It is time to nerf BBQ

[Farsight]

6 hours ago, Knurek said:

Not really. That would allow players to stick to printing only the dupes that love any low grade food that they have plenty. Then it becomes the best food and is available right from the start.

And if a player wants to save-scum or mod, they can avoid every dupe trait that's not optimal.

If there are 9 or 13 Favorite Foods (>=8 morale or >=4 morale), a player that's not cheating would have to give up a LOT of dupes with good skills. And that's a strategic choice, which is more interesting to me than having zero reason to do anything but Surf n Turf + Berry Sludge.

Do I take a dupe that loves BBQ, but farts? Do I skip a dupe that wants lettuce wraps, even though they've got skills I really want?

To me, those kinds of choices add to the game, and help make each playthrough unique. Right now, feeding dupes feels the same every game unless I purposely make it harder on myself for no benefit. That's not fun to me; it's masochism.

[old esc coli]

I think it's not difficult. My colony has already stockpiled over 50 million kcal of food, and I have even tried mass production of various top-notch foods. There are now over 10 million kcal of hamburgers, over 8 million kcal of tofu, over 5 million kcal of bread, and over 2 million kcal of berry pie (because everyone is eating berry pie now, the reserves are relatively small)

Even though I often complain about tofu with my friends because its role is almost to foil the fact that bread is a simple food to make, I still make a lot of tofu, even if it is just for the replicator to change food occasionally.

But I think we can add such a setting to prioritize the use of different foods within the allowed range and improve their morale

[Knurek]

On 7/26/2023 at 4:02 AM, Farsight said:

zero reason to do anything but Surf n Turf + Berry Sludge

I'll refer to the Spice Grinder again. Do you use it? Many people would ignore favorite foods also if benefits were similar. I ignore even the standard morale bonus from food, but it didn't stop me from trying different food sources with each playthrough, just for fun. Sorry that it doesn't feel as fun to you.

On 7/26/2023 at 4:02 AM, Farsight said:

To me, those kinds of choices add to the game, and help make each playthrough unique. Right now, feeding dupes feels the same

I don't see how it will make playthroughs more unique on the long run when eventually you'll have to farm/ranch for every food with each playthrough with a lot of dupes so every one of them eats their favorite. I think it will actually do the opposite - since you'd have to build every food chain available to make favorite food for everyone your options to build things differently or try something new in the next playthrough would be limited.

[Farsight]

Some people might pick only dupes with favorites that match their foods.

Some people might take all dupes, and make nearly every food (that's probably me, once).

Some people might skip dupes that love particularly troublesome foods (that's probably me, most of the time  )

Some people might ignore the system entirely and get morale other ways.

Those are strategic choices, which IMO improve the system over what we have now.

Right now, BBQ/SnT and Berry Sludge (for space-food) are clearly easier/better than other options in almost every scenario. There aren't really strategic options, just goofing around options.

Plus, dupes having individual tastes makes them feel more unique and 'human'. Being able to give the little goofballs the food they love and see their little overjoyed reactions would be a reward in itself!  

[Magheat2009]

On 7/29/2023 at 4:28 AM, Farsight said:

Right now, BBQ/SnT and Berry Sludge (for space-food) are clearly easier/better than other options in almost every scenario. There aren't really strategic options, just goofing around options.

What you say is very obviously true. However, you can type this till your fingers are numb. This forum is dominated by meme players. Talking balancing with them is like talking about space with a flat earther. No matter what you say, no matter how reasonable your argument is, they simply wont agree and will oppose it.

Its not that they oppose specific balancing suggestions on various grounds. They will oppose balancing suggestions in general. They are fundamentally opposed to the idea of game balance in single player games. 

[goboking]

1 hour ago, Magheat2009 said:

What you say is very obviously true. However, you can type this till your fingers are numb. This forum is dominated by meme players. Talking balancing with them is like talking about space with a flat earther. No matter what you say, no matter how reasonable your argument is, they simply wont agree and will oppose it.

Its not that they oppose specific balancing suggestions on various grounds. They will oppose balancing suggestions in general. They are fundamentally opposed to the idea of game balance in single player games. 

You accuse us of opposing game balance despite the many calls we’ve made for diseases to be bolstered.  

