Giving a more defined role to food reagents

[Mickyan]

As it currently stand food reagents are generally just very weak counterparts to actual chems. That's not going to change and I have no intention of fitting food into the chem meta, but I think there's a few changes that can be made to give food effects more personality and make the bar/kitchen, as well as coffee/soda vendors a bit more mechanically relevant

So I was inspired by countless RPGs where you have the distinction of potions for instant, powerful and short term effects (chems) and food items with long term but very mild buffs (food reagents) that you typically use to buff before a fight

My current plan is to drastically decrease the metabolization rate of most food reagents (and change their effect to fit where applicable/appropriate) so that their effect will persist for several minutes. The idea is that instead of using food items reactively as cheap chems, you can "buff up" in anticipation of what's to come. Drinking milk won't save you from an e-sword, but every little bit can help in the long term.

I am also looking into adding more utility to certain reagents like coffee and sodas, such as do_after speed increase

[Davidchan]

Pretty neutral on the idea as a whole, but it does amuse me that nuke op prep would probably include feasting down on various specialty foods to give the ops the best edge they can afford.

[MMMiracles]

Pretty neutral on the idea as a whole, but it does amuse me that nuke op prep would probably include feasting down on various specialty foods to give the ops the best edge they can afford.

[Dr_bee]

If I recall correctly Goonstation made foods give a hitpoint and stamina regen buff for around 5-10 minutes, with strength and duration based on the quality of it.
Also currently high mood makes you go into crit at 120 damage instead of 100, so food already helps somewhat with that.

I still would like more interesting effects however.