Wild Food Spoilage.
Summary:
- Wild Vegetable Preparation Time = 1 period per 100kg (2d6% wastage/month)
- Wild Grain Preparation Time = 1 period per 200kg (1d6% wastage/month)
- Carcass Preparation and Storage = 1 period per 50kg (1d6% wastage/month)
- Dried Meat Preparation Time = 1 period per 50kg + 6 Days Drying + 1.5kg "salting" salt per kg. (1d6% wastage/month)
- Salt Meat Preparation Time = 2 period per 50kg + 3 Days Drying (1d6% wastage/month)
- Dried Meat Preparation Time = 1 period per smoker up 200kg + 2 to 3 periods smoking (no wastage)
- Fats Preparation Time = 1 period per 100kg meat (no wastage) Requires large cookers.
Each of these periods shown requires a Task
- Easy: Survival/Cooking/Biology (unskilled)
(Note this can be an Average Task or even higher if the required equipment is not available or if the player has to avoid observation. Salting must have "salting" salt or is not possible).
Food goes off, and it goes off faster depending on a range of factors. Firstly, it definitely doesn't like getting wet. That bit about all the food you gathered from a field? Well the first time it rains you can either have everyone pull the vehicles off the road to dry out the food somehow or you can throw most of it out. This is because most players don't have nearly enough containers to put the stuff in so it's often lumped into the back of a truck in a huge, awful mess of a mound (which will give you wastage as well). Players should become obsessive about gathering and cleaning those 44 gallon drums.
Food doesn't like to just sit, although some food is more stable than others. Spuds and other roots will sit happily in a cool, dark and ventilated space for a few months. Wheat and other grains last better in the kernel so if the players didn't separate the chaff (page 150, T2K v2.2) they will find it spoils rapidly. While grain might last 6 months if stored correctly you can expect your root vegetables to be useless in three months tops, less if in not ideal environments.
The following assumes that each unit of meat is about 50kg, and even small units take the same time.
Meat, game or fish, goes off fast and unrefrigerated meat in small amounts is dangerous after two hours. Really dangerous. Now, this actually isn't all the meat, the outer layers are the most affected by the atmosphere and all the greebies in it in a well-dressed carcass (something the players are adept at is cleaning carcasses by now, even with just a bayonet). But if you can't preserve your meat for some reason you'll get rapid wastage as you keep cleaning off the carcass. Raw meat has to be kept away from flies and other vermin, usually by wrapping in coarse cloth that can still breath such as burlap, coincidently what most of the sandbags are made from.
However if you want meat to stay stable you have to start to do some serious work, it takes about six days minimum to air dry meat correctly. The food should be kept stationary in this time. Now, it's conceivable you could make up a large meat rack for a truck but expect a large amount of your load capacity to go out the window, far more than the mass of the food. This can only be done in areas with a low humidity.
Salt-curing meat is the other method suggested last time. Now, for a start you need more than just normal sodium chloride, you also need some special salting salts that include nitrates and nitrites, this will have to be traded for as the players aren't going to just find it. You don't need much but it is still needed otherwise the fats in the food will oxidise. Salted meat has little fat, the salt won't penetrate it. Fat is vital for the players so we'll cover this elsewhere. Salt-cured meat must be dried for three days before being salted and then takes after cooking, the cooking process takes a period to gather equipment and fuel, set up, clean the food, cook and then prepare for drying. All this salting stuff is really wasteful of salt, you can use half again as much salt as you have meat.
Smoked meat is a dark art.
A smoker is either a hole in the ground, a structure or a portable device, this last one being far preferable to gypsy player characters however portable smokers can only handle limited amounts of meat at a time whereas a smokehouse or smoke pit can be constructed to process as much as the PCs desire. On average a smoker can do its job in 2 to 3 periods using 20kg fresh-cut hardwood per 50kg meat. It takes 1 period to get everything set up.
Animal fat is vital, especially in winter. Players are going to want to create lard from carcasses. It takes another period of cooking to render animal fat that should be added to the preparation times, if not reduce the amount of nutrition the food provides in snow periods. Note that the players also derive soap from this step which should give them a bonus to avoid some diseases and even lower some enemy recon rolls! Being less stinky also makes hunting easier.
It also takes some upkeep and just looking after this wild food is going start eating into the player's time. Players will be assume to be constantly checking the food sources and making sure that it's aired, vermin free and clearing out wastage. This should be assumed to be part of their daily upkeep.
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