Food Rebalance Summary

[Saturnus]

36 minutes ago, goboking said:

I agree with the rest of your post, but this part speaks to an issue with pacu farming more than an issue with the balance of pacu fillets.

I see it as two sides of the same coin really. If pacu farming is deemed fine the way it is then pacu fillets are too high quality. If they change how pacus can be farmed by, let's say tamed pacus must eat at least once in their life to reproduce then the quality of Pacu fillets is probably fine as it is.

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

I see it as two sides of the same coin really. If pacu farming is deemed fine the way it is then pacu fillets are too high quality. If they change how pacus can be farmed by, let's say tamed pacus must eat at least once in their life to reproduce then the quality of Pacu fillets is probably fine as it is.

Ahem, the current thing is about wild pacus. Tamed pacus should die when not fed. But if wild pacus have to eat once, you have a max of 25 cycles to get to them and then they will be dead. The thing they could do is just count the water when calculating available space and then having them overcrowd. That could still be worked around with a large tank though and I would totally do that. 

[Saturnus]

1 minute ago, Gurgel said:

Ahem, the current thing is about wild pacus. Tamed pacus should die when not fed. But if wild pacus have to eat once, you have a max of 25 cycles to get to them and then they will be dead. The thing they could do is just count the water when calculating available space and then having them overcrowd. That could still be worked around with a large tank though and I would totally do that. 

I'm ok with leaving wild Pacus as they are, even so far as the possibility of farming them indefinitely. Because there is a fixed amount of wild Pacus on a map, and there's not going to be more. That puts wild Pacus in the same position as wild sleet wheat, wild mushrooms wild pincha peppers etc etc. In the current live version (ie. not the preview) there is a guaranteed amount of wild sleet wheat to fed at least 10 dupes on every single map. And this can be fully automated as well by placing sweepers to pick up the wheat, and just making sure the ice biome stays cold enough.

My problem isn't with the wild population of plants and critters, it's specifically with how critters can be tamed, made to reproduce en-masse and then when you stop feeding them they'll continue to reproduce. That doesn't make sense. Once tamed they should loose, if not the ability to survive without being fed outright, then at least loose the ability to reproduce when not being fed.

[Grimgaw]

11 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Because there is a fixed amount of wild Pacus on a map, and there's not going to be more.

I get the 8 Pacu welfare package way too often.

[Saturnus]

13 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

I get the 8 Pacu welfare package way too often.

I think we can all agree that welfare packages should be tamed critters, not wild ones.

Critters found on other planets if such a thing exist, definitely should be wild ones.

[nakomaru]

25 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

I think we can all agree that welfare packages should be tamed critters, not wild ones.

Sadly we cannot. It's much nicer for me to be able to slaughter everything until I want to make some wild ranch of some kind, rather than preciously corral everything into a waterlocked vacuum. Or even have a wild ranch on rime at all.

[Saturnus]

 

6 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Sadly we cannot. It's much nicer for me to be able to slaughter everything until I want to make some wild ranch of some kind, rather than preciously corral everything into a waterlocked vacuum. Or even have a wild ranch on rime at all.

I dismiss your objection. We shouldn't we even have the option of wild farming on Rime at all beyond those critters and plants in the starting biome, and those seeds you happen to find buried. It's not a natural environment for almost any critter or plant.

[nakomaru]

I hope this isn't too pedantic - I wasn't objecting to your belief about how the game should be designed, I was stating my own.

[Saturnus]

3 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

I hope this isn't too pedantic - I wasn't objecting to your belief about how the game should be designed, I was stating my own.

Oh, that changes things. I actually thought you were kidding. So my answer was a tongue in cheek response to what I thought was a deliberate devils' advocate position.

[nakomaru]

4 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Oh, that changes things. I actually thought you were kidding. So my answer was a tongue in cheek response to what I thought was a deliberate devils' advocate position.

Seeking common ground - if all critters are available on various space destinations as wilds, I'd be fine with the printed ones being tamed. I can check the planets before I play a map in debug to be sure I have everything available.

