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Author Topic: What is a "decent meal"?  (Read 15463 times)

andrei901

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What is a "decent meal"?
« on: October 10, 2018, 09:23:08 pm »

Literally every single one of my dwarves has the "no decent meals in too long" negative stressor. I have hundreds of masterwork roasts and a legendary dining room. Do the meals have to coincide with the dwarf's preferences? Due to the nature of my current fort design, aboveground farming is...severely impractical.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2018, 09:58:24 pm »

Yeah, it's one of the issues currently with the stress system (along with relationship building, inability to take breaks or see to ones needs properly during breaks and stacking body-part stress). The decent meals is far too exact. I enjoy monkey brains and no other part of a monkey will do. And don't get me started on how wrong gorilla is...
« Last Edit: October 10, 2018, 10:01:23 pm by Shonai_Dweller »
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anewaname

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2018, 10:42:49 pm »

I buy up every bit of food from caravans in hopes of meeting a food preference.
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How did I manage to successfully apply the lessons of The Screwtape Letters to my perceptions of big grocery stores?

PatrikLundell

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2018, 02:47:23 am »

"Decent meal" ceased to refer to the quality of the meal when the current needs system was introduced, and instead refers to meals containing preferred ingredients (where the UI hides the important detail that it's actually only the brain that's of interest). I've seen indications that meal quality may come into play when the meal contains a favored ingredient, but I haven't had it confirmed.

Even if you manage to get hold of monkey brain, there's a significant risk some other bugger who can't get his favorite food will eat it rather than one of the bazillion plump helmets.
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feelotraveller

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2018, 05:41:27 am »

This thread http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=171322.0 should answer your questions (and explain why monkey brains are being talked about).  In short, decent meal thoughts arise when dwarfs eat foods that they have a preference for, quality of meals effects the strength of the thought and preferences for animal parts are not fully reported on the thought and preferences screen.
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mikekchar

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #5 on: October 11, 2018, 08:42:13 am »

Yes, basically as long as a meal includes an ingredient (either favoured food *or* drink), then it will meet the criteria as "decent meal".  If the meal increases in quality, then the qualifier on the thought will change.  The highest is "legendary meal" I think -- I've probably had them all, but I can't remember what they all are (though "sublime" is in there somewhere).  I don't know what difference this qualifier has on stress levels, etc (if anything).

I've been able to satisfy most of my fortress for food preferences (somewhere around 80 percent, anyway).  The trick is to make sure to get drink into your meals because most drinks are easy to produce or acquire.  If you are in an acceptable biome, you can grow a lot of them and there are a lot less of them than the meat.

My general rule is: don't have any food in the fortress that a dwarf doesn't like.  Use the manager to make meals and make 1 every day if you have the ingredients (no more than that).  Put a stockpile of drink of 2 tiles right next to the kitchen and "take" from the main booze stockpile.  Don't have it too far away from the main stockpile.  This will ensure that there is exactly 1 barrel of booze next to the kitchen virtually at all times (and the timing of the making of the meals leaves time to haul a new barrel there).

When making meals dwarfs will semi-randomly select ingredients.  In reality, they will take the closest ingredient from where they are when they need the ingredient.  There is a *very* important rule.  If an ingredient came from a container (any container -- barrel, bag, pot), the dwarf will preferentially choose the next ingredient from the *same* container.  So the rule is: never store ingredients for the kitchen in a container (unfortunately some ingredients like seeds have no choice :-( -- avoid using them if possible).

Make a stockpile for the other ingredients a few tiles farther than the booze stockpile next to the kitchen, but closer than the main booze stockpile.  This means that when a dwarf selects an ingredient, they will pick something randomly (based on how close it is).  The second ingredient they choose will always be the booze because it is next to the kitchen (you can also put other liquids like milk next to the kitchen for the same effect).  After that because the booze is already gone, they will continue to select dry ingredients based on how close they are from the kitchen.

This will ensure that *every single meal* will contain booze (assuming that you don't make a mistake somewhere).  Booze is made from plants and for every plant in the stack you get 5 booze.  That means that usually you have 10-15 booze in your ingredient.  This lets you extend your monkey brains -- if you have 5 monkey brains and 15 rice wine, then you will have 20 monkey brains and rice wine biscuits.  I've been making only simple meals because I *think* it's more efficient -- because each meal will get a different booze extender, but I'm not really sure (I need to think of all of the corner cases).

Dwarfs eat anywhere from 6-10 times a year and will seek out meals that contain ingredients that they like.   In the example above, our monkey brains biscuits will satisfy dwarfs who like monkey brains *and* rice wine.  Assuming you only grew rice because one or more dwarfs like rice wine, then you can satisfy at least 2 dwarfs with these 20 meals.  If you keep enough variety in your fortress, then your 2 (or more) more dwarfs will have plenty of opportunity during the year to partake of those meals.  Even if they eat it only once, they will *still* get good thoughts from remembering eating a legendary meal.

