Chef for too long has been an excuse for Minging and using the radio.
As someone who has spent 26 support levels purely in chef to figure out the issues with the job, 15 cooking levels figuring out the menu and strategies.
And trying to actively roleplay with certain jobs where I've been told its impossible to do.
THERE IS A TLDR AT THE BOTTOM IF YOU DONT WANT TO READ IT ALL.
Here is my Suggestion for a mild rework, upgrade and post upgrades.
These can be implemented partially, fully or adjusted to the administrative liking of the server.
Note this will not allow chef to be combative in any way, and will purely add flavour and dynamic of the server.
This is a preface of the Current state of the Chef job in Site 65 (These can be adjusted for above ground chef)
Point of Interest 1.
Currently, the best things to cook in terms of Food, Support / Cooking XP and Time spent are the following;
Cyanide pills at 1170xp for 130s of time. at 9xp per Second (9XP/S)
Large Meat Pizza at 1131xp for 2x 30s for the meat, and 1x 85 for the actual pizza (7.2XP/s)
Caracle cake at 1041xp for 2x 35s for 2 cakes, 2x 15s for 2 icing, 1x 10s for 1 iced cake, and 1x 72s for the Caracle Cake. (6.05XP/s)
Most other jobs earn much larger XP for the time spent, and for effectively standing still the job becomes boring quickly.
Some of the worst things you can cook but take just as long as a time are;
Cheeze pizza at 195xp for 120s. (I.5XP/s)
Ellies rose wine at 3xp for 120s (0.025XP/s)
Syrian Soup at 157xp for 60s (2.6xp/s)
Most other foods range from 3xp/s to 0.5xp/s Which seems unreasonable.
If the only way to progress is to cook the one dish thats worth making, why make anything else?
Why not just hop off the job while waiting for more ingredients. And even then making food is just a novelty due to MRE's.
Point of Interest 2.
Since most of the other foods are not worth cooking due to the XP/s you gain, these foods and their ingredients are in high demand.
Due to global limits and high population times, getting certain ingredients to level up become harder and more grindy the more people are on and the more you require. You will find yourself in the position of going to the chef NPC and see that everything you want is sold out.
These sold out ingredients range from, Dough, Raw Meat, Mozzarella Cheese, Eggs, MRE's and Milk.
Most other ingredients go to the high 150's in stock purely because people don't cook with them and it feels wasteful of the whole system.
And some ingredients you cannot even purchase to make use of the Recipe's shown inside the kitchen itself!
Those examples include Coffee granules which should be a staple in an underground stress filled facility and are relegated to scavenging the surface. and Crushed digestive biscuit which from my limited knowledge cannot be created without leaving Site65.
Point of Interest 3.
Moreover, My statement on standing still is another problem with the job, You will barely interact with a chef actually doing their job inside of D-block, simply walk past those cooking in the PW halls, though you do get more customers that way, and the last place you can cook is the breach shelter which is locked behind 2 Cl2+ or 1 Cl4 and is so out of the way that you wont interact with the chef at all, and if a chef does get in, there is no way out without asking for help.
Point of Interest 4.
I feel a major amount of the minging boils down to a really poor implimentation of the Recipe book. There is 0 in universe way near the kitchen to find out all the recipe's and nuances to actually being a chef, how are you going to let a spreadsheet be the way you explain all the Recipe's when theres a great tool using PC's.
If you're brand new to any other job theres a good explination of what you're supposed to do, through NPC dialog and reading on the PC, which the kitchen doesnt have.
Concluding Beginning Statement.
Cooking overall feels like a waste of good mechanics, the food system, the vending machines and Roleplay, the XP system is broken and requires reworking.
The fact you can just buy full feeding MRE's from the NPC and dodge the whole job feels bad and nullifies roleplay.
Using chef as a roleplay device doesn't work because half the time you spend in a corner of the map without any interaction minus the occasional D-class who aquired a permit or an SCP wanting to get some free kills in the cooking area.
And becoming a new Chef and using the role well is boiled down to tabbing out to read a spreadsheet.
Thus is why I am suggesting these additions/changes to improve the job.
The suggestion will be split into a few major parts. Chef XP system | Chef Job Upgrade | Roleplaying oppotunities | and Recipe Laptop.
Starting with Chef XP System.
