The perplexing Food Storage Nerf

[cokess]

Hello Klei,

I want you to know that I love you, and you should already know that I really don't ever complain. But the latest [Game Update] - 466411 has got me thinking if we are still on the same page after all these years.

Klei, pray do tell me that we still do share the mutual respect and understanding of each other's feelings? Or have all those been lost sometime in a distant past, perhaps because of younger, better endowed and more attractive audience? 

When we entered into this relationship back in February 2017, it was thanks to our mutual friend, Brothgar. He said you were cool, and so one day, he went and explored your universe using Excel and Webcam, and then shared with me and the world his amazing discoveries about you. I immediately fell in love with you and decided that I'd forever be yours.

Your physics, your cutesy way of saying NO to Ms Entropy and the Evil Prof Thermodyn and OMG your total disregard for the lecherous Infrared, who's always been too keen on transferring his heat to bodies which are not of his own; these were all your immensely attractive qualities that kept me close to you. Oh! I've never liked Infrared either, but you, in your awesome ways, you've always kept him at bay with vacuum, and therefore your virtue and purity. Because of this I was able to keep tonnes of 1500°C of magma from slowly dwindling The Bustling Facility to heat-death.

Being with you made me feel invincible! My own universe couldn't offer this happiness. And that's what I love so much about you! 

This morning when I woke up Steam told me that I've spent 1,275.5 hours being with you. Hehe.. little did the stalker know that on top of this I've also spent considerable time outside of his surveilled area to gain a deeper understanding of you:

Do you remember that my heart? Yeah it's funny because they make no sense to anyone else. But you, when I showed them to you and laid down the blueprints, you immediately gave the necessary instructions to Bubbles and Meep to faithfully construct the overcomplex Minor Volcano Magma tamer. Behold!!

But, it didn't work!! LOL. It broke after 300 cycles of testing. You must have known about that before construction began right? Yahh you laughed at me because you saw that I was trying to impose my own universe's paradigm when I was with you. In your universe, things work differently, and I should accept you as you are, right?

But I just loved that you let me do it anyway, that despite my ridiculous style of making things more complex than they should be, you let me experience you in my own way. And I loved the choice, I loved it that I was able to reach a desired destination within your universe in various ways, unhinged by the often violent realities of my own universe.

I wish,... I just wish that you'd continue to be different in your own way. But somehow... lately it's starting to feel like you're trying to be a lot more like the universe I live in..

I wish I understand this desire, but after spending time thinking about it, I still don't get it...

For four years, ever since I got to know you, storing food in chlorine killed Food Poisoning germs and conserved food permanently. Then several weeks ago, you suddenly decided that I had to cool them too, and to -18°C no less! But at least you had allowed storage in vacuum as a feasible alternative. But today, after 1,275.5 hours of being with you, you finally decided that even food storage in vacuum wouldn't cut it anymore. By doing so, you are putting at risk the lives of 32 Duplicants at the Bustling Facility whom we bore and nurtured together for thousands of cycles.

-18% deterioration per cycle for something that is stored in vacuum! 

Do you blame me if I thought your recent treatment of our Dupes have been so harsh? 

I am honestly perplexed by your recent change. I had a choice previously on how to store food, but that choice has been completely taken away from me. I do not enjoy the fact that you gave priority to addressing this matter when there's so much else we could have done to expand our universe. I mean I haven't even dealt with thermium yet, nor have I dared to approach the 52B. You've already made that very difficult and inaccessible to unintelligent, old, ugly people like me . And even so, you've decreed that the very basic of things like food storage be done closer to how things are done where I come from.

Does the suffering that exists where I come from leave you in envy? Our slimelungs can kill and far too often no amount of doctoring skills could save their victims. Infrared is a lot meaner. Evil Prof Thermodyn has at least three laws that he vehemently enforces. And as for Ms Entropy,..

... you can't Miss Entropy where l am..

It breaks my heart to say that this is even remotely possible, but I'm afraid that your baffling pursuit of RL pain, may well cause the entropy of my desire to be with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DagroTV]

Sir, by far the most heartspoken words i´ve ever read for this game. I feel you and i hope its just a "Oh, mhh, yeah you are right, we´re gone too far with that kinda nerf."

[NeoDeusMachina]

Klei are kind - they actually offer us an opportunity to rethink our old ways. They are helping us, because now we can open our eyes and stop overproducing food that was just piling up forever while duplicants elswhere in the universe aren't as fortunate and are perhaps starving. That means less resources needed to build food infrastructure and less dupe time to ranch or farm or cook which frees them to do other vital tasks in our colonies.  This will indirectly reduce the stress on our power infrastructure as well, which is great! And also our cooling needs for all the power generating and storing machinery we may not have to build. Less food "debris" having to be simulated and taxing our precious processor computational abilities.

Klei are kind - they also help us realize that different food have different spoiling time and that some even never spoil! They are basically helping us diversify our playstyle and explore other assets of the game. 

And i could probably keep going like this for a while, but I will spare you all from this suffering

[Parusoid]

With 32 dupes you sure are able to afford aquatuner loop with petroleum to cool down your food in CO2, no?

