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Author Topic: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)  (Read 32997 times)

Zrk2

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #90 on: November 06, 2010, 07:43:16 pm »

I think a simple answer to this would be to redesign how the "cook" labour works. Before the economy you could just build a "restaurant" and a cook could owrk at it and make a meal for anyone who comes to get one. After the economy comes in the restaurant could be owned by someone else and it would cost quite a bit to buy a meal. But to counteract this you could also have "food stalls" which are just like the normal shops only you could buy raw food there and then eat it in the dining hall.
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Nilsou

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #91 on: August 01, 2017, 08:58:45 am »

Hi,
Just want to up this old suggestion as i was writing exactly the same thing before i try searching for existing suggestion.

I think the first post is a good point for begenning a change in the food system. Also i want to add that Farming field should be entirely redone to ensure a good difficulty level and plausibility.
In real life you have to have a good layer of organic before being able to plant something. As DF now manage the fall of flowers/leaf it could be easy to extend this system to manage the appearance or "disapearance" of  loam tiles. By disapearance i mean transformation into sterile tile of course, not making void :p .

Of course, a part of this system exist with the implementation of the necessity of bringing mud on floor when you want to create subterran farm. But mud stick on floor infinitly even if your plantation, in real life, will not be able to recreate enough organic layer to save you for bringing new mud. This is notably the case in mushroom culture in underground carry in real life (there are a lot around my place, so i am very familiar with this topic ^^ )

One other thing is the yield of farm in the game, which is far too much important considering thec flow of time in dwarf and the dwarf eating. Here, few tile can bring enough food in your fortress to feed a lot of dwarf...
Maybe it could be "solved" simply by upgrading the quantity dwarf have to eat each time (and not the frequency) to a better/bigger number...

Well, just some idea for improving this suggestion ;)

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NW_Kohaku

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #92 on: August 02, 2017, 12:05:34 am »

Wow, this thread brings me back...

Hi,
Just want to up this old suggestion as i was writing exactly the same thing before i try searching for existing suggestion.

I think the first post is a good point for begenning a change in the food system. Also i want to add that Farming field should be entirely redone to ensure a good difficulty level and plausibility.
In real life you have to have a good layer of organic before being able to plant something. As DF now manage the fall of flowers/leaf it could be easy to extend this system to manage the appearance or "disapearance" of  loam tiles. By disapearance i mean transformation into sterile tile of course, not making void :p .

Of course, a part of this system exist with the implementation of the necessity of bringing mud on floor when you want to create subterran farm. But mud stick on floor infinitly even if your plantation, in real life, will not be able to recreate enough organic layer to save you for bringing new mud. This is notably the case in mushroom culture in underground carry in real life (there are a lot around my place, so i am very familiar with this topic ^^ )

One other thing is the yield of farm in the game, which is far too much important considering thec flow of time in dwarf and the dwarf eating. Here, few tile can bring enough food in your fortress to feed a lot of dwarf...
Maybe it could be "solved" simply by upgrading the quantity dwarf have to eat each time (and not the frequency) to a better/bigger number...

Well, just some idea for improving this suggestion ;)

Speaking of keeping older threads alive, have you seen The Improved Farming Rebooted Thread?  It's a rather exhaustive look at exactly the problem you mention, brought about as the fruit of a tremendous amount of discussion on the subject.
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Nilsou

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #93 on: August 02, 2017, 09:16:55 am »

Didn't seen it but i think the regulation of Hunger should be the priority because why making a better, complex farming if your fortress cas survivre with picking two random stack of fruit every month or with crappy farm field, even with a complex faming system, the badest farming field should be sufficient to feed dwarf with the current food consumtion of dwarves.

So it could be a better option to
First : making Dwarves food consumption more credible.
Second : Complexify the farming system to more real life like.

I really think the two have to come together to be usefull.
However, it could be really complex to modelize, even roughly, interaction that lead to degradation or not degradation of organic matters to good soil...
Maybe it could be done by simply suppose that leaf (and other things) degradation are faster on good soil and very very slow on bad soil, that it depends on presence of water or not.

