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[hanni79]

Greetings fellow ‼Scientist‼,

in this thread here I would like to gather information about anything Toady has said regarding cooking and dwarven food references.

As of now, I basically quit DF because cooking is something I really enjoy ( in real life as well as in DF), but as most of you probably know,it is excessively tedious to tend to the needs of your dwarves, mostly not being usefull at all.

I really like my dwarves being happy, but the recent changes to how dwarven mood works changed cooking from an overly easy way to make your dwarves happy to an overly tedious way.

Hopefully, we will get a nice system in the future, which has a good balance between being challenging and fulfilling as well as micromanagement and usefullness.

[Shonai_Dweller]

A couple of days ago:

On the stress thread in general:

Yeah, the thread has been great.  We have about twenty angles to work with there, and some of them are straightforward enough that they should come up in the parallel releases rather than with the Steam/itch release.  I haven't run any numeric tests yet, so I'm not going to pin it on anything, but between siege bodies and rain and food and cave adaptation etc. there is a lot to check and change.  The needs discourse is fascinating since it doesn't seem(?) to be a numeric stress problem, but it is a presentation problem, so we'll still need to address it.  The changes made to friendship forming and vulnerable dwarves in the recent 47s is just the start.

Contrary to popular belief, and some bizarre posts in that thread, Toady and Therefore started the thread to find out the causes of stress in long term fortresses in order to fix the stress problems in long-term fortresses.

Some posters there would have you believe that depression inducing rain and crushingly strict diets are the way Toady insists the game must be and refuses to change anything.

Also, you really should just play the game and not care about it. It's not important and doesn't cause fortess-wide depression in any way as some hysterical forum posters would like you to believe. (But the rain and corpses might).

[PatrikLundell]

I would assume the bizarre hidden specific preferences would be addressed, as they're bad for newbies and bad for (dorf) morale.

Lavish Meals might be a candidate for newbie confusion reduction, as the current state of it being irrelevant for satisfaction is confusing, but there are a lot of candidates on that table, and only a sliver of it can probably be addressed before the Premium release is due.

Cooking in general, with recipes and player control over contents lies in the future beyond Myth & Magic, so your hope there would be for a (probably unlikely) sneak introduction in a parallel maintenance release during the Big Wait.

However, the good news (well, not exactly new, but anyway) is that you can do a fair bit with DFHack scripts, so if you're willing to play with DFHack and write scripts (learn to if needed) you could create recipes yourself and get them made. The functionality exists under the hood, but it's not accessible through the UI (and I'd consider it a very low priority target for the UI changes).
I've used scripts for booze cooking to provide food that satisfies needs for almost all dorfs in the fortress (other hacking to get access to all booze producing plants helps in that regard).

[Shonai_Dweller]

Lots needs to be fixed yet, but no fortress will collapse just because you don't micromanage the meals. One or two dwarves will have difficulty with their not-related-to-stress needs.

For now Dfhack the stress away when it all gets too much. 47.04 is a good first step (adjusted stress calculations, dorfs make friends).

[hanni79]

Also, you really should just play the game and not care about it. It's not important and doesn't cause fortess-wide depression in any way as some hysterical forum posters would like you to believe. (But the rain and corpses might).

I am aware that not micromanaging meals doesn't pose a threat, I just enjoy to do it to quite some extent.
Right now it's just too much micromanaging for too litle gain, therefore I don't enjoy doing it.
I envision my Dwarves having lots of parties with all the drinks and meals they love, in legendary Dining halls, wearing mastercrafted GCS silk clothes and royal bedrooms for everyone and stuff ^^
This is basically my personal goal in the game, to make Hyper-Luxury Fortresses, which I can't do as it stands.

[vjek]

Recently, while updating some of my dfhack scripts, I noticed there was an open bug regarding unmet needs and "eating good meals" in version 0.47.02.  I don't think it's been resolved in 0.47.04.  Even if you adjust their preferences to prepared meals of a particular type (I've done this) and then provide that exact prepared meal, they still don't get happy thoughts or needs met.  Even if they eat it in a fantastic dining room.

So, for me, I removed the need entirely, until the bug is resolved.  Similarly, despite being able to pray, the praying need is also not met by praying.  I don't know if there's an open bug for that one, but in any case, it's relatively straightforward to change the needs of dwarves so they can meet some of them that are high value, and they remain focused and happy in the long term.
In fact, by far the simplest change is to adjust the personality.trait(s) regarding "negative thoughts" and similar so they are unfazed by stress.  CHEER_PROPENSITY=99, DEPRESSION_PROPENSITY=1, ANXIETY_PROPENSITY=1, STRESS_VULNERABILITY=1. Once you do that?  Melancholy, depression, and similar are very unlikely.  Then, if you adjust [df.need_type.Socialize]=5, [df.need_type.BeWithFriends]=5, [df.need_type.TakeItEasy]=5, [df.need_type.MakeMerry]=5, [df.need_type.AdmireArt]=5, and provide a meeting place/tavern, leisure time, and a statue?  They're content, and typically express very joyful sentiments.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, the change from meal quality to meal content is only the tip of the iceberg. Currently meal quality is essentially a useless vestige of a removed functionality.

