Chef Archive
Thread: Happy Holidays Your Present Is Here And It Ain't Fruitcake
Wow, this is simply fantastic. This is a merry christmas.
Any word on the actual bio additives? Like what do they do and what's the new resource cost?
And any word if they are changing the current formulas or what the weightings are for each category? A giggle if filling is 100% UT 
Great work SirVimes.
I have to say, it certainly looks interesting. As a Master BE, I can't wait for +maskscent food, if I keep it that long
I'm drooling now, and we haven't seen the Chef lines
Nice work SirVimes, TH & GreenMarine.
GM said that milk will be more readily available in the game although I am not sure of the details yet.
azjones wrote:
Incidentally, is there any word if milk will become more prevalent along with this revamp, or if recipes will be modified to require less milk?
Naturner wrote:
Wow, this is simply fantastic. This is a merry christmas.
Any word on the actual bio additives? Like what do they do and what's the new resource cost?
And any word if they are changing the current formulas or what the weightings are for each category? A giggle if filling is 100% UT
Great work SirVimes.
I don't know anything more about the BE additives yet.
As far as changing the current formulas....do you changing how filling something will be? Yes, they are simplifying all that.
I'm just speechless. Thanks, Sir Vimes, for filling us in!
I really can't wait now. Any idea if the changes will be retroactive to existing food, or will we have crates and crates of pre-patch stat-buffing foods? I can't imagine that they will do a retroactive change, but then again it will make for an interesting market if foods/drinks like Sunburns have a pre-patch version that's a higher stat buff than what might come after the patch.
SirVimes wrote:Oh, one more thing.
Right now I we have I believe 109 schematics. Well, GM is not sure that he will be able to code 109 schematics in time. So we might loose some recipes. We will still have a large amound, and GM plans to add more in patches and expansions. Just thought I would warn you.
And personally, I think it is a reasonable trade off.
yes, I completely agree that it'd be a fair trade off....109 schematics...how many of us use more than 10 (not counting subcomponents)?...theres maybe 2 schematics per box that are useful now...so even if we only get 4 schematics per box...if they're all as useful as the few good ones we have now...it wouldn't be "losing" schematics...we'd be gaining them.
the artisan foods look great, hopefully the chef ones will look just as good....and being able to experiment with filling...wow, hopefully we'll be able to see the stats on subcomponents, and the filling on the actual food/drink. secret components look good...but why only in bio-eng components? couldn't they take the place of a subcomponent, or be used instead of an optional bio-eng component....not all of them but at least a few, would be fun.
overall looks great, I can hear the SL's and tailors gripe even now...while BE's, and artisans join us in rejoicing.
"couldn't they take the place of a subcomponent, or be used instead of an optional bio-eng component....not all of them but at least a few, would be fun."
Because the bio-eng components are all optional. We don't need them to make our food, although they will make our food better. We do need the subcomponents to make our food...so they would be harder to replace.
I'm ambivalent toward these proposed changes. First of all, the description is ambiguous in several places:
1. "Drinks go in the drink bar. Everything else in food." Currently, drinks go in the drink bar and foods go in the food bar. However, the preceding statement indicates that this is a "change" from the existing system. Is this just a misstatement? Or, do they mean that food and spice will go in the food bar? That would put chefs and smugglers in direct competition, much more than in the current system.
2. "Skill mod foods do not stack... Duration effects do not stack." Does this mean that only skill mods and duration mods of the same type do not stack, or will skill mods and duration effects of different types also not stack? Will skill food mods stack with clothing skill mods? If so, is there still a cap of +25 to the total skills? That might render some proposed foods (like Carmelized Pkneb, buffs healing effectiveness) of limited use. If a dancer wants to buff healing effectiveness, they can wear bioengineered clothing close to the +25 cap.
3. "Food buffs do not persist." I can only guess that this means that when you die, the food buff goes away.
4. "Experimenting on flavor... for instant effects this does nothing, for everything else it has a very noticeable effect." I am assuming that this was phrased incorrectly. The way delayed effects are described, they also would have no duration.
The correct interpretation of these statements could have a big effect on how effective certain foods are. Second, some of the mechanics of how the skill mods and duration effects are not described at all. For instance:
1. If you do not naturally have a skill and you eat a food that buffs the skill, are you able to use that skill? Suppose I do not have terrain negotiation. Does a food that give me +10 to terrain negotiation benefit me in any way? I recall at one point I had a +12 to forage skill tape and I still could not forage; that is, I had the skill mod but lacked the ability. Therefore, the skill mod did me no good. If having the skill already is required to use the buff, many foods will have a limited audience (i.e., just scouts, just brawlers).