[Saturnus]

1 minute ago, nakomaru said:

Seeking common ground - if all critters are available on various space destinations as wilds, I'd be fine with the printed ones being tamed. I can check the planets before I play a map in debug to be sure I have everything available.

If their natural biome is on the asteroid, and there's no other external factors that dictate why they should not be there, like extreme heat or cold, then you should have wild critters and plants of every type that map offers. That's obvious. I have no desire to limit or shrink the natural population of wild plants and critters.

As an anecdote, I got bored one day and generated a random map just to count up how many dupes could be fed on the natural wild population of plants and critters on the map. The result was a staggering 47 dupes, and that seemed like a pretty standard map to me. The thing is there's a lot more food on the map than most people realize when you add up all the critters; hatches, pacus, drecko, shove voles etc, and the wild plants, ie. sleet wheat and mushrooms. And most of those 47 dupes would live on high quality food as well due to large amounts of wild pincha peppers to make BBQ and Pepper Bread.

[DarkMaster13]

23 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

If their natural biome is on the asteroid, and there's no other external factors that dictate why they should not be there, like extreme heat or cold, then you should have wild critters and plants of every type that map offers. That's obvious. I have no desire to limit or shrink the natural population of wild plants and critters.

As an anecdote, I got bored one day and generated a random map just to count up how many dupes could be fed on the natural wild population of plants and critters on the map. The result was a staggering 47 dupes, and that seemed like a pretty standard map to me. The thing is there's a lot more food on the map than most people realize when you add up all the critters; hatches, pacus, drecko, shove voles etc, and the wild plants, ie. sleet wheat and mushrooms. And most of those 47 dupes would live on high quality food as well due to large amounts of wild pincha peppers to make BBQ and Pepper Bread.

Though that is the theoretical max.  The player will not actually have access to that much food due to things like incorrect atmospheres, temperatures, and the player's own actions.  A very cautious player can likely save most of the wild food, but I suspect that 20-50% will probably be either unavailable or destroyed through regular play.  It also means a lot of travel time, since most of those food sources will not be in convenient places to get to from the base, especially if you're being diligent about preserving the food.

Which actually sounds fine to me.  You're basically playing as scavenger gatherers at that point, which isn't an efficient way to feed a population.  There should be a reason to use domestic food sources instead.

[nakomaru]

The recent update has two changes that we discussed: soul food moved from bbq (tier 3) to burger (tier 6), and bbq no longer requires peppers. That seems to correct for the pacu discrepancy.

[Saturnus]

2 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

The recent update has two changes that we discussed: soul food moved from bbq (tier 3) to burger (tier 6), and bbq no longer requires peppers. That seems to correct for the pacu discrepancy.

Doesn't bbq still require grilling while pacu fillet doesn't?

[nakomaru]

25 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Doesn't bbq still require grilling while pacu fillet doesn't?

Yes:

• Raw meat (uncooked, tier -1)
• Pacu Filet (uncooked, tier 2)
• BBQ (grilled, no other ingredients, +25% bonus calories, tier 3)
• Cooked Fish (grilled, no other ingredients, +60% bonus calories, tier 3)
• Surf'n'Turf (gas range, both together, +7% bonus calories, tier 4)

It would be strange to eat either raw. And once you have bbq, you very likely have surf'n'turf.

[Saturnus]

1 minute ago, nakomaru said:

Yes:

Raw meat (uncooked, tier -1)

Pacu Filet (uncooked, tier 2)

BBQ (cooked, no other ingredients, +25% bonus calories, tier 3)

Cooked Fish (cooked, no other ingredients, +60% bonus calories, tier 3)

Surf'n'Turf (gas range, both together, +7% bonus calories, tier 4)

And the berry tree in the preview?

[nakomaru]

Berries seem basically useful for up to tier 1. Their tier 3 and tier 4 are probably scams. Ranching is essentially tier 3 from the start.