[Emeal]

I read that post twice and I cant follow it at all.
This Colony is SUFFERING!

[Gurgel]

I don't see the problem. Any reasonably designed food supply should not be affected by the change. Food should still be consumed before it rots. The only reason fro stockpiling is Experiment 52 and there you can simply deep-freeze and combine that with an inert atmosphere. It is not even hard to do.

I think one of my usual rules "overly dramatic complaint indicates lack of merit" applies here. Have seen that one a couple of times on this forum and may even have written one or two myself.

[Yunru]

You can also simply cool your food down before sticking it in a vaccum.

Sure, you now need to cycle it through a freezer until at temperature, but that's a small price to pay when it means more things to build.

[SharraShimada]

Give that man an award for the text. Na i dont mind what award, but give it to him. (if you are a woman, i apologize and please dont kill mehr for my mistake)

As for the topic itself:

PLEASE KLEI, add another option for food preservation in the game settings. Yeah your changes are legit, but its not the way so many people liked to use the system for years now. 

[hegemontree]

That you klei for giving us a new challenge.  We needed it.

[SamLogan]

Quote

I am honestly perplexed by your recent change.

You should be perplexed by seeing food get a -18°C bonus only by the fact there's in a vacuum that's a total illogical thing. Vacuum don't have any heat exchange or contact with element, so it must be totally neutral to the food.

Quote

I had a choice previously on how to store food, but that choice has been completely taken away from me.

Yes, previously, you have two choice :

- Use a fridge that cost energy, emit heat and don't give "deep freeze" bonus, and have malus if the gas around is not sterile.

Or

- Just put your food in a square with vacuum that offer : unlimited food storage, unlimited food conservation, not heat production, no energy cost.

Klei decide to deeply modify the food concervation system so they can't let an overpowered option. Player complain only because they used to, to use an overpowered system.

Each time an usual glitch or overpowered feature is fixed, player don't keep in mind it can be fix will fall from high, when it comes.

[mathmanican]

Now you just have to learn to abuse temperature clamping, and the food issue is solved.  It's the same problem that riddled the steam turbine 3 years ago.  It's just a new iteration of something they removed from the game.  Temp clamp your environment (there are power free ways to do it), and problem solved. The new rules may make things (exploits?) like temp clamping become more mainstream. 

[Tytan]

18 minutes ago, SamLogan said:

- Use a fridge that cost energy, emit heat and don't give "deep freeze" bonus, and have malus if the gas around is not sterile.

18 minutes ago, SamLogan said:

Klei decide to deeply modify the food concervation system so they can't let an overpowered option

I myself have never used this system to store food in the vacuum. I have always used refrigerators to store food, precisely because I don't like these abusive systems

 

8 hours ago, cokess said:

Hello Klei,

but I understand your pain partner, I liked your text, I laughed a lot!

8 hours ago, cokess said:

perhaps because of younger, better endowed and more attractive audience?

but I think she actually didn't go after another for the causes she mentioned, I think she was interested in people who are more open-minded, less retrograde and limited to old values, I feel that she is one of those who always seeks to update herself and seek new ones things xD

[Gurgel]

4 hours ago, Yunru said:

You can also simply cool your food down before sticking it in a vaccum.

Sure, you now need to cycle it through a freezer until at temperature, but that's a small price to pay when it means more things to build.

Also, from my observation on Sleet Wheat in current Ice Biomes, CO2 + deep frozen will result in 0% decay. So vacuum is not even needed and you can build a very conventional freezer with inert atmosphere on top.

[mathmanican]

9 hours ago, cokess said:

considerable time outside

I loved the discourse and computations. This was my favorite line. 

[babba]

I`m still producing 100-300000 calories for dupes every cycle, and they lay it somewhere temporary and then kind of instantly munch it away... and then green bubbles start popping up out of now where, has something changed with food ? Mush is the best food choice !

[NewWorldDan]

13 hours ago, babba said:

I`m still producing 100-300000 calories for dupes every cycle, and they lay it somewhere temporary and then kind of instantly munch it away... and then green bubbles start popping up out of now where, has something changed with food ? Mush is the best food choice !

It's funny, because right now I'm doing the mush bar challenge.  It's the only food my dupes are allowed to eat.  Must complete all requirements for "Home Sweet Home" on nothing but mush bars.   

[babba]

1 hour ago, NewWorldDan said:

It's funny, because right now I'm doing the mush bar challenge.  It's the only food my dupes are allowed to eat.  Must complete all requirements for "Home Sweet Home" on nothing but mush bars.   

Mush bars are the delicious mars bars of the universe - Make a mush and fly to mars I hope you manage to achieve your achievement.

[psusi]

The CO2 or vacuum storage was absurdly cheaty, but I still consider the refrigerator unusable.  I've said for years that it needs to stop consuming power once the food inside is cooled down like real ones do.  120 watts of continuous power to store a relatively small amount of food is just crap ( especially when it still spoils ).  And even if you aren't stockpiling wildly overproduced food, you still can't avoid spoilage because dupes don't prefer to eat the older food, so some will randomly sit around until it spoils.