The current system rewards people who buy out the Dough, Raw Meat, Mozzarella Cheese, and Tomato's. With 0 reason to purchase anything else. The XP gap between a Large Meat Pizza is so gigantic that it's the only thing people should cook.
This should be a fairly reasonable fix. Either lower the requirement to level up each time, and reduce the amount of xp the Pizza gives. Eg, lower it by 1/2 and then reduce the required xp per level by half.
Or the long way. Bump up the xp on every single recipe by a % that allows those recipes to become viable to cook. allowing a multitude of wide foods to become useful to the class.
Theres 1 alternative i can come up with for an extended menu. which is the "Effect" way.
Give certain foods minor effects when you eat them, the pizza restores more health, the soups give a regenative effect. the drinks give a caffinated speed boost. Burgers bolstering your armor, ECT.
One final note on the Chef XP system. Food quality effects how much XP you gain. So to null and void all the previous work on increasing XP, simply add when you reach certain level milestones such as level 10 cooking or level 20 cooking, allow Chefs to purchase higher leveled ingredients. Foods that are scavenged range from Terrible to Perfect but all you can purchase from NPC's and all you can cook is Average, Even if you're the best chef its still only a level 100 average large meat pizza...
Adding tabs in the NPC that allow level 10+ chefs to purchase Good ingredients, level 20+ chefs to purchase Great ingredients, level 30+ to puchase Excellent ingredients and 40+ to purchase Perfect ingredients would allow actually impressive chefs to show off their expertise, You would gain xp slightly faster so the grind would feel more enjoyable AND it would allow site65 to use the different leveled food tags because all we eat currently is average foods.
Upgrading cooking means Upgraded job. Allow me to introduce
Chef Job Upgrade - *NEW* Head Chef
With the ability to become a better chef allows more freedom of movement within Site-65 and allows better connections.
I suggest this job is equipped with a CL3 and spawns into the floor 1 MTF Cafeteria where a new cooking setup (2 ovens, an npc and a chopping board) will be placed.
This job will work alongside External affairs to get more supplies from the surface into Site-65 to allow more advanced cooking.
Requirements would be Support 20 and Cooking 20 (And maybe a whitelist, we'll see how that fairs)
The Unique duties of the head chef will require to have access to basic commonrooms around Floor 1, The garage, and storage area.
Spawning inside the Storage area will be food packages sent from the surface for the chefs around Site-65. The head chef will have to pickup these packages and bring them into the D-block kitchen where placing them into a fridge will restock 50-100 of each ingredient to each chef npc around the site. (They will have a cooldown due to restocking granting a large quantity of XP)
This also restocks and adds unique foods into the NPC's such as Digestive Biscuits, Apples, Coffee Granules and any other surface food unable to be purchased currently.
This Job will enable more chefs to be online without the global limits effecting them too harshly. Having 5 chefs on with the current rate of ingredients being restocked is unreasonable and this would be a workearound while encouraging roleplay within the job, asking your head chef to head up and get more exotic ingredients.
This job would also give a permanent 1.5x to your cooking XP while cooking on the job.
You will also be able to have access to approve recipe's for the new Recipe Laptop.
Roleplaying opportunities
REMOVE MRE'S FROM THE CHEF NPC! ALLOW CHEFS TO FEED THE SITE!
Allow chefs to be able to stock the multitude of vending machines around the site to increase roleplay. here is a simple list of reasons.
A. Gives chefs a better income because selling back to the NPC doesnt give a profit 90% of the time.
B. Allows them to get orders from players so they can interact without people without them just ignoring every chef.
C. Gives vending machines a use, allow tech experts or engineers to repair them if they get broken, allow site to talk the head chef about getting onto certain vending machines. ect.
D. Give chefs more XP for restocking foods, they are doing their job in supporting the site. give them a reward, Maybe a quest system inside vending machines.
Letting chefs run around and restock the vending machines, the head chef interacting with DEA and SA. All things that improve player quality and server health, adding more dynamic roleplay then just asking people if they're hungry.
Recipe Laptop.
My final suggestion for overhauling the chef job is a simple laptop on a desk next to each cooking setup. This laptop will be able to be access a very limited version of the current SCI Net and let chefs look at recipes the head chef has been approved. This simple change would let chefs actively see what recipe's work and which don't. There would be no need for external spreadsheets or cookbooks (Though Chase Bear's is really good) and they would slowly be phased out.
