[Suggestion] Tube Food

[blash365]

The new space travel mechanics make it desireable to have food with a reduced rate of spoiling available for the travelers.

While in theory it is possible to add a refridgerator or a sterile cell somewhere, it seems a bit of a challenge in the early command modules. Also it is currently not possible to choose food based on specific values (e.g. not as good as spoiled), which doesnt exactly make the current system user friendly.

There are of course some foods already that already have an increased shelflife. But these foods are also of higher quality and require more ingredients that the original colony might be lacking. Also they still are no safeguard against dupes supplying your stalest food items first...

 

My suggestion is to add some space-flavored food types that have an extremely long shelflife, reduced calories compared to their ingredients, low mass and very bad quality. They should also be low-tech and could then later be replaced by "normal" food, once the space travellers have upgraded their modules and are more space travellers than magelanian-exporers.

Example recipes (all reduce quality by 1):

•  Lice rusk - comparable to lice loaf, but instead of adding water, you extract water (or slime) and produce 700 kCal and 50kg water from 1200 kCal of meal lice (1 kg water = 10kCal, same as for lice loaf)
• Dried Berry - comparable to stuffed berry, but instead of adding pepper, you extract salt (or dirt) from it 4000 kCal bb -> 3600 kCal + 2000g salt (1g salt = 20 kCal, same as for pepper)
• Toothpaste - can be used as similar to table salt to increase morale in normal colony life, spacefarer may consume it in case of emergency. At their own risk.

 

[Jackblac]

Currently the game has grubhub preserve +3 and pickled meal -1 that preserve for 16 cycles without anything. Pickled meal doesnt require anything and you have hundreds of tonns of dirt on all planets. Grubhub requires sulphur and 4kg sucrose. a single sweetle produces 10kg sucrose from 20 kg sulphur.

Berry Sludge +3 made from sleet wheat and Bristle berry does spoil ever. It is cooked on the Microbe musher so germs arent removed and might need a chlorine bath to be safe. Sleet wheat is a bit harder to grow, but with pips you can grow them naturally in some area.

So you already have 3 options there. Those preservation times work for most missions

[blash365]

2 minutes ago, Jackblac said:

So you already have 3 options there. Those preservation times work for most missions

 

1 hour ago, blash365 said:

 Also it is currently not possible to choose food based on specific values (e.g. not as good as spoiled), which doesnt exactly make the current system user friendly.

i only count 1 option.

[fpx007]

I don’t think they are necessary. Even before the DLC, we already have special foods that have an extremely long storage life. At early game, pickled meal is already available. It needs meal lice (available early game) only, is prepared at a electricity grill (really low-tech), and takes 16 days (long-enough) to decay, not to mention that it is also immune to food-poisoning (basins are no longer necessary).  Such a good dish for early-game traveling, why can’t it satisfy you? You want to take some early trips that last even longer than 16 days?

[blash365]

1 minute ago, fpx007 said:

I don’t think they are necessary. Even before the DLC, we already have special foods that have an extremely long storage life. At early game, pickled meal is already available. It needs meal lice (available early game) only, is prepared at a electricity grill (really low-tech), and takes 16 days (long-enough) to decay, not to mention that it is also immune to food-poisoning (basins are no longer necessary).  Such a good dish for early-game traveling, why can’t it satisfy you? You want to take some early trips that last even longer than 16 days?

Cause my starting planet does not have any meal lice on it?

[fpx007]

5 minutes ago, blash365 said:

Cause my starting planet does not have any meal lice on it?

First, you have teleporters in the starting asteroid. You can easily go to the linked asteroid, where there are mealwoods. Second, grubhub preserve, plz. Third, I’m not sure about the paste, but neither of the other 2 items you listed above is available in the starting asteroid, so I assume you already get some of the ingredients.

