User:Studenterhue/Sous-Chef

CIVILIAN DEPARTMENT
Sous-Chef
Sous-Chef	Difficulty: Easy Requirements: None Access Level: Kitchen, Bar Additional Roleplay Access Level: None Supervisors: Captain, Head of Personnel, Chef Subordinates: None Responsibilities: Cooking food for the crew, keeping the kitchen clean (and the bar too if you can), helping out the Chef Guides: Foods

Every hero needs a great sidekick, and for the Chef, that sidekick is the Sous-Chef. As a Sous-Chef, your job is to cook up delicious meals in the Kitchen to serve in the Bar, ranging from the mundane (soup with beans, tomatoes, carrots, and rice!) to the fantastic (deep-fried chili con carne and waffles pizza...?) While you're the Chef's second-in-command, mechanics-wise, you only differ from them in minor ways, to the point that you're basically a second Chef. That's all for the better: too many cooks may spoil the broth, but many hands also make light work, and the two of you will make light work of deep-frying the broth, putting it a sandwich, and making it into sushi, in no particular order.

This job is only available to people who join after a round has started. On top of this, the slot for it only opens up if there is a Chef around. Since it's only available to latejoiners, Sous-Chef is also locked out of roundstart antag selection, though it's still eligible for latejoin antag selection. In addition, a Sous-Chef can still be mindhacked, get converted over to the revolution, awaken as a sleeper agent, etc.

Like Chef, this is a good role for newbies who are comfortable working with only one colleague around. You get to learn most of common methods of item interaction, and if you mess up, it's not too dire. Plus, making delicious and/or cursed food is always fun. Since this job only appears if there's a Chef, you (ideally) always have someone around to show you the ropes (and fry them too). This is good because you otherwise have fewer coworkers, i.e. people who could help you, than you would when playing, say, Botanist, and the Roleplay servers' hunger system creates additional social pressure and obligations (though hunger itself is more forgiving than you think).

To Serve Man and Chefs

Main article: Foods

Goonstation's cooking system is pretty simple to the point that if you're a sous-chef in real life, you might overthink things and struggle more than someone with no culinary knowledge. Most recipes involve putting certain ingredients in the oven and picking the right settings. If you get the best setting possible, the buffs gained from eating it last much longer than usual. Conversely, if you put in the wrong ingredients or set it to too high a time, you get mush and charred remains, respectively.

For example, to make a cheeseburger, you:

1. Make flour into dough. No need for buns.
2. Find a piece of meat. You can use monkey meat (so long as you're careful when grabbing the monkey and putting it on the meat spike), human meat (grinding dead people into meat is allowed, though a lot of people see it as a jerk move; grinding living people is against the Rules), and synthmeat (which comes from a certain plant that Botanists can grow). No further processing is needed; you don't need to grind it or shape it into a patty.
3. Cut up some cheese into slices. Obviously, you can cut it with a kitchen knife, but you can use all sorts of things. If you're so inclined, you can slice cheese with a chainsaw or the Clown's funny sabre.
4. Put everything in the oven for 7 seconds and set it to high.

For some recipes, like cake batter, you might need to insert something into the KitchenHelper (just a mixer) or the processor (less a food processor and more a general-purpose food refining machine; for example, it turns wheat into flour, which is not what food processors in real life do) For some recipes, you can add an ingredient of your choice. These recipes can accept any other food item, even if it's whole entire dish or something normally not used for said recipe. One of the major joys of cooking is making cursed food combos, e.g. a soup made with ice cream, onion chips, and a bowl of udon noodles.

You can make all possible recipes as a Sous-Chef; no recipes are level-locked or time-locked. The recipes themselves don't change just because there's another person in the kitchen.

Hunger and You

On the Roleplay servers, people periodically need to eat to keep their hunger meter up. (It's formally called a motive, in reference to The Sims.) However, unlike hunger systems in other games, if your hunger hits zero, you do not die. Instead, you get a maximum health penalty, which is definitely detrimental but at least you're still alive. In other words, you cannot starve to death, so you don't have to worry about people dying because you took too long to make a cheeseburger.

