EXODE - Space Colonization

Note that every single value and process proposed in current procedural generation may be modified later.

Food items generation, especially, respect a very base setting which will be modified for later planets.

Before you analyze into numbers below, you should understand that "luck" is not a direct factor in EXODE.

The economic value of a content depends on an evolving situation of supply and demand in varied categories.

But one persistent observation is that food items can be used to raise back stamina and happiness in citizens.

Having access to “good food items” is then interesting to increase the output of your citizens and colony.

But not only is this strongly influenced by your crafting decisions (making a good menu out of “weak items”), your research focuses (obtaining more out of your food), your away teams focuses (finding more items, finding rarer variants, exploring further, focusing on this instead of other collection..) and production teams (performance of your cooking team)…

It is also influenced by other parameters such as accessibility of this resource, abundance of it, resilience of this supply over time, easiness to prepare it and to extract its nutrients in a menu.

This means that even if one's food could have better looks or nutrients than others, other parameters are also used to determine its compatibility in collection, crafting and production, which ultimately will define “how useful” you made this food to you.

“Early game” food, which means accessibility in your first region and non-dependence on a rare region or season, is also different than “late game” food which more heavily depends on food reserves and volume in a global galactic economy.

In addition, some food can have a weak “raw” version, a superior “prepared” version, and an even superior cooked, steeped or rare variant!

So, you should look at all angles when analyzing things.

With all the parameters in a planet, there should be nothing really related to luck: but all uniqueness expressed in different areas. This creates interesting risks and conditions for any game.

The number of different food items to roll is determined with (10 + number of relevant wildlife + number of relevant plantlife).

This should make about 12 to 30 different food profiles on any given planet, with a strong average of about 16 to 18 different profiles.

This, in turn, gives many chances to have all food types (meat/fish, fruit, vegetable) represented on a planet, but also some being more abundantly represented than others.

Number of relevant wildlife and plantlife on a planet are themselves heavily influenced by planetary type. For instance, Jungle worlds have more of them.

This directly means that planet types such as Jungle Worlds receive more food profiles.

Having access to more varied profiles allows to design more varied menus.

However, is still not as strong as having accessibility and volume to at least one usable and exploitable food profile, and exploring food variants (different versions to prepare one's food) can also allow to compensate for it.

For every individual food profile, the system will then roll for Meat/Fish, then for Fruit, and if not rolled as such, will consider the most frequent type to be Vegetable.

This allows Meat/Fish rolls on some planet to be more invasive, or less invasive compared to Fruits ; and same for Fruits vs Vegetables ; allowing to express planetary type further.

This also allows Meat or Fish expressions to then fight each other in a secondary roll and to separate population of carnivorous content (meat + fish) and non-carnivorous content (fruit + vegetable).

Chances for any food item to be Meat or Fish are (number of relevant wildlife) * 3, with a minimal 15%.

It is then influenced by planetary type:
+5% for Terrestrial and Exotic worlds
+10% for Ice, Jungle, Swamps and Forests worlds
+15% for Oceanic worlds
-3% for Deadlands worlds

When rolling Meat/Fish, another roll is then made to determine if it's a Meat or a Fish.

Base chances for Fish start with a low 10% on this second roll but with bonuses as below as example values:

+80% for Oceanic Worlds
+70% for Ice Worlds
+50% for Swamp Worlds
+30% for Jungle Worlds
+25% for Exotic Worlds
+20% for Terrestrial and Forest Worlds
+5% for Steppes, Lava, Desert, Chasms
+0% for Deadlands

Food that is not Meat or Fish on its first roll will make a roll to see if it is a Fruit. It begins with 20% chances with the following bonuses as example values:

+60% for Jungle worlds
+40% for Forest and Exotic worlds
+30% for Terrestrial and Swamps
+20% for Desert, Oceanic, Rocky, Steppes, Chasms,
+15% for Lava
+10% for Ice and Deadlands

If it's not rolled as a fruit, it is then a Vegetable.

Because of the above rolls, Vegetable has then chances to be the most abundant profile on a planet.

Food rolls its colour, with 40+ color description groups separated in two pools: it has 50% chance to have “a developed colour” (ie. “royal azure”, “jade green”) and the rest to have a simple colour (“azure”, “green”).

Name

Food name is generated thanks to our common name algorithm.

Description

To give you an example of the food description generation program, it works around the concept of generating its description with 80% chance to receive a size parameter in it, and 100% chance to receive one colour, one look aspect (ie. smelly) and one “piecing aspect”.

This can work around formats such as a collection of <size> <look> <colour> shapes, giving for instance a collection of small smelly black shapes.

Esthetics

“Picture Variant” and “color” values (from 1 to 1000) are example values which can be used to better represent this item in addition to its food type.

