changed sprites on top for flexible dishes (eg. green pesto, red tomato). And while you can generically mix pasta/sauces (if pasta is a pairing for that sauce) and create a 'rigatoni bechemel', pairing the right sauce/pasta/food items would result in 'homemade mac and cheese' with better bonuses. Some things like teriyaki dishes might work best as recolors of the main ingredient used with the sauce.



5. Yeah but... what do they do?

I'd like them to be a handshake with the chemical and/or food systems currently in place to boost them and make food more of a consideration in people's plans. Some of the ideas I was bouncing around outside the current food buffs (eg. stamina regen):

Adding a multiplier (positive or negative) to chemical decay
10u of Booster Enzyme
Tempura can coat something so well it could hide chem scans
Veloute should give some great standard food buffs but decay into cheese and cholesterol
Bolognese adds a multiplier to physical damage (beefy!)
Teriyaki acts like glue, slowing you down for a short bit but gives a movement boost after
Broths I was thinking of acting as different heals (eg. Fish's omega3's heal brain damage, beef brute)
Creme Anglais I'd like to give a minor buff when used as is, but when chilled it becomes 'creme de glace' with more use

I'll admit I have not fleshed it out in-depth, which was part of the reason I posted for feedback! My coding skills might also be lacking to flesh this out as deeply as I'd like, but I'm willing to give it a whirl. Do people think it would work better as just a 'packet' type item like hot sauce? My thoughts are the work put in should feel like more than just a 'quick add on' to a dish. Would introducing something like calories to food be a good way to showcase cooking so you can see the 'Round's most calorie laden dish eaten" at the end? What do you think would help cooking pop more?