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[Jazzeraint]

Since learning the initial hang of feeding a fort's dwarves, I've always thought that it was entirely too easy. Dwarves only need to eat roughly 2 food each season? Farming alone can take care of the completely. Bringing some egg-laying poultry can do it with even less work (and no Farming skill necessary). And then there's booze-cooking, plant gathering, fruit picking, butchering, and trading for food (which is almost ridiculously fruitful considering you can net thousands of Uristbucks by cooking a fraction of the food you trade for while buying it for 10 bucks per stack of 5).

In all, I wanted another area of challenge within the game beyond sieges, beasts/titans and creatures. Starvation is !FUN!.
And, I like enhanced realism, to a certain degree. There's just something about having to imitate distillation or smoking meat that makes my brain happy. So, two bams in one.

Alpha Version Here
Recommended Install Instructions:
1) Do a new LNP install
2) Set graphics to ASCII
4) Unpack the zip into your main directory, overwrite everything
5) Enter " decayfood start " in DFHack after you embark
6) Good luck!
(7) Don't forget to build the new Brewery, the Still is rather useless now)

This version has all of the new alcohol implemented for everything in the plant_standard file, and gives two methods of preserving meat indefinitely (extract blood or smoke meat, you'll need fuel for the latter).


State of the Mod
The first part of the mod is making food decay, no matter where you have it stored. You won't accumulate thousands of meals over time, because they will automatically take wear and evaporate from inside your barrels. (This is achieved through a modified version of omniclasm's scripts.)
This makes food acquisition less fire-and-forget, and makes food preservation a vital part of the fort.
Implemented, see Wishlist for expansion


The second part is making food acquisition more difficult, thus requiring significantly more effort in a single sector or branching out into multiple food sectors. The latter is easier by far, but hey, it's your fortress.
This entails making crops take longer to grow (exceptionally so for the underground crops), making egg-layers lay fewer eggs, making most plants dead in Autumn and Winter, reducing the amount of fat received from animals, eliminating booze-cooking and seed-cooking, making most ingredients require processing before they are actually edible, and a couple other small things.
Implemented, will be tweaking growth timers and other sundry details over time


The third part is creating the preservation industry. Preserved food will last indefinitely (for the nonce), but it requires more work to come by.
You can smoke meat and fish, confit meat and fruit, ferment meat, cure eggs, and so on. Flour and sugar are also far more useful now, rather than just adding value to meals or selling off to traders.
Working on this


The fourth part is making alcohol-creation harder. It's necessary for every fort to flourish, and it's significantly more complicated IRL than a single-reaction product like it currently is.
I've thus added three steps to the creation process, with differentiated reactions and materials based on the kind of alcohol (cider, beer, wine, etc). To make it not so horrifically onerous, the additional steps are automated (minus the collect water task). The number of drinks created per plant, however, is significantly reduced.
Implemented, see Issues


The fifth part is altering food values to make selling food less profitable, and buying food more expensive.
Working on this


The sixth part is then adding in some kindnesses to add more diversity into the available foodstuffs (as well as in adding in some extra realism and uses for stuff that's otherwise trash).
Blood can be extracted from meat and cooked, quarry bushes / nut oil can be turned into fuel and vermin remains can be turned into ash, subterranean plants grow year-round, two underground trees now produce fruit, some other underground goodies can be turned into food through gathering, and a few other small things.
Half-implemented, working on this



Current Issues
There are two hiccups that I haven't been able to resolve to satisfaction yet on my own, though.

Currently, all preserved foods are classified as Cheese. This is solely because I couldn't get the new materials to get stockpiled otherwise, and cheese is my preferred template of the existant ones out there right now. I'd like to ideally have the materials be differentiated, but I haven't figured out how to get them into food stockpiles yet.

Water is necessary for most of the booze reactions, but seemingly can't be automatically gathered, so there's a reaction that makes water out of nothing. I'd prefer a call for water just appear when the reaction is started, rather than needing to do that, or try and fanangle with Pond shenanigans.

Also, the Still is utterly useless for this since it doesn't play nice with [AUTOMATIC] reactions. Without a building replacement hack or some other fix, it's going to just require new buildings for most everything.



