Bar Customization and Taste System.

[SomeoneOutTher3]

After finishing writing my chemistry guide, I thought that it would be a good idea to eventually try out the role of Bartender and write a guide on it (A bit early to write suggestions for something I never played before, I know). I thought of things I would put on a Bartender guide, and one of those was getting the crew to come to the bar, by "inventing" your own drinks as the shift's bartender. My suggestion aims to make that possible. I also propose that we implement a "Taste system" similar to the one Baystation has.

This is pretty much how the taste system works:

A substance is assigned a "taste message" that will appear to anyone that eats or drinks it (But not if it is injected). For instance, potassium chloride and animal protein have bitterness and "protein" as their taste. If a player were to eat a food containing those substances, or one of countless others that has a "taste", they would get a message saying "You can taste X". With our potassium chloride example, eating it on Baycode would give the player a message saying "You can taste bitterness", and animal protein will display a message saying "You can taste some sort of protein", and so on for almost all other substances in the game.

This brings me to my second suggestion: Giving bartenders the ability to customize their creations.

The point of this suggestion is to allow bartenders to make up their own drinks, complete with custom bottling, naming, and even descriptions. Hopefully, this will allow bartender players to get more people visiting their bar, have conversations over a glass of whatever they came up with, and just create more interaction. The customization will come in the form of a few new items.

Glass & Bottle Maker:

In function, this is almost identical to the ChemMaster. The only difference is what is created as a means of storing whatever substance is put into the machine. As opposed to pills and bottles, this machine would create bottles and drink glasses, and give the user the option to select what the glass/bottle will look like. Have you wanted to pour your bar drinks into glasses that look like the ones for the "Syndicate Bomb" and "Three Mile Island Iced Tea"? This will make it possible. This will also need more spriting.

Drink Labeler

This will look exactly like the hand labeler, except it will be used to label bottles and glasses of drinks. To use, one would simply have to click on the labeler to turn it on, which will prompt the user to enter a new name for whatever they want to rename, and a customized description (optional), and then hit a glass or bottle with it. The labeler will not work on empty bottles/glasses, and labels will disappear once all the liquid in a glass/bottle is gone. This will only work on mixtures of substances or drinks. (You won't be able to label pure hooch as "Hippie's Delight" and give it a description that matches that of the Hippie's Delight drink. However, if you were to mix, for example, Absinthe and Hooch, you will be able to label the drink as anything you want and give them any description. This might be a problem if abused,however.)

Example of how the two above items would be used if implemented:

John Doe mixes Absinthe, Hooch, Ethanol, Neurotoxin, and whatever makes you hallucinate. John Doe places a glass containing all of that into the glass & bottle maker machine, and makes a glass that resembles for that drink. He then uses the drink labeler to label the glass of his custom drink as "Wirecutter" and gives it a description of "A drink you have never seen before. It glows all sorts of colors. Guaranteed to get you wasted". John Doe then proceeds to advertise his creation over the Common Channel, and many people flock to the bar to try it out.

And my final proposed item: The display case. This will allow you to place drinks that you make inside it. When examined, it will show what drinks are in it and their descriptions.

I think this is something that should be added to the bar to create more interaction between the Bartender, the medbay's chemist (supplying chemicals, PAPERWORK, etc), and the rest of the crew. Let me know what you think of this.

[Ian The Corgi]

Id like to purchase 5 bottles of LITERAL POISON brand whisky

[icy_dew]

i don't think you can quite taste protein. correct me if i'm wrong.

[Chaznoodles]

You can taste ... death

John Doe gasps!

John Doe gasps!

John Doe seizes up and falls limp, his eyes dead and lifeless...

[Ian The Corgi]

You can taste... holy shit its a roofie

John Doe screams!

[TrickingTrapster]

I'm up for that, though you could extend it slightly to the kitchen and the chef, with the whole taste thing. If you do it for drinks, do it for food too.

[SomeoneOutTher3]

[JKJudgeX]

I like these ideas because they don't add unneeded complexity, but they let the bartender invest more time in his craft for a different, deeper result.

The glass labeler would be pretty nice for allowing fully custom drinks.

I think one of the reasons I no longer play bartender is because it's a less useful, less complicated version of chef that has a very short horizon on learning and very little access to the station. I think the bartender is definitely due at least a little attention.

[SomeoneOutTher3]

Alright, some ideas for the tastes of various substances:

Salt-Salt

Potassium Chloride-Bitterness

Potassium Chlorophoride-Bitterness

Chloral Hydrate-Tasteless

Animal Protein-Something brothy. Alternatively: Something Meaty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami

Milk-Something savory,thin, and watery.

Iron, mercury,copper,Silicon,Gold,Silver,Uranium,Aluminum,Radium- Metallic

Blood-Metallic

Lithium,Potassium,Sodium- To be added

Cyanide-Bitter Almonds

Phoron-Sharp,biting, and irritating.

Ammonia-Ammonia

Hydrazine-Ammonia-like??? (Google says it smells like Ammonia)

Wine: Sweet and sour

Hydrochloric Acid: Sour??? (I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that acids taste sour)

Polytrinic acid:Sour, with a tingling sensation. (This is what will be displayed to anyone drinking it). If not mixed with anything, will display "You can feel your tongue starting to burn up!".

Sulfuric Acid: Will leave this up to the imagination of the coders.

Lemon Juice:Sour, with a distinctive taste of lemons.

Alcohol: Bitter and sour.

The bar drinks would taste like each of their individual ingredients combined

To be continued.

Edited February 20, 2017 by Guest

[SomeoneOutTher3]

i don't think you can quite taste protein. correct me if i'm wrong.

Some proteins can be tasted.

[Synnono]

Giving this one a bit of a bump, since I was about to write my own thread about adding some sort of bar-themed ChemMaster 3000 to the bar backroom, and that idea is incorporated in this.

Giving bartenders the ability to make their own bottles of mixers/irish cream/intermediate ingredients is nicer than having to store them in 30 unit glasses, or just dispensing finished drinks from the drink showcase. The customization suggested in the OP would be welcome as well, though I'd be just as happy expanding our menu of server-specific drinks.

[The Stryker]

I like this. Bartenders actually have to work with a drink because as the system stands right now you could make any drink and no one would know it's not the drink they ordered.

[NoahKirchner]

A very large +1 to you sir, I was considering suggesting this myself.

I play a lot of bartender, a little bit more to do when nobody's visiting would be a godsend!

[Wiebman]

I like the bar customization, but I'm not sure about the taste. Seems like it might make it too easy to detect spiked drinks, and also a lot of coding work, and a lot of spam in the chat, if you're gobbling down food, or guzzling drinks.

[whiterabit]

I'm pretty sure Bay already has a system like this in place though I'm not sure how difficult it would be to port if the coders wanted to go in that direction. It's either them or Polaris, I forget which.

As for spiking drinks, tators could be given an option for a tasteless knockout drug or something but I'd imagine that most normal drugs for that would have a discernible taste which would make spiking drinks much less of a secret than is currently represented.

[Stauto]

Or, depending on the amount of knockout liquid (Like, 2u Chloral in 58u beer), the flavor of the liquid could be completely overwhelmed and not show any flavor markers. Same with stuff like cyanide (which apparently tastes like almonds). Otherwise, if all chemicals were equally represented in a drink, a lot of cool antag ideas would be ruined. How else are we supposed to lace all of the drinks in the bad with laxatives?

[Arrow768]

Has been implemented. Moved to completed projects