This means each chef should also spawn with a notebook to allow them to upload recipe's into the laptop and then the head chef can test and approve those that work and can be replicated easily, it also gives an area for suggestions and tips that other chefs can use. Simply 3-4 folders inside of the SCI net named "Chef Documents"
and inside would be "Tips and Tricks", "Recipe book" and "Basic Chef Requirements".
Allowing more physical input to every player and tightening the rules slightly to disallow messing around on the job would improve the job immensly and fix the Chef role as a whole.
Concluding statements
I am quite passionate about the chef job. As someone who cooks alot irl and has a great fascination for the job it pains me seeing how poorly the role has been treated, its really quite sad how many chefs I see that don't follow the rules and just use the job to get an easy level 1 keycard without any proper restrictions to see where they can get in trouble.
Thank you so much for reading through this all. It is certainly a giant block of text that I hope gets through to the team.
If this suggestion was too long for you regular player, Heres a TLDR:
Fix the Xp system, its not fun to grind out pizza's in a corner
A new Head Chef job that guides over the current chef job with a unique interaction
Remove MRE's and give Vending machines a proper use on site.
Recipe laptop for ingame Recipe's and Chef interaction.
Format Stuff Below
Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?:
The only thing I can find about Cooking XP is this accepted suggestion here:
But even this suggestion hasnt been implimented quite yet.
So I do not believe someone has made a full in depth revision of the job.
Possible Positives of the suggestion:
The chef role has been neglected and can be completely ignored by other jobs by purchasing MRE's
This whole thread provides suggestions and implimentation to allow the job to do something passively and actively
Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
Only true negative I could possibly imagine is that it would be too much work for the content team to handle very easily, unless there are shortcuts I am unaware of.
Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
Due to the overwhelming amount of negatives the chef job has already i feel this revamp would breath new life into a role that has been ignored and that people really think down on. It should be a job you play to cook and help out the site and this fixes alot of the current issues.
As someone who has spent 26 support levels purely in chef to figure out the issues with the job, 15 cooking levels figuring out the menu and strategies.
And trying to actively roleplay with certain jobs where I've been told its impossible to do.
THERE IS A TLDR AT THE BOTTOM IF YOU DONT WANT TO READ IT ALL.
Here is my Suggestion for a mild rework, upgrade and post upgrades.
These can be implemented partially, fully or adjusted to the administrative liking of the server.
Note this will not allow chef to be combative in any way, and will purely add flavour and dynamic of the server.
This is a preface of the Current state of the Chef job in Site 65 (These can be adjusted for above ground chef)
Point of Interest 1.
Currently, the best things to cook in terms of Food, Support / Cooking XP and Time spent are the following;
Cyanide pills at 1170xp for 130s of time. at 9xp per Second (9XP/S)
Large Meat Pizza at 1131xp for 2x 30s for the meat, and 1x 85 for the actual pizza (7.2XP/s)
Caracle cake at 1041xp for 2x 35s for 2 cakes, 2x 15s for 2 icing, 1x 10s for 1 iced cake, and 1x 72s for the Caracle Cake. (6.05XP/s)
Most other jobs earn much larger XP for the time spent, and for effectively standing still the job becomes boring quickly.
Some of the worst things you can cook but take just as long as a time are;
Cheeze pizza at 195xp for 120s. (I.5XP/s)
Ellies rose wine at 3xp for 120s (0.025XP/s)
Syrian Soup at 157xp for 60s (2.6xp/s)
Most other foods range from 3xp/s to 0.5xp/s Which seems unreasonable.
If the only way to progress is to cook the one dish thats worth making, why make anything else?
Why not just hop off the job while waiting for more ingredients. And even then making food is just a novelty due to MRE's.
Point of Interest 2.
Since most of the other foods are not worth cooking due to the XP/s you gain, these foods and their ingredients are in high demand.
Due to global limits and high population times, getting certain ingredients to level up become harder and more grindy the more people are on and the more you require. You will find yourself in the position of going to the chef NPC and see that everything you want is sold out.
These sold out ingredients range from, Dough, Raw Meat, Mozzarella Cheese, Eggs, MRE's and Milk.
