Vgstation13: Space Dietary Roadmap

[Kurfursten]

Recently there have been some calls for a deeper food system. It would work pretty nicely with PRs like #13978 (benefits of muscle mass), and #13993 (better speed system). In addition, if Economy ever happens (who knows?), it would be nice to have some reason to get one food over the next. I like simulationism, but I think we can all agree we don't want to add realistic amounts of each B vitamin to every grown object. So here's a prototype system design that simplifies nutrients to just a few I've been looking at, and some of the effects.

Nutriment as a reagent would be replaced with

• Protein: Comes from meat products. Raises cholesterol, governs body's natural regeneration from damage, improves Sport performance. Combines with Fiber to create Bulk in the body.
• Fiber: Comes from most grown products. Lowers cholesterol, governs body's blood regeneration rate. Creates a large amount of Fullness with little Carbs.
• Lactose: Comes from diary products. Governs bone break resistance and tooth-loss resistance, as well as fart regeneration.
• Starch: High level of carbohydrates and fullness. Lowers bloodsugar.
• Sugar: High level of carbohydrates but low fullness. Everything contributes to bloodsugar, but this raises it much faster.

High cholesterol causes heart damage. Low bloodsugar causes lethargy, high bloodsugar causes fullness to burn through more quickly. Bulk is turned into muscle mass with exercise. All of these reagents generate carbohydrates in some amount or another. Whether your body feels like it should eat is governed by fullness, but whether or not you are actually nourished (and thus get full speed) is ruled by your carbs.

Remember that cooked items inherit the reagents of their components, so for instance, a mushroom pizza would have fiber from the mushrooms, lactose from the cheese, and starch from the flour.

But wouldn't this make every round hellish as the chef keeps cooking fried eggs and refuses to cook veggies?

I would certainly find numbers that are agreeable for everyone. I promise no hypothermia-esque "bite one sausage, collapse from heart failure". Do remember that the pizzas from cargo do seem to have quite an excellent variety.

Would health analyzers get some kind of buff to help diagnose malnutrition?

Sure

Can I survive off vending machines still?

It's got beef jerky, ramen, and... cheesy honks are a vegetable, right?

Lemme know if you think it's worth pursuing, or overdesigned garbage.

[unusualcrow]

Sounds good to me. Would definitely help with economy which I'll be working on next.

[kilozombie]

I really like what you've done with those five categories. There's a ton of variety in what's best at a given time, and playing a chef would definitely be more interesting.

For instance, sweets and sugary foods on a highpop round might be more efficient (more carbs). If I want to fill up a ton of people without a chance of making them fat, some veggie dishes sound good. If I want to keep them moderately fed but also healthy, a mix of veggie and meat dishes would be a good idea, and I'd certainly give the clown tons of milk to fart faster (oh god that actually sounds bad)

I'd love if there were an inverse to analyzing somebody's nutrient levels, where you could analyze food items to see what they contain. Putting it in the wiki might be a job I'm willing to do but even then it's a pain to go back and forth checking.

Heart damage should definitely have some limit based on current cholesterol. There should be a way to have a meat-only diet without dying, if you're cautious.

[unusualcrow]

Would be cool if chef started out with low grade ingredients and had to purchase better ones.
You could have the same recipes with variable nutritional value.

[Kurfursten]

The chef's PDA actually already has a reagent scanner, which would do what you're asking for basically.

[FudgePucker]

@unusualcrow
But the Chef already gets his ingredients from botany

[unusualcrow]

Then botany has to buy better seeds :^)

[Kurfursten]

@unusualcrow There actually is sort of a framework for that. For instance, you can choose to use any meat in a meat steak (which in turn can go into an eggs benedict). So if you choose to use bear meat for that base ingredient, your final product ends up with hyperzine, which is cool.

You could do something similar with better kinds of meats, for anything that simply requires any generic meat item. Certainly you might say, a rare meat like xeno meat or carp meat gives more protein, while diona's leafy meat offers some fiber, etc.

[kol1th]

Food datums when?

[despotate]

this server can't even handle hardcore mode, you think they'll be able to handle maintaining five different nutrition types?

[ghost]

This server has to uncasualize