Alpha 8 - New food and food-item drop system

Discussion in 'FAQ & Feedback' started by Hummel-o-War, Jun 11, 2018.

  1. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    We changed the single-purpose food & item drops system into a basic set of groups.

    - PlantProtein
    - NaturalSweetener
    - Grain
    - Berries
    - Fruit
    - Mushroom
    - NaturalStimulant
    - Vegetables
    - Spice
    - Buds

    Each harvestable plant in the game, that is relevant to a food item or meal, will drop an item that is named like one of these groups. For example: Corn and Wheat plants will get you GRAIN.

    There are other plants, that did not see a change yet, like Varon Root still drops Varon Roots, but this might change as we explore categories and new food groups in the future! We are of course open to any suggestions on that matter. ;)

    3b. Alternative ingredient crafting
    In addition to these first set of groups (might be expanded in the future as we add more plants and planets!) we still have a few collectibles

    - Egg
    - Milk
    - Meat

    There is a slight change as well - or better: new alternatives. Having those is often a key, for example if you are in desperate need of a collectible and you simply cannot find it or you ran out of ammo in the c(h)ase for meat.

    Whatever the reason is, we thought it is a good idea, to add a few test cases in Alpha 8, like being able to craft Meat and Milk from PlantProtein, Vegetables (Starch!) and Water. Pretty much like it is done already today in the real world. Of course this is the 25th century way doing it. There are a few more recipes added like this (like PlantProtein can be extracted also from Vegetables, etc).

    Eggs are the only exception from this new rule, as there is no logic replacement for them yet. As an alternative to hunting the dinos, we added little nests you can pick up the eggs from.

    As a side effect, we now can officially claim that you can fill your food bar without having to HARM A SINGLE ANIMAL in the game. :D

    We also made sure the categories are that flexible, so we can have all the ingredients dropping from wild plants - at least for the starter worlds. The plants dropping for example BERRIES of course might be different on a temperate world compared to an icy or desert world.

    Full overview of the ingredients, currently needed to craft all the new food AND medical templates can be found in the ingame EMPYRIOPEDIA in the BIOLOGISTS GUIDE

    20180611233630_1.jpg
     
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  2. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    Notes:
    - All stats (health, food, stamina, perish) are calculated based on their ingredients!
    - The crafting time is now calculated based on the total beneficial stats of an item. Example: High healt+low stamina is created slower than low health+low stamina.

    New FOOD Templates
    • Fruit Juice
    • Vegetable Juice
    • Berry Juice
    • Power Bar (using Plant Protein)
    • Hot Beverage (using Buds)
    • Fried Vegetables
    Renamed FOOD Templates
    • KavaeCoffee > Energy Drink
    • Popcorn > Cereals
    Main Drops: FOOD
    • Plant Protein: Corndogs, Corndogs Snow, Ahax Fruit, Seaweed, Big Alien Flower
    • Grain: Wheat, Corn
    • Berries: Akua Berries
    • Vegetables: Pumpkin, Large Egg Plant, Blue Pepper, Egg Plant, Tomato
    • Fruit: Pearthing, Space Oranges
    • Spice: Cobra Leaves
    • Natural Sweetener: Alien Worm plant
    • Herbal Leaves: Pixie Stalks, Aloe Vera
    • Natural Stimulant: Kavae Plant, Brain Fungus/Brain Fungus Snow, Pulpit Fungus
    • Mushrooms: Green Spiky Mushroom, Brown Mushroom, Tall Green Mushroom
    • Buds: Blue Alien Flower
    Additional Drops: MEDICAL*
    • Herbal Leaves: Pixie Stalks Plant & Pixie Stalks Snow & Aloe Vera Plant
    • ConfettiMossScrapings: Confetti Moss, Dimple Dome, Dimple Dome Snow
    • FireMossScrapings: Fire Moss
    • AlienTooth: (dropped from creatures)
    • AlienParts02: (dropped from creatures)
    • AlienParts01: Reef Plant, Red Coral
    • AlienParts03: Pod Plant, White Coral
    • AlienThorn: Opuntia Cactus, Thorn Plant, Beehive Cactus
    * Some FOOD items are also used for medical items (like Natural Stimulant, Mushrooms, etc)
     
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  3. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    = Known Issues =
     
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  4. Bigga1337

    Bigga1337 Ensign

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    Where do i find grain? Which biome? Didn't find any in 8h play..
     
