Cooked meat vs. Smoked meat

[Arlequin]

As a proud tavern owner I could say I've got quite an issue with public smokers, since smoked meat is the best food if you got the time to make it. It's like if crossbows were made of bones and sinew and just took some time to craft.

But actually I disagree mostly on it being way better than cooked meat. See:

Smoked meat:

- You can smoke meat at smokers with very little wood (<90 wood per 1000 smoked meat).
- You can set the amount to do, so you don't need to worry about losing the spot. Leave the char idle some days and then wake him with food for ten years.
- Smoked meat is really light, the lightest food I think.
- You don't need any special tools.

Cooked meat:

- Ok, it requires 2 days to cook 1000gr (1 with the big pot, 1 collecting wood with a steel axe or drying dung), while smoked meat requires 3 days, but:
- You need an huge amount of dung/wood (641 wood per 1000 cooked meat). By the way, the wiki says 750, which I think it's wrong.
- You can't set the amount.
- You need to make a big pot, and you need iron for the tool. Even worse if you want a steel axe to gather wood.
- It's slightly heavier than smoked food.

I think cooked food is way easier to digest than smoked food. It just rots faster. But, by cooking, you also kill some nasty food parasites. So:

- Cooked food should decrease hunger faster (and/or smoked food slower); it has more water but it's also more nutritive. Putting cooked food in a container and eating once each two-three days would make it better than smoked meat.

- Cooking food shouldn't require such an outrageous amount of fuel. Maybe half day of wood with a stone axe (200gr) and a bit of water (10gr), now that water can be collected everywhere.

- Cooked meat shouldn't transmit food parasits, if any.

Notice this isn't a suggestion to force characters to work more and RP less, but actually to force them to RP more to get cooked food from characters that can supply it. I'm a bit sick of idle characters left working at smokers.

[wichita]

I agree and have for sometime. The smoker was out of balance from day one. But due to their incredible popularity, we have been reluctant to face the wrath of the populace. My tavern owner has had a difficult time strumming up business too.

Frankly, I don't think flipping the mechanical food balance will help that at all. We need to find more roleplayers, and give food some way to have different flavors (moreso than just different eating rates).

[Nakranoth]

Honestly I think the way to fix it will come in the form of healing/resting/etc effects from foods happening over time... so eating nothing but salted/smoked meat will actually cause your charrie to become fatigued much more readily (restore fatigue slower) than eating breads and cooked/grilled meat with cheese if you catch my drift... diffrent foods need diffrent values of over time regeneration... cooked foods uping energy faster than uncooked... cooked vegetables faster than cooked meats... faster than smoked/salted meats... but meats uping health faster than vegetables... it's a bit complicated, and requires something backburnered to be implimented by ProgD, then get RD input too... but it's possible.

[Surly]

Ick.

I agree with the original post... but I really don't like Nakranoth's idea...

[tiddy ogg]

Quite so, Surly. More complication, steeper learning curve yet again for new players. Many places don't have a choice of food, anyway, only different ways of preparing it and this is already set up.

[Nakranoth]

I feel silly now... the solution hit me this morning... I was eating myself a turkey sandwich while being completely sleep deprived... staring at the package of turkey... meat... looked at the bread on my table... then the sandwich in my hands... pure genius. No one would make a salted meat sandwich... or a jerky sandwich... or anything like that... so if we made cooked/grilled meats able to get sandwiches from them, much like a cheese sandwich like we already have... we give a mechanical reason for cooked meats. I rule (at least when I'm delerious from not sleeping).

[wichita]

I eat bacon sandwiches all the time. Bacon is smoked meat.

[Nosajimiki]

- Ok, it requires 2 days to cook 1000gr (1 with the big pot, 1 collecting wood with a steel axe or drying dung), while smoked meat requires 3 days, but:
- You need an huge amount of dung/wood (641 wood per 1000 cooked meat). By the way, the wiki says 750, which I think it's wrong.

I wish it were this generious. If it were 641, I'd be cooking a lot more meat. last I cheaked it was 1000 meat and 1000 fuel for 800 cooked meat making it actually less time efficent than a smoker. If it were say 1000 meat, 600 wood or dung for 800 cooked meat, then it would ballence out. 1 day to dry dung or gather wood. 1 to cook. It would be slightly more time efficeant, but also more waistful and less wieght efficeant.

I think if the stone pots used fuel more effeciantly, you'd see a lot more incentive for cooked meat. Right now I have someone who has a big pot but only uses it for boiling eggs b/c he has a smoker. I actually tryed making stew with it, then remembered how much wood it takes... I was upset b/c he does not live in a forest .

[wichita]

I hate to do this...