[Henlikuoth]

2 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

What you say is very obviously true. However, you can type this till your fingers are numb. This forum is dominated by meme players. Talking balancing with them is like talking about space with a flat earther. No matter what you say, no matter how reasonable your argument is, they simply wont agree and will oppose it.

Its not that they oppose specific balancing suggestions on various grounds. They will oppose balancing suggestions in general. They are fundamentally opposed to the idea of game balance in single player games. 

Sometimes I noticed this also...

I want to remain positive that Klei will do the necessary balancing steps over time. 

[Pproy]

On 7/28/2023 at 6:58 PM, Farsight said:

Some people might pick only dupes with favorites that match their foods.

Some people might take all dupes, and make nearly every food (that's probably me, once).

Some people might skip dupes that love particularly troublesome foods (that's probably me, most of the time  )

Some people might ignore the system entirely and get morale other ways.

Those are strategic choices, which IMO improve the system over what we have now.

Right now, BBQ/SnT and Berry Sludge (for space-food) are clearly easier/better than other options in almost every scenario. There aren't really strategic options, just goofing around options.

Plus, dupes having individual tastes makes them feel more unique and 'human'. Being able to give the little goofballs the food they love and see their little overjoyed reactions would be a reward in itself!  

I agree that BBQ and berry sludge are the best option of all the food, but I don't think adding a food preference system would help that much. Depending on how such mechanic is implemented, it would be either inconsequential and most player will ignore the system (like the disease system ), or it will just gate dupes selections and slow game progression (AKA dupe that would normally be great to take would be useless because it want a food that the player doesn't currently have the infrastructure for).

The main reason people get BBQ is because people are going to ranch hatches (especially stone hatches) anyway. Its the only source of renewable coal (if we don't count space mission). However, I do think stone hatches could get nerfed. The fact they provide coal and meat for the low cost of stone make them a bit too good to the point they overshadow other hatches morph. A good nerf would be to lower the amount of meat they drop, so in the late game, if a player wants to make surf and turf, they either have to allocate a lot of space and dupes to ranch stone hatches, or use other critters. Another approach could be to add a recipe in the kiln to convert lumber into coal, and remove hatch from the forest starting biome entirely (so the forest start is not the same "make hatch farm to live" routine).

Now, the bigger problem is berry sludge. For space travel, players are left with few choices when it come to food preservation. Either they make pickle meal or grubfruit preserve and accept its going to rot eventually (making other asteroid colonization either a race against time to establish food production, or a tedious back and forth experience), make a kitchen and use the spice grinder then store the food in the fridge (meaning they have to find salt sources), or make Berry Sludge, which require water, dirt and cooling. Since we need water to make oxygen anyway and a way to cool the base down, the natural progression is to make berry sludge, any other food will only complicate/delay space travel. To be honest, if berry sludge is to keep its niche of not spoiling, it should come with no other bonus, even drawback.

Also, to be honest, another issue is the fact that sleet wheat only requires water, dirt and cooling. If you want to farm nosh bean, it requires: ethanol, dirt, CO2 atmosphere and cooling. All of that to make tofu at a +2 quality rating; berry sludge is +3...

[IHaveQuestions]

This is a single-player game.

If you don’t enjoy barbecue or berry sludge, you can not use them or make a mod. When you request features like this, you don’t take into account the players that;

a) like the system the way it is

b) don’t want to have to change over all of their infrastructure if the change gets added

c) would be negatively affected, despite not using either of these two foods.

Changing a system like this will mess up a lot of existing saves, and make the lives of other players who don’t use barbecue harder as well.

[Bluefoxfire]

Quote

Even if no one is "forcing" anyone in the game directly to only do BBQ and Berry Sludge, there is still an indirect forcing or compelling, simply because BBQ/Berry Sludge are often the best and easiest solution. 

This right here represents the biggest flaw of the whole "But it's single player" argument.

[Primalflower]

22 minutes ago, Bluefoxfire said:

This right here represents the biggest flaw of the whole "But it's single player" argument.

I don't understand it. fundamentally speaking, there is nothing forcing me to go for BBQ & Berry sludge each time. You could do it if you wanted, but there are also a million other  things that are perfectly capable of forming the same pillar or "need" in endgame sustainability. None of them are ever going to obsolete one another, because they're all capable of fulfilling the same purpose. Maybe a better framing device is that some options are just easier, while some are harder.

