One Hour One Life Forums

I don't get it.

That's a fair post.  For the record, if i am eating raw corn, i am also going to be eating popcorn 100% of the time, in general i am going to be eating popcorn, because i think it is a great food item.  The reverse is not true.

I don't think the general opinion on this forum supports yumming uncritically, in fact i think it supports quite the opposite, that yumming is a mistake and should be avoided.  I agree that milk is a great (the best) food item, and i'm surprised you've never consumed it.  A wandering cow is easy to get at least one bucket from, though i've noticed it tends to sit there a while and no one consumes it.  Maybe it looks too much like some kind of paint.

In terms of yum being easy to understand, sure, but I think relatively few players go for it at all, and a lot of the more experienced players seem to disfavor it altogether.  To me it seems like a small minority of players that advocate yum chain while vocal experienced players trumpet the value of the most efficient foods without considering all factors.

Lol, YES! that raw corn is SO delicious! I CAN'T resist!  That's what it is.

Look, I understand the math you've posted in other discussions, and it is consistent and makes sense.  The problem for me is you rely entirely on quantifiable factors, and specificially on value of the food item.  However with less of an emphasis on cost, and especially with pretty much a complete ignorance of (this is not specific to you at all and actually seems to be a general ignorance) time involved of production.  Raw corn could be considered a baseline value of cost for production, since any use of corn requires that same baseline expenditure.  Beyond that though, additional time and resources become necessary and the comparison becomes non-perfect.  If time and resources were infinite, your analysis of food options is perfect, but there are also non-quantifiable factors to consider, which you seem to prefer to ignore since it makes comparison more difficult and impossible to evaluate perfectly.

The predominant line of thinking seems to be "if you want to yum, make the better foods (but please don't)".  I think there is a place for the 'bad' yum foods.  And just for the sake of clarity, when i say yum foods, i mean any food that you haven't eaten yet.  In an establishing village you will reach a point where there is enough potential yum foods to maintain a life-long yum chain, but a lot of the 'better' yum foods are not yet available and/or wild foods have become rare.  Personally I think at this point it is acceptable, and perhaps even ideal, to make berry pie varieties in small numbers as well as eat foods that are 'bad' when considering value, though it is best if these foods are eaten only by those successfully yum-chaining and moved on from when possible.

Some think eating low value foods like corn and green beans is "lazy" yumming, and in many circumstances that would be accurate, but in some circumstances it can be inaccurate as well.  It is easy to say "go hunt a turkey instead of eating raw corn".  Yes, turning a raw corn into stew/chips/tacos creates value, and value to cost ratio does change favorably; though these higher value items also have a higher cost both in resources and time, .  There is an opportunity cost for everything in this game, due to time constraints.  If, for example, you are in an establishing town looking to transition to diesel engine and need to still find a tarry spot and build an oil rig, it is more valuable to the town to work on this task than spend time processing food to make it more efficient/higher value, even though those processed food items are better.  Other examples could be gathering rubber, or establishing an iron mine.  Before heading out to bring a cart of water buckets to the oil rig and build a kiln and produce some charcoal to drill for oil, while loading up the supplies for your trip you can fill up on popcorn + green bean + shucked corn and head out there with nearly a full bar +39 pips, allowing a long stay to focus on work while retaining full cargo space!  While you're out there maybe you'll see a banana/cactus fruit to eat, and if you're yum-chaining, these foods are almost twice as good!  And that's the thing about yum-chaining - it's not about just eating bad foods to make them passable, it's about making the best foods way better!  Taking a bite of rabbit pie for 26 pips with double digits extending beyond a full food bar is pretty good!

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Anyway as far as yum etiquette goes:

-Plan ahead so you don't lose your chain or waste time running around looking for something delicious.
-In general, and especially if you're still familiarizing yourself with yum-chain, avoid the least efficient options until they're necessary.  It is incredibly counter-productive if you eat a raw corn at +4, and then subsequently need to reset your chain shortly after.
-Don't do it if the options aren't there.  Instead focus on small chains of more efficient food options (popcorn, bread, stew, rabbit pie, carrot/rabbit pie, reset)  It gets pretty easy to keep extending this when you expand to things like mutton, berry, berry bowl, and often there's a few good options laying around like omelette, cooked rabbit, bowl of carnitas, turkey and it's broth, then you can get into things like carrot, onion, tomato, etc.  It's good to build in this order in general since it protects against lost value in a dropped yum-chain, and because sometimes new, more efficient food items will appear as your life progresses.  It feels pretty dumb to have yummed a raw corn early on while leaving a higher value item for later, only to find that later when you need to eat the higher value item someone has produced skim milk and sauerkraut and now you only get to eat one of three.  You could always eat the raw corn last if no one had happened to prepare these options, so try to leave the least efficient options for last.
-Prepare food for everyone, not just yourself.  If you are preparing yum foods for yourself, make sure you are making efficient use of the cooking session, as kindling has a non-negligible cost.  Focus on producing the most efficient foods since most players won't be yum chaining, such as plain rabbit pies, carrot/rabbit pies, mutton pies, //cooked rabbit, bowls of carnitas, and omelettes/stew.  Gather/prepare as much as you could cook by yourself before starting to cook, ideally.  More if you know there are others who would be helping, though it seems difficult to get people to wait beyond more than 1.5x what someone could do by themself.
-Again, focus on producing the most efficient options such as rabbit pie and carrot/rabbit pie to protect against new players not knowing the difference and to keep non yummers from being forced to consume less efficient options.
-If food is plentiful and there is nothing better to do, produce additional food items to what is already available!
-Work! Make use of your decreased need to eat in your life and accomplish something!

fwiw I play the game as "a multiplayer game about parenting and civilization building", and I tend towards the top of the ladder.

