Crock pot stacking

[Kevin]

Currently, every piece of food that you craft in the crock pot has an individual bonus value associated with it for both hunger and health. This is calculated using an over-complicated formula that takes into account the values of the specific items that you used. Under this system, the meaty stew that you made with all 100% beefalo beef is worth a lot more than the one that you made with filler and morsels.

This is nice and simmy, but it presents a UI problem. You need to be able to track and select particular items, so I made it so that they do not stack. This leads to a somewhat underwhelming food carrying capacity. We also don't have a way right now to visualize the particular values for a given cooked food item. I could make it so that Wilson could inspect it and say something about it, but that would be very different from his usual try-it-and-hope-for-the-best approach to food.

An important consideration here is interface consistency - I don't want to make a specific food-item interface that people will have to figure out. At the UI level, simpler is better.

Do you all think that I should ditch the unique properties on the cooked foods, and make them stack like any other item? This would probably go hand-in-hand with a slight nerf on their values so as to not let them get too overpowering. Maybe they could have a smaller stack size, as well, for balance reasons.

[kalamari157]

I would like stacking and wouldn't mind the nerfs. Getting meat as is is somewhat easy. Being able to tell would be nice if possible.

[Joyousterror]

If you are camped out near your crock pot chances are you already are stacking the matts required to cook. It's only when you travel that you need those crock pot items and because travel takes so long only being able to fit 2-3 with your tools torch and grass and sticks for campfire is pretty limiting. We sometimes have too many unique items and not enough room to carry them on adventures.

I vote yes, maybe allow them to stack to 5. 10 is too much for food items that give you quarter-full health.

[Bogpad]

how about you add a cupple more recipes, so if you use high quality meat instead of morsels, you don't get meaty stew, but something else, with better stats.

It might be some work, but it could work in a way that you have a main ingredient, like:

Meat

Morsel

Eggplant

Butterfly

Frogleg

Dragonfruit

the other food items are just fillers of different quality, i.e.

Grass, Twigs, Pine Cones and the like are very bad quality fillers, make them tier 1

carrots, corn, berries, honey, those are very common, make them tier 2

the other stuff, pumpkins, fish, eggs and everything else that I forgot is tier 3

to recduce the overwhelming amount of possibilities, make it that only one main ingredient, and 3 fillers of the same tier can be used for a certain food item, so you get

Main + Tier1 /2 /3, no matter what item from a certain tier you used, what ever you get has certain stats, and can stack

so you would end up with three different versions of food per main ingredient, with different bonus, that are stackable.

as Example:

Morsel + tier 1 = icky Meaty Stew

Morsel + tier 2 = simple Meaty Stew

Morsel + tier 3 = tasty Meaty Stew

so from my quickly arrenged suggestion, you would end up with 18 recipes, a lot, but I think not too many to handl it.

you could also reduce the suggested main ingredients loosing 3 recipes per lost main ingredient, so it should be easy to come up with a working number of recipes pretty easy.

EDIT: Oh, and if you add 4 types of the same main ingredient, you get the prime version of food aswell.

Combining different Main ingredients however would not work. (since I made that up within a cupple of minutes, I am sure someone can find a good soolution for that aswell.)

Edited November 27, 2012 by Bogpad

[501105]

Hm, interesting change. I think I would prefer making them stackable, even if that means that they are nerfed a bit. It would be very handy to know what each type of food wil give you and not have to quess their effect. It is currently a pain when you have several of the same cooked food in your inventory and not know which is the better one. Adding another interface to differentiate between cooked foods and to show what they do would makes it far too convoluted imo since we have plenty of Ui elements as it is.

[SneakySeal]

Perhaps have them stack if they have identical values? say, meaty stews using two cooked morsels and two cooked berries stack up to five? change their name depending on the ingredients used? say, a meaty stew made using four monster meat is called monsturous stew? (this would probably be a nightmare to implement though. having to name every possible combination X3)

But I really wish you made them stackable. having no inventory space during an expedition due to meaty stews taking it all up is getting old.

[wonderpug]

I would be in favor of a separate "food pouch" of sorts that would let you manage the food type varieties in a different manner than ordinary items. It would let you more directly manage the food side of the game balancing, allow for the food pouch to be another money/item sink (upgradeable), and solve your stacking issues.

But if you do want to avoid making the inventory UI more complex, then I'd recommend simplifying the food output types. Instead of umpteen subtle varieties of meat stew quality, just make the possible results be "weak meat stew," "meat stew," and "hearty meat stew." (Or just the latter two, to make it even simpler.) This gives you just 3 types of stew quality to stack, instead of a myriad.

edit: Didn't refresh the screen so I missed Bogpad's post, but his suggestion is along the same lines as what I'm saying.

Edited November 27, 2012 by wonderpug

[Kevin]

Hmmm. Yes, a tiered approach could work. The art would be the same between tiers (perhaps with an icon), but it would let you have some difference in results while at the same time reducing a lot of the clutter. Good suggestion!