But the major problem in this point of agriculture (and forestry) is that DF lack of a good simulation of "layers" that are smaller than one tiles. You have the water system, that subdivise tiles in seven, but it does the work poorly and have a problem of lisibility if it comes to superpose differents layers on tiles. Of course, a temporary solution is the one used by toady for the new tree system : use the tile system to represent layers, even if you change scale a little in comparaison to the dwarf fortress past. But if it works with big tress, large root system and one or two layer of "good soil", it may fail poorly to represent superposition of two or three small layers that have NOT the height of a "wall" :p

I don't imagine a good solution to the problem, even an ad-hoc one, without a more subtle gestion of subdivision in tiles. (note that this pack with other problem like representation of big or high creatures etc..)...

So well, i think all of this come to another suggestion that have to come first :p
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #94 on: August 02, 2017, 04:12:54 pm »

Didn't seen it but i think the regulation of Hunger should be the priority because why making a better, complex farming if your fortress cas survivre with picking two random stack of fruit every month or with crappy farm field, even with a complex faming system, the badest farming field should be sufficient to feed dwarf with the current food consumtion of dwarves.

So it could be a better option to
First : making Dwarves food consumption more credible.
Second : Complexify the farming system to more real life like.

I really think the two have to come together to be usefull.
However, it could be really complex to modelize, even roughly, interaction that lead to degradation or not degradation of organic matters to good soil...
Maybe it could be done by simply suppose that leaf (and other things) degradation are faster on good soil and very very slow on bad soil, that it depends on presence of water or not.

But the major problem in this point of agriculture (and forestry) is that DF lack of a good simulation of "layers" that are smaller than one tiles. You have the water system, that subdivise tiles in seven, but it does the work poorly and have a problem of lisibility if it comes to superpose differents layers on tiles. Of course, a temporary solution is the one used by toady for the new tree system : use the tile system to represent layers, even if you change scale a little in comparaison to the dwarf fortress past. But if it works with big tress, large root system and one or two layer of "good soil", it may fail poorly to represent superposition of two or three small layers that have NOT the height of a "wall" :p

I don't imagine a good solution to the problem, even an ad-hoc one, without a more subtle gestion of subdivision in tiles. (note that this pack with other problem like representation of big or high creatures etc..)...

So well, i think all of this come to another suggestion that have to come first :p

With regards to the soil qualities in the Improved Farming suggestion, I basically suggest treating the topsoil as a sort of contaminant, not terribly unlike the way that grass is treated, currently.  It's not actually a part of the soil "wall" tile making up the ground, it's an item sitting on the "floor" tile above the "wall" of soil. 

This actually makes a fair deal of sense, as even loamy soil isn't what plants really need to survive, but the carbon-rich topsoil, which even in rich farming land is only an inch or two deep, so it wouldn't make sense to keep it a tile or even a fraction of one.  Topsoil depth is one of the major variables for the NPK+ system I back in that thread, so it needs to be maintained to keep most plants growing.  (Barring "ground cover" plants that specifically live in barren soil and repair it, of course...)

And beyond that, yes, both factors need to be covered.  So far as food goes, the game is ludicrously unbalanced, since you can easily bring a mating pair of geese with you to embark, and feed your entire fortress entirely on eggs for the rest of the game without ever touching the farming mechanics.  Cows need large pastures to be fed and need manual milking to produce milk, but you can easily ranch large predators that need no food and produce far more meat. 

Toady has simply been working in a piecemeal way, introducing systems that will all eventually add up to something that makes sense and works, but because only half the features are there, it creates an odd and disjointed system, at least in the moment, but it's not like it's wrong try working towards it one piece at a time.
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Nilsou

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #95 on: August 02, 2017, 04:53:59 pm »

I'm pretty OK with your point, the default with using the contaminant system is that it prevent you for have "leaf that recover leaf" whcih is fairly important to degrade organic matters. But it could be possible by tuning the degradation law if you have access to the age of leaf (state of degradation) so it's fine, finally ^^.

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Nilsou

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #96 on: August 02, 2017, 04:59:40 pm »

For the Toady organisation of work, you're true. Personally i have nothing to blame as i work in the same way. But it could lead to infinite problem popping if you create "perfect sub-system" that is finally perfect in its branch but that just not fit at all because it fit bad with others branch. It's like making a gigantic tower in lego with platinium pieces designed all in once with no plan, no little model etc...
With infinite amount of time you eventually succeed,  but you lose a looooot of pieces designed with love for YEARS in the process, when you have to throw "defectuous idea" just because you forget a little thing that make the piece obsolete.

It's the problem with this approach...

But as i said, i have the same, sooooo :p
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Tristan Alkai

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #97 on: August 02, 2017, 10:37:42 pm »

While the thread is near the top, I have been looking at the problem from a slightly lower level. 