Small firepit: Grilling meat
meat -> 300, wood -> 200 (.7 days) -> 270 grilled meat (9.6 meals)
4.8 / 1.7 = 5.6 meals / day

Spit: Grilling meat
meat -> 300, wood -> 120 (.4 days) -> 270 grilled meat (9.6 meals)
9.6 / 1.4 = 6.9 meals / day

Small Firepit: Cooking meat (big pot)
meat -> 1000, wood -> 750 (2.5 days) -> 935 cooked meat (37.4 meals)
37.4 / 3.5 = 10.7 meals / day (assuming free meat)

Fireplace: Cooking meat (big pot)
meat -> 1000, wood -> 600 (2 days) -> 935 cooked meat (37.4 meals)
37.4 / 3 = 12.5 meals / day

Oven: Cooking meat
meat -> 450, wood -> 25 (.08 days) -> 400 cooked meat (16 meals)
16 / 1.08 = 14.8 meals / day

Smoker: Smoking meat
meat -> 400, wood -> 30 (.1 days) -> 400 smoked meat (18 meals)
18 / 1.1 = 16.5 meals / day



Big pots cook meat the fastest. Ovens are the most fuel effective. Smoked meat is the most potent. If any change is to be made, it will be to cut the smoking efficiency in half, maybe a 75% reduction. Either that or smokers become more expensive.

[Nakranoth]

Alright, fair enough... but can I still get my meat sandwiches? We need more simple synergies.

[DELGRAD]

Smoker: smoking meat
400 meat+30 wood=350 smoked meat. 15.90909090 etc...
Or would you rather us eating 200 grams of potatoes a day?

The act of smoking is rather efficient and many cultures ate it before CANTR with no ill effects. Go find something else to destroy
wichita. You want to take smoking meat down to 87.5 grams made a day?

[Arlequin]

On smoking food:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoked_food

Only hot smoking, which includes barbecues, is sure to kill parasites, like the trichyna, but hot smoked food gets spoiled fast even in the refrigerator. Hot smoking needs to keep 55º-80ºC for 8 hours. Cold smokin, 25ºC for several days, and you need to cure it with salt if you want to kill the microbes.

To do it in the wild for survival you need to use a poncho or something to cover the smoker and keep the smoke in and with a constant heat. There are physical limits on how much food you can put in an improvised smoker, though. You can leave it smoking during night and wake up with some edible food.

Resinous wood isn't good for smoking since it leaves a bad taste.

With rough numbers, (and not like Cantr has to be reallistic, I know) it seems hot smoking is about eight times slower than cooking and uses a little less wood. Long lasting smoked food can be dozens of times slower and requires salt or a freezer, though ideally it's an almost automatic process.

[Sicofonte]

We do need taverns in Cantr. And taverns can't be there if no one is going to pay for the food.

Well, my tavern is going out of business after twenty years because no matter how much different food you offer, how well you roleplay and decorate the tavern, how much effort you put on advertise it, how fast you cook it with expert chefs, no matter if the tavern is in a location with a big population and scarce food, and you exchange food for work or almost anything besides bones and fur, there's absolutely nothing that can compete with smokers. I said it somewhere before.

My tavernkeeper has tons of cooked food and nothing to pay his providers, employees and merchants, so that's over.

The non roleplaying awkard meat smokers have won.

Smoked meat is too powerfull.

The smoker is buildable outside (logically) with primitive tools, and requiring for its construction and utilization only wood (and a hammer) so it is very accesible.


Currently:

Smoker: Smoking meat
meat -> 400, wood -> 30 (.1 days) -> 350 smoked meat (16 meals)
16 / 1.1 = 14.55 meals / day

So it is faster than any other meat preparation, except:

Oven: Cooking meat
meat -> 450, wood -> 25 (.08 days) -> 400 cooked meat (16 meals)
16 / 1.08 = 14.8 meals / day

But the oven is more expensive than the smoker (it needs 3 kilos of stone and 7 days of work, besides it can be only built indoors).


My suggestion:

Smoker:

Smoking meat

Output per day of labour
* 150 grams of smoked meat
Maximum output
* 28000 grams
Required resources
* 200 grams of meat
* 150 grams of wood
Required tools
* none

Then it would be:
Smoker: Smoking meat
meat -> 200, wood -> 150 (.5 days) -> 150 smoked meat (6 meals)
6 / 1.5 = 4 meals / day

Or something like that, but smokers must be less powerful, they make Cantr nutrition bore, stops characters of making other foods, and we do have a big diversity of foods that are almost unused.

BALANCE !!!

[ceselb]

I would suggest something a little more devious.
Input: 350g meat
Output: 275g smoked meat
Eaten: 24g /day

This changes all three values for a more subtle effect. Not sure if it is such a problem though. Sure, most people can feed themselves easily. A tavern would only be viable in a large port or something, catering to the sailors needs. Most of my sailors would buy atleast some light food if available.

[Arlequin]

A tavern would only be viable in a large port or something, catering to the sailors needs. Most of my sailors would buy atleast some light food if available.

That tavern was in a large port (population around 40, lots of ship traffic), and besides five casual customers, in twenty years it only sold to a few sailors and the workers of a local industry, and mostly healing foods only, for there were some incidents in the other shore.

Most people that bought nournishing food already had kilos of everlasting smoked meat stored, and only traded for RP purposes. Actually, besides having a lot of cooking machines, the product the tavern sold more often was smoked meat. Yet we still managed to store 58000 grams of it.