Coffee plants and mechanics for advanced espresso machine

[Sidewayspear]

So I've always thought it would be cool to see coffee as a crop in the game. Coffee beans IRL produce different flavours in different growing environments, so I think it would work well in ONI, where players' ability to create a variety of controlled environments already exists. Varying pressure could result in different buffs for dupes, such as speed or morale bonuses for extremely low or high pressure growing environments. Growing in different gases could activate effects like (e.g.) divers lung if the coffee is grown in CO2. Other control variables could be biome or altitude - I'm not suggesting all of these should impact the kind of buffs the coffee produces, but I think it would be cool to see a crop in the game that acts kind of like a "potion" and requires players to precisely control the growing environment to make it work. Coffee could be roasted in the kiln and ground in a rock crusher.  

But where I think this idea comes full circle is the addition of a buildable espresso machine. The espresso machine already in the game is alright, but if we think about how an espresso machine actually works, I think it would be quite possible for players to actually build one in their base. As a hasty generalization of how an espresso machine works, steam pressure pushes through a portafilter (where finely ground coffee is compressed), and the pressure forces the coffee out - a hasty and incomplete description for sure, but building one in the game would be quite fun, and would provide additional late-game experiments (especially with a variety of coffee crops to grow). The "fun" for a lot of us ONI players is precision and optimizing builds; I'm sure there are a plethora of ways to make a "this-will-do" espresso machine if a newer or less experienced player wants to just have one, but an espresso machine could certainly be optimized. An incentive for finding optimal builds could be a "quality" threshold with several tiers based on how precise the steam pressure and how efficient the pull time was.

Fun consequences could be caffeine addiction, where you need to sacrifice quality for quantity, as your dupes require more and more to achieve the same bonuses, and withdrawal if you aren't able to maintain throughput. Managing coffee intake to ensure dupes are receiving diminishing returns or that you aren't creating a slippery slope of addiction would (imo) be a fun level of depth. 

The espresso machine would provide "moderate" quality coffee consistently, but with optimal espresso machine builds, players could achieve "perfect" quality coffee. And to synergize with the buffs from the coffee crop variants, a higher quality could result in higher buffs for dupes (e.g. "moderate" == +1 movement speed; "perfect" == +5 movement speed). Anyways let me know your thoughts! It would be cool to hear feedback on the feasibility of any of these suggestions or if there are other creative suggestions. Its a long-shot to have this added into the game but I'd love to see it  

[babba]

Coffee plantages would be nice. It would be great if we could equip a whip, to lash out on to dupes for faster work performance. This could be implemented in a funny way, like in DungeonKeeper2. 

@Sidewayspear great stuff