Chef Archive

I've decided it was time to lend my voice to the chef community. As an experienced chef myself (4/1/4/4), I can definately say that each time I acquire a new skill box, I see it more as a stepping stone to master level, and less as an exciting opportunity to try out new and unique recipes.

The bottom line is that foods buff your stats. Only, there isn't any rhyme or reason to how the devs have laid out the various foods and their buffs. A new food you may recieve in, for example, at entrees III might actually buff the same stat, but WORSE than a food at entrees II. I don't have any specific examples of this off-hand, but I think we all know as a community that the chef line desperately needs this "balance pass" we're supposed to be getting so that our skills make sense.

But why does our food only buff the HAM bar and secondary stats? Doesn't that seem rather limiting? Esspecially since there are four (questionably) other classes in the game that have relatively similiar abilities.

Doctors can buff your stats by hundreds to thousands! For over thirty-minutes! Holy smokes!

Smugglers I think are balanced in this regard. Their spices give you quality buffs for good durations, but they have the downer (which really sucks). I think competition between Chef buffs and Spices is a good thing as they both have their advantages.

The two other 'questionable' buffing classes (in my mind) are musicians and dancers, who buff your mind and focus/willpower when you watch/listen to them.

Nonetheless, all of these classes provide a huge amount of overlap when it comes to providing services to players. How can we try to accentuate the differences between classes? Here are my ideas (which have almost certainly been posted in some form or another, but I atleast had to get this off my chest in my own way):

Some chef recipes that affect skill bonuses rather than all of the chef recipes exclusively affecting HAM/secondary stats.

The devs are fond of giving us buffs that provide a good bonus at the cost of a small debuff. So, how about a food/drink that provides between (depending on experimentation) 5-20 in Burst Run Efficiency but -5 in Terrain Negotiation?

Or how about foods that provide Steady Aim Bonus +10?

Or how about Melee Defense +10 and Ranged Defense -5?

This game has a HUGE amount of various skill bonuses, how come our foods can't affect these in one way or another? Why are we always limited to +200 action but -50 willpower? Etc, etc.

I want to be able to tailor my foods to very specific clientel. As it is, I sell almost exclusively tatooine sunburns. Sometimes I sell Bespin Ports and Ice Blasters to Squad Leaders and Bio-Engineers who really need their Mind buffed.

If a Teras Kasi walks into my store, I'd like to be able to say, hey, try this "Insert Name Here", it'll give you a boost to your melee defense.

The combos of buffs this system could provide is almost limitless, and provide Chefs with a service other than just straight HAM buffs to help distinguish them and their talents among the other denizens of the Galaxy.

I can only hope in my heart of hearts that the devs would possibly implement something like this.

<crosses fingers>

Anyways, I welcome any ideas or dicussions about the ideas.

because about 90 skills do nothing and 10 do so much that buffing them is overpowered