Some people satiate their hunger by gobbling junk food from the snack machines or even just ignore it, but many will come to your Bar for a bite to eat. Most of them will just eat whatever has been placed on the counter, but sometimes you get someone with a specific request. Having to feed so many mouths can be a lot of work, but luckily, hand-made meals are usually great at filling the hunger meter. For example, a cheeseburger restores 72% hunger, while a spaghetti with tomato sauce restores 90%. The hunger cap is 100%, so these values are quite generous.

The main problem is social. If a customer comes along, and there's nothing for them to eat, you might feel rushed to fix up a meal for them as fast as you can. This can be difficult to deal with, especially for newbies or people who are naturally anxious, but the pressure usually goes away with experience. Some people also might rowdy if they go too long without being served chow, if they don't just decide to head to the nearest snack machine instead (which can feel quite humiliating). Thankfully, most people are reasonable and will forgive your lack of haste if you clarify the issue (e.g. you're missing an ingredient, you're kinda new and not used to this kitchen.)

The Chef du Sous Life

What do you actually do as Sous-Chef? It's simple. You make food in the Kitchen and give it to people in the Bar. A lot of people like to lay food out on the bar counter and let patrons pick and choose what they want, like a buffet or cafeteria. Others outfit the place into a table-service restaurant, drawing up menus, taking orders from customers, and ferrying plates to and from tables. Some people do a food delivery gimmick, accepting orders via PDA messages. The game does not railroad you into one particular playstyle, so you and the Chef can do whatever service style you like.

Thanks to your Kitchen Training, you can Examine (Hotkey: Alt + E) food items to determine their quality and the food buffs they provide. Your NanoTrasen-mandated training also lets you handle pufferfish without getting pricked and safely prepare pufferfish fillet, which is usually dangerous to eat unless you're trained in how to cut it.

Despite your training, you still have some minor issues when gathering certain types of "meat". When raking through gibs for mystery meat, you only have a 70% chance to actually get some meat. Similar deal when rifling through robot debris; you only have a 70% chance to get meatal. While you'll get less meat than a Chef would, 70% is still a pretty high chance of getting something. It's better than 50-50, so you're more likely to succeed than fail.

The Civilian Channel

You start with a civilian headset, with access to the civilian radio channel/frequency (135.5, prefix :c). Among other things, you can use the civilian channel to get some help from your boss, ask the Botanist(s) and/or Rancher(s) to grow you something, and request supplies from the Quartermaster(s). To speak over this channel, do one of the following:

• Press Y. Choose the "Civilian" option. Type whatever you want to say into the window, e.g. Any botanists around? I want some pineapples and coconuts for a tropical-themed menu.
• Press T. Type :c, followed by whatever you want to say. For example, if you want to ask Rancher Ennis Twist for some funny chicken eggs, you could type :c Hey, Ennis, you got any interesting eggs for us to serve?
• Click on that command bar on the very bottom of the game window, and type say. (You'll know you typed it correctly because the game will automatically insert quotation marks after "say".) Then, type :c and whatever you want to, well, say. For example, you can ask the Quartermaster for fruits and veggies by typing say, followed by QM, could you buy a Fresh Produce Crate?

Differences from Chef

So, how do you compare to the big cheese? For one, as previously mentioned, you're less adept at gathering mystery meat from gibs and meatal from robot debris. Very few recipes use these meats, though, so it's not a huge loss.

In addition, you do not get crew objectives or Chef XP. Recipes are not Chef XP-gated, so you can still make any recipe you want. This mostly just locks you off from the Tall Chef's Hat job reward, since that can only be obtained via the job rewards and XP system. You can still obtain the components of the Sushi Chef Outfit reward if the Catering Apparel machine is hacked.

