Food Freshness Mechanic Issue

[fpx007]

I thought dups will eat food with least freshness. But today when I'm playing the game, I noticed that dups are doing exactly the opposite thing: They eat food with most freshness instead. (Look at the pic below. I took 10 kg of pickles in 3 piles with different freshness levels, but only the freshest pile gets consumed after several cycles, so it can't be random selection). This means instead of a dynamic equilibrium of food consumption and production which keeps the existing food at a mid-level freshness, food with least freshness will be almost forget forever until they spoil. Thus, food wastage is almost inevitable.

Besides, there is almost no way to store food with highest freshness/lowest freshness/freshness within certain threshold, thus food with with high/low freshness will often be messed up in same storage. This will bring a lot of troubles. For example, if you are preparing for a long range space trip/delivery in SO, it is possible for you to fill the container with lots of stale food. Taking former issue into consideration, only fresh food gets consumed while those stale food spoils, which greatly reduces your actual food reserve.  Another example is that you can't prevent your stale food from eventual spoilage by putting them into fridges, which also causes a loss. Besides, spoiled food will eventually turn into pO2, which pollutes fresh food in the same container. (The only way to manipulate food freshness is to set the containers to sweep only and mark the desired food piles. But considering how many piles of food can stay in a single block, the )

Although there are actually some solutions for this problem, but they are not as good as expected.

Spoiler

1. Produce exact amount of food.

This seems good, but infeasible. There are a lots of variables in food production, so the amount of food production fluctuates. As mentioned above, since dups eat food with highest freshness, there will be some stalest food left behind. This is true even if the food has a long (but not infinity) shelf life. To completely get rid of this, all food of that type needs to be consumed. This indicates that your dups will be in hunger sometime, which risks losing their life due to starvation.

2. Overproduce.

The simplest solution, but definitely not expected here.

3. Store food in environment granting infinity shelf life.

That's what we did before. But since last update, the construction for infinity-long storage gets much harder. Thus, this one is no longer a good solution. 

4. Use food that has no spoilage.

Perhaps the best solution here. But all those food (expect berry sludge) don't have a reliable source. Meanwhile, although berry sludge is renewable, it is only a mid-tier food. Thus the freshness issue will still encounter when food of higher quality are expected to use.

To solve these problem, I think 2 game mechanic should be introduced/tweaked.

1. Dups should eat food with least freshness instead. Currently there is no motivation for dups to eat food with high freshness (e.g. morale bonus), so it is ridiculous for dups to do so. What's more, the game don't allow players to command a dup consuming the exact pile of food. I think the this tweak should not be difficult for devs since dups are already programmed to do the opposite. And if this issue were intended as a result of game balance... I would say this idea is even more ridiculous than the issue itself.

2. Options for freshness management should be included in the storage interface. This should be possibly be a slider for players to set the range. The default range can be 0 to 100 of course, but can be toggles to any legal number. When set to a specific level, dups will only try to deliver food within the respective threshold. In addition, It would even be better to add some type of automation. (Similarly, other "debris" with property in percentage form, e.g. eggs, masks should also be treated like this.)

 

[gabberworld]

26 minutes ago, fpx007 said:

I thought dups will eat food with least freshness

 

yeah i hoped that too that they  todo that but its total random

 

[Orzelek]

It's not random - given set of same type food they will eat the freshest one. And with recent changes fridges are quite nice but consumption order makes wasting food easier - dupes will constantly eat latest deliveries while even slightly less fresh food gets stale.

Dupes should at least take lowest freshness food from same range (fresh or stale).

[RonEmpire]

Yea it would be nice if a dupe eats the food that is about to expire first so that food isn't wasted.   

Should be programmed to take whatever that is lowest freshness percent first.     

But then there is also the quality factor.  Not sure how to juggle this. 

 

I think the food consumption table menu tab should have more ways to set the order based on quality and freshness.   

 

Quality affects the morale bonus. Certain dupes need to maintain highest morale and thus needs the best food. 

 

Of course in real life most people want to eat the  freshest first.  Can you blame them.  

[fpx007]

55 minutes ago, RonEmpire said:

Of course in real life most people want to eat the  freshest first.  Can you blame them. 

