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[Chimerat]

First I'll clear one thing up in regard to this question: I only ever cook Roasts, so that's four ingredients per prepared food.

I know that the game somehow determines individual stacks of items and that there can be duplicates of the same item over various stacks (at least if I'm reading and understanding the wiki correctly), but is there a rule to things? For example, do cooks seek to select an ingredient from as many different groups as possible? Is it just a matter of the least travel to go get them?

For example, if I have four types of birds (which I do in my vanilla DF game), I suspect there might be dishes that use all four types of eggs in the same roast, and that's the same of milk and cheese and plants and meats and other possible ingredients I haven't listed, but is there a way to set things up so that your chefs use certain ingredients, or a mix?

I'm mainly asking because I started a "Masterwork" mod game, and the Kobolds require at least one meat in their meals to be able to make use of them. This means that meat (and I believe fish) must take up at least one ingredient slot out of the four used to make a Roast. They can harvest wild plants and grow crops, though, so I'd think it would be a better use of resources (especially early in the game) to try to get my little scaly cooks to "pad" their meals with as much non-meat filler as possible.


TLDR: Is there a way you can influence the selection of the four ingredients used in Roasts by the kitchens? Does the game look for the nearest thing or variate when determining what will be used?

[Cocoprimate]

I've noticed that cooks don't seem to like picking up huge stacks of a food item. For example, you kill and butcher a dragon. They won't pick up the stack of 700 meat unless you forbid all other ingredients. They also won't split it, they'll just cook 700 roasts at the same time.

The way to make them use the ingredients you want, is to go to the kitchen screen and redden all the ingredients you don't want them to use. Be sure to leave available at least 4 different ingredients. It's really bothersome to do frequently, but if you butcher a large animal, say a roc, dragon, jabberer, etc., the meat returns might make it worth your while, as it would grant several hundred meat roasts for your kobolds.

[Garath]

boozecook? 1 type of meat, otherwise only booze? That way you're sure there will always be meat in it. They do sometimes pick duplicate ingredients (dog tallow roast anyone?)

[Urist McRas]

Stockpiles with your choice of ingridients feeding your kitchen.

[Sutremaine]

Booze cooking is probably your best bet, as mentioned. You can have a booze stockpile close to the kitchen, and a meat stockpile a little further away. The cook will use the booze because it's closer, and the meat because it's solid.

Cooks use distance alone when determining which solid ingredients to use.

One piece of modding I've done is to create smaller minecarts (100000 capacity). Originally this was to allow for finer control within the game's options for moving partially-filled minecarts, but the smallcart I casually used for the food QSP has been dividing the food stocks into 'meat-only' and 'assorted' by not being large enough to take stacks of FB meat and the odd stack of FB intestines. The limit based on memory is somewhere in the region of 60 meat. The current stock of prepared food shows the limit as being somewhere between 100 and 204 meals (50 and 102 weight), which is pretty vague. I've been taking advantage of this to keep a constant supply of meat for my own carnivores (there are only 14 of them though). They prefer to eat roasts because they're closer, but if I ever run out of the ones with meat in them there's some raw stuff available.

Maybe I should set up the stockpiles so that the meat is surrounded by the roasts. The dwarves sometimes rip off a hunk of meat to take to the dining room. Most annoying.

Anyway, tldr, booze cooking is your friend here.

[Garath]

Actually, I think some people remarked that liquid ingredients were way down the priority list and ignored even when closer in favor of solids

[Blue_Dwarf]

They take the closest ingredients. First the closest solids in any barrels, then any closest items that aren' forbidden. The only way to automate is to creatively arrange the stockpiles and forbid barrel usage.

Check my kitchen design topic too.

[Sutremaine]

Actually, I think some people remarked that liquid ingredients were way down the priority list and ignored even when closer in favor of solids

Oh yeah. There was a section in there about containers, but it got deleted in an edit before I posted.

