Yes agreed on that point.... we should be able to 'harvest't he milk without slaughtering the mule. It's how it's done in real life no?
I finally got my greenhouse setup for making canned vegetables. I have 5 3x3 blocks of planters around the starter module with 1 grow light centered above each 3x3 section (and a few other lights to make things easy to see). The starter block has 2 fridges (stacked), 1 food processor, 1 small generator (on celling over the door), and a large fuel cell. The planters are divided up for the 3 needed crops giving me enough produce to make 15 cans each growing cycle. All I need to do for a harvest/canning session is make sure I have enough metal plates and purified water loaded into the food processor. I love the efficiency and self sufficiency of the setup, now it's almost impossible to run out of long lasting food and by having it in a separate building I can leave the power on all the time (only uses a tiny amount) regardless of if I want to shut down my main building when I go out to hunt/explore.
It may seem silly to some but I've shelved several other games at the moment because that's not possible, or possible but really punishing. So it's really great to have this in Empyrion from the start. I know that the rations require meat and many players in this thread are expressing a strong preference for those (because they don't decay) but I can live with that. Out in the real world I'm accustomed to checking cheese ingredients to see if I can eat it. Rennet is a pain. I don't eat it that often these days. I should probably just go full vegan and be done with it. I'm sure Empyrion's mules would appreciate it. Maybe I'll start my own religion - Mulonism - and take to the stars with capital vessels crammed full of mules and spread them to space stations and other worlds. The moment they add some form of taming or herding....
Yeah you can extract milk without killing a cow. Those are domesticated beasts though. I'm not a lady so can't speak from experience but I don't think I'd be terribly accommodating if some space alien just walked up to me and started massaging my boobs. In fact it's quite possible that would elicit a violent reaction. So it might be realistic that you need to kill the mule to get its milk. In real life cheese is also hardened with a substance called rennet which is often taken the stomach juices of dead animals. There are also plant and microbial alternatives but the stomach juices type is still probably the most commonly used.
Feedback/ Review PA 3.0.1 Food system needs massive rebalancing. In game I only make canned meat (meat+tomato+water+metal plate). It has 350 parish time and 170/10/25 (food/health/stamina) food value. I don't even need fridge as I ate them all before they ever come close to perish. Emergency Ration, though have no perish timer, is very hard to make and not worth the time or effort. Other foods are either very bad, perish very fast or take many things to make. As no foods have any spacial properties people will choice one fit to their play style and never bother to cook others...It would be good if some food have some antidote property so players will atleast consider making them before go exploring. Foods needs to be stacked or have a separate back pack for food only. Fridge should not stop the perish timer so people have incentive to make emergency ration before long voyage.
Emergency Rations are a pain to make but as the only food that both stacks and does not perish they are worth the effort to make I think. The only problem is you have to go to Omicron to make them currently because the required energy pills need eggplant parts that are not available on Akua. I don't know yet if eggplant grows on other planets. Seems we are missing 2 plants on Akua, Alvera could possibly be transported as sprouts from Omicron for the advanced medical recipes but the eggplant parts for rations can not be grown by players currently. My choice in food is canned vegetables as I can grow everything myself. With 15 planters for each of the 3 vegetables I can make 15 cans each growing cycle, more than I can use. The required ingredients are the only things worth growing on Akus for now, unless plastic (from corn) is needed for something other than rations. As for the fridge stopping the perish timer, your still paying for that in fuel so I think it's good as it is for now balance wise.
I think one way to solve the issue of eggplant and any other plant really is letting players create seeds and grow them. Ether with grow lights or on the landscape like a few others. I would also like to grow fiber myself. My main food tends to be canned meat till I have a big enough farm to make rations.
Then that would make the fridge useless if they didn't stop food spoilage. People would just make ER's just to eat. It wouldn't be balanced at all if food went bad in the fridge when it was supposed to stop it from going bad. Food is hard enough to come by without it rotting every 5 minutes. Whats the point of it if you hunt animals for meat and have it go bad in the fridge? Or pick crops and have it rot before you can eat it? It doesn't make sense to me sorry.
The devs created lots of food recipes so I'm pretty sure their intention isn't to have everyone just eat the same thing. The emergency food rations are probably already far more popular than they'd like.
If your on Omicron then rations are easy enough to make (stock up now for space later), on Akua and I expect most of the other planets don't have the needed plants to make rations so maybe not as popular as some believe. Either way with the current balance most pick 1 or 2 of the longer life foods and stick with it for convenience and because most of the food spoils way to fast to be worth the effort to even make for now. Just my view, your's may differ
I hate to suggest ripping off another survival game, but I just don't see people making a variety of foods unless they have special perks. Like reduced O2 consumption, longer-lasting fullness or hydration, bonuses to combat or mining, basically like ARK. The little odds and ends of hp and stamina don't really seem to be worth bothering with at the moment.
it works great, but I cant find a way to survive on the desert planet currently (monsters don't spawn that often, hardly ever)
Current food system is strange you will run out of food quickly than oxygen and when food is depleted you die quickier than oxygen is depleted ( i wasnt able to run 100m and get pommes frites from stash and eat then before i died , quite strange in real workd you will last for 300 days without food (i would consider this - our max health will be slowly reduced to zero when no food - so you wont be able to use healing machine as aux food supply )
I like the idea of the Fridge not stopping the perish timers. In RL food goes bad in the fridge and canned food stays a lot longer. I would like to be able to grow other things like the eggs needed for rations so I can grow them on other planets while im there or out in space but make it a research thing that I have to do at a research station. Like have to run 25 test on a certain plant to be able to make a seed. Each test run has to be on a picked plant and run one at a time. Each test takes a day to run. Something to that effect. Meat will still have to be gathered while on a planet. I think research is the key to making the food system better. When you start you can only make a few items like the grilled pumpkin or durian fries. Then you have to research new foods (edible or not) and recipes (when you find a new food item then when researched it will give you a recipe if you have all the items researched). That would make the start a little more survival mode.....just my thoughts on the matter.
I got a stacks of food rations that I don't even use because tinned meat recipe is much so much easier to craft and has a very fair perish time. I thought emergency rations would be needed more for space station life but you can live easily on just a 5x5 square of space durians without ever needing to planetside besides for oxygen.
The game is set in a more technologically advanced future. Perfect refrigeration isn't unrealistic. Even today we can (industrially) store some fruits uncanned (eg. apples) for up to a year.
Currently we have open food or canned food that will spoil over time and emergency rations that never spoil. I would like to see a 3rd option, dehydrated food packs. A dehydrated food pack is made from 6 of any existing food and a bottle of water. While it is in dehydrated form it is like a ration that never spoils but you can't consume it directly. When used the first time it re-hydrates all 6 items with the bottled water and places them in you inventory. Now you can use each individual food item and the perish timers start counting down again. Advantage, can keep them out of a fridge for as long as needed but it only delays the regular perish timer until you open the package. Also all 6 food items are opened at once making it more balanced in that you can still lose you food to spoilage if your not watchful. And you still have to make the actual food to start with so any food could be used in this manner.
That's a cool idea. Edit: To expand on it, couldn't we make the meat into jerky? Just something to do with meat to help it store and stack as a snacky-style thing. It'd dehyrate you, but water bottles aren't that hard to come by.
