Chef Archive
Thread: Telling devs who we are.
Chef
Prerequisites:
Domestic Arts IV: 29 Skill points
Chef tree:
Novice Chef: 6 skill points, Entrees IV: 14 skill points, Desserts IV: 14 skill points, Mixology IV: 14 skill points, Cooking IV: 14 skill points, Master Chef: 1 skill point.
Total: 92 skill points
Food Assembly: +100
This skill determines the success of the initial combination of a chef item.
Food Experimentation: +100
This skill determines the success of each experiment performed by the chef when improving an item, plus determines how many experimentation points can be used (one point per +10).
These modifiers are gained in the Cooking skill branch and the Novice and Master box; all other branches provide only schematics.
Chefs have the ability to make buffs for various stats, skills, and apply special effects (such as reducing incapacitation time, improving experimental success, or reducing burst run HAM cost). Foods are unique among buffs in several ways; some are also common to smuggler's spices:
- Stat buffs gained from food stack with other foods. All other buffs cannot be stacked with themselves.
- Using a food/drink adds to the player's "food filling" or "drink filling" bar. A player can take any combination of food/drink that they wish provided that they don't get overfull.
- Food has the ability to improve a player's skills.
- Food does not require any skill point investment to use (this ability is shared with smuggler spice).
- Food buffs can easily be applied during combat (this ability is shared with smuggler spice).
- Food buffs do not require a special location (cantina, medical center, camp) to apply (this ability is shared with smuggler spice).
- The variety of foods that is available, almost all with some use (compared to pre-revamp where the list of "useful" foods were more limited).
- Chef hats and aprons.
- Finding effective food combinations to help customers with specific needs.
- "Pushing the envelope" on foods, such as one chef's quest to find out if a 50 filling Vercupti is possible when using a nutrition additive. This is trivial with a filling additive, but then the buff size is much lower. It turns out that it is possible (it's just very difficult).
- Finding new potential in "useless" foods. For example, Parwan Nutricake reduces the HAM cost and recovery time of burst run. This was generally considered not worth the stomach space; until we discovered that using a flavor additive (which improves the recovery bonus) could make a food that allows continuous burst running with no downtime needed to rest.
- Waiting for stomach to empty after cloning.
- Requiring Bioengineer additives to make food that is considered "useful" by customers.
- Multiple subcomponent factory runs to make most high-level foods, especially when additives are used.
- Tedium in milking creatures to get stacks of sufficient size for a factory run. This is more of a scout issue than chef (since milking requires mask scent or camouflage), but affects us greatly, since the only items requiring milk that have no relation to chef are BE's +taming clothing tissues. Everything else is either food or tissues for food.
- Having most of our drinks under-utilized due to the (perceived?) necessity of Mind buffs from Vasarian Brandy.
- Bugs that have been around since the revamp: barrels not giving a multiplier to drinks, Ruby Bliel or Havla not working unless heal recovery of 100 is reached, etc.
The design reasons behind most of these non-fun items are understood, just not liked.
Compared to pre-revamp, a much larger set of our foods have uses to various player professions and play styles. There are very few foods that get "eclipsed" by higher level ones since there is such a larger variety of effects. Even with higher-level foods that have the same effect for a larger duration/buff, there is almost always a trade-off with filling. This makes lower-level schematics much more marketable (although having fewer experimentation points does hurt lower-level chefs).
A few foods do not appear to have enough "oomph" to really justify their use. The majority of the "Defense vs. {state}" foods fall into this. Even with a Nutrition additive, these cap out at around +20-25 defense. While possibly beneficial in PvE, they provide little defense in PvP.
For example, a hypothetical maxed out Cho-nor-hoola gives around +32 Defense vs. Poison (and I'm not sure if this is even possible, depending on stat caps for Milk). This provides little help against the potency of high-end CM poisons, and almost none against poisons using looted components.
Chefs themselves do not take part in combat (at least not as chefs). What we do is to provide support for players in combat: increasing stats, improving accuracy, increasing defense, etc.
Because our buffs are portable and used by the customer, chefs do not need to group (again, at least not as chefs). There is no benefit to making food "in the field", in fact it's generally a drawback: we don't have access to our high-end crafting stations or research center bonuses.
We do have one-on-one interactions with our customers, informing them about their options, making suggestions, and taking special orders. Many social chefs enjoy this interaction.
- Even more variety of foods to craft. One thing we do miss (a little) from pre-revamp is the "Wedding cake" that many players liked to use for in-game weddings. If this could be added (with an appropriate image, not just the Air Cake icon it had before) RPers would probably really appreciate it.
- More variety of art (the majority of foods share images).
- ???
