Pickling sucks - How to fix it

[Dawidio123]

Okay so first of all, pickling UX fucking sucks. Sorry for being crude about this joftar I'm sure you worked hard on the system and it adds some complexity to previously pretty simple food recipes which i personally like.
So what's wrong with pickling?
First of all if you want to make a decent amount of pickles you will probably need like 2-3 cupboards of jars (64-96 jars), 3 cupboards of pickling jars can make one batch of 288 spicy salads, now that's a decent amount and it's honestly not the main issue.
The issue arises when you have to fill all those jars.

-You cannot put the pickling brine in first, because the amount of brine that fits into a jar decreases as you put in more stuff in it. It's realistic okay, but does it add anything to gameplay other than the annoyance when you first do it and fill them all with brine first before putting in vegetables? It doesn't. It's a pointless realism mechanic and adds nothing positive gameplay wise.
Solution: Make pickling jars hold a fixed amount of pickling brine no matter how much things you put in them, there is no point to complicate things, there is no strategy that involved putting in less things so you can do multiple batches in same jar without refilling, it's just annoying.

-Second issue comes once the pickling is done, if you filled the jar to full (9 items and full brine) the pickling process only works for the first 6, and only finishes for the remaining 3 once you add a bit more brine (even though the jar is not out of brine it just requires a minimal amount for the process to work) so you either juggle the brine between your jars which is just a ton of menial clicking for no reason or you get a bucket of brine and add it to each jar. What's the point of this?
Solution: Adding onto the previous one, make it so jars can hold enough brine (maybe even precisely so, so you are left with an empty jar at the end even though it's not realistic) to fully pickle all its contents, no need to refill them at the end, makes the whole process a lot less tedious.

-Another issue i find when doing big amounts of pickling is the tediousness of taking things out of the jars, if you have 96 jars you need to hover over 96 jars and remove their contents from the pop-up inventory, this might've seemed fine in testing when you did it once with like 10 jars, but it's really not when you make a bigger amount of stuff, my hand is literally more tired from clicking the jars than when doing actual combat.
Solution: Honestly it's hard to find a solution to this, easiest solution on user-end is probably just make a script to empty the jars (which also fixes most previous issues but that shouldn't be the way to fix things). One thing that i do find weird is that jars are the best we can do for pickling, why not add a new type of container like a pickling barrel, make it similar to a kiln let's say, where you have for example a 5x10/7x8/10x10/etc. (horizontal x vertical, this is important for my next point) space and a liquid meter that when filled has enough brine to pickle everything inside. Make the barrel require like hardened leather and hard metal/steel to make jars a cheaper alternative for people that just want to pickle small amounts or maybe make the barrel less efficient when it comes to brine, it doesn't matter. This minimizes the amount of containers you have to manage and would make the whole process a lot less painful.

-Okay, when i say pickles i think cucumbers. First of all, there is 2 recipes that use them (and for some reason pickled cucumber makes them worse), but that's an issue that goes beyond this thread. Now if you want to pickle cucumbers you are in a world of pain, the jars are 3x3 but the cucumbers are 1x2, which means you can fit at most 3 in them leaving 3 empty spaces in there, just like, uh, why.
Solution:The jars are obviously bigger vertically than horizontally as they even occupy 1x2 themselves, so it would only make sense for them to be 3x4 allowing you to fit 6 cucumbers with no empty spaces, which is also why when mentioning pickling barrel inventory space in my previous point i gave examples where the vertical size is an even number allowing you to fill them up fully with cucumbers without those pesky empty spaces.

If those were implemented pickling could be something you'd do even if some of the recipes weren't stupidly good (which is the case right now, i don't think anyone would do pickling if it wasn't for those 4 good recipes).
Thanks for coming to my ted-talk.