Jiri Petrew has covered the economics and specialization of cooking well enough that I do not feel the need to add much, beyond my own personal preference for the “communal cooking” mess hall option (although that might have something to do with the fact that, under the current interface, it is really the only workable one).  I will focus instead on recipes and reactions: more details on the many possible methods of preservation that would probably be available at the tech level of Dwarf Fortress, and more detailed descriptions of the individual prepared meals, along with how to implement the reactions to make all of them.  This will be a long one, so I will use spoiler tags to condense it into manageable sections. 

Further reading: Cooking techniques other than “mincing” and A Gastronomic Adventure Into DF

Many preservation techniques call for fermentation, which is much closer to real life with the option of long term unattended reactions

To start off, I will review the methods of preserving food, gathering as many as possible into one place for later reference. 

Food Types
To avoid confusion, here is a list of food types, to clarify terms used in subsequent sections. 

Plants cluster:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Meat cluster:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Preservation methods
There are a lot of different options for preserving food.  Each option works better on some food types than others. 

0. Whole livestock: “Keep the animal alive, so its own immune system keeps the meat fresh, and butcher it just before eating.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cooling Series
Most food items spoil more quickly while warm.  Therefore, storing food in a place that is reliably less warm will make it last longer. 
> The game apparently does track temperature and heat flow, but it does not display this information to the player.  Proper implementation of cooling as a preservation method will require this information to be displayed, so cold rooms can be positioned and designed correctly. 

1. Root cellars: “Store food away from the heat of the day.  With a bit more work, it can even be kept away from the heat of the summer.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

2. Ice box: “Store the food in a box with ice at the top, which will keep it colder.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

3. Evaporative refrigerator: “Humans sweat to cool off, and a porous container can leak to similar effect.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Drying Series
As a rule, dried goods are both lighter and smaller than they were moist.  The catch is that moist food can provide a substantial amount of water in the overall diet, and if food is consumed dry then the removed water will need to be drunk directly.  In other words, eating dry food seems likely to increase thirst. 
> The math also works if eating moist food reduces thirst, while dry food does not, but making dry food increase thirst should reduce walking by prompting a need to drink shortly after eating; normal design will helpfully put drinks near the usual eating spots. 
> Drying is an IMPROVEMENT reaction that significantly changes the properties of the improved item.  Both the base item being improved and the exact improving reagent are significant, and should be tracked in the finished product.  Compare dye and glaze, which also display both of these behaviors. 

4. Sun drying: “Simply leave the food exposed to sun and wind to allow the moisture to be carried off.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

5. Smoking: “Dry the food over a fire.  The coating of smoke helps too.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

6. Salt curing: “Add salt to draw water out of the food by osmosis.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

7. Sugar curing: “Add sugar to draw water out of the food by osmosis.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Pickling Series
Food is stored under a “pickling liquid,” which slows or prevents spoiling and often provides an environment for the food to ferment somewhat, changing its flavor and texture.  All pickled products will need to be stored in water-tight containers. 
> The pickling series was items 8-14.  I ran out of space in this post (limit 40,000 characters), and decided that the pickling series should be kept together. 
> Several pickling liquids are possible, and each works best with a certain range of foods.  I identified seven segments, and ten reactions.  Details in a future post. 

Others

15. Potted meat: Meat is cooked (boiled or similar), then a layer of molten fat is poured over it.  The fat is a type that is solid at room temperature, and after it hardens it forms an airtight barrier. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

16. Sausage: Animal intestine is used as a casing for other food items.  I assume that the standard sausage of DF will be cooked and smoked before storing, and thus have a relatively long shelf life. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: August 04, 2017, 03:09:46 pm by Tristan Alkai »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #98 on: August 03, 2017, 01:13:21 am »

Jiri Petrew has covered the economics and specialization of cooking well enough that I do not feel the need to add much, beyond my own personal preference for the “communal cooking” mess hall option (although that might have something to do with the fact that, under the current interface, it is really the only workable one).   

Additionally, the introduction of taverns really pushes the idea of communal dining forwards.  It makes far more sense to have a few cauldrons of stew, (mystery) meat pies, and kegs of various fermented things on tap in a big legendary mead dining hall, especially now that we have taverns and all the associated entertainment options they present implemented.

