Moffic Food and the Insane Unavoidable Credit Taxes

[Redrover1760]

So I tried making moffic food yesterday... And I've discovered something horrifying. A large part of the ingredients of it can only be gotten by literally buying them. And its super expensive too for a single pizza.

High Quality Oil costs 120 credits for 50 units and that is so ungodly much amount of units you will basically never manage to use, but at the same time has no other way of getting it and is practically a credit tax to even begin cooking lizard/moffic foods. I tried making a single moffic five cheese pizza and in grand total it cost me an unavoidable (you cannot get them anyway else, outside of the produce order console):

30 credits to buy Cornmeal (1 is enough for 3 moffic pizza doughs)
120 credits for quality oil (it spawns 50u and its an insane up-front cost in exchange for like using 7u (5u for tomato sauce, 2u for the pizza dough)
30 credits to buy a Can of Tomatos (yes, there is no other way to make tomato sauce. And its 1 per pizza. Oh god why)
30 credits to buy Vinegar (good for 2 moffic 5 cheese pizzas, cause you have to make 3 curd cheeses and convert 2 of them into 1 herby cheese and firm cheese (drying rack))
And lots of flour/sugar/complexity/etc/time spent (but time can be optimized so not a big deal)
in total it costs 210 assuming you use cargo deliveries, doubled its 420 if you are instant deliverying. I also spent around 40 credits on botany stuff to mass grow herbs/wood for drying rack. For a single pizza. The sheer investment that a cook has to put into making a single irregular cuisine is literally insane and means that unless someone is really dedicated you will probably never see new foods (and will NEVER see them in mass) due to the sheer credit tax associated with just making them.

This is literally insane and there either needs to be ways to get these materials that don't require the console or a steep price decrease on these, because at the moment it severely discourages variety unless someone is willing to spend and ungodly amount of money to make a single moffic pizza. (It doesn't help that the moffic pizza didn't magically aheal me or anything, or give anything more than the standard "I love this food" mood buff... to a moth...)

Alternatively, making such pricy and difficult food should be rewarded much more than simply "I love this food because it is within the types of food I like" nonsense. But yeah. Good luck.

[oranges]

moved to coding feedback

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Yeah I've gone down the moffic food rabbit hole. Try making a sweet chili cabbage wrap.

There is no good reason for the fucking tomatoes to be import only, at the very least. If you want the food to be super special snowflake and require tons of work, fine, but making items import only just feels lazy to me. Give us a way to make high quality oil and every other import-only item, please.

[Redrover1760]

moved to coding feedback

Thanks

[Valorium]

Maybe make the canned tomatoes just like, stewed by cooking tomato juice for a super long time? So you have to monopolize one of your griddles or something?

[EOBGames]

So this PR has now been merged: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/67227 which should address some of the stuff regarding credit payments for ingredients (except vinegar, because I forgor) and nutriment amounts, generally making the mothic and lizard cuisines more rewarding. The issues with crafting and recipes are also something I'm seeking to address by making crafting recipes give more items overall per ingredient, but it's not as trivial a change as I'd like it to be, so that will take a bit more time.