Booze-cooking works when the solid ingredients aren't in containers. If your booze is in a barrel and your meat is in a barrel, the booze will always be ignored until the cook has no more meat to use. If the booze is in a barrel and the meat is lying openly on a stockpile, the booze will be ignored if it's further away. If it's closer to the kitchen than the meat, the cook will take three barrels for a roast, realise there's no solid ingredient, and walk a bit further to pick up the chunk of meat.

[Hurkyl]

A scheme like this works very, once you account for the priority issues.

In the science I did, the cooks seemed to choose things in this order:

• Quarry bush leaves (maybe being in bags affects this: I did not test)
• Solid food in barrels
• Any food

with ties broken by distance.

If you wait for the feeder stockpiles to fill, and they all have the same priority, then your cooks will reliably produce roasts with one ingredient from each lane. You may want to prevent additional items from being brought to the stockpile while this is happening, though.

I have no idea if masterwork/kobold affects this any.

Depending on your wants, you may just want to go with some simpler layout: e.g. filler in barrels and meat not in barrels. Or filler nearby and meat distant, with care to ensure that meat doesn't out-priority filler.

I'm assuming kobold cooks are guaranteed to pick a meat so that they won't cook inedible roasts. If they will cook inedible roasts, then you probably want a solution like the one I linked, and only enabling cooking jobs when the feeder stockpiles are filled. Although you could simplify the layout by combining three of the lanes into a general-purpose stockpile.

[Garath]

I'm guessing the way cooks choose ingredients is harder to alter than most stuff and hasn't been changed, so they choose ingredients that make it an edible meal for dwarfs, which may be a disappointment for kobolds

hence the need to get some controll on what the kitchen uses

[Chimerat]

Wow. Thanks everyone! 

I'm not sure if booze-cooking will work because the Kobolds actually have a negative reaction to alcohol, but maybe milk will do the trick? Of course, that would mean I'd need to find something to milk, and have a lot of them... Hmm...

I'll try a few of the layouts and see how that works out.

Thank you all for the quick feedback, once again. I'll be giving this a go later today!

[AWellTrainedFerret]

Are you making easy meals (only 2 ingredients) or the larger meals? If it's just easy means, a simple solution is to have a burrow designated with only 2 stockpiles. Those 2 stockpiles will only have the 2 ingredients you want, and are set to take from another common stockpile(s) outside the burrow. Larger meals can be done in the same way, just with more single-ingredient stockpiles inside the burrow and a little more micromanagement in designating each stockpile for a new ingredient as it runs out.

[Chimerat]

Are you making easy meals (only 2 ingredients) or the larger meals? If it's just easy means, a simple solution is to have a burrow designated with only 2 stockpiles. Those 2 stockpiles will only have the 2 ingredients you want, and are set to take from another common stockpile(s) outside the burrow. Larger meals can be done in the same way, just with more single-ingredient stockpiles inside the burrow and a little more micromanagement in designating each stockpile for a new ingredient as it runs out.

As mentioned in the first post, I only ever make Roasts.

I hadn't really had a chance to test this out yesterday, I decided to go back to my main DF game and see if my waterworks would, well, work. Then I got a Goblin siege so I saved and called it a night. *headshakes*

I don't see why I would need a burrow, though? The previous suggestions were to just make the stockpiles, which is what I'll be trying first. The interesting part will be to ensure they don't get refilled while the cook is doing their thing.

[AWellTrainedFerret]

If the stockpiles are arranged close enough to the kitchen in the right order, they will work most the time without a need for a burrow. However depending on your fort layout, there may be times when the cook initiates the cooking job while not in the kitchen, like immediately after waking up for example. He will then path to the closest stockpile to his bed to get the first ingredient. Using a burrow simple insures that only those specific stockpiles can be used.

[Chimerat]

Ah. So I'll put the cook's rooms near the kitchen. At least once I get the Kobolds underground. I'll be doing my best to get this set up later today, though chores and such come first or they never get finished.