2. Ice box: “Store the food in a box with ice at the top, which will keep it colder.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Keep in mind, the nethercap is a perfectly-efficient, zero-maintenance, wholly renewable green (anti-)energy source.  Nethercap wood (even after processing) keeps everything nearby at ice-cold levels. (Literally 0 centigrade) It wouldn't be hard to mitigate the effect of a nethercap wood "freezer" by driving it as a stake into the ground to take advantage of the massive heat-absorbing capacity of layer stone, and as such raise the temperature of things you don't want actually frozen to mere "cold" levels like 5 centigrade.  Even in giant refrigeration rooms, just having a few planks of nethercap wood lying around in a big, reasonably sealed room is all it takes to keep the whole cavern at near-freezing.

The mere existence of nethercap makes any more complicated system like this ice water system you describe a lot of coding for an already-obsolete system. Nethercaps appear in infinite supply in any game that has access to caverns (at least 2 of them unless you mod nethercaps to be shallower).  There's really little reason to bother coding what it takes to make more complex systems when nethercaps are so obviously superior to any other solution, and will always be available to any player who digs deep enough (just like magma).
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Nilsou

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #99 on: August 03, 2017, 02:50:42 am »

For eggs, you can note that preservations technik exist, there are just not common in "west". For example in Asia, eggs are buried to let fermentation process do their trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg

Note that all the ingredient are available in the early game and that it seems to be "easy" to implement.

In the same way, for plants you have only cite west common technik, Japan conserve a lot of leaf/floyer type in salt. Which work well.

We can also notice that dwarves have, in fact, technique to make glass can. (they master in glass making and metals so...)

In the same way, Fish can be conserve like "Garrum" (Roman like) or Nioc Mam (same thing, asia like) sauce. Which is the more common method to conserve fish.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2017, 02:56:02 am by Nilsou »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #100 on: August 03, 2017, 01:24:05 pm »

1. Root cellars: “Store food away from the heat of the day.  With a bit more work, it can even be kept away from the heat of the summer.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh, and I might as well mention this as well...

At least in the current game, all tiles marked "underground" have the same temperature.  (IIRC, 7 centigrade.) It doesn't matter if you're 10 feet below the surface of arctic tundra or blasted desert, much less daily fluctuations of temperature, it's the same hard-coded temperature unless it's near magma or nethercap or something else that forces temperature changes.  You can replace the idea of a "root cellar" with literally any underground storage area (which would, by extension, be any storage area not created by people explicitly doing aboveground "challenge" fortresses).

If you would want something different, it would take explicitly asking for a change in the game's mechanics.  (Likewise, using nethercap wood to keep things cool only keeps things in the same tile at 0 centigrade, and that has no impact on the temperature even a single tile away.)
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"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
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Tristan Alkai

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #101 on: August 03, 2017, 02:29:17 pm »

Okay then, replies and more details. 

For eggs, you can note that preservations technik exist, there are just not common in "west". For example in Asia, eggs are buried to let fermentation process do their trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg

Note that all the ingredients are available in the early game and that it seems to be "easy" to implement.

In the same way, for plants you have only cite west common technik, Japan conserve a lot of leaf/floyer type in salt. Which work well.

We can also notice that dwarves have, in fact, technique to make glass can. (they master in glass making and metals so...)

In the same way, Fish can be conserve like "Garrum" (Roman like) or Nioc Mam (same thing, asia like) sauce. Which is the more common method to conserve fish.

A lot of this was in the pickling section that got cut for space.  I did try to draw attention to its absence. 
Pickling Series
(...)
The pickling series was items 8-14
This line was bold for a reason!  On the other hand, I do admit to focusing mostly on the techniques I am familiar with, which means western Europe. 

My notes also include a dairy products section, but I knew it wouldn’t fit even before I had to cut the pickling section. 

2. Ice box: “Store the food in a box with ice at the top, which will keep it colder.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Keep in mind, the nethercap is a perfectly-efficient, zero-maintenance, wholly renewable green (anti-)energy source.  Nethercap wood (even after processing) keeps everything nearby at ice-cold levels. (Literally 0 centigrade) It wouldn't be hard to mitigate the effect of a nethercap wood "freezer" by driving it as a stake into the ground to take advantage of the massive heat-absorbing capacity of layer stone, and as such raise the temperature of things you don't want actually frozen to mere "cold" levels like 5 centigrade.  Even in giant refrigeration rooms, just having a few planks of nethercap wood lying around in a big, reasonably sealed room is all it takes to keep the whole cavern at near-freezing.

