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[Brendan]

Perhaps irrigation could be re-implemented so that soil must also be irrigated; this would also give people an incentive to settle in areas with aquifers (since if you don't have a river/stream/brook or the ocean there's nowhere else to get permanent water) as well as make life in the desert suitably difficult without requiring self-nerfing.

And if all else fails you can grow surface crops, so long as it rains

[tweinst]

The most interesting cooking system I've ever seen in a game is this one, used by A Tale in the Desert. I don't think directly copying it makes much sense for DF, but there are some ideas there that might inspire something.

[Aquillion]

The one thing I hate about the current system is the fact that cooking plants does not return seeds.  It sounds trivial, but it isn't.  It means that if I let my legendary cook go for a couple of minutes he'll turn all my plump helmets into roasts (which is good) but leave me absolutely no seeds.  None.  At.  All.  He'll also get rid of any booze in the fort, which just makes problems later when my dwarves are forced to view the world without the benefit of alcohol.  So the only thing I let the idiot cook is meat.  And only once its dead.     The only solution to this is switch the cooking job off and on every few minutes and manually monitor the seed/farm plot levels, which gets tres annoying.

The other major problem with this is that it is completely unintuitive to new players.  There is absolutely no indication anywhere in the game that your dwarves won't save seeds if you cook your plants, and no reason that a new player would know this if they hadn't seen the wiki.  The fact that it defaults to cooking all those things (even though it's usually a terrible idea to do so) makes things even worse.

As far as cooking booze goes, it's planned to change when cooking is done in a more detailed fashion.  I wouldn't really call it an exploit, though -- it's not actually a good idea for an established fortress to cook booze.  I never do it, not because I view it as cheating but because, generally, keeping full supplies of food is much easier than keeping full supplies of booze -- turning booze to food is a bad decision, no matter how good the exchange rate looks.  It's much better to make food from processed plants.

Y'know, you could farm something other than Plump Helmets and still get seeds and food, without cooking booze.

You can, yes, and many players do farm things other than Plump Helmets.  But the only reason to plant something other than Plump Helmet is to make things harder on yourself.  Other ways to "self-nerf" your food production at least have some legitimate (if contrived) reason (e.g. choosing Dwarven Sugar over Syrup at least lets you save barrels).

This is untrue.  There are many, many reasons not to rely on plump helmets.  You already mentioned one (barrels).  Dividing your food and drink chains is another -- if you don't divide them, even a slight hiccup in your booze supply line (say, because you run out of barrels) will almost instantly make you run out of beer as your cooks use it all up.  This can be a huge problem, and it's easily avoided by taking a few seconds to set up additional farms + workshops.

Second, dwarves get happy thoughts for eating food they like.  They get unhappy thoughts for having only one kind of booze.  You will get much, much happier dwarves in general if you produce a wide variety of food.

Third, plump helmets have a catastrophically low drink value (2), and will therefore cook into horribly low-value roasts.  Compare this to Quarry Bush Leaves (5), or sweet pods (20!).  These values contribute to the happiness of your dwarves -- your entire fortress will be more happy, and therefore less prone to tantrums and tantrum-spirals, if you use better food.  Sure, you can grow plump helmets slightly faster -- but that doesn't matter.  Your dwarves will still eat the same amount.  If they eat a Quarry Bush roast they'll be slightly happier.  If they eat a Dwarven Syrup Roast they'll be ecstatic.

A fortress that makes extensive use of sweet pods and quarry bush leaves can easily buy out an entire caravan with a single masterwork roast.  A fortress that only makes plump helmets will be less happy (because you're feeding them terrible food), and won't have nearly as much value for trading or attracting immigrants.

Plump helmets are not bad as an emergency stock, but mostly they're good for newbies, because they're quick and easy.  (Well, that and they're the only edible indoor plant you can grow in the winter, making it logical to switch all your farms to them at that point.)  In the long run, other plants have the advantage over them other ways.