2. What is the difference between a skill mod type and a duration type? Air cake is called a duration type, but it increases dodge for X minutes. Dodge is a skill mod available to pistoleers, and perhaps to other classes. Why is dodge a duration effect, not a skill mod type? My guess is that skill mods are for skills specific to certain classes, while duration refers to abilities that all characters have, regardless of whether they have boosts to those abilities.
Just how desirable the foods are going to be depends largely on the customer base to which they are available, and it isn't quite clear based on the description how large or small those customer bases would be.
Third, I don'tagree withreducing the number of schematics, even temporarily. Some of the schematics (e.g., bivoli tempari, ryshcate, thakitillo, vercupti of agazza boleruu, angerian fishak surprise, breath of heaven, flameout) sell well already. I would be disappointed if these foods were removed from the tree altogether (or changed to be less desirable) for lack of time. If a schematic cannot be adequately balanced and programmed, I would rather it be left as is (or modified slightly) than removed altogether.
If I was confident that the rebalanced chef tree would make it to the live servers reasonably complete and bug-free, I might feel differently. However, looking at the example from the domestic arts tree, I suspect that, no matter how much we try to test on TestCenter, the initial release will be plagued by balance issues.For instance, like most other chefs, I have sometimes been disappointed by the repeated buffs, useless buffs, lack of progression in the skill tree, and lack of balance between buff size and resource costs. As I look over Thunderheart's summary of the proposeddomestic arts changes, I don't feel confident that chef history won't repeat itself:
1. Repeated Buffs: In introducing many new types of buffs, they can hardly help to have ameliorated this problem. However, of the six stat mod type foods and drinks in the DA tree, the only two drinks are both devoted solely to focus, while no drink (or even food) is devoted solely to each of the other five secondary stats. Why?
2. Useless Buffs: Whether a stat or mod buff is going to be useful is difficult to tell, since the plan doesnt state buff size or duration. However, just looking at several of the delayed effect and skill mod foods, I can't help wondering how effective they would really be. For instance, reducing the recap time after incapacitation (Starshine surprise) might be a little convenient, but in my experience, if you are going to receive a deathblow, it will happen very quickly. This means that starshine surprise will rarely, if ever, save you from death. Similarly, are dancers really going to buy food to buff healing effectiveness? Dancers already heal wounds and battle fatigue quickly; my guess is that most of them won't be very interested in this unless the effect is dramatic.
3. Lack of progression in the skill tree: Even without the buff sizes and durations listed, I don't see how the newdomestic arts tree (from I to IV) shows any better progression than the old tree. For instance, Ruby Bliel (DA3) is listed as reducing heal recovery time, an effect that would be more useful to more people than increasing Wookie roar (Jaar, DA 4).
4. Lack of balance between buff size and resource cost: This largely depends on whether they are planning on changing all the recipe ingredients, as well as the effect of the recipes themselves. If they are planning on leaving the ingredients the same, I don't see why a drink that reduces the length of time to recap (starshine surprise) should be worth so many more resources as one reducing the duration of DOTs (dustcrepe).
I guess I am saying that changing the chef tree isn't the same as fixing the chef tree, and while the ideas have promise, the actual layout of the domestic arts tree prompts a lot of questions about how successful these ideas, applied to chef, will be. Because of all the possible balance problems and bugs, I'd like to see foods that would otherwise be omitted left in the tree until they are rebalanced.
I TOLD them they should have made our spherical space station out of the same magnetically shielded walls as the garbage compactor! -Sleksheea with all the new buff possibilities, it could potentially be mind boggling to keep track of them all. its hard enough keeping track of food buffs during a prolonged fight...but add in skill buffs, and other things no where near as easy to notice...and well its not going to be very fun keeping track of it all.
oh and sir vimes even tho its a little unrelated...any word on how they're going to make milk more available? even if they give us all these amazing schems...if they require milk, and its still very rare...well I don't think I need to say the rest. I'm pretty sure you've already brought this up with the devs, but in case you haven't could you get GM to also balance out resource rarity with buff quality (i.e. something that requires meat should be more beneficial than something that only requires flora...at the same tier level of course).