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[feelotraveller]

It would be very cool though. 

[lyraluthuin]

I'm happy to see this thread because I had the same question. I'm a little sad that a cooking expansion isn't a higher priority since I'm convinced it could add some very enjoyable dimensions to the game, where players who chose to prioritize cooking for a particular fort would pay as keen interest to the available plants, fish, and animals/vermin on the map as we do to the available metals. As far as I can tell from scanning mods and suggestion threads, moddable recipes and the ability to restrict recipes to civs (flavor), are the most desired features. Then some dwarf-happiness motivation to collect rare cooking ingredients required in those recipes would be a logical finishing touch.  I'm flip-flopping between wanting to tip the scales towards those few things (incremental improvements that could really improve the cooking experience hopefully without requiring a major overhaul), and adding my own massive wishlist to the suggestion threads. The fact that most of these things can be done with dfhack may be a reason to set the priority of adding native support low, but I'm rather reluctant to write scripts in dfhack for things that seem like they should be supported (is it really worth my time?), so the question in this thread is important to me in deciding if and when to take a break from the game to wait for more cool stuff. If it were up to me, I would prioritize a cooking/farming overhaul right after improved sieges, but obviously there are a hundred ways to play this very cool game and my style is only one of them.

Ultimately I'd like to see a financial motivator (more sophisticated than selling overpriced meals made of whatever was on hand to caravans), so I talked myself into feeling hopeful that we'd see a bigger overhaul with the economy update. I'd love for honey and moghopper extract and modded ingredients to become things players purposefully collect because if they can get everything they need for a particular recipe, they can deck it out with the most expensive spices the fort has to offer and serve it up to a rich guest in their tavern/restaurant for a small fortune. Or something like that.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Cooking and games were postponed from the tavern release because there's no economy, no real money (there are coins, that's not the same thing) and no meaningful way to assign a value to meals. Should be added when making a profit becomes part of fortress gameplay (quite a while yet).

Besides, this thread is about stress and not being able to fix it with lavish meals.

[Trabber Shir]

Besides, this thread is about stress and not being able to fix it with lavish meals.

Me thinks you forgot which thread you were looking at.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Besides, this thread is about stress and not being able to fix it with lavish meals.

Me thinks you forgot which thread you were looking at.

Now read the op again. It's a complaint about dwarf food needs requiring micromanagement to fix (because each dwarf has way too specific needs).

I mean, the request was answered in the first reply, yes, Toady is going to do something about it, so you may as well discuss future cooking systems and the economy. There are good threads in Suggestions too.

[hanni79]

Okay, since I have a 12 year old fortress running right now, I feel cooking really needs some serious love.

Especially before a Steam release.

Eating and drinking is one of the most basic of dwarves and I feel this will be met with some serious irritation if this did not work well.

 Just now it works, but far away from working well.

I tried to implement some of the workarounds from the wiki to make my dwarves consistently mixing foods, it just does not work.
I still get stacks and stakcs of 4*Quarry Bush Roasts ( or EggEggEggEgg Roasts). ALso, some of the "workarounds" like not allowing barrels&pots lead to other problems, like flies.

Especially when thinking about the stress problems it is paramaount in my view to at least get cooking right. I have dozens of dwarves with "Feeling dejected because of lack of decent meal" thought (x349739).

Even a short term solution like maybe a recipe list for cooks might help a lot here ( enabling a dwarf to remember what he already brought to the kitchen and then picking any ingredient not already picked ), or maybe usage of the detail function other workshops already have.

[/rant]

[Shonai_Dweller]

Not happening before Steam. Procedurally generated recipes will take a long time and a placeholder would just waste time better off spent on graphics, bugs, mod support, UI remake, etc.

Don't expect any feature additions before Steam unless they're directly "ease of gameplay & interface improvements".

[Quarque]

Being able to specify what ingredients you want to be used in the next meal is a UI improvement. And it would address a lot of complaints for little effort.

As they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good. It is counterproductive to think you cannot possibly implement a small & easy improvement until you get around to the ultimate complete overhaul.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Being able to specify what ingredients you want to be used in the next meal is a UI improvement. And it would address a lot of complaints for little effort.

As they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good. It is counterproductive to think you cannot possibly implement a small & easy improvement until you get around to the ultimate complete overhaul.

Yep, as with every other little thing in the game. Those little efforts add up and time is not something Toady has right now. Yes, it can be done, no it won't be done before Steam. It doesn't need to be done before Steam because it has nothing to do with the goals of the Steam release.

[hanni79]

This kinda makes me ask myself what Toadys goal is with Steam. Does he want to give old players an easy possibility to give him money or does he want new players ?

