Chef Archive
Thread: My latest note to the developers
As a long time bio engineer, and ex-business partner to a master chef, I totally agree that something needs to be done with bio additives. From a BE perspective, making food additives that use massive quantities of high quality meat is a very unattractive one. If I have say a stack of 2k 900+ OQ quality meat, I can put that into a crate of 25 tailor tissues, which then will make bio clothes which give "permanent buffs" to at least a dozen different garments, and probably serve a dozen or half dozen different customers. Or I can make a crate of chef tissues, which will be added to food, bought by a single person, and used up very likely within a week. I guess what I'm saying is that I see a lot more value added (and thus can potentially make a lot more money) creating a crate of tailor tissues rather than a crate of chef tissues, all things being equal.
I haven't even seen what the new chef tissues schematics look like, but if they are anything like the old ones that require tons of creature resources, I just can't see myself using my top resources to make chef additives. Like Sir Vimes said, you guys need things in big big quantities and that just isn't worth the effort when we're talking about meat. I would seriously suggest removing all creature resource requirements from all food additives except maybe the very very uppermost tier of them (master level). Having a few uber items that are rare and difficult to make is a good thing, just so long as they are not all that way.
Im with Ezran here. I have writtnen a post (not sure where now), where the Devs seem to be nerfing non enhanced food do to the power of additives. BE tissue being common is a problem. It will nerf regular chef food and require that ALL food be made with enhancements. That will cripple most of the chef economy. When numbers came out for the Awesome Brandy together with BE enhancements, people gasped. Im sure the devs saw this as a problem, (along with cries from other professions). Put all this together and now we have our current Brandy.
I think the DEVs insist making BE tissue common, but we all know that will not be possible. I can see a few solutions for this:
A) increase the food buffs or lower the filling or a combination, but also either decrease the power of BE tissue or further increase its requirements. Making BE tissue much rarer.
B) (I am strongly against this, but nonetheless it is an option and should not be omitted) decrease BE tissue requirements to make them more common.
C) (I dont like this one either) Some have said scrapping the idea of BE tissue for food and just making food stand alone.
D) (this one I like) make tissues only affect quantity and duration. Chefs are complaining that the quantity is too low, well this can be a way out. Also the DEVs dont like huge buffs and low filling.
E) increase the food buffs and lower filling and leave the BE tissue the same (this led to the "nerf" of vasarian brandy and what we have now).
Any other solutions or opinion would be great.
We have to remember that the reason chefs sell in such bulk now is that the duration and number of charges per item is so small. Both of these are going up with the patch, so it is reasonable for volume to go down.
Consider old BoH vs. the new Vaserian Brandy (I haven't seen stats for new BoH):
Assume an old BoH has 550 buff for 550 seconds with 15 charges. For single-charge, constant use, thats 2.3 hours of buff-time per stack, or 57 hours/crate.
Now take a new brandy, add the medium BE nutrient additive, and put it in a cask. As I understand it, this will give about a 300 buff for 45 minutes with 20 charges and 50 filling. Take double shots and you can have a 600 buff constantly, with about 7.5 hours of buff-time per cask.
So 8 casks of new BE-enhanced brandy provide about the same total buffage as 1 crate of old BoH, or roughly 100 casks for the equivalent of a 13-crate run of the BoH. Total resource requirement for the 100 casks is 34k, with 2k of this being meat. Compared to 88k resources for the full run of BoH.
All other things the same, equivalent buffage should command the same price. But with less than half of the resource requirement the sell price/resource will more than double. Lower volume/higher cpu sales may not mean better profits, but it will allow chefs to pay well enough to get the BE components/meat needed.
I don't know, are my numbers just way off or something?
Mutton
Caveat: I like the way BE Bio component are right now. I wouldn't like to see them change.
(Too Good) Vasarian Brandy
Filling: 25 (At about 20-25%)
Buff: 150
Duration: 45 min
If you try real hard, you could get 9 of these working at the same time if your stomach empties in 30 min. That's 1350 mind boost for 7.5 minutes (Too much). On average, you could keep a 600 mind buff (okay).
(New Nerfed) Vasarian Brandy
Filling: 50 (20-25%)
Buff: 200
Duration: 45 min
If you try real hard, you could get 4 of these working at the same time, and have 800 buff for 15 min(Not worth it). On average, you could keep a 400 mind buff (Also low)
(Middle Ground) Vasarian Brandy
Filling: 33 (20-25%)
Buff: 200
Duration: 45 min
If you try hard, you could take 6 of these and get up to 1200 for 5 minutes (High, but doesn't last long). Over the long run, you could keep 600 (Same as good stuff).
The nice thing about this version is that you could also take 1 of each of Garrmol, Vasarian Brandy and Accaragm, and boost all 9 stats.
The dessert stat buffs hit a good point at about 400-500 for 8-10 minutes with 50 filling.
The Entrees and artisan stat buffs haven't appeared to have changed much.
If this is where food/drink stat buffs end up, I will be happy.
Message Edited by Ezran on 02-05-2004 12:58 PM
You hit the good points.
I think the thing that is killing alot of things is the required level of meat. Not just our food but everything. Ih beta meat was harvested alot like we harvest minerals now, but that idea was scratched and now everything that was built on top of it needs to be re thought.
Why does every planet have 5+ types of meats ?
Why does every planet have it's own type of meats ?
This is to complex of a system with over 40+ types of meat out there at one time. If recipes are going to require such large quantities of meat something has to be done to :
The way we gather meat (Bring back some type of farming)
The number of different types of meat out there. (Have some planets meat coincide with one another)
Tie both together (Require a farm to have animals captured by a CH, raised and breed by a BE. Require regular restocking to keep quality up)
Just some ideas. Nothing can change overnight but something does need to be changed.
Just my 2 cents.
MuttonJedi wrote:
Well, I see things a little differently, but I haven't been on test center so maybe I'm making some bad assumptions. I agree with how important the BE additives are (and maybe they shouldn't be), but I'm not sure the meat requirements will be as bad as they look.
You're absolutely right, the resources for BE BioComps won't be impossible to get. And for a small run chef with only a PA to feed, they could probably get by with using Additives all the time.
But for the wholesale chef, with 3 factories going churning 10s-100s of crates per day (which is even demanded for Weaponsmiths, and guns last a lot longer than crates of food), it should be impossible to have additives in everything. At the very least, it should jack the price up enough so that the small time chefs can still provide food without additives that players will still want to buy.
I think the system is set up to provide this environment now. But only time will tell.
Ezran wrote:
Now, suddenly everyone is thinking having a BE additive "More common" would be a good idea.
If we start having this attitude, the food WILL be balanced as if it had a light additive in it, and be useless otherwise.