[Bogpad]

Hmmm. Yes, a tiered approach could work. The art would be the same between tiers (perhaps with an icon), but it would let you have some difference in results while at the same time reducing a lot of the clutter. Good suggestion!

yeah, the artwork can stay the same, I am not even sure if you need an icon if you can implement the tiers via the names, just adding an adjective.

edit: oh, and thanks Actually, the crock pot is one of my most favorite structures so far, and it would be terrible for me if the food you can produce gets bland just to make it stackable its a far too interesting mechanicto be oversimplified just for conveniance reasons!

Edited November 27, 2012 by Bogpad

[Chocolate Tree]

I agree with the others on the fact that we need a way to "store" our cooked staff and not let them lay on the floor... so far, I like the changes.

[mobius187]

What's all this? All morning I was working hard in the Suggestions forum and here you guys are inventing new food systems without me? I'm shocked...

And now I'm over it.

To start I wanted to suggest something for you to consider, namely the system used in Project Zomboid. The foods are created using components of the real food. For example, say you wanted to create a cheese sandwich. You combine bread + cheese, and you get a cheese sandwich. If you do it again you get another one. Both sandwiches will satiate the exact same amount of hunger. Now if you wanted to create a grilled cheese sandwich you would add butter into the mix and you needed to use a stove. In return, the grilled cheese sandwich satiated even more hunger than a normal cheese sandwich.

On the flip side, just as Bogpad suggested, in PZ you could also make combo dishes by using various different ingredients, and depending on the quality of those ingredients you ended up with different versions of the same food item (i.e. each satiates a different amount of hunger). Then, based on what ingredients you used, the food item would use a different adjective to describe it, so the player could tell how good it was, for example: bitter, bland, tasty, delicious, ect. Obviously these adjectives would create an issue with stacking as I assume you could only stack "Tasty" meals with other "Tasty" meals.

Now the first and the second suggestions though had one key factor, they were made with as many ingredients as required or, in some cases, that you wanted to invest. So if you wanted to make soup in PZ, you could use a pot and throw in a tomato, then cook. Or you could have a pot and throw in a tomato, carrots, and beef. Right now I find it odd that you have to use 4 ingredients in the crock pot in order to cook with it. Why not 3? Or even 2?

Also... maybe grass could not be a filler? I tend to use it because I need that 3rd or 4th slot filled, rather than caring about what I'm cooking. I would like to see recipes like "Ham + Honey", cook, then Honeyed Ham.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the matter.

[501105]

So tiers would mean having tier 1 wet goops for example heal from 10 to 50 stomach wise?

Just make them slightly stackable please, if only a few, that would make them much more usefull to take with you.

[EternalNinja0]

I agree with all the comments here. A tiered system with different quality foods (same icons) would be great. Even if the food could stack to 3 (or maybe even 5) and it got nerfed a bit, it would be good. It would also add a nice challenge of getting enough resources to make the same food item more than once so it would stack in your inventory, instead of carrying round lots of different types of food which take up all your space.

[Robwill]

Why not instead of stackables make the soup bowls have a durability. Like now there is only 80% of the soup left in the bowl or something like that. It would remove the need for stackables and make crock-pot something people would actually be interested in investing in:)

[Stairmasternem]

All this crock pot talk is making me think of Super Paper Mario. Although hopefully things that AREN'T food don't pop out on this.

I like the idea of tiered meals based off what you use as ingredients. Sounds like a good balance between the current none stacking, more customization approach and making it super simple Maybe you can even add in hidden combos then.

[Marak]

I'm in agreement with Kevin and Bogpad. Being able to make (and stack) 2 or 3 different versions of the same Crockpot recipe sounds like a great solution. If all you have is filler, you can still use it up to make a stack of Bland Ratatouille to carry around with you. If you're swimming in Veggies, then you can "upgrade" that stack to 100% Vegan Ratatouille that restores more Health/Hunger. And as was said, you can re-use the existing icons, and just add prefixes to the basic food name.

Hoping to see a change along these lines at some point. *crosses fingers*

[NippleKing]

I agree with robwill. Make it have a durability but in return make it much more expensive like it takes 10-20 to make a stew and the stew can be used 5 times.If this is too simple then perhaps also add the quality thing to it but instead the fancier the quality could mean the more durability it has.

[Q is for cucumber]

I say ditch it, Kevin.

[Aerow]

The tier suggestion is actually quite great. It would be nice if the icon of the cooked product changes a lil bit as the tiers progress. Like the basic tier would be a very small looking quantity and the highest tier could have like steam oozing out of it.

[Fluffy_McNutter]

Just an idea, but what if meat went rotten under traps if you did not get to them in time ? It would make it harder to survive, add a new element to the game with preservation, and nerf the traps since you can set a ton of them and come back to them all anytime.

[Corvuz]

If you are camped out near your crock pot chances are you already are stacking the matts required to cook. It's only when you travel that you need those crock pot items and because travel takes so long only being able to fit 2-3 with your tools torch and grass and sticks for campfire is pretty limiting. We sometimes have too many unique items and not enough room to carry them on adventures.

I vote yes, maybe allow them to stack to 5. 10 is too much for food items that give you quarter-full health.

Hi,

i'm new to the forum

but we can't stack food items that heal that much huh?

never tried to cook a tallbirds egg into an omelette without the crock pot

heals pretty much half your life and fills the stomach quite good, and i think u can stack more than 10.