But I guess you will still eat stalest food provided that its taste/quality haven't degraded at the moment, otherwise its quality will degrade later. Since most of you should also have ever played DS(T), let me use what players do in DS(T) as an example.  In DS(T), food spoilage have 3 states: fresh state (51% to 100%), stale state (21% to 50%) and spoiled state (1% to 20%) (or 4 states if you count the final rotten food as one). And in each state, food provides the exact same effect, which means eating food at 51% freshness or food at 100% difference makes no difference. Under this circumstance, you will probably eat food at 51% freshness rather than food at 100% freshness as the later provides no extra bonus (expect special cases, e.g. you want to farm rotten eggs for gunpowder). Let's go back to this game. In ONI, there is only 1 food spoilage state. (The fresh/stale tooltip actual makes no difference as food always provide same calories, moral bonus, etc.) Thus, there should be no reason for them to eat fresh food. @RonEmpire You mentioned food quality issue, but don't forget that food quality is only affected by food type. To solve this, it is possible to set food priority with multiple levels of selection criteria, e.g. first food quality level, then food freshness (either percentage value or remaining date until spoilage), then location, etc. Whatever the criteria are, dups are not supposed to eat food at high freshness provided all other conditions are the same.

Eating food at lowest freshness increases the average freshness (and thus remaining shelf life) of the remaining food, while eating food at highness freshness decreases the average freshness. Remember, fresh food will turn stale sooner or later, but stale food never turn fresh again!

[Saturnus]

4 hours ago, RonEmpire said:

Of course in real life most people want to eat the  freshest first.  Can you blame them.  

Exactly, and this is why I don't see a problem with dupes preferring the freshest food by default. Anyone that has ever been to a supermarket in their life knows that people pick the freshest fruits, take the milk in the back to get the newest carton, looks at the date label to pick the one with the expiration date furthest in the future even if they know they'll consume it well in advance of it. It's just human nature.

There's an extremely easy way to fix the issue that takes minimal effort by the devs. Have a tick box in the fridge (and by association the smart storage as well as the two building share game mechanics resources) that it can output a green on either full or empty, and not just on full. That way you can enable food production, or transport from a flash freezer to the fridge when the fridge is empty so all the foods have been cleared out, even the least fresh food, and refill the fridge with fresh food. As it is now with automation on fridges only able to report full, the fridge will just be constantly topped off with fresh food leaving the least fresh food to go stale and rot. There are works arounds to achieve the same result but honestly they're just silly circumventions for the devs being either lazy or ignorant of the issue.

Ideally the fridge and smart storage would have hysteresis sliders like smart batteries. However, I've asked for that so many times I've given up on the devs listening to reason on that issue but as I explain above just having a tick box to switch between outputting green on either full or empty is "good enough" and something that requires minimal effort.

[Gurgel]

This could be a setting in the "CONSUMABLES" menu: a) random b) freshest first c) most stale first. Should not be hard to implement. But I think this is one of the more hidden "progress drivers" Klei put into ONI: It motivates you to move to inert gas + deep frozen storage as a meta game goal. That would mean it should not be "fixed". 

[NeoDeusMachina]

49 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

But I think this is one of the more hidden "progress drivers" Klei put into ONI: It motivates you to move to inert gas + deep frozen storage as a meta game goal. That would mean it should not be "fixed".

Agreed. To be honest, I sometimes wonder where is the limit between problems that should be solved in game vs on the forums. ONI is a lot about solving problems, and I believe it's okay to have problems as long as we have ways in game to solve them or work around them. And more often than not, we do.

Somehow, a lot of us spend a lot of time trying to find solutions to in-game problems on the forums, maybe for convenience reasons, or because it seeme to make more sense, or because we simply do not like having to solve specific problems in game, or would rather solve it in another way? Who knows..!

The folks at Klei are most likely aware of those issues by now with all the discussions we've had about it and I trust that they will make changes to it if they think it should be changed. In the mean time, I will personally keep solving the food problem in game just like many others already do.

Edit: Just thought maybe it wasn't clear what i meant by solving problems on the forums. What I mean by that is discussing ways to change in game content/mechanics on the forums (changing the game itself) instead of trying to find ways to make it work with the tools we currently have at our disposal in game (changing our way of playing the game). Hope that makes more sense xD

[Gurgel]

Yes, makes sense to me. ONI appeals to different people, but one group is "tech-problem solvers" (sometimes called "engineers" ;-). I am one of those. These people want to figure out solutions and see difficulties as challenges. They will first try to "cooperate mercilessly" with the game mechanics and see how far that gets them. They will rarely complain about mechanics unless the only solutions they can come up with are tedious and unreliable. My experience is that if you make a good case for the only good solution to something being tedious and unreliable (i.e. "not fun"), Klei will eventually do something about it. See, for example, Regolith. 

