Food changes

[Nick]

ps. Cookie Monster, please change this "Location: At UNIIIIIIIIIVEEEEEAAAACCCCCCIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDD" in your profile. This makes forum tables divided in bad way

He was already told this, but nothing will be done about it until some administrator changes it themselves, which will be in a long time. Cookie enjoys ticking people off, and the admins seem to be a little slow on correcting this.

[Schme]

Damit.

[Cookie]

Wha?

[wichita]

ps. Cookie Monster, please change this "Location: At UNIIIIIIIIIVEEEEEAAAACCCCCCIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDD" in your profile. This makes forum tables divided in bad way

Ditto that, KeVes. :S
EDIT: Thanks Cookie.

As for machinery standing in the way of being able to prepare, that is under consideration so try and share any bright solutions to the problem on the Suggestions forum or PM me.

[Shaderon]

I agree that cooked foods should come before the raw foods start getting less and less in nutrition. Not just for those travelling traders (I have one, maybe two myself and they will suffer badly) but also because the characters need time to work out what they can cook and to make pots and ovens etc.

I don't want to complain too loudly *mutters something about doing it anyway* but to have one source of food reduced in nutrition BEFORE getting another one introduced might just cause an epidemic of newspawn death. Now I know some newspawns are better off this way, but that's not all of us! I have charries 2 that are newspawn and are actually quite good charries (even if I do say so myself) and I would hate to see them fail before they actually get going.

[melbi]

... the impact on inventories will be that you will require twice as much inventory room to carry around with you. This may not be much of a problem for townsfolk with storages available, but travellers will find they need more inventory room if they eat raw food.

I guess the idea is to discourage the trade that was supposedly encouraged by food shortages?

Could I make a little suggestion? When one of these changes that on the face of it seem intended to make Cantr more difficult to play, could you give some rationale?

I mean, I thought the general amnesia was insane until Nick explained it, and now I am quite curious to see how it works out. In this case, it just sounds like a "screw the disadvantaged" idea.

Since the food shortages began, I have been gradually letting my characters die off -- there is really only one for whom I see any interesting future. Many of them have just been cut off at the knees by the shortages (yes, it is still a problem in some areas), and struggling for subsistance, though realistic, can't really be called a game... at least it doesn't justify the time and emotional investment.

This change, I think, will make life too difficult for at least two of my characters who live in places where potatoes are the only real food.

Sometimes I wish I didn't read these forums. Really. I have to, to know what's going on, but at times it is both depressing and maddening.

Incidentally -- coal ovens are great IF you have a building. If you don't, they are just a theory.

[Agar]

From what I've been able to gather, the idea is to make raw foods less desireable, and then making prepared food eaiser to make. What I've been pushing for is a change in the order of implementation, so that we have prepared food that's easier to make, then less desireable raw food. That way, we have a chance to work out any bugs in preparing food without as many people close to death.

Keep in mind, any new resource added to prepare food with will still be restricted in gathering, so this does little to help that issue. More so if it's not added to any populated lands ...

So in my fan of spreadsheets way, I ran some numbers through Excel. The rate I wanted to find was how many days of food do you get from raw food, and a few prepared foods. How many days you can eat off of how many days you work. Some results are :

Asparagus 8.5
Blackberries 1.7
Blueberries 1.5
Carrots 10
Potatoes 8
Spinage 11
Salted meat 17.5
Smoked meat 15.9

In the prepared food, I did not include how long it would take to get the meat, as that is based on the availability and success of hunting animals, which is random. I did include the time it will take to gather the resource to prepare it with, and the preparation time.

The big advantage of raw food right now is it's sticking out of the ground everywhere (mostly), where as prepared foods are limited to where the machines are built and where the resources to build the machines are.

The more types of machines that can be used to prepare food, the more we'll see prepared food. Even if the ratios stayed the same as they are now, where you get twice as many days of food to eat as raw, you will see more prepared foods. As has been pointed out in the Saddle Quern thread, the more metal thats needed to make any part of the process, the less that process will be used.

But the main point remains. We need more prepared food FIRST, then less desirable raw food.

[formerly known as hf]

But the main point remains. We need more prepared food FIRST, then less desirable raw food.

I agree completely - the first, and most simple step, should be that every raw food has a cooked alternative - and can be cooked on virtually any existing oven/spit/firepit etc. etc. More cooking 'machines' might not be possible (I can't think of many that we haven't already got - except specialised ones) but I do think the existing ones should be much more versatile.

The big problem with Cantr in relation to reality - is the limited availability of wood. No settlement in the real world would easily develop where there wasn't a source of wood for fuel for cooking. It doesn't require forest - just a few palm trees - but, in Cantr, only forests tend to have wood.

If cooked/prepared food is to be made more appealing - either wood needs to be made more available (unlikely) or some imagination needs to be used in what 'prepared' means. I like the idea of sushi, as it requires no fuel - but it does require a specific and difficult to make tool - could that be changed?

[Agar]

Exaclty why does Sushi need the iron in a Kitchen table to make sushi work? Finding a little wood for a makitsu isn't overly hard, and it's not consumed, so that's even better.

Considering water is rarer than salt, or was it removed entirely, it should either be added back or spread out more if we are to boil things. Almost everything can be cooked with a pot of water. Barley soup, rice, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, cooked carrots, put it all in. If you want to keep things real-ish, or exploit the opprotunity to add another disease, make us boil water first, but increase how much unpure water can be gathered.

Seriouly. Almost everyone in thise thread wants more prepared foods to happen before raw foods become undesirable. I'll start a poll if you want, but you might want to do it yourselves, as my polls have inherant bias to slant votes in the favor of the idea I like.

[Doug R.]

I saw nothing indicating that prepared food was to be made easier to make. Perhaps I missed it, but don't get your hopes up.

[formerly known as hf]

From what I've heard, the RD have said they're gonna try and introduce more ways of preparing food... wether they'll be easier is to be seen...

[The Sociologist]

My congrats to Agar and everyone contributing. These will be good changes. An further idea would be mixed "meals" consisting of various resources--thereby encouraging trading and restauranteurs even more. Eg "grilled meat in a nut sauce with mashed potatoes and boiled spinage". That sort of thing should be the most efficient food of all, and a real boost to a new restaurant business! Anyhow, thanks for the good work and for making a thread worth replying to.

Agar is The Man!

[Agar]

The existing prepared foods are left untouched; and apart from that, new ways to cook food will be implemented over the coming period. This will make prepared food more attractive, especially for travellers.

In fact, to quote the "real" man, nothing will be happening to prepared food, except adding way of preparing them. If the new ways are as unavailable as the current ways, then nothing will be improved. All a matter of making the process logical, balanced, and realistic, while avoiding metal or resources being put on unpopulated lands.

People ate food for thousands of years (at least) before the copper age. How'd they do it? I'll look up some random things, but I think the rest of you might want to contribute some...

[Pie]

Cool.

THERE WAS A PLAYRE RIOT WITHOUT ME????

[wm]

This plan is a sure way to kill intertown foot travel and trade. Period. AMny characters can travel long distances and sort of negate the benefits of vehicles by getting a lot of lightweight food that lasts a VERY long time to bring with them. With this system, people will no longer be able to travel cross continent on foot in less than 20 years. It sure is a good thing all my pauper characters are stationary for now... I would hate to have discovered that the food supply I thought would last me from Seatown to Doryiskom would run out in the Akypor region...