Wishlist
At some point, I'd like to make these happen:

• Decay script that works on item types or materials that aren't already covered in the item-type list (i.e. preserved foods of new materials, as nothing lasts forever~)
• Have a HUNGER SCRIPT that can increase the number of meals a Dwarf needs in a season (and possibly also alcohol, but that's already pretty fine-tuned now)
• Have some kind of script or somesuch that prevents non-preserved food items from being traded at the Depot
• I want a general reaction that turns a stack of X plants into much fewer meal-items (edible raw or cooked), but I don't know how to make a reaction like that which doesn't erase the identity of every ingredient after the first. It'd be ideal if you could make a salad out of raspberries, plump helmet, spinach and walnuts, and then see all four of those in the item, and then add that to meat to create a meal. I have a workaround, it's just not as tidy as having that automatically happen.

I'm going to be re-doing subterranean plants to a certain extent, and I may or may not create separate mods for that.


Many thanks to Meph for his advice and excellent Masterwork mod, which made a lot of this much easier, and to Evaris and his Orichalcum mod, which inspired me to do this in the first place (and gave a bunch of good ideas).

[Zammer990]

(that liter of rum just isn't that nutritious)

It's all in the liver boy, you wouldn't understand, puny humans can't even mince wine!

Being serious though, a food rebalance seems interesting; I'd suggest not removing lavish meals, but just decreasing the value of all food. It's pretty crazy as is.

Also your link should be omniclasm's script

[Meph]

I'd remove a lot of EDIBLE_RAW tags, forcing people to cook food.

More growdur on the plants. My own harder farming puts underground plants at 4000, aka 1 year.

Less value of the materials, especially for meat.

Counteract that with more custom reactions for specific dishes. minced plump helmet roast made of minced plump helmet, minced plump helmet, minced plump helmet and minced plump helmet should be worth not a lot; but custom reactions with different reagents should make better prepared meals. Milo Christiansen wrote a script that allows custom-made prepared meals.

Increase gnawing/food-consumption of vermin.

Increase the amount of CURIOUS_EATER and CURIOUS_GUZZLER animals, or add a creature variant of the type. Some mischivious creatures that path into your fort to drink and eat your food would make it more difficult to sustain foods.

There was also a very, very nice approach I saw in the forums of making some foods spoil, even if they are in stockpiles. For example meat had HEAT_DAM of X and a FIXED_TEMP of X+n, resulting in meat-items slowly taking damage, until they destroy themselves. The mod (or mod idea) then added a reaction to prepare meat, either by salting it, smoking it, cooking it, etc, which needs one workstep and extra reagents like coke, salt, etc. to change the material from MEAT to PREPARED_MEAT, which does not have the slow damage.

I liked that idea a lot and will take it up in future.

Booze could be reduced to 2.5, instead of 5, or you can delete the original reaction and add more complex booze-making, that requires equipment like a metal cauldron and metal pipes for the still, as well as additional ingredients than just "plant". Plants + sugar + water + fuel = booze; as an example.

Non-domestic pets should also have their eggs reduced. Just check the crocodiles, they are crazy.

[Jazzeraint]

(that liter of rum just isn't that nutritious)

It's all in the liver boy, you wouldn't understand, puny humans can't even mince wine!

Being serious though, a food rebalance seems interesting; I'd suggest not removing lavish meals, but just decreasing the value of all food. It's pretty crazy as is.

Also your link should be omniclasm's script

Ah, ty, I forgot that "" shouldn't get used.

But how do you decrease the value of meals? They tend to skyrocket because of the quality modifiers. It's no issue for me to reduce the value on the premium food items, but the quality modifier remains~

[Jazzeraint]

I'd remove a lot of EDIBLE_RAW tags, forcing people to cook food.

Hmm, okay. I'll have to consider which vegetables and such should be raw or not.

More growdur on the plants. My own harder farming puts underground plants at 4000, aka 1 year.

Does this affect plants growing in the wild? Because if the 'wild' subterranean plants growing in the caverns still pop up all the time during seasons, then subterranean farming becomes mostly pointless with that long of a GROWDUR. But I'm fine ramping it up further.

Less value of the materials, especially for meat.

Meat's valuable? It has the same base value as plants, no? Certain plants and beasts just have value multipliers. Do you mean removing value multipliers for those creatures?

Counteract that with more custom reactions for specific dishes. minced plump helmet roast made of minced plump helmet, minced plump helmet, minced plump helmet and minced plump helmet should be worth not a lot; but custom reactions with different reagents should make better prepared meals. Milo Christiansen wrote a script that allows custom-made prepared meals.

Totally fine with this as long as it doesn't get out of control; having a workshop menu with 50 recipes seems cumbersome, though I suppose the 'white'/available ones do move up to the top.

Increase gnawing/food-consumption of vermin.