Most other ingredients go to the high 150's in stock purely because people don't cook with them and it feels wasteful of the whole system.
And some ingredients you cannot even purchase to make use of the Recipe's shown inside the kitchen itself!
Those examples include Coffee granules which should be a staple in an underground stress filled facility and are relegated to scavenging the surface. and Crushed digestive biscuit which from my limited knowledge cannot be created without leaving Site65.
Point of Interest 3.
Moreover, My statement on standing still is another problem with the job, You will barely interact with a chef actually doing their job inside of D-block, simply walk past those cooking in the PW halls, though you do get more customers that way, and the last place you can cook is the breach shelter which is locked behind 2 Cl2+ or 1 Cl4 and is so out of the way that you wont interact with the chef at all, and if a chef does get in, there is no way out without asking for help.
Point of Interest 4.
I feel a major amount of the minging boils down to a really poor implimentation of the Recipe book. There is 0 in universe way near the kitchen to find out all the recipe's and nuances to actually being a chef, how are you going to let a spreadsheet be the way you explain all the Recipe's when theres a great tool using PC's.
If you're brand new to any other job theres a good explination of what you're supposed to do, through NPC dialog and reading on the PC, which the kitchen doesnt have.
Concluding Beginning Statement.
Cooking overall feels like a waste of good mechanics, the food system, the vending machines and Roleplay, the XP system is broken and requires reworking.
The fact you can just buy full feeding MRE's from the NPC and dodge the whole job feels bad and nullifies roleplay.
Using chef as a roleplay device doesn't work because half the time you spend in a corner of the map without any interaction minus the occasional D-class who aquired a permit or an SCP wanting to get some free kills in the cooking area.
And becoming a new Chef and using the role well is boiled down to tabbing out to read a spreadsheet.
Thus is why I am suggesting these additions/changes to improve the job.
The suggestion will be split into a few major parts. Chef XP system | Chef Job Upgrade | Roleplaying oppotunities | and Recipe Laptop.
Starting with Chef XP System.
The current system rewards people who buy out the Dough, Raw Meat, Mozzarella Cheese, and Tomato's. With 0 reason to purchase anything else. The XP gap between a Large Meat Pizza is so gigantic that it's the only thing people should cook.
This should be a fairly reasonable fix. Either lower the requirement to level up each time, and reduce the amount of xp the Pizza gives. Eg, lower it by 1/2 and then reduce the required xp per level by half.
Or the long way. Bump up the xp on every single recipe by a % that allows those recipes to become viable to cook. allowing a multitude of wide foods to become useful to the class.
Theres 1 alternative i can come up with for an extended menu. which is the "Effect" way.
Give certain foods minor effects when you eat them, the pizza restores more health, the soups give a regenative effect. the drinks give a caffinated speed boost. Burgers bolstering your armor, ECT.
One final note on the Chef XP system. Food quality effects how much XP you gain. So to null and void all the previous work on increasing XP, simply add when you reach certain level milestones such as level 10 cooking or level 20 cooking, allow Chefs to purchase higher leveled ingredients. Foods that are scavenged range from Terrible to Perfect but all you can purchase from NPC's and all you can cook is Average, Even if you're the best chef its still only a level 100 average large meat pizza...
Adding tabs in the NPC that allow level 10+ chefs to purchase Good ingredients, level 20+ chefs to purchase Great ingredients, level 30+ to puchase Excellent ingredients and 40+ to purchase Perfect ingredients would allow actually impressive chefs to show off their expertise, You would gain xp slightly faster so the grind would feel more enjoyable AND it would allow site65 to use the different leveled food tags because all we eat currently is average foods.
Upgrading cooking means Upgraded job. Allow me to introduce
Chef Job Upgrade - *NEW* Head Chef
With the ability to become a better chef allows more freedom of movement within Site-65 and allows better connections.
I suggest this job is equipped with a CL3 and spawns into the floor 1 MTF Cafeteria where a new cooking setup (2 ovens, an npc and a chopping board) will be placed.
This job will work alongside External affairs to get more supplies from the surface into Site-65 to allow more advanced cooking.
Requirements would be Support 20 and Cooking 20 (And maybe a whitelist, we'll see how that fairs)
The Unique duties of the head chef will require to have access to basic commonrooms around Floor 1, The garage, and storage area.
