Topic

On food and becoming 'full' -- a proposed change to the system

Apologies if this has been suggested before. No apologies for the math!

Yesterday, I was doing some seriously energy intensive chefery, fueling my energy needs by just stuffing down facefulls of meat [10 energy]. For the first time ever, I ran into the "you are full" activity cap (the need for which I completely understand).

I thought the solution was to eat fewer units of more energy intensive food. So today, I made a bunch of Divine Crepes [78 energy] (the most high energy food I can make with current skill and reasonable cost). The cost/energy was actually worse than meat, but I didn't mind since I assumed I'd be able to eat 7.8X the amount of total energy. Nope.

I learned that the cap is energy consumed, not food consumed.

I would propose changing this because under the current system, the optimally efficient solution to ones energy needs is to eat raw meat. As such, you remove a great deal of the incentive to make food. This leads to the rather ironic outcome that the only useful functions for food manufacture is for sale to vendors and donation to shrines, but NOT for actual eating.

MATH:

Meat: 10 energy
Harvest (AH 6): 2 energy for 3 meat
AH Purchase: 8 currants (sometimes lower, but that's the vendor buy-back price, which acts as a soft floor)
Harvest return on energy: 15.0
Purchase energy return on currants: 0.8c/energy

Divine Crepes: 78 energy
Harvest (AH 6, A2):
5 grain: 2.2 energy
flour conversion: 2 energy
9 cherry: 7.5 energy
strawberry conversion: 6 energy
2 milk: 2.5 energy
1 butter conversion: 2 energy
2 eggs: 1.67 energy
frying: 5 eenrgy
pan/board wear & tear (approx): 1 energy
total energy: 29.87
Harvest return on energy: ~2.61

AH Purchase (assumes best prices I've seen for the most part, cherries have inflated a lot though)
5 grain (1.5/each): 7.5c
9 cherry (4/each): 36c
2 milk (6/each): 12c
2 eggs (4/each): 8c
Energy for making wheat, strawberries, butter, frying crepes: 14
Net Energy yield: 64
Total cost: 63.5
Purchase energy return on currants: .99c/energy

Conclusion: Whether purchasing the ingredients with currants or with an investment of energy and time by harvesting the raw materials "for free" my optimal decision is to eat meat. When you include the fact that cooking my food requires eating some food for energy to perform the cooking, making me fuller right away, going with the meat option becomes even better, thus rendering the cooking of food for actual eating completely pointless, at least with my current skill set and availability of recipes. Since Divine Crepes is near the top of the list of recipe efficiency, I don't see the economics changing with a different recipe. That goes double when you consider the time investment that goes into preparing food vs. the time it takes to double click a meat stack.

Posted 82 days ago by Brief Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I just realized that I explained why the system needed to be changed without providing any suggestions for how to change it. I realize that switching to a straight Maximum Items Consumable system from the current Maximum Energy Consumable has it's own flaw: it severely handicaps beginners while giving veterans a ridiculously large energy pool to work with. I would suggest one of two things:

    1) Hybrid system: You have a fixed available "Maximum Consumption" statistic. Eating unprocessed food subtracts from this at a 1:1 rate. For prepared foods, the more ingredients that went into the food (whether by count or by street value), the greater the discount to your lost available consumption. Something like (2/Ingredient count +1) would work. This might still lead to too much discount for high level players, as such

    2) Logarithmic system: simply have the amount of energy subtracted from your Maximum Consumption pool decrease in logarithmic proportion to the energy consumed. Alternately, you could achieve a similar curve by just taking the square root of the energy content of each individual item consumed. So with a pool of, say 1000, eating raw meat (10 energy) would allow  316 meat consumption, or 3160 energy total, while eating Divine Crepes would allow eating 113 crepes consumed, or 8814 energy total. 

    Obviously, you could fine tune the curve to provide something appropriate to the time and energy investment for cooking.
    Posted 82 days ago by Brief Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Let's not forget the iMG you get when making food, and you can eat the food for bonus iMG. Many ways to work around energy usage like no no powder and having a high energy tank, so it's hard to consider the energy part of the math. Whats really easy is to think about how much time it takes to cook and whatnot, but that math is not there, is it? Do we know how long it takes? should we time every recipe? too much to think or care about for me.

    Food is supposed to be an investment, not an on the spot benefit. You can make all this food for one day and then nom it the next few days and live in energy luxury.

    They could easily change the value of food to a % so energy tank size doesn't matter. Or add a more proper limit like you mentioned. I agree with having the energy limit so damn high but we can nom whatever we want until up to that point, but ultimately it's how much energy is spent, not gained. That has to change, or have a second layer of being pooped, a "full stomach" effect.

    Let's also not forget the time it takes to find and click on 3 separate piggies (6 clicks) and then have to move to another location to click on 3 more (discluding superharvests). I could be using that meat for Lemburgers or something.
    Posted 82 days ago by LųĉĩđεşşΨ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I understand your point, and if I had a more advanced Glitch, I might just brush this issue off (for instance, I can't yet cook Lemburgers). Also, I'm not objecting to the general 'Full Stomach' game mechanic. I'm just suggesting it be reformed to make eating prepared food competitive with eating raw basic resources. At the very least they could be energy neutral.

    Actually, some the points you make (for instance, how things are different with a higher energy tank, using no-no powder) just reinforce the fact that the system as-is punishes beginning-to-mid level Glitchen and people who don't know how to min/max every last game mechanic.

    Finally, thanks for commenting!
    Posted 81 days ago by Brief Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like this idea a lot.  I cook a lot, and I still think it's worth cooking for the iMG, but it would be nice if the cooked dishes were worth a bit more energy as well.
    Posted 81 days ago by roler Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think the hybrid system would work, but suggest this:

    - Raw foods count towards super pooped at 105%
    - Transmogrified items could at 100%
    - Basic recipes count at 95%
    - Advanced recipes count at 90%

    "Basic" generally being of the recipies unlocked by {skillery} 1, advanced ones being unlocked by accomplishments and {skillery} 2+

    Keep in mind TS has promised (repeatedly) to rebalance recipies (which I've whined for, repeatedly) -- and given Mart Lume's recent accomplishments, I suspect may happen soon.
    Posted 80 days ago by Sturminator IX Subscriber! | Permalink