The mass of any given meal isn't always fully converted into useful calories/nutrition - some of it will get converted into fiber (in the form of breads, grains etc.), which has no real nutrition but helps the body regulate sugar uptake, and contributes to the feeling of "fullness".

If the feedstock is 100% converted to nutrition (and nothing else), you'd simply end up with what are essentially food pills of various sizes, which would consume very little feedstock mass, but would be pointless as players would want to automatically min-max to the best version of the food pills. And that's not mentioning the Watsonian (in-universe) issue that arises from the lack of fiber.

What really should happen is that there needs to be a variation in the amount of mass per meal:

• For vanilla simple, fine and lavish meals, this could be as easy as writing an XML patch that consistently changes the mass of each meal type to 0.25, 0.3 and 0.44 kg respectively
  
• For meals from third party meals, it would be up to the modder to vary the mass of each meal item themselves, or have another XML patch in Replimat (e.g I doubt that a serving of sushi has the same mass as a hambuger, or a tub of ice cream)

Alternatively, just pretend that the pawns sometimes waste food by not actually eating their entire meal.

Your solution sounds good. My idea was to tie feedstock usage to the nutrition of the replicated meal. If you change less nutritious meals to weigh less, this would automatically be achieved and it would make sense immersion-wise.

Since you mentioned that it would be pretty easy to implement, would you please include this into the mod? Maybe it could be toggleable in the settings.

Regarding third party meals, I think the two most used food-related mods out there are Rim Cuisine and VGP. If you would patch those, you'd actually cover a lot of players out there.

Overfox, I'm not sure if you're understanding this correctly, but nutritional value is not necessarily related to mass. The idea to change the mass of the meals is based on overall differences in portion sizes (e.g. a simple meal of porridge vs a multi-course haute cuisine meal with all courses served together).

It will take some time to develop these compatibility patches, as I have other commitments and collaborations. And no, XML patches cannot be toggled on and off in the Mod Setting menu.

Sumghai, that a change in mass of the meals would be due to different portion sizes is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote that. I am also well aware that nutritional value is not necessarily related to mass. That is why I criticised that your Replimat is using mass instead of nutrition in the first place.

I figured that the Replimat would disassemble ingredients into their core components (fat, protein and carbohydrates, a few minerals, vitamins and some water), and then reassemble those into a new meal. This is why it makes no sense that currently the amount of feedstock gained from an ingredient is related to its mass instead of its nutritional value.

In your mod, filling a kilogram of watermelon, which is mostly water, into the hopper, gives me the same amount of feedstock as filling in a kilogram of meat. That makes no sense. Or can your replimat take any kind of mass and turn it into any kind of output? Take in water and turn it into fat? In that case we should be able to put in hay or heck, anything. The amount of feedstock gained should be proportional to the amount of stuff in the ingredients that is actually usable for sustenance. And Rimworld already has a value for that: Nutrition.

Furthermore, your statement "If the feedstock is 100% converted to nutrition (and nothing else), you'd simply end up with what are essentially food pills of various sizes" is only accurate in the broadest sense. The emphasis would really be on "of various sizes" here.

There are limits to calorie density. The most calorie dense stuff we can eat is fat, which has about 9 calories per gram (it's also the densest in terms of calories per volume). Which would make around 277 grams of fat for 2500 calories. Which would be a very bare minimum for a colonist doing mostly manual labour for 14 hours a day. 277 grams of fat would have a volume of 320ml. Dividing that into 3 meals would be 106ml per serving. Let's say a food pill has a diameter of 1cm so it can be easily swallowed.

That means that 1 meal, 1 serving of food pills, made of the most energy dense food there is, would contain 202 "nutritional pills". And this is disregarding the need for sugar so the body can actually burn the fat. And of course disregarding the need for less-dense ingredients like protein. I think if it's really about minimizing volume and weight, we can do without fiber for a while. But I know what of an effect this would have on intestinal peristalsis and cancer rate.


Your statement is "nutritional value is not necessarily related to mass. And you are right. This is why your mod should disregard mass and convert ingredients into feedstock based on the nutritional value of the ingredients instead. And then turn this feedstock into meals, with the foodstock use proportional to the nutritional value of the replicated meal. This way your mod would make sense. And you'd also actually stick to your own statement.

I don't mean to attack you personally. But I see flaws in your argumentation and in the implementation of the food conversion of your mod.

I have decided to no longer consider this request. As such, this matter is closed.