Spawning inside the Storage area will be food packages sent from the surface for the chefs around Site-65. The head chef will have to pickup these packages and bring them into the D-block kitchen where placing them into a fridge will restock 50-100 of each ingredient to each chef npc around the site. (They will have a cooldown due to restocking granting a large quantity of XP)
This also restocks and adds unique foods into the NPC's such as Digestive Biscuits, Apples, Coffee Granules and any other surface food unable to be purchased currently.
This Job will enable more chefs to be online without the global limits effecting them too harshly. Having 5 chefs on with the current rate of ingredients being restocked is unreasonable and this would be a workearound while encouraging roleplay within the job, asking your head chef to head up and get more exotic ingredients.
This job would also give a permanent 1.5x to your cooking XP while cooking on the job.
You will also be able to have access to approve recipe's for the new Recipe Laptop.
Roleplaying opportunities
REMOVE MRE'S FROM THE CHEF NPC! ALLOW CHEFS TO FEED THE SITE!
Allow chefs to be able to stock the multitude of vending machines around the site to increase roleplay. here is a simple list of reasons.
A. Gives chefs a better income because selling back to the NPC doesnt give a profit 90% of the time.
B. Allows them to get orders from players so they can interact without people without them just ignoring every chef.
C. Gives vending machines a use, allow tech experts or engineers to repair them if they get broken, allow site to talk the head chef about getting onto certain vending machines. ect.
D. Give chefs more XP for restocking foods, they are doing their job in supporting the site. give them a reward, Maybe a quest system inside vending machines.
Letting chefs run around and restock the vending machines, the head chef interacting with DEA and SA. All things that improve player quality and server health, adding more dynamic roleplay then just asking people if they're hungry.
Recipe Laptop.
My final suggestion for overhauling the chef job is a simple laptop on a desk next to each cooking setup. This laptop will be able to be access a very limited version of the current SCI Net and let chefs look at recipes the head chef has been approved. This simple change would let chefs actively see what recipe's work and which don't. There would be no need for external spreadsheets or cookbooks (Though Chase Bear's is really good) and they would slowly be phased out.
This means each chef should also spawn with a notebook to allow them to upload recipe's into the laptop and then the head chef can test and approve those that work and can be replicated easily, it also gives an area for suggestions and tips that other chefs can use. Simply 3-4 folders inside of the SCI net named "Chef Documents"
and inside would be "Tips and Tricks", "Recipe book" and "Basic Chef Requirements".
Allowing more physical input to every player and tightening the rules slightly to disallow messing around on the job would improve the job immensly and fix the Chef role as a whole.
Concluding statements
I am quite passionate about the chef job. As someone who cooks alot irl and has a great fascination for the job it pains me seeing how poorly the role has been treated, its really quite sad how many chefs I see that don't follow the rules and just use the job to get an easy level 1 keycard without any proper restrictions to see where they can get in trouble.
Thank you so much for reading through this all. It is certainly a giant block of text that I hope gets through to the team.
If this suggestion was too long for you regular player, Heres a TLDR:
Fix the Xp system, its not fun to grind out pizza's in a corner
A new Head Chef job that guides over the current chef job with a unique interaction
Remove MRE's and give Vending machines a proper use on site.
Recipe laptop for ingame Recipe's and Chef interaction.
Format Stuff Below
Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?:
The only thing I can find about Cooking XP is this accepted suggestion here:
Accepted - Make Looting and Cooking Levels universal
What does this suggestion change/add/remove: The suggestion would make the Looting and Cooking Levels on your account instead of each character Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?: there has not been a similar suggestion Possible Positives of...
civilnetworks.net
So I do not believe someone has made a full in depth revision of the job.
Possible Positives of the suggestion:
The chef role has been neglected and can be completely ignored by other jobs by purchasing MRE's
This whole thread provides suggestions and implimentation to allow the job to do something passively and actively
Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
Only true negative I could possibly imagine is that it would be too much work for the content team to handle very easily, unless there are shortcuts I am unaware of.
Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
Due to the overwhelming amount of negatives the chef job has already i feel this revamp would breath new life into a role that has been ignored and that people really think down on. It should be a job you play to cook and help out the site and this fixes alot of the current issues.