Food/Drink stalls - reasons to customise the products.

So you can customise the products in the food stands - adding cheese, gherkins etc to burgers, but what (if anything) does this do to the simulation?

I'd like to see good reasons to want to do this.

Each additional option should come with a cost; this makes production of that food item more expensive (and we should know what the cost is) but also more valuable.

Each additional food item we choose to sell on the menu (regular burger, cheese burger) should incrementally drive up the cost of producing each (because it's easy to train people to flip a basic burger, compared to serving a complex menu with 20 variations) - or perhaps the vendors training level gives them a 'maximum' number of different items they can handle, or more complex items slow down production risking lost sales.

Some items like mustard and ketchup should be removed as items to add as a component, and instead offered as separate products which you could give away for free, or charge for - I don't need to offer a variant of burger with ketchup and one without, just sell the customer some ketchup!

Guests should come with preferences - some enjoy some things, some dislike other things - so you need to offer different things to suit different tastes, if you're not catering for customers who don't like gherkins, for example, you're losing sales. (but again, you can't just remove gherkins from everything because some people will really like them and avoid gherkinless grub).

Finally, food items / extras should come with effects - like the original theme park...

Salt should induce thirst (but more salt costs more, some people won't like it, and it may generally reduce quality or happiness because customers know what you're up to).
Hot sauce on a pizza might improve the taste, but cause more toilet visits.
Ketchup and mustard sachets might improve the taste or generate more sales but cause more litter around the stand as people add it to their meal.
Coffee might make people move a little faster.
Cold drinks will increase mood in hot places.
Hot drinks will please people in cold places or near water rides.
..and so on.
 
Well, I always thought things like Salt and Ice mattered the most. In the old Theme Park game from 1994, adding salt made guests thirsty and adding ice lowered the quality of drinks but increased profits. Unfortunately, I don't think thats true in PC though :(

According to this guide - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1103779725

It says that the condiments work similarly to scenery, meaning the more you add the more it attracts guests. You will never see a guest complain about toppings, they will not say things like "I wish this burger had less/more ketchup" because they dont care. Personally, I miss the option to set toppings to optional like we could in RCT3, that way the guests are always happy, and I dont have to sit and play around in menus for hours choosing toppings
 
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Some very good points, I agree with most of them. I find the lack of information to be a problem throughout PC. For example, I believe I read/heard somewhere from an official source that salt on fires already adds to a guest's thirst, however, this is not mentioned anywhere. Right now the food and drink extra's only seem like a cosmetic option. Tell us more about what the implications are!

the same goes for coaster reliability, for some reason one of my coasters is much less reliable than the others, what causes this? Do the train get into the brakes too fast? Are the G-forces too high? etc. Show me how the reliability is influenced!)

I really like the suggestion of more complex configurations taking longer to make, I am not sure if this is already the case (again, it's not mentioned anywhere). This feature seems like a no-brainer to me.

I would also really like to sell mustard and ketchup etc seperately. It is really annoying that we can't present many combinations here, especially since every item can only have 1 configuration per shop.

Additionally, offering combo sales would be something I would like. Eg. sell a whole menu including drinks, fries and a burger for a discounted price. I think it really is a shame that the options are currently so limited, especially considering there is absolutely no information about the effects of the options that are there.
 
If more condiments means more guests then there's simply no reason not to turn on everything - especially if the 'cost' of providing the food is the same.

There should be positives and negatives to adding the extras so that there is no automatic right answer, and instead it becomes either a matter of preference affecting the simulation in different ways, or a matter of strategy.
 
Increasing toppings does effect running costs.
Increasing ice lowers them, though.

Adding "a lot" of things like salt, vinegar, peppers, chili sauce, will make peeps thirsty faster.
Adding fruit to smoothies fulfills hunger.

Coffee and energy drinks fulfill thirst and energy. If you have too many benches, you won't sell much coffee or energy drinks.
 
Increasing toppings does effect running costs.
Increasing ice lowers them, though.

Adding "a lot" of things like salt, vinegar, peppers, chili sauce, will make peeps thirsty faster.
Adding fruit to smoothies fulfills hunger.

Coffee and energy drinks fulfill thirst and energy. If you have too many benches, you won't sell much coffee or energy drinks.

If that is indeed the case, we are back to the lack of information about this in-game
 

WingardiumLevicoaster

Volunteer Moderator
If that is indeed the case, we are back to the lack of information about this in-game

But did Theme Park tell you these things? As when I played I worked them out myself. I thought that was part of the game, to experiment with settings and see if it improves things. Part of the management experience like in a real business.
 