[Gurgel]

18 hours ago, psusi said:

The CO2 or vacuum storage was absurdly cheaty, but I still consider the refrigerator unusable.  I've said for years that it needs to stop consuming power once the food inside is cooled down like real ones do.  120 watts of continuous power to store a relatively small amount of food is just crap ( especially when it still spoils ).  And even if you aren't stockpiling wildly overproduced food, you still can't avoid spoilage because dupes don't prefer to eat the older food, so some will randomly sit around until it spoils.

I think it should be modified like this: 

1. Cools to deep-freeze level, i.e. -20C or so (or make 4C/-20C a building setting)

2. Draws realistic cooling power (e.g. same as aquatuner for the same cooling)

3. Outputs heat from cooling, i.e. does not delete heat anymore

4. Let it draw, say, 1000W and store 10'000kg.

Still needs to be put into inert atmosphere or vacuum to get 0% spoil rate.

 

[Nebbie]

On 6/9/2021 at 4:50 PM, psusi said:

The CO2 or vacuum storage was absurdly cheaty, but I still consider the refrigerator unusable.  I've said for years that it needs to stop consuming power once the food inside is cooled down like real ones do.  120 watts of continuous power to store a relatively small amount of food is just crap ( especially when it still spoils ).  And even if you aren't stockpiling wildly overproduced food, you still can't avoid spoilage because dupes don't prefer to eat the older food, so some will randomly sit around until it spoils.

The real issue here is ONI's building contents interact directly with outside air, instead of the building being an intermediary. This means fridge contents are constantly getting heat from the environment and care about whether there's a stink cloud around the fridge. Of course it's going to draw 120W forever, because that food is really just hanging out in open air as far as the game's concerned.
I'd be mostly happy if they just made the fridge (and ration box, which is pretty much useless currently) an exception that actually somewhat protects its contents from the environment.

I'd really love to see freezer buildings too though.

[psusi]

On 6/13/2021 at 4:57 AM, Nebbie said:

The real issue here is ONI's building contents interact directly with outside air, instead of the building being an intermediary. This means fridge contents are constantly getting heat from the environment and care about whether there's a stink cloud around the fridge. Of course it's going to draw 120W forever, because that food is really just hanging out in open air as far as the game's concerned.
I'd be mostly happy if they just made the fridge (and ration box, which is pretty much useless currently) an exception that actually somewhat protects its contents from the environment.

I'd really love to see freezer buildings too though.

Some buildings have the "isolated" attribute that causes their contents NOT to interact with the environment.  Either way, it is easy enough to build a CO2 pit for food storage, and alone that probably should not be enough to completely prevent spoilage, but the 120 watts of *constant* power drain that even with a CO2 pit still lets food spoil is too much.  If it is too complicated to simulate heat leaking in and only draw power when actively cooling, then at least the constant power requirement needs to be lowered.  I mean, 120 watts of constant consumption is basically the entire power output of a natural gas vent.

[Nebbie]

31 minutes ago, psusi said:

Some buildings have the "isolated" attribute that causes their contents NOT to interact with the environment.  Either way, it is easy enough to build a CO2 pit for food storage, and alone that probably should not be enough to completely prevent spoilage, but the 120 watts of *constant* power drain that even with a CO2 pit still lets food spoil is too much.  If it is too complicated to simulate heat leaking in and only draw power when actively cooling, then at least the constant power requirement needs to be lowered.  I mean, 120 watts of constant consumption is basically the entire power output of a natural gas vent.

It's definitely too much...design shown below isn't quite the final thing (replaced metal tile with a third fridge and made all 3 bottom-row gas pipes radiant with steel), but damn, multiple fridges with food frozen in CO2 atmosphere for the price of 61% of one (uptime on the thermoregulator):

[0xFADE]

I don't really mind the change since storing everything in a co2 pit was super trivial and ignored a lot of built in spoil mechanics.  It is just odd that it would be addressed so many years later.

I'm more surprised that deep freezing is it.  I would also expect us to need a microwave oven or something to re-heat the food.  I don't know if many people go in to a freezer, grab a frozen dinner, and eat it right there.

Maybe I've said too much.  Don't want to require another layer of complexity.

[Gurgel]

8 hours ago, 0xFADE said:

I'm more surprised that deep freezing is it.  I would also expect us to need a microwave oven or something to re-heat the food.  I don't know if many people go in to a freezer, grab a frozen dinner, and eat it right there.

Well, to be fair dupes eat pickled meal with the glass...

That said, a building doing deep freezing and perfect preservation together with a building to heat things up to make them edible again would be a solution.

[0xFADE]

20 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Well, to be fair dupes eat pickled meal with the glass...

That said, a building doing deep freezing and perfect preservation together with a building to heat things up to make them edible again would be a solution.

That would be good.  There is a fridge, and there could be a freezer as well.  Deep freeze could be a status that preserves the food but also requires it to be thawed to not have a debuff.  So you would add another building to do that.

Then on the other hand, since doing everything in the environment is better, you could build a freezer to store stuff and send them to a low quantity hot box to be eaten from that day.