I would like to explore the possibility of doing away with all the various food items and replacing them with a single generic food item called ‘food ration’. As for drinks, there would only be dirty water, clean water and ‘preserved drink’. ‘Preserved drink’ would replace all soda and beer cans, lemonade bottles etc. but not ALL alcohol.
ISSUES:
- The cooking skill. It would become far less meaningful, but it would still affect the chemistry side.
- Food ingredients in other recipes. There is a handful of crafting recipes that require certain food items, such as salt, sugar, and lard.
- Deciding the nutrient content of a single ‘food ration’.
- The harvest from animal carcasses. Should we have ‘uncooked food ingredient’ to represent all raw meat and fat, and then have a single cooking recipe for ‘food ration’ that uses ‘uncooked food ingredient’ as the single component?
- Alcohol. Weak and strong alcohols are needed in many recipes. Perhaps alcohols should be turned into generic ‘weak alcohol’ and ‘strong alcohol’ items?
- How to deal with the mod and the graphics? It might be easiest to just have the ‘food ration’ have a single graphic, even if it makes the game look a bit bland at places (grocery stores, farm fields).
- Compatibility with the simplified nutrition mod.
- Various cookbooks would become largely void of recipes although they might still increase the skill. But I… guess that could be OK?
- Spoilage. I was thinking that all food should become non-perishable, even if it would render minifridge largely obsolete. Although it would still be needed to preserve ‘uncooked food ingredient’…? Food being universally non-perishable would also mean it would always stack neatly.
Edit: One more: - Food allergy traits. They would either have to be disabled or their cost reduced to 0 or something.
The main reasons I’ve often thought about this mod are the cluttered crafting menus and inventories, and just the general micromanagement hassle with food and eating while reading, while trying to keep anything from spoiling - all of which I find a bit of a nuisance, together compounding into a greater nuisance.