[Impaler[WrG]]

That 'A Tale in the Desert' system sounds interesting but it seems to hinge on the cook making wise ingredient selections which would be an issue when the player has no direct control, perhaps if the dwarf doing the cooking knew how to optimally select ingredients within certain guidelines the player selects.

[tsen]

Personally, I think the gap between plump helmets and other plants in terms of advantages should be more significant and also more varied. i.e. Not *just* value, but in usefulness for other things.

[MrWiggles]

Some of you are pawing for more realistic game play, but want cooks to deseed every item the prepare? That doesn't make much sense to me.

It does make sense that the disstilling crops, leave seeds, and eating lives seeds. However when cooking bannanas, I don't deseed it. When cooking cucumbers I don't deseed it. So forth.

There are some plants you do deseed, yes. But it would seem to make more sense if it was based on the recipe being used instead of being universal.

And a note on having actual recipes. Though on the surface that sounds neat, but I think it will lead to clothing manufacturing issue. And we'll just ask for the vauge, fine, lavish meal type deal.

[Walliard]

Whatever Toady does to fix cooking (which apparently is part of the Burrows Arc for whatever reason), it should be more than just "the way it is now, but change this, this, and this". Ultimately, in order to get it right, the whole system needs to be redesigned from the ground up.

Take, for instance, the point about cooking and seeds. Whether or not a cooked plant returns seeds should depend largely on the plant. If I make apple pie, I'm pretty sure I'm going to remove the seeds. On the other hand, the edible part of some plants is the seed. Should milling a cereal plant destroy the seed? It could be argued that the seeds returned from milling are a small fraction of the crop yield left un-milled, but there are probably other ways of handling it as well.

Ultimately, while we want something realistic, it'd also be nice for the cooks and farmers to take a few autonomous steps towards ensuring you don't run out of seeds.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I think the only really logical solution to seeds to have a 'Seeding' task performed at Farmers workshop that generates seeds form a plant, none of the other usages of the plant produce seeds and a percentage of every crop is reserved (iron clad unless explicitly over ridden) for seeding automatically.

[MrWiggles]

Well no, I don't think it should be iron clad. It should be something to watch out for. Starvation due to poor mgm. should be a risk.

For myself, is how much meddling does it deserve?

 It shouldn't be baby sat. I agree, but if I forget, then I should suffer for it, especially in an early stages for the fort.

Perhaps a reserve system, something akin that already in place, but per workshop per crop.

Something handle from the Status Kitchen Tab.

[Aquillion]

Personally, I think the gap between plump helmets and other plants in terms of advantages should be more significant and also more varied. i.e. Not *just* value, but in usefulness for other things.

Value makes a big difference, though.  It influences happiness (and therefore averts catastrophic tantrums), it lets you trade, and it increases your fortress value (and therefore attracts more immigrants.)  If the cooking of alcohol is changed (and I do agree it should be changed, I just don't think it's as game-breaking an exploit as some people think), then plump helmets will also produce less food -- one unit of wheat or a single sweet pod can be processed into five cookable units, while a plump helmet is just one.

Plump helmets are like rice.  They're the staple food in the dwarven diet, useful for many things...  but you wouldn't want to grow just them.

(Also, dwarves should get tired of eating the same thing all the time, maybe.)

Well no, I don't think it should be iron clad. It should be something to watch out for. Starvation due to poor mgm. should be a risk.

For myself, is how much meddling does it deserve?

 It shouldn't be baby sat. I agree, but if I forget, then I should suffer for it, especially in an early stages for the fort.

I strongly disagree.  Making it easy to run out of seeds due to micromanagement is putting pointless speedbumps in the learning curve -- it doesn't add any strategy to the game (the way, say, new types of sieges do), it just brutally punishes players who didn't read the wiki and don't know that they have to micromanage X, Y, and Z.