• Bristle Berry (uncooked, tier 0)
• Gristle Berry (grilled, +25% calories, tier 1)
• Berry Sludge (mushed, 1600kcal berry+5 grains = 4000 kcal, tier 3)
• Stuffed Berry (gas range, 2kg pepper = 400kcal, tier 4)

[Saturnus]

12 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Berries seem basically useful for up to tier 1. Their tier 3 and tier 4 are probably scams. Ranching is essentially tier 3 from the start.

Bristle Berry (uncooked, tier 0)

Gristle Berry (cooked, +25% calories, tier 1)

Berry Sludge (mushed, 1600kcal berry+5 grains = 4000 kcal, tier 3)

Stuffed Berry (gas range, 2kg pepper = 400kcal, tier 4)

Well, no reason to farm bristle berries anymore then. So basically it's ranch or die. I feel gristle berry should be tier 2 on par with pacu fillet. Fried mushroom should be as well.

Now the choice is down to if you want to ranch hatches because you get twice as much meat per hatch but requires dupe manpower. Or you want to farm pacus because you get twice as much egg shells per pacu but can be fully automated.

Thanks for the info.

[DarkMaster13]

Bristle blossom plants are very high decor and spread floral scents when close to harvest.  They also only consume water for fertilization and need to be lit, making them very low maintenance crops for dupes.  Once you have hydroponics, the only thing that's needed is dupes to come and harvest them.

Non-pacu ranches do require regular visits from skilled dupes for grooming, in addition to food drop-offs.  So they are a more labor intensive option that does need specialized skills.

That said, different starts will change things.  The forest start has no blossom seeds without care packages.  Pips aren't as good for meat as hatches.  Missing the swamp biome means no pacus without care packages.

[nakomaru]

Do both! Very straightforward tier 4 food.

I think the intent is early game has 4 options: mush bar, mealwood, berries and mushrooms (tiers -1 to 1). You are just doing it for calories.

Middle/late: ranching (if free/abundant lettuce/peppers: mushroom wraps and stuffed berries too)

Late: Ranching, sleet wheat, peppers, lettuce. (beans?)

Tweaks on nosh beans and lettuce requirements and the stuffed berry recipe would give the middle/late game more flexibility. If you have free peppers or free lettuce (wild), middle game gets more interesting.

Oops, nosh beans were changed again:

• Nosh Sprout is now fertilized with Dirt [5 Kg/cycle] and Ethanol [20 Kg/cycle].

You can get a lot of wood with wild trees so this seems like a really interesting option. Balance seems not too bad to me.

[Promethien]

Ethanol distillers require more wood, the trees require more water and the trees produce less wood. Wild trees are much less effective but I suspect we can make it work. With enough prep spicy tofu can be made with only the resource expenditures of cooling the ethanol and the peppers.

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Oops, nosh beans were changed again:

• Nosh Sprout is now fertilized with Dirt [5 Kg/cycle] and Ethanol [20 Kg/cycle].

You can get a lot of wood with wild trees so this seems like a really interesting option. Balance seems not too bad to me.

It is certainly interesting. And it somewhat seems to make up for options removed or nerfed into the ground elsewhere.

[Troxism]

If anyone was curious on a breakdown of tofu post patch vs other foods (there is some very minor rounding with these numbers but it's not enough to really matter)

Regular Tofu consumes 43.2kg of water (mixed polluted and clean) per cycle to feed a single dupe on normal difficulty. This assumes irrigating/dupe harvesting trees, and the needed dirt is acquired by composting the ethanol polluted dirt.

Spicy Tofu consumes 34.5kg of water/cycle if you ignore the peppernut, with the peppernut included (ie the total) it's 52kg/cycle

In comparison to other water based foods for those curious to how that stacks up in practice:

Berry Sludge consumes 55kg/cycle to feed 1 dupe on normal, +3 quality.

Stuffed Berry is 86.36kg/cycle (it got buffed to 4400kcal the patch before, used to be 95kg before) including the peppernut, +4 quality. Has the dubious distinction of also requiring 3 cooking actions total per 4400kcal which is worse then pretty much any other food.

