Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26172435-20160401094948

"A nice pickle they were all in now: all neatly tied up in sacks, with three angry trolls (and two with burns and bashes to remember) sitting by them, arguing whether they should roast them slowly, or mince them fine and boil them, or just sit on them one by one and squash them into jelly."

- The Hobbit

Subject
All foodstuffs and a new resource: Rock Salt.

Objective
More realistic immersive gameplay and more hardship for the player.

Starting Points
Keep It Simple Stupid!

Main Proposals

 * All fresh food items decay.
 * Decay can be reduced by either treatment through sousing or other further processing (including consumption).
 * Rock Salt will be added as a non-renewable but fairly common resource.
 * A recipe for Gammon will be introduced.

Sousing

 * Rock Salt is a fairly common resource that generates upon world generation in any layer between y = 32 and y = 96. It will spawn in significant veins of 8 to 16 blocks with a spawn chance of 1 per chunk. A block of Rock Salt has similar appearance as Saltpeter Ore, but the grains of bright white salt are mottled with grey and brown impurities (mostly consisting of calcium and iron salts). Upon breaking a Rock Salt block, the block disappears and 4 to 8 Handful'o'Salt items are released. Breaking Rock Salt does not provide experience orbs.
 * Sousing is performed by putting a Handful’o’Salt into the central slot of a 3x3 crafting grid on a normal CT and surrounding it with 8 pieces of raw meat or fish to produced 8 pieces of the 'corned' or 'pickled' variant.
 * Upon first time sousing a player gets the achievement "Souse that!", "Pickle me Bert!" or whatever catchphrase would be most fitting.
 * Pickled raw porc shall produce Gammon.
 * Sousing gives 1 experience orb per Handful'o'Salt.
 * Corned or pickled meats and fish has a nutritional value that is 1 hunger point higher than the raw variant.

Decay

 * Decay is implemented as simply 'disappearing' of stored food items, in any containment (player inventory, chest, hopper, item frame, plate, etc.). Every half Middle Earth day (MEd) a percentage of foodstuffs disappears, even without leaving a trace of smell or sticky moisture. The mod calculates decay at dawn and dusk, which gives players the time to process raw and fresh foods.
 * The 'Decay Rate' (DR) is the chance of disappearance of items in a full stack at dawn or dusk, expressed as 100 % per ED MEd. With 'ED' or 'Expiration Date' the extrapolated period of total decay (disappearance) if the decay rate would be absolute and not relative. The 'Base Decay Rate'(BDR) will be calculated as '100%/(2*ED) per half MEd'. The effective decay rate will have an additional random component and will ensure that one item in any containment can also just decay (disappear) at any given moment. Therefore the effective decay rate will have to be calculated as BDR*(64/'actual number of items in containment')*Randomizer. The 'Randomizer' function will be a Gaussic function between 0% and 200% cut off at +/- 2 sigma with sigma being 50%. Despite this Randomizer, food with a very slow decay rate that is stored separately, like put on a plate or in an item frame, will not decay.
 * Decay is only calculated and effective when a player is present within a radius of 4 chunks from stored food items.

Decay rates for typical food items
Here's a list of indicative values for the Expiration Dates and Base Decay Rates of most food items.
 * ED = Infinite / BDR = 0.00%; for sugar, lembas, brews and draughts: these will not decay!
 * ED = 144 / BDR = 0.35%; for maple sirup and wheat stored in hay bales. BDR =
 * ED = 108 / BDR = 0.46%; for roast chestnuts, corned red meats, pickled fish and pickled other meats, like Gammon.
 * ED = 96 / BDR = 0.52%; for raw grains (corn and wheat, including hay bales), dates and cane.
 * ED = 72 / BDR = 0.69%; for chestnuts and eggs.
 * ED = 36 (36 MEd = an IRL day) / BDR = 1.39%; for pies, pastries, pancakes, types of bread and fresh vegetables (carrot, potato, pumpkin, ...)
 * ED = 24 / BDR = 2.08%; for cakes.
 * ED = 12 / BDR = 4.17%; for cooked mammal meat and fresh temperate fruits and berries.
 * ED = 6 / BDR = 8.03%; for cooked chicken and fish, lettuce and fresh tropical fruits like banana, mango and melon.
 * ED = 3 / BDR = 16.67%; for raw meats, fish, milk and soup.

Possible Fun Additions / Related Suggestions

 * Make ED values climate dependent. Example: quadruple them for Forodwaith, double them for the biomes north of the White Mountains and Mordor, and halve them for the moist and warm Far Harad Jungle.
 * Eating potatoes, raw meats, milk and fish gives a player a chance of being poisioned (food poisoning). Highest chance, ca. 40%, when eating raw chicken - lowest chance, ca. 10%, while eating red meats.
 * Add a thirst mechanism that requires players to drink water on a daily basis. See this plugin for a simple and effective example: Hydrate.
 * The additions on passive animal behaviour as proposed in this thread: Nature bites!.

Bring that feedback!
This may not be original, but the thought of this has crossed my mind for quite a long time. I know this may not be the most favoured feature as it makes gameplay harder than desirable for many, but I just felt like the time had come to throw it in. :)

Now bring on that feedback! Any feedback will be appreciated, including 'No, please, don't!'. Your vote in the post below will also be useful to get an idea of the acceptance of these proposals.

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