1 hour ago, blash365 said:

•  Lice rusk - comparable to lice loaf, but instead of adding water, you extract water (or slime) and produce 700 kCal and 50kg water from 1200 kCal of meal lice (1 kg water = 10kCal, same as for lice loaf)
• Dried Berry - comparable to stuffed berry, but instead of adding pepper, you extract salt (or dirt) from it 4000 kCal bb -> 3600 kCal + 2000g salt (1g salt = 20 kCal, same as for pepper)

 

[blash365]

1 minute ago, fpx007 said:

First, you have teleporters in the starting asteroid. You can easily go to the linked asteroid, where there are mealwoods. Second, grubhub preserve, plz. Third, I’m not sure about the paste, but neither of the other 2 items you listed above is available in the starting asteroid, so I assume you already get some of the ingredients.

I was simply suggesting a concept of creating high shelflife food specifically for space flight. They were not meant to be the ideal fit for the current starting position, just blueprints for it.

I am also a fan of being able to produce what my dupes consume. Currently i cannot produce sulfur until i reach space materials.

[Jackblac]

I havent fully mined out the first planet, but I am at about 100 tonns of sulphur. that is enough to make a lot of grubfruit preserve and get to a sour gas boiler

[mathmanican]

1 hour ago, blash365 said:

it is currently not possible to choose food based on specific values (e.g. not as good as spoiled), which doesnt exactly make the current system user friendly.

To me, this comment hits precisely on the problem.  I can make stuff with 16 day shelf life, but I can't tell my dupes to pack it in the ship (barring lots of micromanagement). 

When I saw that we would need to supply dupes with food for voyages, and also saw that space in capsules would be very limited, it took a few seconds to conclude that berry sludge would be the food of choice for astronauts, and they better learn to like it. This was the only option, and that could easily be main problem.  The game only provides one option that fits in the current model.  If we can somehow choose food based on spoilage (probably not gonna happen), or get more options for shelf-stable food, then I'm on board. Adding more options seems like a fun way to tackle the problem.

[fpx007]

5 minutes ago, blash365 said:

I am also a fan of being able to produce what my dupes consume. Currently i cannot produce sulfur until i reach space materials.

If everything is already and always available, why bother you go to space? Just for fun? If you find something that is not available (or currently available, but will be eventually used up), then you will think about going to space to either improve your living quality or make resource sustainable. That is the true reason why you should have space traveling. 

The game should provide you limited but adequate resource at the early game, thus you will make further progress. Of course, with inadequate resource you can’t progress further. However, you won’t progress further either if you already have infinity resource, since you don’t have the motivation.

[blash365]

5 minutes ago, fpx007 said:

If everything is already and always available, why bother you go to space? Just for fun? If you find something that is not available (or currently available, but will be eventually used up), then you will think about going to space to either improve your living quality or make resource sustainable. That is the true reason why you should have space traveling. 

The game should provide you limited but adequate resource at the early game, thus you will make further progress. Of course, with inadequate resource you can’t progress further. However, you won’t progress further either if you already have infinity resource, since you don’t have the motivation.

I am going to space to find something that i need, but dont have. But i wont burn my planet to get there.

Unless the game is designed around hopping from planet to planet, salvaging it, which i currently dont see.

To me the beauty of the game is creating a self sustained colony. Or group of colonies.

[Steve8]

Keep in mind that resources aren't balanced for sustainability yet. And there will be more asteroids later on. So there will probably other sources of sulfur. And if it's just more ore you can mine to stretch supplies.

[fpx007]

2 minutes ago, blash365 said:

But i wont burn my planet to get there.

You misunderstood me. I’m not saying that you “burn” your planet. But if you don’t find a new solution, you will finally “burn” it. Just use the generation of O2 in old terra planet as an example. In early game, you need algae to generate O2. But you will finally research the respective tech tree and use electrolyzer to produce O2. If you don’t do so, you will definitely “burn” up all algae and die, even if you don’t want to. Obviously, the “algae” here is the limited but adequate early game resource I said. If you already have infinity algae, why do you need to change all your O2 diffusers to electrolyzers? Then is it reasonable to complain that you can’t live forever because algae is finite?