One of the keys is to stagger the production throughout the year.  Cooking a maximum of 1 meal a day helps (which is why I suggest using the manager).  Also you should stagger your growing schedule.  There are 4 seasons.  You should stagger growing so that you grow a quarter of your booze producing veggies/fruit each season -- that way you ensure more variety when you are making meals.  Also, don't over grow!  You probably only need between 1-3 (and likely only 1 or 2) tiles per plant type.  You don't want to get in a situation where you have lots of stacks of a single plant and you end up making the same booze over and over again.  Similarly, when you buy ingredients, only buy as much as you need.  Probably 5 is enough, even if someone eats one or two before you have a chance to cook with it -- because each meal is being extended by the booze.  If you decide to buy a lot, then consider forbidding most of it so that you don't end up with 1000 monkey brains biscuits and only one dwarf that likes monkey brains.

I could go on, but hopefully that inspires people to experiment.  It really isn't so hard, but it requires some knowledge about how dwarfs work with stockpiles.  Also it *requires* that you don't put food for your kitchen in containers!  That bit is the most important, so don' forget :-)
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Fleeting Frames

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #6 on: October 11, 2018, 10:24:52 am »

I considered mentioning that, but OP disbars aboveground farming.

Plus, I've got the impression that temperate-tropical boundary forts aren't highly selected for.

andrei901

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #7 on: October 11, 2018, 10:32:57 pm »

Oof.

Okay. Guess I'm gonna have to figure out some aboveground farming after all, in a fortress where the distance between the surface and the military camp at the entrance to my fort is over 2000 tiles away...

Anyone know why all my dwarves are constantly "picking up equipment"? Are they changing their socks or something?
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anewaname

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #8 on: October 11, 2018, 11:33:55 pm »

...Anyone know why all my dwarves are constantly "picking up equipment"? Are they changing their socks or something?
Any time there is a "better" item assigned to their current uniform (civilian uniform or military), they drop something and go to get the new item. So socks, and other stuff.
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How did I manage to successfully apply the lessons of The Screwtape Letters to my perceptions of big grocery stores?

PatrikLundell

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #9 on: October 12, 2018, 03:10:15 am »

And this "new equipment" ripples down the ranks, so if the top soldier replaces his weapon for a better one, his old weapon may be better than what the second dorf had, so the second dorf drops his weapon to pick up the first one's weapon. The third one suddenly finds a better weapon (dropped by the second one)... Thus, production of a single new item can potentially result in 10 replacements.
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andrei901

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #10 on: October 12, 2018, 10:27:52 pm »

And this "new equipment" ripples down the ranks, so if the top soldier replaces his weapon for a better one, his old weapon may be better than what the second dorf had, so the second dorf drops his weapon to pick up the first one's weapon. The third one suddenly finds a better weapon (dropped by the second one)... Thus, production of a single new item can potentially result in 10 replacements.

Ah. Yep, I'd just made three new ☼Steel Battle Axe☼ in the last batch. My squads were probably upgrading. At least 3-4 of them are still attached to some -copper battle axe- I threw together in the first year, though...
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em312s0n

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #11 on: October 28, 2018, 08:47:23 pm »

I found a amazingly useful feature of dfhack just a few moments ago that actually helps a lot. press alt + a. while querying the workshop then indicate what materials to use.
Although with fish you can't specify which fish to cook but as far as I can tell that's the only one that you cant.
For fish search under globs and then choose the part of the fish or under meat then choose the kind of fish meat you want cooked

anways screenshots:

assorted stockpile looks like this:


set preferences


and then...



Dfhack thread on how to use said feature as well as other useful things dfhack does
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=142622.0


hope this helps somebody
« Last Edit: October 28, 2018, 09:12:01 pm by em312s0n »
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Wannabehero

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #12 on: October 30, 2018, 10:16:05 am »

I found a amazingly useful feature of dfhack just a few moments ago...

Thank you for posting that em312s0n. Micromanagment of stockpiles to control ingredients is a very tedious way to try and cope with some of DF's quirks.
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em312s0n

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #13 on: October 30, 2018, 05:31:30 pm »

Micromanagment of stockpiles to control ingredients is a very tedious way to try and cope with some of DF's quirks.

Agreed. You also may want to use this script by PatrikLundell that tells you what the preferences are of your dwarves in your fort


This DFHack Lua script lists them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
[/quote]
Here's a somewhat improved version that sorts the entries and removes duplicates (which resulted because the original script just added preferences as they were encountered, without checking of another dorf had the same one).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

EDIT: Oh and if you see something that refers to "animal pancreatic tissue" or "animal stomach". It is refering to sweetbread and tripe respectively
« Last Edit: October 30, 2018, 05:37:45 pm by em312s0n »
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Saiko Kila

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Re: What is a "decent meal"?
« Reply #14 on: October 31, 2018, 03:31:19 am »

Number of possible different roasts that carry only preferred food (or drink in 2nd, 3rd or 4th spot) in my fortress:
3661038000 (that's 3661 millions).


I think the best approach is to identify the biggest whiners, and try to make their preferred alcohol (or solid food, if more common) a part of the meal, and just forget the rest. And maybe nag Toady from time to time so he makes the "decent meal" requirements a bit more sensible.


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