The mere existence of nethercap makes any more complicated system like this ice water system you describe a lot of coding for an already-obsolete system. Nethercaps appear in infinite supply in any game that has access to caverns (at least 2 of them unless you mod nethercaps to be shallower).  There's really little reason to bother coding what it takes to make more complex systems when nethercaps are so obviously superior to any other solution, and will always be available to any player who digs deep enough (just like magma).

Two replies here:

1. Inferior =/= Obsolete: In worldgen, even most dwarves don’t dig deep enough to get nether-cap (which is why it doesn’t show up in caravan inventory or the embark screen), let alone humans.  Even if the nether-cap version is obviously superior for fortress mode, the ice version should still be relevant to the cities that an adventurer wanders through.  On a related note, people in the world would know about snow and ice, but I don’t see how they could know about nether-cap, so why would they think to dig for it? 

2. Secondary freezing and melting effects: With heat of fusion properly modeled, ponds and rivers will freeze slowly and from the top, not instantaneously and all the way through.  This means that frozen murky pools are no longer impromptu drowning traps, and avoids the adventure mode YASD of swimming to boost stats when the pool freezes without warning.  The icebox can wait; I want realistic slow freezing and thawing so temperate climates are safe.  Thinner ice also allows tricks like ice fishing.  With fishermen tracking the ice, even thin ice does not present nearly as much drowning hazard as instant complete melting does now. 

1. Root cellars: “Store food away from the heat of the day.  With a bit more work, it can even be kept away from the heat of the summer.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh, and I might as well mention this as well...

At least in the current game, all tiles marked "underground" have the same temperature.  (IIRC, 7 centigrade.) It doesn't matter if you're 10 feet below the surface of arctic tundra or blasted desert, much less daily fluctuations of temperature, it's the same hard-coded temperature unless it's near magma or nethercap or something else that forces temperature changes.  You can replace the idea of a "root cellar" with literally any underground storage area (which would, by extension, be any storage area not created by people explicitly doing aboveground "challenge" fortresses).

If you would want something different, it would take explicitly asking for a change in the game's mechanics.  (Likewise, using nethercap wood to keep things cool only keeps things in the same tile at 0 centigrade, and that has no impact on the temperature even a single tile away.)

Huh.  So that's why digging down to magma is such a massive undertaking on Earth but routine in DF. 

I can wait for a change in that mechanic.  Heat transfer is still tracked somewhere, so modifying the interface to display it in Look{k} mode should be a quick tweak.  Since most of the underground is a single fixed temperature, exceptions are always significant.  Meanwhile, allowing us to directly see the temperature outside is the start of a weather-based civilian alert (too hot or too cold for people to live long). 

With those comments made, on to the pickling series:

Pickling Series
Food is stored under a “pickling liquid,” which slows or prevents spoiling and often provides an environment for the food to ferment somewhat, changing its flavor and texture.  All pickled products will need to be stored in water-tight containers. 
> Like drying, pickling is an IMPROVEMENT reaction that needs to track both the improved item and the reagent used to improve it. 
> In biochemical terms (which is not the same as programming terms), pickling processes largely collapse into two broad categories: in “chemical pickling,” the active ingredient directly inhibits problematic microbes (possibly assisted by boiling and airtight containers).  In fermentation pickling, the pickling liquid fosters microbes which leave the food in an edible state after they are done processing it. 
> Pickling involves several distinct chemical processes, and there might need to be a list of REACTION_CLASS tokens to reflect this (both the processes that work well for this food item and the process that this liquid can provide).  Each reaction token (except lye and maybe brine) has several options that should qualify.  This hierarchy also applies to smoking and sugar curing, and possibly to salt curing as well (sea salt and rock salt in that case). 
> Some processes produce a slurry or paste (jam and soy sauce, for example), but if the food remains relatively intact, so it can be removed from the container separately from the pickling liquid, it may be possible to re-use the pickling liquid.  Sometimes this will require removing surplus water. 
> Many pickling recipes also call for secondary spices or herbs as supplemental preservatives, or simply for flavor.  Examples include ginger, garlic, cloves, and cinnamon (cucumbers are frequently pickled with brine as the main agent and dill as an additional spice). 
> Some pickle recipes also call for more than one type of food (counted separately from spices) to ferment in the same container, so pickle recipes can approach the complexity of some stews. 
> In general, most pickling reactions probably shouldn’t take much skill; exceptions will be mentioned as they come up.  Adding secondary spices and preservatives may pull in Cooking skill. 

