Hades

This is out of the "small but important suggestions" thread. I've started a new topic so it's easier to have a discussion and collect our ideas in one place- what are yor thoughts on the cooking system as it is now?
 
589. Food Prep
Taken from the Vehicles build 26 thread:
I also find that cooking could be a little more elegant in design. I understand there were some changes made in the build 26 (main game, not vehicles) but I wasn't around to know what those changes were. I liked Shin's idea above and might expand on it like this:
 
1. Similar to the present method, right-click on a food item to see your food prep options (prepare salad, stir-fry, etc).
2. After choosing an option, a "grocery/recipe list" comes up. This is a list of all food in range that can be used in the dish you selected (eg. chicken stir-fry also brings up butter, noodles, condiments, etc).
3. You click checkboxes beside the food items to select the ingredients you wish to use. If you have enough of an item to use it multiple times, perhaps after selecting it once it can spawn an additional checkbox to allow you to add more of it (repeating the process until you have no more portions remaining).
3.5 As you click to add more food, the recipe stats (hunger, happiness, etc) update to reflect your current selection.
4. You click a button at the bottom of the recipe list, something like "prepare." This triggers a progress bar with timing scaled to be proportional to the number of ingredients you are preparing.
5. Once you have a prepared dish, you can still right-click on it to reopen the recipe list and add more food to it.
 
This process isn't radically different from what we have now, but it cuts the number of food-prep clicks in half (no more reopening the context menu for each item). It also gets rid of the start-and-stop progress bars invoked by the multiple item adds we have now.
 
I don't know how hard it would be to code in that recipe list, but if done it would save the cooks of Knox County plenty of tediousness!
 
 
 
ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS
From @Damien Darkside below:
Food Prep station
"those who have played Minecraft with the "Pam's Harvestcraft" and "Cooking for Blockheads" mods installed know what I am talking about, a dedicated system like that would be great."

I think a food prep menu like yours should be used, with context.
 
First is "on hand" food prep. You are carrying a pot and some food in your backpack. "Prepare Food" in this sense is what is in your backpack as well as your hands. 

A "Food Prep Station" would be very nice, assigning a hard counter surface that allows you to keep knives, pots, pans and the like. When preparing food here, it takes in consideration all the items in the food station as well as on your person (like carrying meat to the station). I kind of do this in my house builds but it would be great with assignable stations. You just end up with ingredients that were in your inventory, not a mish-mash of everything you touched.

If those who have played Minecraft with the "Pam's Harvestcraft" and "Cooking for Blockheads" mods installed know what I am talking about, a dedicated system like that would be great.
 
 

Currently cooking feels tedious: you gather up (or stand near to) the ingredients/utensils needed, then bit-by-bit you add them to the recipe, with a lot of right-clicking and waiting for bars to fill up in between. The craft menu is almost identical, without the right-clicking.
 
What would nice, and what seems not too difficult to implement, would be to be able to use the crafting menu to make a recipe without the waiting in between. I.e., you add the ingredients you want, then you click craft, and then the crafting bars start going, without the player waiting in between and having to interact at each bar completion.
 
What would also be nice, but likely harder to implement, is if the menu "searched" a small area around the player for ingredients.
 
So you open the "cooking" tab on the craft menu, and the game identifies there's a powered cooker within ~6 tiles of the player, a frying pan, pepper, cabbage, some bacon.
Then you click "stir fry", you click the ingredients you want added, you perhaps tick a box to say you want it cooked, and then click craft, and the game automatically completes those actions. You'd still have to watch you don't burn it, mind.

I wouldn't mind if it was Space. It would also help with windows, having the same key to open\vault is annoying as hell, especially when it works like Press E to Open\Close Hold to Vault while pressing it is just for Vault in every other case.

So I'm not sure if anyone's suggested this yet, I haven't seen it, but it'd be neat to be able to pick your start age when you start the game. Of course it'd exclude children, so 18+.
 
Age could effect a great deal of things, running speed, learning speed, resistance to disease, even durability of skin against attack.
 
Also, currently, the way the game works is that you scale up to an awesome threshold. In reality your skill and health often decline with age. I think this would be a nice balance for those who have been living for years.

I find these skills a little confusing and not all that distinguishable (or even useful) to the extent that I'm sure they could be reduced down to two skills and maybe allow us to add something better in their place.
 
For example, in the PZ wiki, these three
 
Lightfooted
Nimble
Sneaking
 
all revolve around "sneaking" in some way.
 
Also, if you're good at running, that kinda sounds like you'd also be nimble. And if you're light footed, wouldn't you also be good at sneaking?
 
But apart from anything, I don't feel the benefits of these three really have any discernible effect on the game.  I've never had trouble with the base speed of climbing out a window. I've rarely had trouble avoiding zombies. If they see me, I'll either run (or walk) away, or just pass through a bunch of trees, so losing all the zombies. And is having a faster sneak speed better? Wouldn't that mean you'd have less time to react when stumbling upon zombies?
 
I'd rather see something like these under "Agility", which I feel would havefer more distinguishable benefits:
 
Speed - how fast you can run (increased by sprinting)
stealth- how good you are at avoiding detection, reduction in making noise in general. At higher skill, smash windows silently - muffle with cloth (combined current light-footed, nimble and sneaking. increase by doing all of the above)
strength -  allows you to carry more stuff, push back zombies, force open locked windows at higher skill level (increase by doing upper-body physical exertion or carrying heavy loads)
Fatigue - allows you to run for longer / stay awake for longer / get bored slower (increase by pushing yourself to the limits - ie tire from sprinting, stay up late, etc)
 
All the above you could realistically improve in real life, so it seems odd that you can't currently. If you chop down trees for three days straight, wouldn't you get stronger? If you push your body to its limits you'll get better at handling it.