As in adding the [VERMIN_ROTTER] and [VERMIN_EATER] tags to more vermin? I don't see a way to increase their rate of hunger otherwise.

Increase the amount of CURIOUS_EATER and CURIOUS_GUZZLER animals, or add a creature variant of the type. Some mischivious creatures that path into your fort to drink and eat your food would make it more difficult to sustain foods.

I was also curious about what behavior makes a Gremlin try to path into your fort and the pause-focus event happen. Is that the [MISCHIEVOUS] tag? I was under the impression that CURIOUS_EATER/GUZZLER will only nab it if they happen to see it, rather than path right for it. Can you elucidate that?

There was also a very, very nice approach I saw in the forums of making some foods spoil, even if they are in stockpiles. For example meat had HEAT_DAM of X and a FIXED_TEMP of X+n, resulting in meat-items slowly taking damage, until they destroy themselves. The mod (or mod idea) then added a reaction to prepare meat, either by salting it, smoking it, cooking it, etc, which needs one workstep and extra reagents like coke, salt, etc. to change the material from MEAT to PREPARED_MEAT, which does not have the slow damage.

I liked that idea a lot and will take it up in future.

That is rather cool. How does that script compare with omniclasm's, which inflicts gradual wear on food items until they fully detiorate? Or was that script never finished?

Booze could be reduced to 2.5, instead of 5, or you can delete the original reaction and add more complex booze-making, that requires equipment like a metal cauldron and metal pipes for the still, as well as additional ingredients than just "plant". Plants + sugar + water + fuel = booze; as an example.

I haven't dived in to making your crazy / neat complex custom workshops just yet, but I like the idea.

Non-domestic pets should also have their eggs reduced. Just check the crocodiles, they are crazy.

Also a good point. I presume that won't affect their population numbers, breeding practices and frequency at all? Since that seems to be handled independently via other tags~

[Urist Targaryen]

PTW

[AceSV]

So like, what's up with beans?

[Jazzeraint]

So like, what's up with beans?

INTO THE MAGMA WITH YOU

[AceSV]

So like, what's up with beans?

INTO THE MAGMA WITH YOU

But seriously, I've never been able to figure out what to do with beans.  I try to farm beans and they just disappear.  Is the current bean system a placeholder?  Is there some crucial step I'm missing?Any plans on addressing that as part of this project? 

[Demiurge]

The issue with food mods is that you're not making food harder, just scarcer, and the answer is simply expanding the farm. Plump helmets taking longer to grow is meaningless when they don't need to be maintained so you just plant three times as many and call it a day. What the game needs is food variety so that a dwarf requires a varied diet of meat and veggies to grow his strong tree-trunk arms!

Basically the game needs Toady to take a look at farming when he's done writing the code for procedurally generated cheese art.

[Jazzeraint]

The issue with food mods is that you're not making food harder, just scarcer, and the answer is simply expanding the farm. Plump helmets taking longer to grow is meaningless when they don't need to be maintained so you just plant three times as many and call it a day. What the game needs is food variety so that a dwarf requires a varied diet of meat and veggies to grow his strong tree-trunk arms!

Basically the game needs Toady to take a look at farming when he's done writing the code for procedurally generated cheese art.

When you have to expand the farm four fold, and it takes significantly longer to grow crops, you have to fill the gaps with food from additional sources. You can still rely solely on farming, but then you need a huge farming operation, and by increasing the haul and processing jobs required to get the meals, it ends up taking more time and requiring more dwarves. Which is sensible - lots of farming requires lots of dwarves.

But you do have a good point. That's already in the game kind of in that dwarves get tired of the same food and crops and negative thoughts are harder now. It could be expanded though.

[Jazzeraint]

So like, what's up with beans?

INTO THE MAGMA WITH YOU

But seriously, I've never been able to figure out what to do with beans.  I try to farm beans and they just disappear.  Is the current bean system a placeholder?  Is there some crucial step I'm missing?Any plans on addressing that as part of this project?

I haven't noticed any issue with them yet. I do use Modest Mod, though.

[Zammer990]

Booze could be reduced to 2.5, instead of 5, or you can delete the original reaction and add more complex booze-making, that requires equipment like a metal cauldron and metal pipes for the still, as well as additional ingredients than just "plant". Plants + sugar + water + fuel = booze; as an example.

Prepare for half-filled bucket spam
Booze reactions requiring more ingredients would be cool, but with the ingrained need for booze built into the game, an early-game, very cheap booze options would also be nice. Or perhaps make all alcohol cheap, and add a distillery to process it into more valuable goods. Do dwarves care about the value of the meals they eat, or just the quality?