8. Jam: “Fruit is preserved by sugar (or syrup) and partial drying.” 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

9. Brine: Similar to salt curing, brine pickling draws water out of the food and any microbes that might rot it. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

10. Syrup: Syrup pickling draws water out of the food and any microbes that might rot it, similar to salt curing, sugar curing, and brine pickling. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

11. Alcohol: Alcohol is toxic to most microbes. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

12. Vinegar: Vinegar is not implemented in the game yet, but in practical terms should be fairly easy to produce, both at the intended technology level and within the game’s code. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

13. Lye: While the use of lye to preserve food is not common, it does work: the high pH inhibits microbes, similar to the low pH given by vinegar. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

14. Vegetable Oil: Certain oils do have anti-microbe properties (olive oil was mentioned in particular), and most exclude oxygen from the food to be preserved more effectively than a water-based solution would. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Summary: There are at least six pickling liquids, and at least 10 relevant reactions. 
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #102 on: August 03, 2017, 03:25:50 pm »

Two replies here:

1. Inferior =/= Obsolete: In worldgen, even most dwarves don’t dig deep enough to get nether-cap (which is why it doesn’t show up in caravan inventory or the embark screen), let alone humans.  Even if the nether-cap version is obviously superior for fortress mode, the ice version should still be relevant to the cities that an adventurer wanders through.  On a related note, people in the world would know about snow and ice, but I don’t see how they could know about nether-cap, so why would they think to dig for it? 

2. Secondary freezing and melting effects: With heat of fusion properly modeled, ponds and rivers will freeze slowly and from the top, not instantaneously and all the way through.  This means that frozen murky pools are no longer impromptu drowning traps, and avoids the adventure mode YASD of swimming to boost stats when the pool freezes without warning.  The icebox can wait; I want realistic slow freezing and thawing so temperate climates are safe.  Thinner ice also allows tricks like ice fishing.  With fishermen tracking the ice, even thin ice does not present nearly as much drowning hazard as instant complete melting does now. 

It's one thing to propose slower freezing mechanics (which I'm sure Toady wants to get around to, anyway), as a mechanism for realism and not having a YASD because the temperature magically freezes your adventurer in carbonite ice, but it's another to propose a complex system of deliberate creation of a building that requires the AI to understand melting and keep replenishing ice to meet its preservation needs, but which would almost never actually be done by players because it's instantly obsolete.

Yes, worldgen characters don't have access to nethercaps, but for that argument to matter, you have to be saying that worldgen humans DO create freezer lockers out of mined-out lake ice transported by caravan to their desert cities... and that's kind of a tall ask, especially since this kind of thing is beyond the tech cutoff date. 

It's not like freezing preservation methods are necessary, as you have already listed a rather exhaustive list of alternatives.  Freezing exists mainly for preserving meats (that you didn't butcher then eat right away instead of shipping the full animal, as you already said they should do) or fruits (that you can also preserve by making into jam). 

If the mechanics by which making something like a freezer room become possible through more advanced thermodynamic mechanics somewhere further down the road, that would be fine as emergent gameplay behavior that exist within the player's realm of normal behavior, but much like pump stacks and Boatmurdering, it's not something that you should expect worldgen to do. 

At best, all you should be asking for is a heat variable for rotting, which would be a much simpler way for the root cellar mechanic and the nethercap freezer mechanic to be implemented.  It could hypothetically allow for that same ice room freezer, as well, once melting isn't instantaneous. 

Generally, I think it would be best to start thinking in terms of actual player interaction with these things, and the actual mechanics they demand.  A giant list of possible preservation methods is nice, but you just need to work out what, exactly, a player is doing with all these things.  If we have a smoking house for making dried meats with a little salt and some fire, why not just make jam the same thing with a container and some extra sugar, so that it's done using the same mechanics and workshop, and not utterly overwhelm the player with 800 new food workshops, for example.  Many of these list members could basically be streamlined into a just different names placed upon the same mechanics with differing reagents.  (Making food processing jobs that just mean fish takes salt to preserve, fruit takes sugar (made from processed sweet pods or sugar cane or sugar beets) and a container and heat to preserve, pickling takes a vegetable (or egg or other picklable) and a container and vinegar to preserve...)
« Last Edit: August 03, 2017, 06:18:22 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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StagnantSoul

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #103 on: August 04, 2017, 12:23:41 am »

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Tristan Alkai

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Re: More reasonable food system (aka Down with prepared meals!)
« Reply #104 on: August 04, 2017, 04:02:05 pm »

Two replies here:

1. Inferior =/= Obsolete: In worldgen, even most dwarves don’t dig deep enough to get nether-cap (which is why it doesn’t show up in caravan inventory or the embark screen), let alone humans.  Even if the nether-cap version is obviously superior for fortress mode, the ice version should still be relevant to the cities that an adventurer wanders through.  On a related note, people in the world would know about snow and ice, but I don’t see how they could know about nether-cap, so why would they think to dig for it? 