There are other motivation groups. For example those that find dupes cute and want to protect (or torture) them. (I am guilty of that as well.) I would say they are typically reasonable complainers and are up to discuss issues and solutions. 

The worst complainers IMO are the "want to build something easily" crowd and specifically those that not simply go sandbox. They do not care about the challenge of finding a solution, they just want to slap something together that looks impressive in the end but still want to claim that somehow building it was an accomplishment game-mechanics wise. Hence for them everything must be easy and obvious. I think they are not quite in the right game though and I do not remember any instances were Klei did cater to their complaints. 

As to "solving problems on the forum", i.e. getting game mechanics changed, I think Klei has shown pretty good judgement in that regards and Klei is especially not making the beginner's mistake of listening to those that scream loudest.

[fpx007]

 

1 hour ago, Gurgel said:

ONI appeals to different people, but one group is "tech-problem solvers" (sometimes called "engineers" ;-). I am one of those. These people want to figure out solutions and see difficulties as challenges. They will first try to "cooperate mercilessly" with the game mechanics and see how far that gets them.

Well, I agree that the problem can be solved using such "technology". But you also stated a fact, "ONI appeals to different people." As for me, It is more a game of (colony) management, and I believe this should also be true for most players (as long as the game is not running on sandbox mode). So my concept is optimal management, i.e. trying to solving most complex problems using simplest method, or gaining most reward with least cost/effort. Actually, advanced technology are good solutions (and I also use them), but I believe they should not be the only solution. Let's back to this topic.  Food freshness issue can be solved with deep-freezers, but it is not supposed to be only solvable in this way. As a colony management game, it should also be solvable through careful management. But the current mechanic just  makes the careful management less effective. As we can't split fresh food from stale food (and vice versa), nor can we command a dup consume the exact pile of food, this "intended" mechanic isn't good at all! that's exactly what you said. "the only good solution to something being tedious and unreliable (i.e. 'not fun')."

ONI is a game of (colony) management, so everything else should serve for serve for it, which also includes technology. You should use technology to improve your colony rather than use your colony to optimize technology. Let's go back to the management issue itself. In this game, you're the role of commander/ruler/nation will, and what you're doing is to send commands to the colony, so they can accomplish the tasks and thus achieving your goal. The commands can be in many form, but most of them in this game are macroscopic (general) level, which means you don't have direct control over many detailed issues. For example, you can tell your dups what they should do (errands) or what they should do first (priority), but you can't can't command the specific dup to do the specific job. (The only exception is the force move command, but obviously it doesn't help in this case.)  In this case, the microscopic game mechanics (which is too detailed for players to take control over) should assist players' optimal management rather than prevent that. Remember the core concept of ONI is colony management rather than "engineering", and everything else in this game, including game mechanics, should help the management. Otherwise, they're completely meaningless. (For example, in terms of technology, you will probably never design a useless machine, e.g. a machine that instantly kill all your living dups. Even if you do so, you will not use that in your survival profiles unless you want to end the save file.)

[Gurgel]

2 hours ago, fpx007 said:

ONI is a game of (colony) management, so everything else should serve for serve for it, which also includes technology. 

I really, really dislike it when people state personal opinions as fact.

[fpx007]

36 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

I really, really dislike it when people state personal opinions as fact.

I'm sorry for that, maybe my words displeased you. But the store page states it is a "space-colony simulation game", and what we actually do is also "guide colonists" (which I translated as management) as stated, too. Therefore, I believe it is reasonable to say that as a truth, as this is not merely my personal opinion, at least it is also what developers' define. And all other parts of discussions are based on this core concept.

It should be mentioned that different players may (including you and me) have different game concept, have different playstyle, thus they may and have different requests hold different opinion towards the same issue. But eventually the game is determined by the devs, not only the game definition but also its future developments and updates. Since in this aspect, my opinion agrees with developers' definition, I believe my suggestion, which comes from my opinion, should also help developers to improve their game so it can get closer to the perfect game under this definition.

Once again, the game is determined by the devs, all I can do to them is to give them suggestions (which can improve this space-colony simulation game in my point of view) instead of directly tweak the game mechanic. If devs believes what my suggestions will probably improve the game, they will do so; otherwise, if my suggestions are infeasible, takes too much effort to achieve or make the game deviate from the perfect ONI game in developers's mind, devs will not adopt them. But if I don't give my suggestions (and explain the reason behind it), they will never be aware of the issue, so they will never have a chance to make the judgment in whether tweaking it or not, not to mention making a "pretty good judgment".