Such values are there to better express later 2D picture or texture representations, or 3D engine representations.

For instance, one value of 524 could be interpreted as different groups of esthetics answers, when dividing the value by 16 or different numbers.

“Color Family” and “Color Tone” are values extracted from the base colour value.

“Aspect Family” is a string codification (“mash”, etc).

All esthetic parameters are also planned to be later used for menu quality.

For instance, using ingredients of different colors and aspect families will be rewarded in menu score.

Home environment

Food has a home planet but may also receive separately a specific Region and Season.

If so, it can be mostly be collected only within said environment or period of time.

Regions and Seasons are very specific to your planet so this adds to the uniqueness of the situation.

Easiness to Collect

In addition to its home environment, other values can influence how easy or not it is to collect it.

“Reserves” determine the quantity of food units that remain to be collected.

“Stealth” make it more difficult to detect it whenever Away Teams make a roll to detect a spot of this resource.

“Extraction Difficulty” can prevent it from being successfully collected whenever Away Teams make a roll to collect it.

Variants

For all attributes below, several “variants” of the same food are also created.

Other Attributes

All parameters with a * have a strong influence already included in current development.

Many of the attributes below, when they are numeric, are rolled with a 1-1000 roll. We plan to differentiate this better later with two added 1-500 rolls, for instance.

Food attributes have been first set as a base generation template for planets, and later patched and upgraded, so some of the information below may be missing some additional attributes.

Attributes covered above are:

Name
Description
Home* (planet, region, season)
Esthetics (picture and color values)
Easiness to Collect* (units left, stealth, extractability)

Size*

Size is used in compatibility to the Dish types you can use when crafting food.

For instance, an Appetizer should have small size, but a Main Course should have a large size.

Looks*

Looks is factored as a global quality factor for "cantina menus".

But it can be totally ignored for "travel rations" when crafting food.

It still has an influence to determine if a citizen likes a plate or not the first time he tries it.

Fragility*

Fragility is directly factored when “Preparing Food”, which is the first step of food crafting.

It acts as a direct difficulty to prepare your food, substracting fragility from your cooking team chances. The less fragile a food is, the better.

Toxicity*

Toxicity increases chances for Food Buffs and Food Debuffs when generating food. It can also influence other negative events when eating.

Raw food has a base ( toxicity / 10 ) +30% to receive one debuff.
Then a second roll of ( toxicity / 10 ) % to receive one more.
Then a third roll of ( toxicity / 10 ) - 30% to receive one more.
Then a last roll of ( toxicity / 10 ) - 60% to receive one last.

All of these rolls are independent from each other.

Half of (Toxicity / 10) (you can interpret that as ( toxicity / 20) ) is also added to the debuff strength category.

Rarity of a debuff is normally 64%, 28% and 8%, respectively, for debuffs of Common/Rare/Epic rarities.

But as half of your (toxicity/10) is also added to this score, this means that your debuffs also have “good chances to be stronger debuffs”.

These debuffs have only 70% chance to carry over to the “prepared food” version of the food item.

Nutrients*

Nutrients is directly used to determine the Stamina output of any menu you craft.

To determine it, the total nutrients of all menu ingredients are added together and divided by 25.

So a menu of 3 food items with 500 nutrients will have an average base output of 60 stamina being gained, in addition to other food buffs.

Then they are multiplied by the crafting results of the menu in three categories: base requirements, dish compatibility and menu compatibility.

We determine the “average” of these three as a percentage.

For instance, you could have 50% score if you have a base requirement score of 20, a dish score of 50, and a menu compatibility of 80.

With 50% score, the end output of a 60 stamina menu will be: 30 stamina.

Taste*

Taste is used for compatibility with dishes and quality for cantina menus, and when determining chances for a citizen to appreciate a new plate he encounters.

Exotism*

Exotism will be used as an influence for citizens to like a plate or not the first time they try it.

Saltiness*
Sweetness*

These values are much used to determine dish compatibility for an ingredient. For instance, desserts must be sweet!

Texture hardness
Heaviness (on stomach)

These two may be used later as influences to appreciate a plate or not.

Interaction
Olfactive
Bitterness
Sourness
Greasiness

These values are unused yet, but “interaction” (how well an ingredient combines with others) and “olfactive” (how strong and good is its smell) may be used when determining a menu success.

Rare variant
Cooked variant
Steeped variant

“Variants” have been generated with their own set of attributes. These attributes may vary from their original.

These variants are unused yet, soon with the exception of the Cooked variant which will become the first to be used.

Normally you can obtain the Rare variant when collecting the food ; it has about 20% chance.

You can obtain the Cooked variant when activating “Heating” (consumes 1 energy but gives +10 to the team skill value) when transforming a food item.

Transforming food has been removed from current features to allow players to better focus on preparing and eating.