2. Secondary freezing and melting effects: With heat of fusion properly modeled, ponds and rivers will freeze slowly and from the top, not instantaneously and all the way through.  This means that frozen murky pools are no longer impromptu drowning traps, and avoids the adventure mode YASD of swimming to boost stats when the pool freezes without warning.  The icebox can wait; I want realistic slow freezing and thawing so temperate climates are safe.  Thinner ice also allows tricks like ice fishing.  With fishermen tracking the ice, even thin ice does not present nearly as much drowning hazard as instant complete melting does now. 

It's one thing to propose slower freezing mechanics (which I'm sure Toady wants to get around to, anyway), as a mechanism for realism and not having a YASD because the temperature magically freezes your adventurer in carbonite ice, but it's another to propose a complex system of deliberate creation of a building that requires the AI to understand melting and keep replenishing ice to meet its preservation needs, but which would almost never actually be done by players because it's instantly obsolete.

Yes, worldgen characters don't have access to nethercaps, but for that argument to matter, you have to be saying that worldgen humans DO create freezer lockers out of mined-out lake ice transported by caravan to their desert cities... and that's kind of a tall ask, especially since this kind of thing is beyond the tech cutoff date. 

It's not like freezing preservation methods are necessary, as you have already listed a rather exhaustive list of alternatives.  Freezing exists mainly for preserving meats (that you didn't butcher then eat right away instead of shipping the full animal, as you already said they should do) or fruits (that you can also preserve by making into jam). 

If the mechanics by which making something like a freezer room become possible through more advanced thermodynamic mechanics somewhere further down the road, that would be fine as emergent gameplay behavior that exist within the player's realm of normal behavior, but much like pump stacks and Boatmurdering, it's not something that you should expect worldgen to do. 

At best, all you should be asking for is a heat variable for rotting, which would be a much simpler way for the root cellar mechanic and the nethercap freezer mechanic to be implemented.  It could hypothetically allow for that same ice room freezer, as well, once melting isn't instantaneous. 

Generally, I think it would be best to start thinking in terms of actual player interaction with these things, and the actual mechanics they demand.  A giant list of possible preservation methods is nice, but you just need to work out what, exactly, a player is doing with all these things.  If we have a smoking house for making dried meats with a little salt and some fire, why not just make jam the same thing with a container and some extra sugar, so that it's done using the same mechanics and workshop, and not utterly overwhelm the player with 800 new food workshops, for example.  Many of these list members could basically be streamlined into a just different names placed upon the same mechanics with differing reagents.  (Making food processing jobs that just mean fish takes salt to preserve, fruit takes sugar (made from processed sweet pods or sugar cane or sugar beets) and a container and heat to preserve, pickling takes a vegetable (or egg or other picklable) and a container and vinegar to preserve...)

1. Instantly obsolete: I have to disagree with the “would never be done by players” part.  I know I don’t speak for everyone, but I routinely take a game year or more to build infrastructure and defenses before I even start looking for the first cavern, let alone breach the third. 
> Nether-cap only makes ice obsolete after it becomes available, and that takes a specific and deliberate effort.  I originally pulled in NPCs in adventure mode for this, but I will concede the point of adventurers not interacting enough with the building to make it worthwhile.  That just leaves my own habits, and my assumption that I am not alone. 
> I personally am not part of the group that would think “nether-cap is an exploit, but ice is acceptable,” but I assume there is one. 
> I do yield the point about pickling making ice redundant. 

2. Hauling ice: The icehouse does not always require hauling ice long distances.  If the site gets snow during the winter, it can be gathered locally, hopefully enough of it so some will last trough the summer.  Unfortunately, that part will require re-working how the “clean” function works.  Lake and river ice can be implemented faster, preferably with a check to make sure mined ice drops a boulder from every mined wall (partial thickness of ice over water may need to be taken into account). 
> This was why I specifically mentioned that the icehouse does not require a desert climate to work (evaporative refrigerator, part C).  Evaporative cooling helps, but the important part of that design is using the melted water for counter-current heat exchange with incoming air. 