[Gurgel]

15 minutes ago, fpx007 said:

But eventually the game is determined by the devs, not only the game definition but also its future developments and updates.

Not really. And since this is a simulation, even less so. The thing is that the _player_ define what a game is, not the developers. The developers can try to coerce people into believing some things, but people can ignore that or just walk away. Fortunately, Klei is very light-handed and that is the very reason we have quite a few differently motivated groups playing ONI. 

So, no, no absolute truth to the nature of this game is to be had. 

[fpx007]

6 hours ago, Gurgel said:

The developers can try to coerce people into believing some things, but people can ignore that or just walk away.

Sorry. What I want to say is that the game's rules are under the control of devs. As a simulation game, we have many freedom in designing the best colony in our mind. But still, whatever we do, everything in this game follows the game rules. For example, you may achieve many great accomplishments which is hard to get, e.g. build wonderful architecture, efficient engineering projects, etc,. but you can't do even simple things provided that it violates the current game rule/mechanic, e.g. you can't pump gas with a liquid pump. Even Maxwell on the throne has to admit that "But even a king is bound to the board. You can't change the rules of the game." And apparently, the rules can only be changed by devs, and these are not what people "can ignore" "or just walk away". (You may say you can mod the game, but don't forget the fact that a recent update ruined the existing modding system/ecology of vanilla game, so even the rules of modding is still under the control of devs.)

On this aspect, all what I do (and can do) is to make some suggestions. But again, the rules are under control of devs, not only game mechanics but the fact that only devs have the power to change the game.

Finally, let the endless debate over, as all my hope in this topic is some tweaks in the game mechanic rather than convince you. And the reason I post this topic is to point out the illogic ones and wish them make a change. It is OK for devs to introduce some mechanic to make the the game more difficult (or challenging), but apparently not in this way. This is like the previous DS(T) mechanic that pressing F (not control-F) as Webber will attack neutral spiders.

[icuurd12b42]

I have tried multiple times to use the game mechanics to solve this but every solution I tried revolved on locking up the food room and automated distribution to an accessible fridge with tiny amount of food and a lot of micro management... Someone should make a mod or something. There is no mechanics to sort out staler food. The best I do now is simply not to over produce and accept that 30% of the food will be wasted either in the fridge or on the farm...

 

 

[Saturnus]

4 minutes ago, icuurd12b42 said:

I have tried multiple times to use the game mechanics to solve this but every solution I tried revolved on locking up the food room and automated distribution to an accessible fridge with tiny amount of food and a lot of micro management... Someone should make a mod or something. There is no mechanics to sort out staler food. The best I do now is simply not to over produce and accept that 30% of the food will be wasted either in the fridge or on the farm...

If you see my suggestion above. A simply tick box in the fridge to say if green automation output means completely full (as now) or completely empty would solve most issues, since you can then request the fridge to be filled when it is empty meaning the dupes have eaten all the food no matter what the freshness. As it is now the automation output can only be used to top off the fridge, so any remaining food in the fridge will be eaten last, and each time the fridge is topped of the food remaining just gets less and less fresh.

[icuurd12b42]

5 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

If you see my suggestion above. A simply tick box in the fridge to say if green automation output means completely full (as now) or completely empty would solve most issues, since you can then request the fridge to be filled when it is empty meaning the dupes have eaten all the food no matter what the freshness. As it is now the automation output can only be used to top off the fridge, so any remaining food in the fridge will be eaten last, and each time the fridge is topped of the food remaining just gets less and less fresh.

Indeed you could produce and distribute batches of food that way. I think you have the finger on the core issue with those fridges... another one is not having the automation working on unpowered fridges, and storage. another problem I can only attribute to the devs having a brain fart... given most things do NOT need power for the automation to work

[NeoDeusMachina]

I think one of the issue here is that fixed mindset of putting all the food in a single tile and filling a fridge with an auto-sweeper. By wanting to be super energy efficient with the freezing another problem is created.

I use a walk in freezer, which is basically just an insulated CO2 pit with a thermo regulator on top, and The dupes walk in, pick some food and eat it. I rarely if ever lose food due to spoiling, food doesnt sit in a fridge, ever. Is it the most efficient? No, it has 20% uptime on the regulator. Do i lose food? No. So im the end, it's a matter of choosing what matters the most to you.