This part of the shops in Planet Coaster are really un-developed. Even RCT3 had a more advanced system for customize food and products with a mush better UI:

1.
RCT3: You were able to add extra products and customize them. [happy]
PC: There is a pre set of items to set on or off. [sour]

2.
RCT3: The UI was easy to use with matrix and colourful icons for the products you add in you food. [heart]
PC: Only name list and yes-boxes. [weird]

3.
RCT3: You add a new balloon and you choose by yourself the colour from the palette. [yesnod]
PC: There is a pre set of balloons you put on or off. [mad]


They have icons to be seen in guests inventory. Why do they don't use them in the shops list? This is just plain bad in feedback and pedagogic logic of the game. To be able to instantly see were the product came from by the icon.

------------------

Whether the customization of sell producs give the simulation any consequences or not. The UI and concept is so bad, no one really use it anyway. Because they have designed it to be BORING. That is my point.
 
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If the effect is subtle, how are you supposed to divine that from watching the simulation? I'm usually busy building and tweaking things - and even if I weren't, what would I do? Click on a person and see how much their hunger bar fills up, then change the burgers, and wait for the next customer?

I mean great if that's how it's working - but I think you should be able to get some more direct information about it (and related things) to help inform your choices.

I wouldn't run a food business (or any other for that matter) if I didn't know my costs up front - so exactly how much does a chilli burger cost me to make?

I would survey my customers to find out their tastes, or at least try and get some data? Oh, so people don't like mustard in these parts... I'll stop serving it, or offer it as optional.

How many people are leaving my park hungry / thirsty because I didn't serve anything they liked at a price they were willing to bear?

If I can add ingredients to drive up thirst, AND charge more because I'm adding them - what is the downside of doing that, to ensure it's just not the only option?

Real business isn't about experimenting with settings; it's about making educated choices based on having *some* information. The more info you have, the better your choices are likely to be....
 
But did Theme Park tell you these things? As when I played I worked them out myself. I thought that was part of the game, to experiment with settings and see if it improves things. Part of the management experience like in a real business.

I haven't played Theme Park myself, so I can't comment on that.

The problem I have with these kinds of things and the guess-work involved is, I don't know what is implemented in the game and what is not. With some logical reasoning and personal experiences I could indeed argue that more salt on the fries will make me (and therefore guests buying the fries) more thirsty, but who says that this actually works like that in-game?

If I would reason with everything like that, I would be picking a strategy in my mind that might not be a strategy in the game at all, since it might have no effect at all or a different effect than I thought it would. Given that there is no way for me to find out which effect it is, it keeps being guess-work. There is no strategy to it unless you happen to know the internal details.

The only way you can find out these details, is by either watching many customers individually and tracking their meters by hand, which is cumbersome and time-consuming while also getting distracted by more important matters. Just watching the crowd as a whole does not tell you much unless they will rush the drink stall afterwards. Some basic information providing mechanism like path-heatmaps for customer needs would already help here. But not providing the tools to analyze your customer behaviour and needs apart from only taking very specific samples is insufficient in my opinion.

I would not mind having to experiment with the effects on a higher level, I like this as well. But at least give me some clue about what matters and the tools to analyze the results on such a higher level.
 
But did Theme Park tell you these things? As when I played I worked them out myself. I thought that was part of the game, to experiment with settings and see if it improves things. Part of the management experience like in a real business.

theme park had thought bubbles or emoticons for guests to see their thoughts. There was also a notification bar that would say things like "Guests think your fries are too salty"

Increasing toppings does effect running costs.
Increasing ice lowers them, though.

Adding "a lot" of things like salt, vinegar, peppers, chili sauce, will make peeps thirsty faster.
Adding fruit to smoothies fulfills hunger.
well thats subtle, so like I said before, adding more toppings is always better

Coffee and energy drinks fulfill thirst and energy. If you have too many benches, you won't sell much coffee or energy drinks.
no wonder I can never sell coffee lol, makes sense but makes coffee obsolete
 

WingardiumLevicoaster

Volunteer Moderator
theme park had thought bubbles or emoticons for guests to see their thoughts. There was also a notification bar that would say things like "Guests think your fries are too salty"

well thats subtle, so like I said before, adding more toppings is always better


no wonder I can never sell coffee lol, makes sense but makes coffee obsolete

didn't tell you to put your gift shops near the exits of the best rides from what I remember though. Best way to make money [big grin]
 
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