- Have usage/regeneration stats continue to effect special attack costs/recovery.
- With the reduction of Mind as a limiting factor in combat, the market will hopefully open up to more than the Vasarian Brandy/Vagnerian Canape/Ahrisa flooding we see now.
- ???
We mainly want to make sure that we continue to be useful after the combat revamp. With the variety of non-stat buffs, I believe that becoming useless is probably unlikely.
- Factional food
- ???
Message Edited by sciguyCO on 06-07-2004 09:49 PM
Ok, I've got it posted, don't want to worry about screwing it up with an edit. 
The point of this is to give TH a consistent document from the player's perspective about the various professions. What we like, what we don't, how we see ourselves, etc. What should chefs be, and how does this compare to what we are? What can we contribute to players outside the profession (such as contributing to the GCW)?
If you want to add something, go ahead and reply. But please try to keep things constructive (especially for the "non-fun things"). Just the facts, any rhetoric will get edited out when I submit anyway.
Oh, one more thing. This needs to be finalized by the end of the week. I definitely want your input, but lets try to keep things as focused as possible.
Message Edited by sciguyCO on 06-07-2004 09:55 PM
Fixing the bugged foods would be nice After the combat revamp having Garrmorl still being bugged will suck ( none of it's parts have PE or FL stats ? )
I'm not so fond of domestic arts foods, chef points don't count on them, always seemed odd to me that I'm a master chef but I can't make some foods ( if you only take chef from the art line you get 7 ex points ? ) well you can make them but not very well.
I do however dissagree that all the extra parts and the reliance on BEs to make usefull foods is a bad thing. Having to work with other players to get the parts you need is what multiplay is all about.
faction food could be something that has really high fill but makes you covert for a few minutes ? maybe 2 or 3 minutes for 50 +fill. only works if you're not in combat.
More art and more food can't hurt.
in the core systems forum, someone posted some info the devs released at the fan fest...special costs will still be affected by secondary stats in the same way they are now...probably not to the same extent (particularly focus/quick/str).
as far as things chefs want from the combat rebalance or GCW...I really don't think its anywhere near fair for the devs to expect chefs to come up with stuff we want. the majority of chefs customers will likely have to "re-learn" how to play their professions effectively, and until the rebalance has gone live for at least a few weeks chefs will likely have no idea as to how "effective" or useless most foods/drinks are post-rebalance.
the GCW is trickier...how do you define roles for chefs/entertainers/scouts/musicians/dancers??? sure you could do the "make chefs have to create a randomly chosen drink/food to bribe an officer to get a code for a terminal needed to destroy a base" type of option...but thats something that a chef dabbler would be interested in...not chefs themselves (just like most BE's that are part of base destruction teams only have novice BE).
grouping:
1) have a "choice cut" option for harvesting corpses available to master chefs...the purpose of this would be as follows:
it would give chefs a reason to seek out groups and join in on the hunting, the "choice cut" option would only be available on certain creatures and would result in "secret research data" useable in BE additives (note: this would also alleviate the BE griping about secret research data being something the devs want to explore in the future bit). the quality of the choice cut can be random (like loot), static (merely based off of creature/cl, so enraged rancor choice cut would be better than rancor youth choice cut...but would be the same type of "choice cut"...just better).
2) "fresh foods"...these would be more powerful than the normal foods (short duration 5 minute max, high power...low filling), and would be available at level 4 boxes/master level. no manufacturing schematic would be allowed for these, and they should have a max of 1 use regardless of containers, experimentation, additives. these foods would essentially be made by chefs as the group needs them...since the more combat oriented members would need their space for loot/gear. and would allow the chef to trade/entice people to go hunting with them...food in exchange for killing certain creatures for the chef...can be done as is with existing foods...
note: since the devs have proven they can change the serial needed for a manufacturing schem...serial is stripped from schem when using walls/drink containers...they can simply replace the serial of the subcomp with the serial of the product which is created...preventing any of that item from being made from a schem...can't make one without having 1 first...so you can't make any at all.
things that would make chef more fun:
1) pick a direction...if chefs are going to have to deal with identical subcomps the quality of resources should matter, and experimentation should be allowed, if not then all chef subcomps should be treated the same as drink containers.
2) fix the barrel bug, and the stomach decay 45 minute instead of 30 bug...bugs aren't fun...when there aren't any bugs things are more fun.
3) bring back the major missing schems (fishak, sunburn, wedding cake, ryshcate) the ones that people used to use for various things...even if they're not very useful...it'd still be nice to have them back.
Battery wrote:Fixing the bugged foods would be nice
I'm not so fond of domestic arts foods, chef points don't count on them, always seemed odd to me that I'm a master chef but I can't make some foods ( if you only take chef from the art line you get 7 ex points ? ) well you can make them but not very well.
