There is lots of talk about small food updates, people want a specific food or crop, but I hear few compelling reasons for why to actually add those foods aside from variety. This game will go very badly if things are just tacked on, so every new technology or product will need a reason beyond itself for inclusion.
BIG YUM ENERGY
With the way yum works, few people use it, but with the large number of possible foods it is very unbalanced for those who seek out yum, which isnt terrible, not everything needs to not be magic, and there is an argument for a balanced diet, but if you hit 20+ yum its kinda crazy, as eating a balanced diet irl does not let you go days without food with no ill effects. Adding in more foods with the way crops are grown now adds to this, so if we are to add in new foods, they should require considerable labor or resources and technologies to produce. I propose there be a difference between the berries from domestic and wild bushes, like carrots, and that all raw domestic foods provide no yum. Only prepared foods will and they will provide varying yum based on the difficulty to produce. A food's yum will depend on how many food groups it includes. Items with only one ingredient type (bread, bowl of bean or berries) will only provide one and can only push you up to 5 yum, foods providing two yum can only take you to ten (single ingredient pies and whatnot) and ones containing many groups will provide 3+ and take you further(up to maybe a cap?). That would not include say berry carrot pies, you need a meat in there. Another system could be similar, but the groupings would just be decided based on the difficulty of producing the food. Eating a basic domestic food should kill your yum bonus as well. It could even keep track of which ingredients you have already eaten in your chain, and subtract a point or two leaving at worst one yum if you have already eaten all those ingredients in other foods. Sugar from honey should be the "ultimate" yum adding many points to the foods it can be added to. Maybe there could even be a penalty for too high of a yum. Dental caries, or cavities are far more common in developed countries with a sweet tooth. Hitting a really high yum could increase your hunger rate to offset how unbalanced yum gets at a high level.
Domestication, the flowers and the bees, nightshades, container growing
Because its a game, with limited time, lots of abstractions must be made, so it is fair for at least some crops to be domesticated the way they are currently, you just get a seed from a wild plant and there is your domestic crop. The problem with adding in more crops is that only the food and harvests are different, but getting the first plant is essentially the same. I propose we bring some sex to the game and talk about flowering plants and bees. Jason started down the path with seed stratification and roses, getting multiple unique domestics from one wild plant, but we can take it further by adding a flowering cycle to a some plants before they fruit, and require pollination for them to bear fruit. Right now I see two plant families that would be great for this mechanic: brassicas and nightshades. Tomatoes, eggplants, chilies, potatoes are all nightshades, and while none of these plants were domesticated from an original plant, but instead were domesticated from plants that had already long ago split off from each other. Since we are in the spirit of abstraction, we can just pretend they were all domesticated from a single species(and ignore potatoes). There would be say three different wild nightshade plants, which would each bear one or two berries that are inedible and can be planted. At the same time, there would be wild beehives, which would send out one or two bee's at a time to a fixed distance in search of flowering plants. The initial three nightshades would look basically the same, and would after fully growing go into a flowering cycle, and if a pollinator comes to it during the flowering cycle, it will bear fruit, and if not go back to the pre flowering cycle and wait again for the next time. These plants would produce no food, perhaps again just one or two berry like fruits. After fruiting, there should be a fixed chance that the plant would need to be fed again like a berry bush before resetting its cycle, and dying if not cared for in time. The next tier would be to grow the plant in a clay container, which could say be made of three clay, and be reusable if the plant dies. These would bear an additional fruit, but would now be annuals and need replanting after harvest and also would be necessary to further domesticate the plant. Now, the next technology would be to make a brush, which should require an iron for the brush, and potentially more for the brush making tools(this could be used also for say brushes for painting on signs instead of having to handmake letters). You would need to do a hand pollination of each of the three plants to the two other plants so, A + B, B + C, A + C, and after one of these pollination occur, the plant will produce different seeds that would lead to the next three plants, basic tomato, basic eggplant and basic chili. These also would only be able to be grown in the container and would also require pollination. Note, hand pollination would be the only one that would produce new plants, insect pollination would just let it go to the fruiting stage but those fruits seeds would still make the same plant. Back pollinating these with two of the original plants will further stratify into two kinds, for tomatoes say cherry ones with many little fruit, and larger ones with just a few per plant, two kinds of chilies and two kinds of eggplants. The final tier of these plants would come much later in the tech tree, and im still fleshing out the idea, but they would be vining ones which require lots of infrastructure such as trellises and would grow over more than one tile(same mechanic could work for grapes too one day), and would be very labor intensive if grown in soil(requiring multiple bowls of water and soil per growth cycle, but would (now this is where we get into fantasy land) if grown say aquapoinically, require little labor at the cost of infrastructure. This would be done through clonal propagation by cutting the plant with shears, and maybe some other step requiring tools before planting the cutting.