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  5. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    There should be plenty in the forest and swamp areas. Check the empyriopedia (f1) if you do not know how the plant looks like.
     
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  6. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    A summary of my outstanding issues with it:

    Food Processors & Refrigerators
    • Food Processor allows storing too much food relative to a refrigerator, making refrigerators for bases almost useless. Please increase the storage of a refrigerator by a lot, and consider reducing the storage of a food processor (or at least a T1 food processor).
    • Consider changing the refrigeration capabilities of a food processor so that instead of perfectly preserving items, it reduces their decay by 90%. So you can leave stuff there a long time, but not FOREVER. This is another way to make a fridge serve a real purpose again. I'd like a T2 food processor that can make stuff faster and store more than a T1.
    • What you're calling a "fridge" is not a refrigerator, it is a freezer. A refrigerator would not stop a perish timer, it would just slow it down. Of course, maybe I am misunderstanding what it is supposed to be, perhaps it isn't just chilling it but is using some sci-fi technology to suspend the movement of all particles, thus preserving it. But wouldn't that still be called a "freezer"?
    Plants
    • Spice plant has too low of a yield, should be at least 2 if not 4. Mushrooms should also be at least 2. To see why, try building a pizza factory, and note that the number of spice plant plots you need is several times the number of grain plots, which makes no sense.
    • It should take at least 2 vegetables to make plant protein instead of 1. Plants that yield plant protein should yield 2 or 4. Those changes combined would make it actually make sense to actually grow plant protein, rather than always growing vegetables. Because right now a plot of vegetables can yield 4X plant protein but if you plant something like Ahax Fruit that actually yields plant protein it only gives you 1X.
    • Unless some type of plant renaming is coming, the big bulbous plant that was previously called "Textured Plant Protein" doesn't make sense, because it is now producing vegetables.
    Recipes
    • Please bring back space fries (or just "french fries").
    • Please add a recipe similar to fruit pie, that uses berries instead, like "Berry Cobbler". As it is, you can't use berries as any type of food unless you eat them raw, making them sort of useless.
    • I like the idea of being able to create artificial meat from plant protein but I think the requirements are too low. Consider increasing it to require more plant protein. Also consider limiting this capability to a T2 food processor.
    • If you can create artificial meat and artificial milk, you should be able to create artificial egg substitute using a similar process.
    • Why does fruit pie need eggs? Pie crust does not need eggs.
    • Bread doesn't seem good enough. It should restore more food than it does. I think the problem is that "bread" in this game seemingly is a couple slices, not a loaf. It looks like a loaf, so I'd expect it to give me a lot more than 50 points of food. But obviously it does not take a loaf of bread to make one sandwich, so I think it is really a slice of bread. This could be fixed by redefining it as a slice, and making the recipe for bread yield 10 of them instead of only 1. Sandwiches and burgers would take 2 of them.
    I still don't like the fact that picking corn doesn't actually give you "corn" and that there's no recipes specific to "corn". I'd like to see this fixed when the recipe system is revisited and will allow recipes that can take "any vegetable" as well as recipes that specifically require "corn".
     
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  7. mR_kAt

    mR_kAt Captain

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    I agree with most of what was said. I miss the uniqueness of fauna in the game and now everything is just lumped into one sum of "vegetables" or "fruit" (which by the way a tomato IS a fruit). I really thinking combining them was a step in the wrong direction and just removes uniqueness of recipes in the game (for food). I'd love to see tomatoes, potatoes (or durians), pumpkins, corn and grain back. Right now there is no point in planting corn over wheat as they all produce the same thing. The same thing goes for any vegetable as well. The system is confusing with all of the "plants" you can grow but they are all redundant at the moment in what they yield.
     
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  8. mR_kAt

    mR_kAt Captain

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    @Hummel-o-War Which file controls the FoodTemplate that the config file makes note of? Is it possible to mod the file with C++ or via Notepad++ to re-add the old values of Pumpkins and Tomatoes so they can be harvested from the crop instead of vegetables?
     
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  9. SmaugBR

    SmaugBR Lieutenant

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    Just a quick question: judging by the icon appearance, and the apparently inability to cultivate Buds, wouldn't "Large Eggplant - Sprout" (or any other) supposed to give us Buds instead of Vegetables?

    And... do plants wither and die over time?

