Suggestion: Give dupes a favorite food.

[goboking]

It's my sense that a lot of players drop farming after they get ranches up and running because ranches and fish farms produce plentiful food and useful byproducts, and they're resilient to hotter and colder temperatures that can stifle plants.  In order to encourage players to diversify their food production, I propose every dupe be given a favorite food.  This could be fixed in the same way stress and joy responses are fixed (i.e. Bubbles loves food made with bristle berries, Stinky loves food made with mushrooms, etc).  A dupe eating a meal made with their favorite ingredient would gain a modest morale boost for a cycle, with no penalty for not feeding them their favorite food (all carrot, no stick).

[pether]

17 hours ago, goboking said:

A dupe eating a meal made with their favorite ingredient would gain a modest morale boost for a cycle, with no penalty for not feeding them their favorite food (all carrot, no stick).

I'd love to see some stick to it: eg Bubbles loves berries, but hates fish and will get sad and stressed when forced to eat pacu

[Spoonwood]

You talk about a very good topic here.  Food diversity is poorly motivated in the base game, even with spoilage if you produce more than you consume.  It's a bit better in Spaced Out! due to the non-production of food while on space missions while in rockets and also reduced or no food production when landing on a new world.  But, that more concerns spoilage, so berry sludge gets motivated, but something like pepper bread or mixed berry pie is not motivated, or much less motivated.  Also, seafood comes as better motivated, since it reduces radiation sickness (if radiation sickness is a potential issue), but again some foods end up with a "why ever make this?" question to them.

Morale boosting is a neat idea, but morale boosts only go so far.  There is the greater likelihood of getting an effect like sparkle streaking with more morale, but it's only useful up to a certain point.  Like I've never seen why I would make surf and turf instead of barbeque in the base game, since I don't feel a need for more morale from surf and turf.  And I certainly would be even more puzzled as to why if someone suggested that I have my duplicants make frost burgers.

It might be more interesting to have different foods give a slight stress reduction.  Like maybe nosh beans serve as a good example, since you won't have buddy buds on a classic Arboria asteroid, and if playing for super sustainable, what do you do with ethanol early other than for liquid locks?  You can't refine steel with it, and refining other metals probably isn't such a good idea. 

Or a combination of stress reduction and morale increase.  Or maybe some foods reduce stress and others increase morale.

[Spoonwood]

On 4/7/2022 at 2:23 PM, pether said:

I'd love to see some stick to it: eg Bubbles loves berries, but hates fish and will get sad and stressed when forced to eat pacu

Some stick is fine, as long the stick can get trimmed or burned.  The current possible stress settings in the startup screen might be fine to handle some stick.

 

[Sasza22]

Well it would need the dupe to eat his favourite food over other options if he has a choice. I think it`s a nice idea but it needs to carry into the late game. A dupe could have bristle berries as their favourite food but later in the game you might be making stuffed berries instead. Maybe the favourite food could be a food type (berries, mushroom, seafood, meat based etc.).

[Spoonwood]

4 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Well it would need the dupe to eat his favourite food over other options if he has a choice. I think it`s a nice idea but it needs to carry into the late game. A dupe could have bristle berries as their favourite food but later in the game you might be making stuffed berries instead. Maybe the favourite food could be a food type (berries, mushroom, seafood, meat based etc.).

Stress or morale can still be a later game issue in Spaced Out! inside of rockets or on new asteroids, correct?

[pether]

16 hours ago, Spoonwood said:

Stress or morale can still be a later game issue in Spaced Out! inside of rockets or on new asteroids, correct?

yeah, more than ever before. I have never had stress/morale issues before I got DLC and landed on new world.

[Sasza22]

19 hours ago, Spoonwood said:

Stress or morale can still be a later game issue in Spaced Out! inside of rockets or on new asteroids, correct?

Yup the dlc makes the morale more meaningful. That`s where the favourite food idea coul shine. I just wish it didn`t require you to downgrade the food you can produce to get the bonus.

[goboking]

On 4/9/2022 at 1:47 PM, Sasza22 said:

Well it would need the dupe to eat his favourite food over other options if he has a choice. I think it`s a nice idea but it needs to carry into the late game. A dupe could have bristle berries as their favourite food but later in the game you might be making stuffed berries instead. Maybe the favourite food could be a food type (berries, mushroom, seafood, meat based etc.).

That was my intent, but I guess I didn't articulate it well enough.  My idea is the base ingredient would be a favorite and any food using that ingredient would count.  So in the example of bristle berries, a dupe would get the bonus when eating raw bristle berries, gristle berries, stuffed berries, berry sludge, and mixed berry pie.

[tuxii]

I really like this idea.  On normal difficulty or easier it could be all carrot no stick and harder difficulties could add the stick.

I also think that if a duplicant's favorite ingredient is berries, mushrooms or meal lice (I think no dupe should have meal lice as a favorite, since there are no good foods that use it as an ingredient, same goes for Bog Jelly) then they should be able to get the morale or stress reduction buff from the Juicer.