[sakura_sk]

On 8/3/2023 at 12:59 AM, Pproy said:

The main reason people get BBQ

The main source of late game BBQ was shove voles and that's already nerfed by having the delecta vole variant

On 8/3/2023 at 12:59 AM, Pproy said:

All of that to make tofu at a +2 quality rating; berry sludge is +3

Would making tofu +5 help so more people make that? I don't think so... Tofu needs water to make it so that means extra dupe labor and delivery errands which leads to another thing: there is no auto-delivery of bottled liquids or auto-bottling liquids without dupe labor. And that's why any recipe involving water is eventually avoided (not a bad or good thing. Just a thing the game does)

[Pproy]

@sakura_sk Fair enough, I didnt explain my points well.

5 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

The main source of late game BBQ was shove voles and that's already nerfed by having the delecta vole variant

I'm fine with shove voles being the late game BBQ solution. In general, BBQ is not an issue, maybe only stone hatches since they dont require much thought in resources management. That why I proposed as an indirect nerf that they should drop less meat, so if player want to go the BBQ route, they'll have to transition to something else (like ranching voles).

5 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

Would making tofu +5 help so more people make that? I don't think so...

I'll admit nosh bean was not the best example here to compare, their problem could be another thread on their own. The point i tried to bring across is to make other kind of food, you'll have to consider other resources (slime in case of mushroom, bleach stone and salt water for lettuce, etc). The thing is, sleet wheat and bristle berry requires water, which we already need for oxygen. So its not like we have to invest in new infrastructure to make it long term, the game already guided us to find renewable water. So, while the game doesn't hold us at gun point to make berry sludge, it is a lot more convenient to do so.

On 8/5/2023 at 9:48 AM, IHaveQuestions said:

This is a single-player game.

If you don’t enjoy barbecue or berry sludge, you can not use them or make a mod. When you request features like this, you don’t take into account the players that;

a) like the system the way it is

b) don’t want to have to change over all of their infrastructure if the change gets added

c) would be negatively affected, despite not using either of these two foods.

Changing a system like this will mess up a lot of existing saves, and make the lives of other players who don’t use barbecue harder as well.

I'm sure lots of peoples liked it when they could build a couple of atmo suits and not worry about the temperature and atmosphere for free before the dev introduced suit degradation. Same thing with food storage, when it was only a question of putting food in a vacuum. It doesn't change the fact that some thing in the game could or should be changed, even if it mean that some people will dislike it.

 

[Bluefoxfire]

On 8/9/2023 at 5:23 PM, Primalflower said:

I don't understand it. fundamentally speaking, there is nothing forcing me to go for BBQ & Berry sludge each time. You could do it if you wanted, but there are also a million other  things that are perfectly capable of forming the same pillar or "need" in endgame sustainability. None of them are ever going to obsolete one another, because they're all capable of fulfilling the same purpose. Maybe a better framing device is that some options are just easier, while some are harder.

I meant to quote only the first half of that first statement. I was referring to the coercion and/or peer pressure people tend to do to others who don't follow the meta like "everyone else". It's not so bad here now but it was a bit rampant some time in the past.

[psusi]

Funny... I have never bothered growing sleet wheat before because it seemed like it was just such a pain and not worth it.  Berry sludge not spoiling has never held any appeal for me, so I can't see why some people say it "invalidates" all other food.  I rarely have food spoil just keeping it in a fridge in a CO2 pit.  If you really want food to last forever, either make a deep freeze, or use the spice grinder.  I'm only trying to grow sleet wheat now because they added the pancakes and that seems nice.  I also have always not liked growing berries because of their annoying need for light and how water hungry they are.  I've always liked mushrooms much better.  I've always seen BBQ as just as nice bonus of ranching, not the end all be all food.  I suppose you can ranch enough critters to survive on nothing else, but that takes a lot of dupe labor and space for the ranches and lags the game.