    Thanks ^_^
     
    #9
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2018
  10. MrFubar

    MrFubar Commander

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    I agree with pretty much everything here, tried out a few different prebuilt bases and CV and found I don't use the fridges, since the food processor keeps everything just fine and has a massive amount of space. I understand it needed to preserve things because before food was expiring while crafting, but maybe make it only preserve food when a crafting queue is active. Leave the Fridges for Storage.

    I think most food items should be better than the starter energy/protein bar but right now they are not, they give a large amount of food and are many times easier to make than almost any other food item so why make anything else? Increase their spoil timers to at least double and lower their food amount and then re-evaluate each other food item that is cooked to see if the effort and crafting time is in line with the food/spoil provided. If some food gave buffs it might be worth while to eat other things.

    Moss scrapings, we need a way to plant these, they are required for many medical objects but we cannot put them in a farm to my knowledge and not every planet has them.

    Fixing the amount harvested the quoted poster suggested and adding recipes that used berries would help too.
    I know many of my friend were disappointed they couldn't make a space hut dog stand anymore since they just get protein.
    I like the simplicity especially for early on survival but also miss the variety of items you could find somewhat.
     
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  11. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    You can craft moss scrapings and most other med ingredients already. Check FP
     
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  12. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    that snot possible. And I doubt that can be added to config anytime soon.
     
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  13. mR_kAt

    mR_kAt Captain

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    Ah ok, thanks for letting me know! :)
     
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  14. geostar1024

    geostar1024 Rear Admiral

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    Concerning the issue of not being able to craft medical kits from the component medicines (ointments, pills, and injections) because of the expense of the individual ingredients, it seems to me the straightforward way to solve this would be to simply give multiple medical kits from each recipe. So one ointment, one pill, and one injection could yield perhaps two or three medical kits (instead of having to craft the medical kit from raw ingredients).
     
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  15. zztong

    zztong Rear Admiral

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    In my latest play through, I made the basic protein bars until such time as I could make canned veggies. There wasn't a compelling reason to make any other foods. The ingredients for protein bars were all over the place and canned veggies last a long time.

    Interestingly, when growing food for canned veggies, you need 2 Spice plants for every 1 veggie plant because of the different yield amounts.

    As for medicine, I never got to where I could grow and craft the advanced med packs, or even the syringes. I could make ointments and pills. Alas, I never left the starter planet which no-doubt limited the availability of ingredients.

    EDIT: I should say also that I didn't miss having the advanced med packs since I had access to BA/CV medical devices.
     
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  16. mR_kAt

    mR_kAt Captain

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    I edited the config files to have protein bars give half the food as normal food, and I boosted salami to 80 Food and Sandwich to 130 Food (Since Bread 50+Salami80=130 Food).

    I also made eating raw meat take away health. Currently it makes no sense to be able to eat raw meat.

    I found this balance to be worth the ingredients to be needed to make them (I also added 1 Steel Plate back to Canned Food since we need Steel Plates for O2 tanks now).

    I'd encourage this change in the main build since it is more risky to take on beasts that can hurt you then pick up plant protein which is scattered everywhere. More risk more reward is the motto of a real survival game.

    By the way, I don't think you should be able to make meat as this removes the risk of hunting in the game. If it is kept in the game then the ingredients for "meat" need to be much more than they are now, as bullets take up for more resources.

    Another idea is to add a T2 Food Processor that needs advanced material to make.
     
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  17. Ian Einman

    Ian Einman Captain

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    I like the idea of being able to create "artificial meat" but agree it should be a T2 food processor thing so you can't do it in the early game. Also it should require more plant protein (and plant protein should require more vegetables instead of being a 1:1 conversion).

    Agree that salami and sandwich should give more food. Pizza and burgers currently give way more food than a sandwich.
     
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  18. geostar1024

    geostar1024 Rear Admiral

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    I'd be ok with doubling the inputs for making meat, though I don't know that there's any need for a T2 food processor. In general, I'm all for making closed-loop food production harder (requiring more space and infrastructure), but it still should be possible given the in-game technology level.
     
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  19. Kosmic Kerman

    Kosmic Kerman Commander

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    AFAIK, all needed ingredients are available on the starter planet to make the advanced med kits. Alien thorn in Savanna. Plasmas in deep water and lakes. While they can all be crafted some need items that can only be looted.
     
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  20. Hummel-o-War

    Hummel-o-War Administrator Staff Member Community Manager

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    Yes, all required materials are either available or can be crafted (or both)
     
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