Perishable Items: Visible Decay Timers

[Inertia]

Would it be possible to see how long a perishable item has left before it goes kaput?

I had a large stock of meat that hadn't yet been converted to edible food items that disappeared. I think it would be extremely helpful, now that there are so many uses for perishable items, if characters could appraise them and see how much longer they'll be available for use.

Thanks for considering!

[Kinaed]

This is a good idea. How should it look, though? Where should they be tagged?

[Inertia]

How about...

Code: Select all

>appraise meat

This 'a haunch of goat meat' is a kind of food.
 It weighs around 0 pounds.
You estimate its value at 4 silver.
It looks to be in excellent condition.
It appears to be made of meat.
It appears to have 60 days left before it will decay.
You cannot figure out if it can be salvaged or not.

Where time left is in RL figures.

[Kinaed]

Should it have a specific skill level to know how long it will be until the item decays or report different things at different skill levels:

No skill - It will decay.
Some skill - It will decay soon/in awhile/in a long while/eventually
A lot of skill: It will decay in 60 OOC days.

[Inertia]

I got distracted from this thread because I actually don't like consider as a skill. But I just got hit by the decay again and lost a VERY large amount of herbs.

I still think that the information consider can show you is not important enough to require a skill, so I'd prefer to suggest it either be a command or that the ability to consider specific items be linked to specific skills (e.g. butcher skill lets you consider meat, tailoring skill lets you consider cloth items, etc.).

But working with what's in place already, sure - I can get behind Kinaed's suggestion that no skill just lets you know it will decay in time, SOME skill gives you a basic description of when, and more skill will give you a specific number of days.

OR: Perhaps perishable items close to their decay time can be colored dark yellow or red like damaged items, so you know they're on their way out.

One problem I see cropping up is being able to manipulate individual items in stacks. For example if you have some venison from your last hunt and you kill another deer, and put the new venison into the same container, it might be difficult to cycle through the stack and use the oldest items first.

P.S. Specifically inspired by my herb loss: perhaps it could be possible to preserve more than meat? Drying herbs, for example, at the cost of mv or something.

[Dice]

LOVE the idea of axing consider and tying it to the skill for the material. That's awesome and realistic.

But either way we definitely need something like this to ensure that decay items aren't unpredictably removed; at least you should get a chance to use 'em before they disappear!

[Geras]

On the herb thing, could herbalists maybe be able to craft a herb-resin that doesn't decay? Hashish has a shelf life of years.

[Applesauce]

+1 for removing Consider and showing the data to people with appropriate craft ability.

+1 for being somewhat more urgent with tons of stuff now disappearing with no notice.