My only problem with food is that the gas grill eats too much gas, basically requiring a dedicated gas vent.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

5 hours ago, psusi said:

Funny... I have never bothered growing sleet wheat before because it seemed like it was just such a pain and not worth it.  Berry sludge not spoiling has never held any appeal for me, so I can't see why some people say it "invalidates" all other food.  I rarely have food spoil just keeping it in a fridge in a CO2 pit.  If you really want food to last forever, either make a deep freeze, or use the spice grinder.  I'm only trying to grow sleet wheat now because they added the pancakes and that seems nice.  I also have always not liked growing berries because of their annoying need for light and how water hungry they are.  I've always liked mushrooms much better.  I've always seen BBQ as just as nice bonus of ranching, not the end all be all food.  I suppose you can ranch enough critters to survive on nothing else, but that takes a lot of dupe labor and space for the ranches and lags the game.

My only problem with food is that the gas grill eats too much gas, basically requiring a dedicated gas vent.

Exactly that on the deep freeze. It is not that hard either. In my current unit I have a cooling chamber build right next to the kitchen. The whole thing except the cooking itself (obviously, although I do wish we had some high end means of automating that and turning things into an industrial food plant) is automated.  My high end food takes a very long time to spoil (the freshness will still drop over time due food being rotated out of the cooling chamber).

I will post some pictures this evening. I am planning on a new set up where the kitchen is inside the cooling chamber, decreasing spoilage even further. It should also simplify things as I have complicated the current set up a lot.

I also dislike growing domesticated sleat wheet as it is very difficult to keep the water within the temperature range. Currently I am getting it of the wild grown sleat wheet in the cold biomes. I am also gonna try to set up a cooling unit to dial in water into the temperature range to see if I can set up a farm.

 

EDIT: as promised:

Kitchen combined with a cooling unit. The whole system focusses around 4 meals:

-Pepper bread
-Stuffed Berry
-Surf 'n Turf
-Spiced Omelette (meal added by Dupes Cuisine made by Ronivan. Needs cracked egg and pincha peppernut)

Those 4 meals are transported to the 4 refrigerators on the far right. Inside a smooth hatch farm. Why there specifically? Because there are no better guards for my food then indestructable hatches! And also because I did not have any other convenient space to put them in... . Anyway, those refrigerators are set to only hold 4 kg of food each, ensuring as little food as needed is kept in refrigerators as it will still spoil in there.

Inside the kitchen there are 5 more refrigerators, and one outside. Each one holds  one ingredient:

-bbq
-cooked sea food
-gristle berry
-sleet wheat
-pincha peppernut
-bristle berry (far left refrigerator, outside kitchen)

Each are set to hold only 7 kg of ingredients. Again, the clue here is to avoid unnecessary spoiling of food while allowing dupes to have actual access to cooking ingredients. When the refrigerators are not full, they will send a signal to a designated conveyor loader in the cooling unit:

 

Each unloader holds one specific ingrediient or meal each. It will be send to receptacle from which an autosweeper will deliver it to the appropiate refrigerator.

Ingredients are mostly delivered to the cooling unit through a convyor rail network leading to all sorts of farms across the colony, dropped right onto the ground of the unit and then put into the appropiate loader. The exception being ingredients that first need to be grilled to different ingredients and hence dont have the time to spoil. Those do not need cooling.

If the fridge is filled up, any ingredients/meals still on the conveyor belt will return to the cooling unit to ensure max freshness.

The cooling unit itself is set at a temperature of -25 degrees celcius.  This lower than the required -18 degrees celcius deep freeze state, but ensures any swing in temperature will not pull it above -18 degrees celcius. All in all, I have never seen it swing above 24..5 degrees celcius.

The cooling of cooling unit itself is done by a separate thermo regulator unit just outside the walls on the left, cooled themselves (yes, we are hitting cooling to the third degree here...) by some wheeze worts.

It is fairly conventional, circulating hydrogen gas inside radiant gas pipes in the cooling unit. Outside the cooling unit, the pipes are insulated to ensure thermal runaway is minimal Despire that, and as you can see, over a dozen of hundred of cycles it still cooled off the area around it. Not a big deal.

I am as I mentioned before planning on a new design where I put the kitchen inside the cooling unit. This would hugely simplify things as I wouldn't need to think about keeping the different ingredients separated. Instead everything would be just on the ground in a freezing hydrogen atmosphere. The drawback of that approach would be I would have to insert both a transit tube entrance and exit, and a couple of atmo suit dock. It would probably increase power consumption although perhaps not by a whole lot compared to the current design.