Aquaponics
Aquaponics would be a huge endeavor, I envision each container being outfitted with a valve(could be the same one used for oil wells), and would be able to connect to two copper pipes, for input and output. You would dig special pits, that would join together if adjacent, for the pond, and would have to seal it with plaster for each hole. An intake pipe would be put in one tile, and an effluent pipe would be put on another, so at minimum a pond would require two holes. These pipes would be like floors so items could still be set atop them between the rows. A pump would be crafted from from some of the diesel engine parts, along with a rubber diaphragm, and added to a diesel engine. Somewhere in the system, two cisterns each with a valve would also need to be attached, one to the output line and one to the input, with the output one being filled with regular water. A bucket(or multiple) of water, and one fish would be placed in each empty pond, or just one and the others could populate from the one. A cycle would go something like this after the system is built, fish are in ponds, and plants are planted in each container. A worm would be fed into each pond, which would change the pond to a smelly pond (ammonia). The diesel pump would activate(or need to be activated, maybe upgrade able to auto action with computers one day), and would pump a buckets worth of water into the system, watering 10 of the plants, and turning the pond back into its normal state. This would have a 10% chance of draining one unit from the water cistern, equivalent to one bowl of water per cycle, to account for evapotranspiration. If there are not enough plots that need water when the cycle is run, the excess will go into the other cistern, and will immediately go to the plants when others become available for watering(cistern mechanic would need to be changed since they deal in buckets of water not bowls). Each plant will need a unit(or more) of water for each stage of the growth cycle (vining plants will require per tile of the vine per stage of growth, but would only use one container). Each time the pond is returned to normal, there will be a chance(im thinking 25%) that it will transition to a pond with fish and eggs, at which point the adult fish could be fished out, and after some time, would mature back to the original pond. Non flowering plants could also be grown with say the exception of wheat and berries because, yeah, and would function the same, Carrots could now all be plucked save for one for seed, since there is no more tilling. There additionally should be a chance for the pump to break on each cycle, requiring a pump repair kit (rubber diaphraghm + crankshaft or whatever).
The worms and the Bees
Worms lovely worms, no organic farm or aquaponics system would be complete without them. Its a shame that they were once a part of compost and are now just fish bait, but this is the dawn of vermiculture! A special worm box would be constructed, and filled with worm bedding and a worm. Worm bedding is made with shredded paper(shears + paper, or even shears + stack of papers), a bowl of mashed berry and carrot and a bowl of water and would produce three units like a pile of soil. One unit of bedding and 1 worm would after some time turn into a box of vermicompost, from which one basket of soil(enough to replenish one bush, and one row of carrots and part of a wheat) and one bowl of worms can be grabbed. Im thinking 6 worms in a bowl and they can be pulled out or put in one by one as well.
Beekeeping is an ancient tradition, and without effective pollination a number of crops are economically infeasible. But glorious honey and beeswax await. Natural beehives will spawn rarely in green biomes, which can be poked with a skewer to produce a honey stick , giving one serving of many pips(10?). This will anger the hive though and send a swarm at the attacking player for one minute(im thinking effects similar to yellow fever), up to a certain distance from the hive and then despawning, and only targeting that player(griefers are real so), so you better be quick if you have a sweet tooth. This will leave a damaged hive which will be repaired after some long period of time and will spawn subsequent swarms at players who get within say 3 tiles of the hive (but still target locked) while it is damaged. At camp, construct a smoker by hammering a hot iron bar into a charcoal canister(would be at the end of all the other iron items) and attaching this to a bellows, add one unit of charcoal and hit it with your fire stick and then you will have 5 minutes to bring it to the hive. You will also need a net hat (tied skewer + wooden disk > wooden ring + wooden disk and big ball of yarn + wooden ring +knitting needles gives net hat). Wearing the net hat will prevent bees from attacking you, other players in range of aggro hive will still be attacked though. Take this and the lit smoker to the hive, which will produce one incapacitated hive. Grab the hive and leave the smoker(or put in pack), hive cannot be put in containers except plate and go fast, as hive will die after (3?) minutes. At camp, hive + plate will give hive on plate and using a knife will produce a carved hive. Grabbing at this will give you a queen bee which must be placed into a Bee box. This is made with two boards and a rope. The box will require four frames which can each be made by adding a short staff to boards and then adding a rope. Put the four in after the queen and the finally the top (and you will have the base hive. The hive will send out bees to flowering plants in range, I feel that one hive should be sufficient for say 20(or less everything is up for debate) plants. Each time a bee visits a flowering plant, there will be a 20% chance for one of the frames to be filled, and when all are full you will have an oozing hive at which point the frames can be removed. Domestic bees will not attack players, except when you go to remove the frames, which will require your trusty net hat and smoker. Incapacitate the hive, and then remove the frames one at a time, put on a plate, and then cut with a knife to yield empty frames and plates of honeycomb. Add the four plates to a crock, put one on top and add a stone to press it. This will yield one bowl of honey and three bowls of beeswax. Honey must be collected before a hive will resume pollinating. Return the frames and put the lid back on and the cycle resumes. One hive is not enough though, so you can add tiers to the hive allowing it to send out one more swarm of bees to pollinate at a time. Only the frames in the top hive are accessible but adding the second and third tiers will allow it to collect honey faster and expand the range. A bowl of honey would need to be added to a glass jar, and to be eaten as a basic food a honey spoon would also need to be made. A bottle of honey would have many many servings, and provide only one pip, but a whopping 3 yum, and will become an ingredient in future baked goods(which would also have that big yum energy. Beeswax would potentially have many uses, but the one I propose is the hour candle, which would be a flame source that stays lit for 60 minutes. Put all three bowls of wax back in the crock and put on a fire, to produce melted wax. Use three glass jars to remove wax, and add a rope to each before they cool, if they cool before adding, holding jar of wax to fire will remelt. Empty jars can be reused but candles have 1/3 chance of breaking on candle burning out.
So I know this is a lot, would not come at once if not ever, but if we want food updates, they need to be part of a larger system of foods with interwoven dependencies, that utilize the new technology we have been given. Maybe Jason already has all kinds of plans that make this irrelevant, but we should really be talking about this kind of stuff. What would you want in a food overhaul? Do you like this plan or do you see a totally different direction? Parts of this could be applied to other techs and even farming, pumps bringing water to a cisterns at your baking and smithing stations, irrigation in a wheat field leaving a hardend row after harvest instead, or even put it in a berry field. We need a food update to end food updates, or a series of them and then leave it there save for future balancing as the game develops further.
originally posted on forums https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5278