Pepper Bread is 67.5kg/cycle including the peppernut, +5 quality (same as spicy tofu)

Frost Buns are 50kg/cycle, +2 quality (same as regular tofu)

Gristle Berries are 60kg/cycle, +1 quality

So in terms of pure water efficiency Nosh Beans are great. They are also easier to cool then Sleet Wheat, since Ethanol has way lower SHC then water, and comes out at about 75C, while water usually comes at around 95C or even higher from geysers. And even if you had a source of cold water (like a slush geyser), that water could be used to cool ethanol, which as mentioned has lower SHC so you can 'make' more cold ethanol from the same amount of cold water. And the masses of ethanol consumed are similar to water, since you only need very slightly more nosh plants then wheat plants (2.5 vs 2.68 for pepper bread vs spicy tofu), and the water used for actually making the tofu at the musher/irrigating the trees doesn't need to be cooled nearly as much (or at all in case of the musher). Although tbh in practice it's somewhat more efficient to directly cool the plants directly then their irrigation (as mass is constantly being destroyed by the plant, before it has a chance to fully drop in temp) , but the ratios still apply either way, and it's easier to visualise the difference by just looking at cooling the irrigation water vs ethanol.

Having said all this, beans do have some drawbacks. While there is much less cooling needed, which generally saves a lot of power, you do need to pay some power for the ethanol distiller. In addition there is more dupe labour involved since you also have to harvest trees not just the beans, and you have to get bottles from a pitcher pump to make tofu. Pepper Bread also only requires a single cooking action instead of 2 for Spicy Tofu. However you also get extra dirt from the distillery even accounting for the fertilisation requirement of Nosh Beans, and you get extra CO2 which can be valuable as well. It can also be a bit of a pain to get more acorns if you want a lot of trees via pips since it's 1 per tree then you have to replant the tree to get another.

Overall it seems more or less right. Beans are better in many cases, but they do have a few drawbacks, and at least they aren't a copy-paste of wheat anymore.

On a separate note, I am confused as to why BBQ is still +3 after the removal of peppernut. Other single ingredient foods only gain +1 morale, making BBQ a huge outlier. And I do agree pacu ranching seriously needs a second look, as currently it's just totally broken and has been for many updates. While other methods of 'free' farming (like regular dreckos off balm lily or voles off regolith) exist, those are way more labour (since you actually have to groom some animals still)/space intensive and generally require way more complex setups then the current infinite 'breed a bunch of pacu and then never feed them anything' setups. While you can technically ranch any animal for 'free' like you can pacu, the issue is that pacu have a very short lifecycle meaning you get your free meat much more rapidly (meaning you need way less total critters), and their fast reproduction means it's possible to get to a sufficient stock far too easily compared to say trying to get free meat from unfed hatches.

[nakomaru]

Great analysis Troxism. I think they did a great job to make them viable and yet very different.

Looking at pacus, bbq and higher tiers as a whole, I think it fits personally. Fish can only get to 3 on their own, and if you want 4 you get all of the drawbacks of normal ranching along with it. Besides that, bbq is necessary for the highest quality food which includes a big buff. Basically I see lots of great options with trade offs, and that's great.

(Biggest offenders for me are bleachstone for lettuce and 2kg instead of 1kg pepper for stuffed berry and those can still be viable.)

[Lilalaunekuh]

In my eyes there are a couple things I would change:

1. I always thought that farming tamed pacus was a broken mechanic and I never used it.

(I keep my wild pacus in some pounds for a little bit of free food every now but nothing more.)

 

=> If tamed pacu farming will not be changed, pacu fillet and cooked fish should all drop by at least one tier.

(Pacu fillet at +1 and cooked fish at +2 would still be better than most crops.)

 

2. BBQ should add less morale for the simple tasks of grilling the raw meat. (+4 tiers and adding some kcal seems totally out of balance.)

 

(3. I am missing the spice on my burger.)