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[Maximus]

Those of use who have cooked a lot of prepared meals have noticed that dwarves usually go for plump helmets instead.  Can I ask that they be set to prefer prepared meals to raw ones (unless the raw food is in their "preferences")?

[Mechanoid]

I definitely agree that dwarves should eat prepared meals FIRST, then others, but I think the order could /should go:
1. Favorite food
2. Prepared food, smallest stack; quality choice based on happyness, highest job rank (legendary eats more lavish then novice -- double legendary, more lavish meals) wether or not dwarf is a noble, etc.
3. Unprepared food (Plump helmets)
4. Raw food (Raw fish. Ew.)
5. Bugs from the floor

[ November 15, 2006: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]

[Kjoery]

I prefer it the way it is; sometimes they eat plump helmets, sometimes meals. That way I dont run out of seeds.

[Rondol]

I'd have to say I agree with prepared meals first. I mean, I go through all this trouble to cook up a meal consisting of tallow, syrup and mushrooms, and they go for my meat instead.

[Maximus]

Good point about the seeds, although you can always brew plump helmets to get their seeds.  You have to process all the other plants to be able to eat them and/or recover their seeds anyway.  And some dwarves will like eating raw plump helmets anyway.

[Pod]

If helmets are not set cookable in the z-menu, are they still eaten?

[grendel]

The one problem I'd see with this is that your dwarves would stop eating turtles/lobsters, and so you'd never get shells, which means that a whole lot of fey dwarves would be going insane if you ever decided to make prepared meals in any sizable quantity.

[Pacho]

I'm not completely certain of this, but I think that a prepared meal with lobster or turtle leaves a shell after it's eaten.

I base this on one of my fortresses where the only food I have is prepared, and I still get tons of shells even though all the food is almost instantly prepared.

[oksir]

One reason why I think dwarfs eat unprepared food is that it is much cheaper than prepared food. Even when I don't have that many plump helmets they only cost 1, while meals cost between 10 and 20. So poor dwarfs don't have much choice in the matter.

[Angela Christine]

Cost should be a factor, but only after the dwarven economy starts up.  When all food is free, people should scarf up all the high quality food they can swallow.

quote: I'd have to say I agree with prepared meals first. I mean, I go through all this trouble to cook up a meal consisting of tallow, syrup and mushrooms,  

 

Fried mushrooms in sweet pod sauce, yummy!

[Draxxalon]

quote:Originally posted by Pod:
<STRONG>If helmets are not set cookable in the z-menu, are they still eaten?</STRONG>

Yes.

[Maximus]

You can force the creation of shells by leaving turtles out of a stockpile to let them rot.  This is admittedly complicated: you've got to set up a turtle-only stockpile accepting no barrels which takes from the existing stock of turtles, and furthermore you've got to put it in a room you can lock so dwarves don't put it back after you undesignate the stockpile.

Better idea:   Cooking foods ought to generate the byproducts (bone, shell, seed, etc.) that other food processes/eating raw does.

As for meals being too expensive, I'd say the problem with that is the pittance that haulers get paid.  All "working" dwarves can usually afford a decent lifestyle.

So, one more suggestion: hauling should pay more, ideally relative to how far the hauling distance is.  And they should also gain experience: the idea that a cook can gain a superdwarven physique while a stone hauler remains wimpy doesn't quite work for me.  Hauling "skill" could possibly work like Armor User: it shoudl make carried objects burden the dwarf less.

[qalnor]

I like this idea in general.

On the issue of seeds. There are some valid concerns.

Genuinely running out of seeds is not a real concern, because as mentioned you can (and should regardless) deactivate the cooking of plump helmets.

There is a somewhat valid concern, however, with the temporal supply of seeds vis-à-vis necessary food production especially for early portions of the game.

Upon considering it in depth, I would tend to dismiss this concern and say only that I think it is not very likely to reduce the supply of food.

Why? Because while it is true that the consumption of food places a limit on the production of seeds which may be used for farming, it also increases the efficiency of food use and I think it does so at a greater rate than could be said to account for any decrease resulting from underproduction of turnipseed.

In essence I am having difficulty imaginging any set of circumstances whereby a civilization might actually starve rather than have increased food supply.

There could be some argument made, however, for greater instability in farming jobs which may turn out to be a bit of an annoyance at least in the short run.

[Frugal]

I thought that when turtles were eaten the byproducts were dropped, though.

[Seryntas]

Yes, this is so.  When a dwarf eats a turtle that has been prepared by a fish cleaner, he gets bones and a shell.  We weren't sure whether a dwarf who instead eats a turtle, horse meat, and wolf tallow stew also gets bones and a shell.  Not only that, but if meals are preferred over cleaned fish, the theory is that turtles will be eaten less.