That's silly.  If you want famine, add actual events that the player can confront -- hordes of locusts, hot/dry/cold weather influencing crop yield, food that doesn't last as long, whatever.

But "you didn't specifically say we should save seeds" is stupid.  Players should be challenged by events in the game, not by a deliberately bad interface or a deliberately crippled AI.  Dwarves should always save seeds unless they have a reason to do otherwise, and the default kitchen settings should be such that a fortress won't run out of seeds absent some external event.

[Derakon]

Right now, seeding plants is abstracted away into the brewing, milling, and processing jobs. I don't have a big problem with it being abstracted away in the cooking job as well. It's either that, or make the "seeding" job be required for all plants before they can be used in any way. Sure it's a bit weird that you'd seed the cucumber before cooking it (mind you, it's a bit weird to be cooking cucumbers in the first place!), but then again, your dwarves should "know" that destroying the seeds would interfere with next year's crops. It doesn't seem like too much to expect some of the seeds to be preserved.

[MrWiggles]

Well no, I don't think it should be iron clad. It should be something to watch out for. Starvation due to poor mgm. should be a risk.

For myself, is how much meddling does it deserve?

 It shouldn't be baby sat. I agree, but if I forget, then I should suffer for it, especially in an early stages for the fort.

I strongly disagree.  Making it easy to run out of seeds due to micromanagement is putting pointless speedbumps in the learning curve -- it doesn't add any strategy to the game (the way, say, new types of sieges do), it just brutally punishes players who didn't read the wiki and don't know that they have to micromanage X, Y, and Z.

That's silly.  If you want famine, add actual events that the player can confront -- hordes of locusts, hot/dry/cold weather influencing crop yield, food that doesn't last as long, whatever.

But "you didn't specifically say we should save seeds" is stupid.  Players should be challenged by events in the game, not by a deliberately bad interface or a deliberately crippled AI.  Dwarves should always save seeds unless they have a reason to do otherwise, and the default kitchen settings should be such that a fortress won't run out of seeds absent some external event.

You're forgetting that its a mgm. game as well. If you have poor mgm. skill for food stocks, then when the sieges come you should be fucked. Just like any other Mayor, or King of a 14th century village. Slaughtered to many cattle, sold off to many seeds. This isn't an Interface problem primarily, and its defiantly not an AI issue.

It a game play facet. How it is now, you can totally curtail it with just growing the universal plump helmet, and its detriment are already in place. Which is kinda of cool. You can choose not to pay attention to it.
Edit: FIx Quote box

[Aquillion]

You're forgetting that its a mgm. game as well. If you have poor mgm. skill for food stocks, then when the sieges come you should be fucked. Just like any other Mayor, or King of a 14th century village. Slaughtered to many cattle, sold off to many seeds. This isn't an Interface problem primarily, and its defiantly not an AI issue.

It a game play facet. How it is now, you can totally curtail it with just growing the universal plump helmet, and its detriment are already in place. Which is kinda of cool. You can choose not to pay attention to it.

As it is, though, it is both an interface and an AI issue.  To the player, there is absolutely zero indicator that cooking destroys seeds.  Likewise, there is no indication that they have to give a "recover seeds" option, since in the real world this is done as a matter of course while farming.

It is also not a strategic choice; there is no reason why a player would ever not want to retain enough seeds to re-plant next year.   Essentially, it is like putting a "don't die" button in the game, and forcing the player to push it every season or they die.  That is simply bad design.

Dwarf Fortress is not supposed to be a game about micromanagement; players should not have to micromanage their farms again every single year, and they certainly should not have to copy a set of 'obvious' orders off of the Wiki just to farm successfully for the first time.  The "default" orders that the AI assumes should always be the most basic, generic common-sense things available -- they won't use up resources or build new things, but they should avoid, to the extent possible, walking off of cliffs, leaping into lava, or eating all their seeds, at least unless they're given a specific order from the player to the contrary. The game's learning curve should not be set to actively sabotage new players by making stupid decisions as the defaults.