The change to meal contents means dorfs are satisfied by any meal that contains one of their favorite ingredients and no other meals, regardless of how grand. The change does not make sense in that the actual need is for a specific body part for animals, but that's hidden (as is the fact that it's sometimes not the regular animal, but the giant one's liver that's required), and that it generates needs for parts that cannot be acquired because the animal is a vermin, a fish, or too small to generate that part when butchered, or has never existed in that particular world (and that is besides the statistic fact that most of it can never be acquired either on the embark or through the standard caravans).
There's another bug report that contains that stuff and more. I expect much of that to be dealt with in the needs changes on the way to the Premium release, but we're not there yet.

[feelotraveller]

Currently meal quality is essentially a useless vestige of a removed functionality.

Just to clarify: meal quality (or drink value) only have effects when the meal/drink contains one of the dwarfs preferences.  Under those circumstances the quality/value works as intendend and scales the effect - that is, how much the dwarf enjoys the item containing their preference.

As a piece of trivia, it is entirely possible to have a dwarf with no food preference.  The only way to satisfy their meals desire is to booze cook - if you can obtain their preferred alcohol...

[hanni79]

I really think this needs a re-work.

Something like, Dwarves can only prefer stuff they actually ate once.
It would be cool if they could have "hidden" desires, which only "unlock" when they actually eat it.
When the hidden desire doesn't match something they ate previously, fulfilling their desire is ranked down a bit, for example a mastercrafted roast would only count as an exceptional roast. THis could work pretty well.

[feelotraveller]

It is certainly intended to be reworked... at some point.  But it is far from a priority right now.  Satisfying your dwarfs can be a nice little bonus but it doesn't really amount to much.

The only real bug specific to food is that the player is not always fully informed of the complete preference - being told 'goat' when it is actually 'goat brain', for example.  Beyond that there is also a problem shared by various other systems of unsatisfiable preferences (pearls comes to mind).

As to how it gets reworked, that is as yet unknown.  Adding feedback in the suggestions forum to a food thread (I suspect there are probably multiple by now) is the best way to go here, Toady reads all of those posts and has been known to make use of them when redoing areas of the game.

As the UI is currently being reworked for the steam release a suggestion in that area, say to show items with food preference matches for current fortress residents on the trade screen, just might get adopted much sooner than a proposed overhaul of an area of the game which has little relation to current development.  (If I could be bothered making a suggestion that would be mine.  ) 

But eventually I think we can expect a cooking, probably along with a farming, overhaul.  Crops and livestock currently produce ridiculous amounts of food and hopefully that will get dealt with then also, so that we will have a reason to be fertilizing our plots again and not have more meat than we can possibly do anything with once we start any regular butchering.

[Shonai_Dweller]

It is certainly intended to be reworked... at some point.  But it is far from a priority right now.  Satisfying your dwarfs can be a nice little bonus but it doesn't really amount to much.

If he's not looking to fix food, why did he mention food in the list of things to look at fixing? There's a stress thought on lack of decent meals too, so it's not just needs.

[delphonso]

As an alternative, if you want to enjoy incredible decadence, and since meals don't really matter one way or another, why not spend time and energy on acquiring rare meats and plants for consumption? What's more exotic than eating giant elephant, panda, and salmon biscuits?

I believe Toady has said something about a farming overhaul in the future, which would probably be part of a food/farm overhaul. I believe the current farms are some sort of placeholder, really.

[feelotraveller]

If he's not looking to fix food, why did he mention food in the list of things to look at fixing? There's a stress thought on lack of decent meals too, so it's not just needs.

Because there was a good deal of discussion about food on the stress thread - specifically about its impact on stress, which quite frankly is rather minimal, and I reckon he'll confirm that once he 'checks' it.  It is stress the he intends/needs to sort out, we know that is out of whack in a major way that detracts from the game (for many people).

'Fix' is a strong term, and it can mean a lot of things but in terms of food and the steam updates we will perhaps see some tweaking, maybe the undisclosed preferences bug addressed, or maybe nothing at all since by many reports it will not be needed to change it to substantially improve the stress balance.

Rain and corpses are the two standouts for stress and I suspect that this is where he will spend most of his effort.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

 
I hope the dwarf who wants to eat roast fish, can actually cook it for himself, if 1) he has cook job turned on, 2) there is raw prepared fish, 3) there is a public/private kitchen available.

[PatrikLundell]

I hope the dwarf who wants to eat roast fish, can actually cook it for himself, if 1) he has cook job turned on, 2) there is raw prepared fish, 3) there is a public/private kitchen available.

Don't hold your breath. It would require implementation of a fair bit of new functionality. Eventually, yes, it's likely. During the 20:ies? Probably not.