Vanilla Food Variety Expanded - Food Diversity, Favorite Meals and Mood System for RimWorld

Vanilla Food Variety Expanded is a lightweight RimWorld mod that introduces a food variety and nutrition preference system, making colonists react to the diversity of their daily meals. Instead of eating the same rice-based dishes indefinitely without complaints, pawns now remember recently consumed meals and ingredients, gaining mood bonuses from a varied diet or suffering penalties from repetitive food.

The modification adds another consideration to colony food management, encouraging players to grow different crops, prepare various dishes, and diversify food supplies.

Food Variety and Colonist Mood

The main feature of Vanilla Food Variety Expanded is a system that tracks what each colonist has recently eaten.

Every pawn remembers a configurable number of meals and their ingredients. The game then evaluates dietary diversity based on both factors.

Main gameplay features:

• Meal variety: Colonists benefit from eating different types of meals instead of repeating the same dish.
• Ingredient diversity: Using a wider selection of ingredients contributes to food satisfaction.
• Mood bonuses: A varied diet improves colonist mood.
• Mood penalties: Repeatedly consuming the same meal made from the same ingredient negatively affects mood.
• Individual food history: Each colonist has their own record of recently consumed meals and ingredients.

The system calculates food variety using the average diversity of meals and ingredients, so both factors influence the final result.

Favorite Meals and Ingredients

Every colonist receives a personal preference for either a particular meal or an ingredient.

Favorite foods provide an additional advantage: When a colonist consumes their preferred meal or ingredient, it counts as two different meals or ingredients toward dietary variety.

This means favorite foods help colonists meet their variety requirements more easily, providing another reason to consider individual preferences when organizing food production.

Customizable Food Variety Settings

Vanilla Food Variety Expanded includes configuration options that allow players to adjust how strongly dietary diversity affects their colony.

Available settings include:

• The number of recently consumed meals remembered by colonists.
• The number of ingredients included in their food history.
• The amount of diversity required to receive a positive mood effect.
• The strength of mood bonuses from varied food.
• The severity of mood penalties from repetitive diets.

These options allow players to make food variety a minor consideration or a more important part of colony management.

How to Check Food Variety

Food variety information is available through the standard colonist interface.

1. Select a colonist.
2. Open the Needs tab.
3. Find the food variety need.
4. Click the small information button beneath it to view the remembered ingredients.

This allows players to monitor dietary diversity and understand how recent food choices affect their colonists.

Performance and Compatibility

Vanilla Food Variety Expanded is designed to avoid unnecessary changes to RimWorld's existing food selection behavior.

Unlike some similar modifications, it does not alter the food-searching job. Colonists do not actively search for meals that would maximize their dietary variety.

Instead, the system evaluates the average diversity of meals and ingredients already consumed. This approach is intended to minimize additional performance overhead.

Compatibility information:

• Existing saves: The mod can be added during an ongoing playthrough.
• Combat Extended: Compatible.
• Food selection: Standard meal selection behavior remains unchanged.
• Configuration: Food variety requirements and mood effects can be adjusted through mod settings.

Author

• Sarg Bjornson - Programming and development.