So, I am quite a new player and I am absolutely loving the game so far.
What has been an issue is the freezing of food.
Find a lemon Night 1: fresh, day comes: mushy, next day: rotten. Doesn’t seem right.
The result is that I rush to find a basement to live in so that my fresh supplies don’t just rot around me.
I read a post from a couple months back that discusses specific heat capacity based on mass etc, a great approach toward realism but maybe too complex computationally.
My suggestion, to introduce a delay.
Possibly with transitionary states. “Freezing” and “Thawing”. If a cold item is at freezable temperatures it becomes freezing. After X number of hours (maybe 4, 6, 8hrs?) it can become frozen. If it rises above freezable temperatures before the time has elapsed it behaves as if it was always only cold. Likewise, with frozen -> defrosting -> cold.
Potentially it would be a feature of the food item itself with timers counting, but that seems like more computation and a possible introduction of lag.
Potentially it would be a feature attached to the weather where things could still freeze and defrost instantaneously but only if the set time has passed with sufficiently cold weather.
Conceptually this would be simulating the delay in the rise and fall of the ambient temperature inside a house due to weather or the delay from heat capacity in an item at freezing point.
I don’t code and am unsure if this would be any easier to implement. Just enthusiastic and thinking out loud. And boy does this game get me enthusiastic and thinking!