I think hackers and those whose goal is to destroy the potential of enjoyment for others should be long-term banned to a secondary server as a consequence for the scum they choose to be; becuase PvP in this game requires no skill whatsoever.  For those who prefer to kill, the current combat mechanics favor wannabe psychopaths and idiots who lack the skill to win at any game that requires any for PvP.  Anyone who is playing this game to feel like they can get the better of someone at PvP simply lacks the skill and intelligence to be remotely successful at any actual PvP game, since there is no element of skill in PvP for this one.  The actual element of skill in this game is being able to not only consistently survive yourself, but help your descendants survive as well.  In order to succeed at this your best bet is actually to avoid the PvP as much as possible.

I 100% agree with this.  It is annoying when villages finally establish and stabilize and immediately people are going around rallying for a stab-fiesta to reset the arc.

Haha, I approve!

Any level of civilization can yum chain.

Early villages might find themselves limited to around 1x to 4x with frequent resets, but saving those few extra pips is significant to ease the strain on resources and preserve a little extra food for others.

A little further down the family tree and you can probably get to 5-6x once or twice in a life with most resets lower than that since you'll need to be busy, focused on your work to keep the village going.  Though I think Berry pies should be avoided at this point since they are too large a drain on resources and you won't have enough options to sustain a yum chain your whole life.

Once the village gets to the point of having sheep and stew farm, you're getting to the point where you can sustain a single yum chain through your entire life.  At this point its worth considering berry pie varieties to support a lifelong yum chain, though berry/rabbit and berry/carrot/rabbit are always a terrible use of resources (you're getting less total pips by adding the berries) and should only be considered if food production is already excellent and it is the easiest way of sustaining a full (lifelong) yum chain.  Non-yummers are encouraged to eat rabbit/carrot followed by plain rabbit pies once old enough to get full pip value, and these two items should be prioritized at the bakery for this purpose due to their high baseline value.

Once you get beyond this milk products should be highly prioritized due to their extreme efficiency.  Non-yummers should add this as a staple to their diet.  It is important to add a large emphasis on highly efficient foods such as carrot/rabbit pies, plain rabbit pies, any type of milk, turkey and it's broth, stew, bread and buttered bread for non-yummers to remain as efficient as possible alongside a small supply of yum-enabling options to avoid non-yummers being forced to consume yum foods due to lack of options.  Low value options such as raw corn, various berry pies, and green beans can be replaced by better options including staples such as buttered bread and milk products, as well as more niche options such as carnitas and french fries.

Beyond this almost anything is fair game if you have nothing to do and resources are plentiful (huge supply of kerosene to supply a diesel well with ample iron supply), though in general high baseline value foods need to continue to be prioritized for non-yummers. and high cost, low value foods should be avoided such as salsa, ketchup, ice cream, mangoes, any type of berry pie, and anything involving masa dough, unless you really have nothing at all to do or the resources happen to already be available.

In general when deciding what food items to consume it is an important distinction whether you are small-scale yum chaining in less-supplied village, or full yum chaining in a reasonably stocked village.  If you can't support a full yum chain or are forced to drop your yum chain in emergency, low value options such as raw corn, green beans, and berry pies become terrible and should be avoided.  Always make sure to eat the highest value food items whether you are yumming or not, such as any type of milk, mutton pies, carrot/rabbit and plain rabbit pies, bread and buttered bread, stew, and turkey and it's broth.

That's a good point about the mutton, wheat, and compost cycle.  Anyway fwiw I was talking about plain carrot and plain rabbit as being the best option for feeding babies specifically, though it seems like mutton should also be included.  For adults rabbit and carrot/rabbit are the best, though i may have to reconsider where mutton pie ranks.

Hmm, I realized that in my comparison of a berry to an empty pie crust I forgot to consider that a pie is 4 bites, so actually it is only 1/8 soil and 1/8 water for a single bite of pie when just considering the crust. Perhaps some pies are not that bad to feed a baby at all. The best ones would still be plain rabbit or plain carrot.

Edit: I also made the same mistake considering the mutton pie.

Ok that explains it. My mistake, thanks.

Also I didn't know before you mentioned it that a cow can be fed a bowl of water to produce extra milk!

Sorry, I don't mean to pick on you, but I fail to see where you get the extra 0.1 water and 0.3 soil for carrots, as well as the extra 0.2 water for beans. To me the numbers after the decimal seem like they should all be dropped.  This would mean the only difference between carrot and berry is the iron use for carrot, while beans remain worse than both due to less total pips.

Given the values you have for berry bushes (starting from the languishing state), shouldn't the values listed next to soil and water also be 1 for both from carrots to squash for consistency of starting point (starting from hardened row, which is analogous to languishing berry bush)?