I do however dissagree that all the extra parts and the reliance on BEs to make usefull foods is a bad thing. Having to work with other players to get the parts you need is what multiplay is all about.
faction food could be something that has really high fill but makes you covert for a few minutes ? maybe 2 or 3 minutes for 50 +fill. only works if you're not in combat.
More art and more food can't hurt.
the bad thing about BE dependency...is that sooooo many of the BE's are completely irate that they're profession is pretty screwed (no sign, hint, or even rumor that the devs are planning on fixing invalid pet checks anytime this year). a lot of BE's have dropped, the new ones are being deterred by the difficulty of getting bulk meat, and the existing ones that are sticking around to supply chefs are working directly with a particular chef, making it difficult for new chefs to find a BE.
while being in a PA does help for finding a BE...even the PA BE's are getting burnt out and dropping, and very few want to pick it up.
add to that the rarity of real CH's (non holo-grinders), and how much more difficult it is to make tailor tissues...and well BE's aren't doing very well.
being dependent on another profession is one thing, being dependent on the most gimped, nerfed, and most broken crafting profession in the game is something completely different.
I hope BE's see some improvements with the combat rebalance...cause as things stand now...there might not be many BE's left after it they don't.
Non-Fun : Storing the massive amounts of components we use
Non-Fun : Storing the massive amounts of ingredients we use
Top 5 recommendations to make chef more fun:
Suggestion here - Cafe's, restaurants or "hot dog stands". Chefs use all their lots, and more, and 5 lots for a cantina is out of reach for many of us. Some building for Chef to use as a retail outlet/roleplay venue would be nice.
Top 5 things chefs would like to see in the Combat Balance :
I would like to see the other drinks made more useful, especially Garrmorl/Acarragm etc. Currently, these are very underused because of the prevalence of Vasarian Brandy use.
I suggest at least a doubling of the buff on these pre-combat balance, and then to be made at least comparable to brandy by fixing the resource stat issues that plague these items currently
GCW :
Not sure how we can fit in here, unless we can make factional pies to throw at the enemy....
Seriously though, I can't see a way for us to be included.
You could make factional food that has the OPPOSITE effect on the other side, such as Imperial Vasarian Brandy REDUCING a rebels MFW... *shrug*
Things that are not fun:
"Requiring Bioengineer additives to make food that is considered "useful" by customers. " - I agree with this. Though I have no problem getting a BE or Additives, it irritates me that "normal" food is almost totally disregarded by players.
Things to make chef more fun:
I would like to see the ability to customize food a litte bit more. We used to be able to experiment on sub-components which was fun and offered a little more customization than now.
I would also like to see more structures offered for chefs, what about the vending machine I always see near the merchent trainers? Even that would be neat.
Message Edited by Saitek on 06-08-2004 10:10 AM
Groid wrote:
to make chef more fun...
1. Fix the merchant bug,set a tent, add vendors, dress them, advertise them and drop merchant,and keeping the vendors is wrong. It exploits the skill point system by granting one skills they no longer have points for.
Ok I understand that this is a bug and definatly needs to be fixed. But how will it make chef more fun? I certainly think I'm having more fun because I can stock my vendors without having to worry about them being full.
I kind of like the idea of factional food. An imp would buy the food and get the full bonus(or an increased bonus, depending on which is listed). A rebel could still buy it, but would get a reduced effect. This would only work on new foods IMO though. I don't want to kill the sales of neutrals because all their food has been turned into crap because of this change.
Other things to make chef more fun.
- Better interface for certain things in crafting
- Resource names listed in some window so a specific stack of berries can be picked out of 50 in a container
- Some better way of storing resources, I'm not talking about larger stacks or something like that. This is purely cosmetic. Its annoying that the only way I can store my resources is to have 10+ backpacks hanging on the walls. Make something like the armoire or chest be able to store things. They can count towards the item count, I wouldn't care.
OokiteBisko wrote:
Being a new chef, I would like to see on the schematics what the food actually does. Knowing a drink is bubbly and spicy doesn't help me. I know with time and experience I will learn what does what, but to a new chef that would be a usefull addition.
/hero sciguyCO in SUCH a big way
i have his page bookmarked, and it is almost always up in the background on my computer when i'm playing. i look up what i need to make a food, or how experimentation works on the stats from ingredients, or which food does what, soooooooo many times per day. i hope i paste it right so that it comes out as a link. if not, it's listed at the top of the FAQ sticky and you can find it that way.
http://home.comcast.net/~sciguyCO/swg/FoodChart.htm