3. A tall task: Hauling ice is a challenge, but an aqueduct is not much easier, and lots of RL civilizations built those. 
> The qanat variant is even harder than the regular aqueduct, but sometimes they were still the most practical way to move water to cities. 
> Water is a major cause of erosion in natural environments, so aqueducts will also require periodic inspection and maintenance.  Qanats often suffered from sediment deposition. 
> The relevant point is not tech, but how big a resource and labor base the engineer has available.  Hauling ice just requires good roads (or good sleds) for fast travel, and not too many stops along the way. 

In other news, the wagon is listed as having a “trade capacity” of 15,000.  This appears to be in kilograms, so one wagon can hold several tons.  Setting aside 1,000 units for insulation, the remaining 14,000 units of ice will take quite some time to melt (at least several days, possibly weeks).  Running at adventure mode speeds, the wagon should be able to cover several world tiles without losing too much ice to melting. 
> Depending on what else the caravan is doing, another option is carrying two wagons of ice, travel until both are half-full, and combine the two 7,000 loads into a single 14,000 load.  Loop as necessary. 

4. Player interactions: I did try to cover this in the pickling section and the cooling section.  I have edited the drying section to add similar notes. 
> I never expected a large number of new workshops.  Most of the work would happen at the existing Butcher shop, Fishery, Kitchen, and Farmer’s shop, and maybe some help from the Still.  The only part that really requires a new building is sun drying.  Smoking is a maybe. 
(Edit)> There would not be a large number of existing reactions, either.  It would be along the lines of
> There would not be a large number of new reactions, either.  There would be some, but they would be along the lines of the existing broad wildcard reactions: “smoke meat,” for example, does not need to be more detailed than the current “brew plant,” “brew fruit,” and “mill plants” reactions.  Even pickling is not much worse than glazing: there is an item to be glazed (or pickled), an item that becomes the glaze (or the pickling liquid), and fuel (pickling requires a water-tight container).  More complicated pickling recipes (adding spices) are entirely optional, and only players that care about it need to bother. 
> I estimate about a dozen new reactions (give or take a factor of two, depending on what gets lumped, what gets split, and which ideas don’t get implemented), spread across several different workshops.  That number is large by the standards of current food processing, but the Carpenter and Mason shops both have long lists of items they can make, let alone the craftsdwarf’s shop and glass furnace.  Interface complications from adding basic food preservation (not worrying about supplemental spices) would be, at worst, about even with current furniture production: there are a few reactions that are self-explanatory, and which almost everyone uses very frequently, plus a much longer list of more exotic options that are called for in certain circumstances. 
> Smoking does not merge with jam because they expect different things from the fire.  Jam uses the heat, and can be done indoors.  Smoking, naturally, produces a lot of smoke, and not all of it sticks to the smoked food; as a result, it is much safer in an isolated smokehouse, or at least outdoors.  (/Edit) I personally keep the butcher shop outside to avoid miasma, and smoke would be dispersed the same way, so a smokehouse is not inherently required. 

5. AI issues: I assume that some shops also deal in imported goods, regularly or exclusively?  Failing that, the economy arc will have to add that sort of functionality at some point.  That should give most of the code to keep the icehouse building supplied. 
> The version where snow is harvested locally during the winter and stored for the summer is even easier for NPC logistics.  The only tricky part is estimating demand (and loss, but compare food losses to rot and vermin) to allow a year supply or more.  Realistic crop growing times (the current times are way too fast) should have similar issues, leaving the unusual harvest time as the only remaining issue.
> Even the version where ice does need to be hauled can borrow to some degree from trade network logic once that is up and running (economy arc). 
> New code would be, at most, logic for workers to leave the map to harvest a specific resource from the wilderness.  There are other uses for such an ability, both in world gen and in fortress mode.  I think I can safely assume that this ability will be in place by the end of the economy arc, whenever that happens. 
> With all of that logic up and running, all that’s left is defining the icehouse and ice closet as buildings that sites can contain.  It is within the cutoff date for technology, although it probably does require a fairly large empire to pull off.  Medieval Europe did not have those, but Rome and Persia qualify. 
« Last Edit: August 11, 2017, 07:55:49 am by Tristan Alkai »
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