So actually it is a transition, and going to space is also a transition. The limited resource I mentioned before was one major motivation. You don’t need to salvage a planet, but you will need these limited resources to help you pull through the hard time that the transition is going on. But if you don’t or can’t make the transition, you are going to rely on them forever. And since they are limited, you will finally use them up, and thus the game can’t continue. (This is just like the old patch, when the geysers were not present. If you use up all the sand/polluted water, your game cannot be continued.)

[blash365]

1 hour ago, fpx007 said:

So actually it is a transition, and going to space is also a transition. The limited resource I mentioned before was one major motivation.

I get that point. But in vanilla you were eventually able to get algae from space. Infinitely, yet not exactly comfortably. You also were able to produce algae from slime (mid-game-ish), which again, you were able to produce (mid game-ish) or import.

Building a oil cooker in the current game requires you to get advanced materials. And i dont see them on any planet yet. So my gut tells me that they are not in the current alpha at all. But instead will be the "late-game" ingredients. Until i see the materials i need on the horizon, there is nothing to transition to.

[Joe Mucchiello]

3 hours ago, mathmanican said:

To me, this comment hits precisely on the problem.  I can make stuff with 16 day shelf life, but I can't tell my dupes to pack it in the ship (barring lots of micromanagement).

Place a ration box in the ship. Set it to priority 9 and only accept preserves. (Set the maximum kg to something low).

Once the food is there, destroy the ration box. Preserves fall on floor and sit there going bad for 16 days.

You call this micromanagement? You must not like ONI at all.

[mathmanican]

25 minutes ago, Joe Mucchiello said:

Preserves fall on floor and sit there going bad for 16 days.

How do you know the dupes didn't select a jar that is 2 days from going bad?  Did you account for this?  What if you have several ships on the ground? What will prevent them from stealing the food on the ground of different ship?  Maybe I'll get a 15 day old pile of preserves from another ship. How does this solve the problem? 

So I have to lock off all food access to other preserves jars first (can't let some already made stuff be selected). This requires I set a door permission that blocks off access to the old jars, meaning I have a separate storage room for jars that I enable disable as needed. I also must block off access to the other space ships that I have ready to launch (as they have jars on their floors that I don't want stolen). Once I've triple checked that none of the possible places where I don't want a jar to come from are blocked off, then I place an order to make new jars and do what you suggest (or let my conveyor handle it - just ticking a box). After the drop is made, then I can enable access to the rest of my preserve jars for other shuttle launches.  Hopefully I don't forget to enable access where it's needed. If I have 3 ships on the ground, this means I had to enter 4 different screens, repeat the same ....

With the current system, I have to pay attention to all of this from before I place a food order to after the food is delivered. It's not ideal. Expanding my space fleet only makes the tedious problem grow bigger. Yuck!

The only option I selected for myself, after a few seconds of seeing the new system, was Berry Sludge.  This lets me put a fridge/ration box in each ship, overproduce berry sludge to fill them all and make sure they always stay full, and then set and forget. When a ship lands, someone is automatically given a "fill the fridge with berry sludge" order.  This I can completely automate, and hence becomes the winner. It will take a while of micromanaging my colony to get to this state, but it can be done. 

I love playing ONI because the game enables you to "set and forget" just about everything you no longer want to micromanage. Berry sludge is the ONLY option that enables this. Having more options could improve the game. Thanks @blash365 for the conversation. 

 

[goboking]

9 hours ago, blash365 said:

My suggestion is to add some space-flavored food types that have an extremely long shelflife, reduced calories compared to their ingredients, low mass and very bad quality.

Pickled lice fits this bill[1].  If I'm not mistaken, one of the new foods (the preserve) does as well.

Edit:  Pickled meal is actually calorie neutral, but checks the other boxes.

[blash365]

10 minutes ago, goboking said:

Pickled lice fits this bill[1].  If I'm not mistaken, one of the new foods (the preserve) does as well.

Edit:  Pickled meal is actually calorie neutral, but checks the other boxes.

In my understanding astronauts eat toothpaste not pickles!

[sakura_sk]

@blash365 when I first saw your suggestion I thought "sure! You would definitely need better preserved foods" .

Then I started playing the spaced out alpha. ... and I discovered something..