[Meph]

Booze could be reduced to 2.5, instead of 5, or you can delete the original reaction and add more complex booze-making, that requires equipment like a metal cauldron and metal pipes for the still, as well as additional ingredients than just "plant". Plants + sugar + water + fuel = booze; as an example.

Prepare for half-filled bucket spam
Booze reactions requiring more ingredients would be cool, but with the ingrained need for booze built into the game, an early-game, very cheap booze options would also be nice. Or perhaps make all alcohol cheap, and add a distillery to process it into more valuable goods. Do dwarves care about the value of the meals they eat, or just the quality?

Its only the value as far as I know, except when it's masterpieces.

The bucket thing should be fixed btw.

I'd remove a lot of EDIBLE_RAW tags, forcing people to cook food.

Hmm, okay. I'll have to consider which vegetables and such should be raw or not.
yep, good idea

More growdur on the plants. My own harder farming puts underground plants at 4000, aka 1 year.

Does this affect plants growing in the wild? Because if the 'wild' subterranean plants growing in the caverns still pop up all the time during seasons, then subterranean farming becomes mostly pointless with that long of a GROWDUR. But I'm fine ramping it up further.
wild plants are affected, yes.

Less value of the materials, especially for meat.

Meat's valuable? It has the same base value as plants, no? Certain plants and beasts just have value multipliers. Do you mean removing value multipliers for those creatures?
You have to reduce the base value. And/or can lower the multipliers.

Counteract that with more custom reactions for specific dishes. minced plump helmet roast made of minced plump helmet, minced plump helmet, minced plump helmet and minced plump helmet should be worth not a lot; but custom reactions with different reagents should make better prepared meals. Milo Christiansen wrote a script that allows custom-made prepared meals.

Totally fine with this as long as it doesn't get out of control; having a workshop menu with 50 recipes seems cumbersome, though I suppose the 'white'/available ones do move up to the top.
It's easy since 40.24 because of the new GET_ITEM_DATA stuff... I have a single reaction for my archeology system that accepts 60 different reagents (1 is enough to run the reaction, out of 60 possible ones), and spits out up to 60 different products.

Increase gnawing/food-consumption of vermin.

As in adding the [VERMIN_ROTTER] and [VERMIN_EATER] tags to more vermin? I don't see a way to increase their rate of hunger otherwise.
They do have a tag for GNAWING, which enables them to access food in containers.

Increase the amount of CURIOUS_EATER and CURIOUS_GUZZLER animals, or add a creature variant of the type. Some mischivious creatures that path into your fort to drink and eat your food would make it more difficult to sustain foods.

I was also curious about what behavior makes a Gremlin try to path into your fort and the pause-focus event happen. Is that the [MISCHIEVOUS] tag? I was under the impression that CURIOUS_EATER/GUZZLER will only nab it if they happen to see it, rather than path right for it. Can you elucidate that?
Yes, it's mischivious. The others do path if they see it... or know about it. AI is weird.

There was also a very, very nice approach I saw in the forums of making some foods spoil, even if they are in stockpiles. For example meat had HEAT_DAM of X and a FIXED_TEMP of X+n, resulting in meat-items slowly taking damage, until they destroy themselves. The mod (or mod idea) then added a reaction to prepare meat, either by salting it, smoking it, cooking it, etc, which needs one workstep and extra reagents like coke, salt, etc. to change the material from MEAT to PREPARED_MEAT, which does not have the slow damage.

I liked that idea a lot and will take it up in future.

That is rather cool. How does that script compare with omniclasm's, which inflicts gradual wear on food items until they fully detiorate? Or was that script never finished?
No script. It's all done with RAWs.

Booze could be reduced to 2.5, instead of 5, or you can delete the original reaction and add more complex booze-making, that requires equipment like a metal cauldron and metal pipes for the still, as well as additional ingredients than just "plant". Plants + sugar + water + fuel = booze; as an example.

I haven't dived in to making your crazy / neat complex custom workshops just yet, but I like the idea.
It would be easy to make, but hard to balance, since people are not used to it.

Non-domestic pets should also have their eggs reduced. Just check the crocodiles, they are crazy.

Also a good point. I presume that won't affect their population numbers, breeding practices and frequency at all? Since that seems to be handled independently via other tags~
Shouldnt affect their worldgen numbers

[qorthos]

What does an alcohol reaction product look like?