[Leon232]

All of this seems like a very logical take on the issues and i see nothing to disagree with here. I'm about to set up my Pickling Facilities for the first time since they were added.....so i imagine i'll have more opinions later; but i can already see the issues that you described annoying me to no end

[MachineLegend]

I think Vatas mentioned in a separate pickling critique that I agree with. Pickling ux isnt where it needs to be if pickling is to remain an actual legitimately good (or even serviceable frankly) system. Pickling just needs a little more rethinking (and possibly even a bit more depth ala cheese making) in order to be an actual industry.

Expand pickling to pickling barrels at a time of a given product (could even be custom pickling kegs), and I think it's golden.

[latency_vi]

Expand pickling to pickling barrels at a time of a given product (could even be custom pickling kegs), and I think it's golden.

I would prefer to have kegs than current jars we have right now.

Remove the jars entirely and have a the keg behave similar to a tanning tub, brine could be place full without affecting the actual amount of produce in the slots.

For the slots, may have it 12 tiles just so that 1x2 items fits perfectly.

[gravesmerch]

my wishlist features:
- shift rightclick jar => remove ready items only
- ctrl+shift rightclick jar => remove all items
- jar icon could show main spice icon on bottom right


my current pickling routine:

- add to jar by scrolling down on jar popup window
- pickup from jars with mass transfer shortcut on popup window
- when last 3 is at 100% I hold first jar and right click one by one, switching juices and checking windows popup, restarting when jar is full

also use a bucket on the container to help some tasks

[Sephiron]

Sounds good to me. Curding tubs for instance use 1.0 l of milk and .02 liters of rennet for each curd, you're never left with just .01L of rennet or 0.8L of milk if you initially fill them to full, no reason pickling shouldn't be the same way.

And what if when pickling is complete, the jar acts like a cheese tray (it's sealed) and you right click it and click open to empty the contents into your inventory? Once the jar is full of brine it seals up until ready

[springyb]

-Another issue i find when doing big amounts of pickling is the tediousness of taking things out of the jars, if you have 96 jars you need to hover over 96 jars and remove their contents from the pop-up inventory, this might've seemed fine in testing when you did it once with like 10 jars, but it's really not when you make a bigger amount of stuff, my hand is literally more tired from clicking the jars than when doing actual combat.

You can hover over the jar and shift-scroll wheel into and from your inventory without clicking. You can also cook directly out of the jars.

I'm not defending pickling, this is a public PSA announcement for carpal tunnel awareness.

[Dawidio123]

-Another issue i find when doing big amounts of pickling is the tediousness of taking things out of the jars, if you have 96 jars you need to hover over 96 jars and remove their contents from the pop-up inventory, this might've seemed fine in testing when you did it once with like 10 jars, but it's really not when you make a bigger amount of stuff, my hand is literally more tired from clicking the jars than when doing actual combat.

You can hover over the jar and shift-scroll wheel into and from your inventory without clicking. You can also cook directly out of the jars.

I'm not defending pickling, this is a public PSA announcement for carpal tunnel awareness.

I mean yeah but you have to hover each jar right, it doesn't take it out of all the jars. And honestly scrolling this much isn't ideal for my hands either lol. And cooking out of the jars uh, i guess, this probably is something i will do next world if it doesn't change, just put 3 cupboards of jars next to me and cook, this is a good one.

[vatas]

I think Vatas mentioned in a separate pickling critique that I agree with. Pickling ux isnt where it needs to be if pickling is to remain an actual legitimately good (or even serviceable frankly) system. Pickling just needs a little more rethinking (and possibly even a bit more depth ala cheese making) in order to be an actual industry.

Expand pickling to pickling barrels at a time of a given product (could even be custom pickling kegs), and I think it's golden.

My main contribution was to just post this real picking barrel from 1950s:

[stya]

If you're lazy... maybe make jars much bigger and fix the "missing brine at the end". Instead of 1x2 make them 2x4 and the inventory inside 6x6. Scale their cost accordingly and voila!

It won't fix everything but it will be quicker than a whole new concept with a barrel-like object.