I think they've already acknowledged this is just a limitation of the recipe system and that it will be revisited in 9.x or later. They need to have recipes with multiple inputs. Once they do that, you can have recipes that take "any grain" or that specifically require "corn". I've gotten fairly used to the new system although there are still things that make my head hurt, like the fact that tomatoes and pumpkins can be used in all the same recipes. I'm trying to imagine a pizza made with pumpkin sauce. Pretty sure there's a reason I've never seen that on a menu.
I've been away for over a year, and boy, things have changed. On one hand, I feel like some of the flavor (no pun intended) is lost with this system of "generic" grains, protein, etc. But on the other hand, it sure simplifies things in an area I think was too fiddly, so I can back this move. One thing I find odd... in reality, "berries" and "fruit" are more alike than different in how we use them (both make pies, both make juice, both eaten raw, etc), I'm not sure why they're two separate categories. When tomatoes, peppers and alien plants are all "vegetables," why separate berries and fruit? It seems like it'd be a gain to simplify these by combining them into just "fruit". (This brought to you by, "Why can't I make pie out of berries?") One thing I saw come up more than once in this thread is, "I don't eat anything but X, Y and Z". And I have to ask... why is there so much variety in the types of finished dishes, especially when the inputs are now genericized into categories? Many of the dishes have complicated requirements, but don't have any real benefit over other, less complicated foods. The player could easily live off of nothing but energy bars or salami, so what are hamburgers and ratatouille bringing to the table? Is too much flavor lost by reducing our options to basically something like "juice, energy drink, energy bar, fresh meat meal, fresh vegetarian meal, canned meat meal, canned vegetarian meal, emergency ration"? It would avoid the confusion of figuring out that most of the "menu" is fluff and can be ignored. The only reason I could see for a large variety is a plan to implement a "balanced diet," where not eating fruit+vegetables+protein regularly degrades your health in some way. (Eating nothing but salami will kill you.) Another thread asked something along the lines of, "what's your one task you find overly tedious," and I think "figuring out what food is the most efficient in my current situation" was maybe my #2, until I figured out that most of it is just fluff and there's really no benefit to making a hamburger when I can just live on salami.
Energy bars schmenergy bars, the DSL power consumption bugs got me making nothing but Emergency Rations, because I can't trust a fridge any farther than I could throw one, these days.