Spoiler

Why bother making food that spoils?! You have perfectly good "no spoiling" food in the game. Although grisly quality, nutrient bars, muckroot, hexalent and now swamp chard heart have no spoiling time (at least for now). You just need to be quick like when the first meat touches the floor and you need it for barbeque but the nearest dupe grabs and eats it. I think as soon as you have a more or less stable food source, you need to save these foods for traveling. I don't know if this is intended but I find it brilliant! The worst starting food of the game is the perfect long travel food.

 

[blash365]

5 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

@blash365 when I first saw your suggestion I thought "sure! You would definitely need better preserved foods" .

Then I started playing the spaced out alpha. ... and I discovered something..

  Hide contents

Why bother making food that spoils?! You have perfectly good "no spoiling" food in the game. Although grisly quality, nutrient bars, muckroot, hexalent and now swamp chard heart have no spoiling time (at least for now). You just need to be quick like when the first meat touches the floor and you need it for barbeque but the nearest dupe grabs and eats it. I think as soon as you have a more or less stable food source, you need to save these foods for traveling. I don't know if this is intended but I find it brilliant! The worst starting food of the game is the perfect long travel food.

 

I am aware of those options.

Nutrient bars, muckroot, hexalents and swamp hearts are not replenishable (apart from care packages). So while they are perfectly fine for the first few journeys (where i actually used them), they are only so as long as you didnt use all of them. And some of us might use them more deliberately in early game than others.

 

Also i can give you another little hint regarding your "nearest dupe grabs and eats" issue.

Spoiler

Simply disallow your dupes from eating unprepared food on the consumables screen.

 

[nvzboy]

On 11/28/2020 at 12:21 AM, mathmanican said:

With the current system, I have to pay attention to all of this from before I place a food order to after the food is delivered. It's not ideal. Expanding my space fleet only makes the tedious problem grow bigger. Yuck!

The only option I selected for myself, after a few seconds of seeing the new system, was Berry Sludge.  This lets me put a fridge/ration box in each ship, overproduce berry sludge to fill them all and make sure they always stay full, and then set and forget. When a ship lands, someone is automatically given a "fill the fridge with berry sludge" order.  This I can completely automate, and hence becomes the winner. It will take a while of micromanaging my colony to get to this state, but it can be done. 

 

 

Maybe slightly off- topic: Perhaps this could be adressed with some new space-fridge or adding new priority rules for existing fridges. This building could be set up to only allow food of a certain freshness and taking food from it is only allowed during missions or if an item is no longer fresh enough. Could be somewhere deep in the food tech-tree and cost refined metals? Just a rough outline of the idea.

[babba]

What if the proposed tube food can only be transported via transport tubes

Imagine a giant kind of toothpaste food tube being stuck in to the tube system...Plopp ! Whoooooooooomphh !

60s vintage dupe carrying "the tube" to the tube system

BTW still no sugar fountain ditch in the game ???

Elephant`s Toothpaste

[Sasza22]

A while ago i suggested a vacuum wrapper machine that would wrap items into vacuum sealed plastic bags. It would allow you to preserve food items forever for the price of plastic being used in the process. It might be a lategame solution to the spoiling food problem for rockets.

[mathmanican]

2 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

snip

I like it.  Vacuum wrapped, freeze dried. Each package you freeze dry requires some plastic to produce (so there is an additional cost, as well as late game barrier before acquisition). Gotta pay for all those plastic bags. After the dupes eats the stuff, the plastic could even be dropped on the floor to deal with clean up and recycling. We could even require it be rehydated with water, though I'd want to keep the water/plastic requirements on the cooking/packing end, not on the consumption end.  So after you cook something, another dupe (machine skill, not cooking skill) can then vacuum wrap the freeze dried food in a bag with some water for consumption.  It requires liquid input (hand deliver, or piped) as well as plastic deliveries (autosweeper), to create recipes (that loose a bit of food quality) that last forever.  

[AddTheJuice98]

Dude, what a point of making another useless thing like gassy moo/Icemaker/ice-e fan?
Even if its sounds like good idea it just gonna make useless other food.
We dont need more useless things in game.