This way I can efficiently cook higher quality foods without getting them spoiled after a few cycles. I feel this works for me, and don't see why I would have to rely on BBQ. BBQ really is a disadvantage for me as I do rely quite a bit on the high morale bonuses of the better foods.

[Henlikuoth]

Strictly speaking, this is not only about BBQ as an individual food type.

The primary idea has always been that once the food production of certain foods like BBQ, Berry Sludge, or Grubfruit Preserve, etc. is established, there is no need to ever bother about any other food.

The disadvantages of this have been laid out in this thread already several times, and I do not want to repeat it again.

For example, on my current map I found two sulfur geysers. They provide a lot of sulfur. This allowed me to create a few Grubgrub stables with Grubfruit plants. The result now is that I can constantly produce Grubfruit Preserve, which provides a +8 morale bonus. This morale bonus is sufficient for most purposes.

So, there is no reason for me now to create any other food type. The Grubfruit Preserve provides already everything I need. The consequence is that all other plants and food types can now be forgotten and abandoned. Aside from a few rare situations, there is no strong compelling reason to even bother creating other foods. I see it in my current game. Nothing happens that would urge me to do so. Of course, you can always voluntarily/intentionally create certain different food types. But in practical gameplay reality there is no strong reason to do so and it is usually just not happening. 

[sakura_sk]

14 minutes ago, Henlikuoth said:

on my current map

Exactly. ONI is based on the RNG of the map. One playthrough you can survive on grubfruit, on another you just ignore it because you have no stable source of fertilizer. Why is that a bad thing? Every playthrough is different that way. If you need every food each time you start a map, then every playthrough will end up the same route and eventually there will be a linear optimal way to progress. If it's not "only bbq" and you absolutely need a variety of food to survive, is that good or bad thing actually?

[Henlikuoth]

6 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

Exactly. ONI is based on the RNG of the map. One playthrough you can survive on grubfruit, on another you just ignore it because you have no stable source of fertilizer. Why is that a bad thing? Every playthrough is different that way. If you need every food each time you start a map, then every playthrough will end up the same route and eventually there will be a linear optimal way to progress. If it's not "only bbq" and you absolutely need a variety of food to survive, is that good or bad thing actually?

Sorry, you may re-read the thread. Several reasons have been given and explained. 

In short, we want a more complex, sophisticated food system that requires a variety of foods with various benefits and gameplay bonuses. 

Edit: Regarding your last question, yes, it is actually good. 

[sakura_sk]

1 hour ago, Henlikuoth said:

we want a more complex, sophisticated food system

And there is a "we" that find the food system complex enough that every playthrough would be a different experience. The game already has a complex system as I mentioned elsewhere 

And it is a system that can fit any start even if some  biomes are missing. More benefits can come from food by using recreation buildings like the juicer and coffee maker and now there is brackene to the mix. I don't see how forcing an all-food-diet would make the game more fun and not just a chore you need to go through.

For reference, here is the current "simple" food system of ONI that has some aspects missing (like difficulty of farming) :

[Farsight]

Giving benefits for food variety wouldn't 'force' anything, except in a min-maxxed end-game base.

Early game morale wouldn't be affected, when players are struggling just to feed everyone.

Only when dupes start to get lots of skills and players start to have access to multiple food chains would meal variety become an option for improving dupes' stats/mood.

The argument to not change it because some players might not like it could be applied to -any- change in the game. That would lead to development stopping.

Right now, it feels like food is only an early-to-mid-game issue. Personally, I'm all for a more intersting food system that keeps offering progress/challenge throughout the game.

[blakemw]

16 hours ago, psusi said:

Funny... I have never bothered growing sleet wheat before because it seemed like it was just such a pain and not worth it.

Sleet Wheat is extremely trivial to grow on some maps.

Like if there's a Cool Slush/Brine Geyser, I always use this general pattern:

First the -10 C pwater runs through Radiant Pipes past the Sleet Wheat, which is grown in a shallow CO2 pit to keep the coldness in, then the pwater goes into a Liquid Tepidizer anti pipe busting heater (it can also be heated in other ways if there are enough heat sources) and a Water Sieve, the cool water (probably like 8 C) is then fed to the Sleet Wheat using Insulated Pipes and also used for other purposes. Bristle Blossom with it's min temperature of 5 C, is also easily fed the ~8 C water, in fact the fact that Sleet Wheat and Bristle Blossom have a 0 degree width of overlap in their temperature range (Sleet Wheat stifling at above 5 C, Bristle Blossom stifling at below 5 C) makes them quite easy to grow in close proximity with only a small amount of tuning of the heat flow, only the least amount of effort needs to be put into thermal isolation of the Sleet Wheat.

