Cooking Ideas

[Kajin]

A couple of suggestions for changes to cooking, that I think might help out going forward.

 

Characters with better cooking skills leave behind small amounts of food because they don't need to use as much to get the same level of hunger reduction. It kind of irritates me because it clutters the inventory and, if you're trying to cook the whole thing to eat it before it spoils, it creates a bit of redundancy that lowers the happiness and boredom rating of whatever dish you're making should you choose to throw it in as well. So my suggestion to counter this is to create a second food item whenever you cook called "Food Scraps" where all leftover bits of food get stacked whenever you cook. It stacks together just like any other prepared food dish you'd make and serves as a convenient way to locate all tiny bits of food so you can throw them into a dish later, should you choose. This would serve as a small improvement to the UI and the way players interact with the inventory.

 

There should also be a balance in dish size. You can feel free to add as much food to the dish as you want, but larger quantities of food in one dish take longer to cook and an unskilled chef might not cook it thoroughly enough, leading to reduced hunger and nutrition values and even possible food poisoning from under cooked ingredients. Could also risk burning the food if you cook it too long since, once again, an unskilled chef might misjudge how long it takes to cook a large dish. This would also result in the wasteful burning of food, leading to a dish with lower hunger and nutrition ratings and possible stomach problems from consuming it. This would be a massive waste of food if such a thing were to happen, and when every scrap of food counts you can't afford to waste a single bite. A skilled cook that can handle larger order sizes for multiple people might be even more valuable to the day to day operation of a survivor group as a result. Not having a skilled cook to process larger orders for a sizable group of people could result in stomach aches, food poisoning, and general wasting of food. This could serve as a small bit of extra difficulty for the proposed difficulty overhaul. Nothing too huge, but it could definitely make things somewhat harder if you don't manage your food reserves carefully.

[Sarthen]

would the "food scraps" end up in your inventory after you eat the food or would you get it in the oven or microwave after you cooked it? I like the idea of it. Like eating bread and saving the crust and crumbs... This sounds like a really good idea when NPCs come also about having a skilled cook and his skill with serving multiple people.