Finally, there are a couple of differences in what you spawn with. You don't get a bell, rolling pin, or meat cleaver, so you lose out on a few tools. Thankfully, the FoodTech has extra rolling pins. Also, instead of a puffy white hat and double-breasted coat, you get a pointy white hat and a simple white apron. The chef coat gives slightly more heat resistance, while the apron has more chemical resistance. Compared to actual protective gear, they're pretty minor, so the difference is mostly fashion. If you want, you can hit up Catering Apparel for a Chef's coat, plus other Chef outfit items.

Otherwise, in terms of just job mechanics, you're almost a perfect carbon-copy of the Chef. Like the Chef, you have access to the Bar and Kitchen, which also means you get FoodTech access. While your starting gear is different, you still get a civilian headset and therefore access to the civilian frequency. You get the same pay as your boss does, and you can make the same recipes they can. You get the same training too.

Your Place in the Food Chain

Sous-Chef is considered subordinate to the Chef, so you should generally follow their commands. If having someone bark orders at you is not up to your taste, fear not. Most chefs are pretty chill and will happily let you do your own thing, without much interference. Since this is a kitchen, not a battlefield, most commands they do issue will be something like, "Hey, help me make pies" or "Mind grabbing my crate from Cargo?" rather than "go take the hill or we'll bombard your trench" or "kill the Captain because she said my hat was dumb" (and if you do get such unreasonable orders, follow common sense and disregard them)

Crooked Cook: Antagonist Sous-Chef

One of the perks of being an antagonist Sous-Chef is that you can get your Sweeney Todd on and turn your kills into cannibal cuisine by using the gibber to turn their corpses into meat. To get rid of the "[name] meat" label, just make it into meat paste. Kitchen staff turning corpses into meals is rather rare but not exactly unheard of, so some people might not bat an eye if they see you dragging a dead body around. However, the key word is "some". Other people will absolutely get suspicious at such a sight, so you better give a good alibi (or prepare your murder weapon). In addition, the gibber can't be moved, so you need to get your victim all the way to the Kitchen. You might want to pilfer a body bag for faster transport or lure your victims into the Kitchen somehow.

Being an antagonist also gives you free license to fill your dishes with nasty chemicals and poison unsuspecting patrons, such as by using toxic ingredients or by injecting the toxins directly into your food with a syringe. If you're really good at mixing hellpoisons, you can kill people by force-feeding them poisoned food or drinks. The road to becoming a master poisoner, however, has some major obstacles. For one, robust/veteran players often conduct reagent scans of what they eat, precisely in case it's been poisoned, undoubtedly exposing your evil scheme. Also, many foods have low chemical capacities, so you need to pick your poisons wisely.

Despite having an effective method for disposing of dead bodies, in the form of the gibber, Sous-Chefs are generally not well-geared towards stealth. Sous-Chefs are usually not found outside the Bar or Kitchen (and, to a lesser extent, Medbay or Hydroponics), so people will get suspicious if they see you, say, hacking into the AI Upload or trying to break into the Bridge.

Le Cordon Rouge Petit: Traitor Sous-Chef

As a Traitor, you have two job-specific items available for order: the hotdog bomb and the syndicate hot dog cart.

The hotdog bomb forces each person caught in the "blast" radius into a hotdog costume—a horrible fate for any crew member concerned with looking stylish, especially since it can't be removed. It's mostly intended for pranks, but it has its uses. For example, if your target is wearing armor, you can use the bomb to remove it from them, making them easier to kill and bake into delicious pies.

The syndicate hot dog cart may look like a standard push cart, but anyone shoved inside is crushed into a hotdog sausage and a meatcube, which shortly after collapses into slabs of cube steak. Unlike with the gibber, the meat is not labeled with the victim's name, though it is possible to trace the blood stains back to the victim. It's a messy, but delicious, method of corpse disposal on the go.

The standard syndie items aren't bad picks either. An emag or a syndicate omnitool will handily resolve your lack of access. If your chef whites hamper your ability to fly under the radar, you might want to buy a chameleon outfit or even a cloaking device. Sleepy pens are decent for knocking out murder victims, and a radio jammer will keep them from squealing over the radio while being slaughtered. And, of course, last, but DEFINITELY not least, what self-respecting evil cook doesn't wear an evil 'stache?