If you can be bothered with "taming" a Cool Slush geyser at all, then sleet wheat is close to no effort.

If you have the competence to put together a Aquatuner and Steam Turbine then it's also absolutely trivial to grow Sleet Wheat by using the similar pattern but running the Aquatuned pwater cooling loop (Liquid Pipe Thermo Sensor'd at -5 C) behind the Sleet Wheat, the Sleet Wheat should get "first dibs" on the coolant out of the aquatuner, but the coolant can go on to cool other things, Valves can be useful to ensure not too much cooling is performed on other things. This pattern also permits feeding the Sleet Wheat and Bristle Blossom with 95 C water, though you may need to dribble some crude oil or brine on the sleet wheat to increase heat exchange with the radiant pipes.

I'm sure some players would say "that's way more complicated than a Hatch ranch", but there's also a lot of moving parts to a Hatch Ranch and it breaks easily if things are not configured correctly, and I expect many players are copying FJ's Ranch. As long as the "Cool the plants not the irrigation water" mantra is followed, Sleet Wheat is really easy. On the other hand cooling the water is an absurdly hard approach.

[psusi]

I guess I never thought about doing it with cold water to start, then you just heat it up to 5 C and don't have to worry about it.  I always saw suggestions to cool the plant, and use a valve to feed it only exactly 33.3333 g/s of warm water so that it won't heat the plant.  I always thought that was a pain.

 

Wait though, how do you keep the sub zero pwater from freezing the fresh water inside the hydroponic tile?

 

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

5 hours ago, psusi said:

I guess I never thought about doing it with cold water to start, then you just heat it up to 5 C and don't have to worry about it.  I always saw suggestions to cool the plant, and use a valve to feed it only exactly 33.3333 g/s of warm water so that it won't heat the plant.  I always thought that was a pain.

 

Wait though, how do you keep the sub zero pwater from freezing the fresh water inside the hydroponic tile?

 

The pipes themselves are insulated which contains the heated up water. The water will not lose a lot of energy before flowing the tile. Meaning the flow of water from the pipe to the tile will inject enough energy to overcome the energy loss from the pwater sitting in the radiant pipe above, especially sind carbon dioxide does not transfer heat that quickly.

[blakemw]

12 hours ago, psusi said:

I guess I never thought about doing it with cold water to start, then you just heat it up to 5 C and don't have to worry about it.  I always saw suggestions to cool the plant, and use a valve to feed it only exactly 33.3333 g/s of warm water so that it won't heat the plant.  I always thought that was a pain.

Not only is the Valve thing a pain, it's a debunked myth, though I can't find the debunking post anymore (basically someone did a very exacting test of different setups and measured how much growth took place before the plant stifled from overheating). But Valving absolutely does not work, it doesn't achieve anything, plants need to have irrigation water in the tile in order to not stifle, so you can't even maintain zero liquid in the tile, heat transfer is independent of mass and depends on the relative temperatures and conductivity only, so the small amount of water in the tile still absorbs just as much heat per tick, changing temperature much more dramatically. Anyway, both testing and theory show that it doesn't work.

Quote

Wait though, how do you keep the sub zero pwater from freezing the fresh water inside the hydroponic tile?

Funnily enough it doesn't matter, elements never change phase inside any building, if the water drops to -5 C that's completely fine.

This principle is why a Metal Refinery can contain overheated liquid, that only flashes into gas when it exits the building and enters the pipe system. It's also why natural tiles can be made by putting Molten Glass into Hydroponics Tiles, the cold Molten Glass will immediately change phase when it leaves the hydroponics tile due to deconstruction or emptying.

So basically all you have to do is ensure the liquid doesn't change phase in the pipes, and simple insulated pipes are adequate for that.

 

At the end of the day a good Sleet Wheat setup relies on some unintuitive game mechanics, but once those mechanics are understood or if a working build is blindly copied it's really very easy.