Because I'm somewhat sure this will become an Armok-worthy bloodbath on the Steam Forums if he weren't to put some effort in some of the "lot of complaints for little effort" high-level needs and stressors before release. Also, time is subjective 

This game is hard on a level most gamers are not really accustomed to, which is okay. But if ( new) players learned how to survive goblin sieges, famines and the circus just to find out their dwarves crumble in the end because they can only eat exceptional and mastercrafted meals they don't care the mostfor... This will provoke some serious tantruming xD.

Maybe we should start a survey here what the biggest "Player stressors" are, so Toady can get an idea if there were some low hanging fruit he actually should invest some time into. I would think the stress system stresses people the most right now ^^
This is why I wanted to know about all the foods and meals stuff, because it once was a good fix for preventing angry dwarves and pleaeses my RPG part of play style 

Considering I'm playing without any invasions, I find having to expel 5 dwarves in 10 years due to stress is a bit much. I would like to play with invasions at some point, but as stress is right now, I don't really want to find out how hard it really is, since I'm not even capable of rescuing dwarves without any of the dangerous stressors.

[Shonai_Dweller]

He's going to release Dwarf Fortress on Steam. With less bugs, graphics and a new UI, but still Dwarf Fortress. That's the aim.

Needs and stress has time and time and time again been promised as being part of the bug fixes before Steam comes out. He even said it again in an interview yesterday. He has an entire thread dedicated to it. Which again he says he's read.

Yeah, if it's all a lie, then sure, will be a problem. Not sure what it has to do with adding procedurally generated recipes to the game. Just fix the bug that causes food needs to be too exact.

[hanni79]

Yeah, if it's all a lie, then sure, will be a problem. Not sure what it has to do with adding procedurally generated recipes to the game. Just fix the bug that causes food needs to be too exact.

I never said procedurally recipes, in retrospect I should have worded that better. With recipe-list I meant:
Cook gets ingredient, puts it on his "recipe list" and every subsequent ingredient has to be something different than whatever is on his list.
Basically a "Forbid" list for cooks, if that made more sense.
This is only to prevent ingredients being multiple times in the same food stack.

Did I explain it better now ?

[PatrikLundell]

You can write a script that essentially does what you want, although it will require a bit of work, in particular handing problem cases, (down to only a few ingredients, or the access to selected ingredients being locked (stored in barrel), or eaten/stolen/moved, etc., so you'd get some cancellations.

There are lots of problems with food/drink preferences, but if only one thing could be done, I'd say changing the preferences to match what the UI currently displays (essentially what Shonai_Dweller mentioned) would be the one with the greatest impact.

I think a suggestion for meals to have varied ingredients whenever possible is a good one, and a possible candidate for a minor improvement in the released version (i.e. Premium) during the Big Wait. For the Premium release, it's more important to balance stress in the first place (which is planned to be done), so player stress will have to take a back seat to dorf stress for the time being.

[hanni79]

You can write a script [...]

There are lots of problems with food/drink preferences, but if only one thing could be done, I'd say changing the preferences to match what the UI currently displays (essentially what Shonai_Dweller mentioned) would be the one with the greatest impact.
[...] so player stress will have to take a back seat to dorf stress for the time being.

Nope, I can't, absolutely no clue how to do so besides giving GCS an Egg layer tag, but thanks for the idea ! ^^

I were not aware that this bug exists, this obviously takes precedence.

Also, right now, I basically think Dwarf stress equals player stress  Sorting out the one is basically the same as the other ^^

Like Quarque said, I view this more in the UI territory, as it would be quite nice to have every workshop work the same, especially with "details". It's not very intuitive for new players if one workshop allowed details while others were not.
Since there is an order-option for kitchens to "mix food", I expect new players to be quite displeased when they see that a "mix food" order results in hundreds of stacks solely consisting of quarry bush leaves, when there is other stuff available to use
This is comparable to "UI not showing the actual preferences", as in this order obviously doesn't do what it says it does ( or at least one would be most likely inclined to think what it should do ).

P.S:
I didn't mean to offend you Shonai_Dweller. I just wanted to point out that in my experience Steam users are kind of a hard to please audience and it seems to me that basic stuff like food, which no player is able to ignore one way or another will, in my opinion, anger the masses quite fast. So I at least did not want to just rant, but give a possbile short term fix as well. Constructive criticism and such ^^

[vjek]

I've changed the preferences of my all my dwarves to exactly one food thing, and then provided them that one food thing, among many food choices.
In 0.47.04, it doesn't make them happy, they just choose to eat that one thing, first, generally.  Not always, but more often than not.
As far as I can tell, they do not get happy food thoughts for eating their only food preference. 
Same goes for drink.  If you have rum, beer, and wine available, and their preference is for wine, they'll drink the wine first. 
IIRC, even lavish meal happiness is gone in 0.47.04, so.. prepared meals are a bit pointless, too, currently.  But now I'm repeating myself.