And players shouldn't have to re-issue farming orders every year in order to conserve seeds, regardless of strategy -- that's balance and gameplay through tedium, which is never good.  It would be a repetitive, mindless task that adds nothing to the game.  The player's input to the game should be in making decisions -- that is, it should be in situations where there are multiple reasonable alternatives (where to put the building, what to craft out of our resources, how to allocate labor, etc.)  Whenever there is only one common-sense solution, the dwarves should do that automatically, with no input on the player's part.  When a player wants something done every season or as a continuous order, they should be able to order that and not have to come back over and over again to make sure it's being done right.

[MrWiggles]

The game also doesn't tell us that Dwarfs drink twice as much as they eat. The game also doesn't tell us that their will be thief, be it monkeys or kobolds. The game doesn't tell us Elves only like certain things. The game doesn't tell us that the stock accuracy is based on in game perscion(sp) by the dwarfs. The game doesn't tell us that the dorfs perfer their own bedrooms. The game doesn't tell us that the dorfs for the most part, like to eat together.
The game doesn't tell us that cat will collect vermin and bring it back to its own owner, which it chooses by itself.

The game doesn't tell us a lot. In fact, it seems to rely on that. Should it be explained somewhere in game. Sure. Will it eventually be discovered. Yes.

And I meant to say not entirely a UI probably. It partially is, like various things in the game. I still contest it being an AI problem.

Food Production is like any other Production aspect of the game.

The game is about mgm. a fortress in some aspects. That means mgm.'ing its supplies of various goods. Be it fuel for the furnaces, how much pigtail to grow to make enough sacks for flour, and sugar.

As it stands now, you can get a tight efficient agriculture industry going right now. That from my experience, is largely hands off. But I think that accident based on how I don't start cooking foodstuff until the first quarter of my second year. I check on it every now and then.

'Uh-oh, I should have made more coal instead of pot ash, now my military is short on good weapons and now their a siege!'

'Uh-oh, I now learned what a fast fevered once that legendary cooks can turn out prepared meals. Hopefully, my stocks will last so I can buy more seeds.'

And the game as it stands now, make it sorta hard to not have enough seeds. You can run out of them, especially the understand stocks. However there is always above ground crops that can be gather and grown.
Is it sorta annoying? Yea, kinda. But it forces a foresight for the game, that I find neat. As it been siad in this very thread, two medium ish plots can take care of the entire fortress.

Your asking for an AI facet to mgm. the fortress itself. Personally, that seems to be taking away from it, instead of adding it.

How about a split. Somewhere down the line, we can choose to have certain like industry automated, for least player input. So you can concentrate on the parts you like.

Although this would make the game easier, and at times, especially for new or early fortress, less frantic game play.

[Silverionmox]

Some of you are pawing for more realistic game play, but want cooks to deseed every item the prepare? That doesn't make much sense to me.

It does make sense that the disstilling crops, leave seeds, and eating lives seeds. However when cooking bannanas, I don't deseed it. When cooking cucumbers I don't deseed it. So forth.

There are some plants you do deseed, yes. But it would seem to make more sense if it was based on the recipe being used instead of being universal.
And a note on having actual recipes. Though on the surface that sounds neat, but I think it will lead to clothing manufacturing issue. And we'll just ask for the vauge, fine, lavish meal type deal.

Funny that you use those examples, because bananas and cucumbers are one of the few plants that are bred not to have seeds: they're multiplied by cutting mostly..

As long as there is a random option, recipes won't make it difficult, will they? There should be a random clothes option as well, of course.

The simple solution for the seed problem would be to let all seeds be disabled by default, the player can allow them to be eaten/cooked when he deems it appropriate. Later on we could have a standing order that says: "Save x prickle berry seeds for seeding." A player should always be able to decide what to do after a bad harvest: rationing, eating the seed, gambling on the next caravan?