EDIT: Here's a chart I made showcasing how this all fits: https://tinyurl.com/tk7dwwnb

Apologies for the title saying "Tiny" - it started out tiny, sure, but then my brain gears kept spinning and I ended up fleshing the heck out of this.

This is an idea for some new foods that fit perfectly into PNC's mechanics, if you ever plan on adding more food that is. This may be feature creep though, but I'll let you decide. I'm basically just submitting ideas as I get them 😅

The main take-away of this suggestion is not just more food, but also giving a little more purpose to the Fluid Mixer.

It's all to do with Deep Fried Ice Cream (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_ice_cream)

A basic idea for how it would be crafted:

Bucket of Milk -> Heat Frame Cooling -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular)
Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Sourdough -> Crafting Grid -> 4x Raw Breaded Ice Cream (Regular) & Empty Bucket
Raw Breaded Ice Cream + Vegetable Oil -> TPP -> Deep-Fried Ice Cream (Regular)

The Bucket of Ice Cream can be consumed, but does not stack. Maybe it could act like milk, and remove effects, but only the negative ones.

There could perhaps be some different flavors as well. Maybe some could saturate better than others, or give a few seconds of effects, or stave off Insomnia for a day. Maybe they can have the same negative effect removal as the bucket, but only remove 1 at a time? The flavors could be made in the TPP:

Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Apple -> TPP -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Apple)
Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Sweetberry -> TPP -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Sweetberry)
Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Melon Slice -> TPP -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Melon)
Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Cocoa Beans -> TPP -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Chocolate)
Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Cookie -> TPP -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Cookies & Cream)
Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Pumpkin Seed -> TPP -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Pumpkin Seed)
Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Carrot -> TPP -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Carrot)
Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) + Honey Bottle -> TPP -> Bucket of Ice Cream (Honey)

These would all convert to Deep Fried Ice Cream of the same flavor, as well.

Though, I guess having this work in the TPP may need a fluid implementation which I know you're trying to avoid. Hmm... Maybe instead of buckets of ice cream it comes out as regular Ice Cream Scoops and instead of using the TPP for flavor mixing you use the Pressure Chamber instead? Not sure... It would just be one fluid, as the flavor could be a tag/nbt

Though, if they were implemented as a fluid, that would give the Fluid Mixer some more utility in making some extra flavors, like so:

Ice Cream (Regular) + Ice Cream (Sweetberry) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Sweetberries & Cream)
Ice Cream (Sweetberries & Cream) + Ice Cream (Chocolate) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Neapolitan)
Ice Cream (Apple) + Ice Cream (Melon) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Apple Melon)
Ice Cream (Carrot) + Ice Cream (Pumpkin Seed) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Carrot & Pumpkin Seed)
Ice Cream (Chocolate) + Ice Cream (Cookies & Cream) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Chocolate Cookies & Cream)
Ice Cream (Honey) + Ice Cream (Apple) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Honey Apple)
Ice Cream (Honey) + Ice Cream (Sweetberry) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Honey Berry)
Ice Cream (Honey) + Ice Cream (Melon) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Honey Melon)
Ice Cream (Honey) + Ice Cream (Pumpkin Seed) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Honey Pumpkin)
Ice Cream (Honey) + Ice Cream (Cookies & Cream) -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Honey Crumble)

Maybe the Bucket of Ice Cream could also be put in a crafting grid, which yields 4 Ice Cream Scoops. These would act like snowballs, in that the player can throw them (especially with the Pneumatic Chestplate's Item Launcher mechanic). They could do a little more damage than regular snowballs, OR instead of doing more damage, they do no damage at all and act like mini-splash potions for the effects they might have (if you go with that idea).

If you like the snowball idea, then you may want to change the recipe from this:

Bucket of Ice Cream + Sourdough -> Crafting Grid -> 4x Raw Breaded Ice Cream

To this:

Bucket of Ice Cream (Regular) -> Crafting Grid -> 4x Ice Cream Scoop (Regular) & Empty Bucket
Ice Cream Scoop (Regular) + Sourdough -> Crafting Grid -> Raw Breaded Ice Cream (Regular)

If you want to really flesh this idea out, you could introduce a Nitrogen liquid. In real-life, Nitrogen is actually extracted from liquified air (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_nitrogen):

Liquid nitrogen is produced commercially from the cryogenic distillation of liquified air or from the liquefication of pure nitrogen derived from air using pressure swing adsorption. An air compressor is used to compress filtered air to high pressure; the high-pressure gas is cooled back to ambient temperature, and allowed to expand to a low pressure. The expanding air cools greatly (the Joule–Thomson effect), and oxygen, nitrogen, and argon are separated by further stages of expansion and distillation. Small-scale production of liquid nitrogen is easily achieved using this principle.[citation needed] Liquid nitrogen may be produced for direct sale, or as a byproduct of manufacture of liquid oxygen used for industrial processes such as steelmaking. Liquid-air plants producing on the order of tons per day of product started to be built in the 1930s but became very common after the Second World War; a large modern plant may produce 3000 tons/day of liquid air products.

So that would change the recipe for making Ice Cream into something a little different, but makes it more of a puzzle. Instead of:

Bucket of Milk -> Heat Frame Cooling -> Bucket of Ice Cream

It'd be:

Air Canister -> Heat Frame Cooling -> Liquified Air

OR

Air Canister (5.0 bar) -> TPP (at <0c) -> Liquified Air & Empty Air Canister

THEN

Liquified Air -> TPP -> Nitrogen
Nitrogen + Milk -> Fluid Mixer -> Ice Cream (Regular)

Perhaps you could also do the funny and make it so that Ice Cream (Regular) that has just been freshly produced has a timer on it, and needs to sit at a temperature sufficient enough for the Nitrogen to boil away (I think this is >77k, can't remember) until that timer ends. If the player consumes the Ice Cream before this, insta death :D

Another interesting timer-related idea is having the ice cream melt over time (which in practice just makes the items disappear), unless stored in a cooled heat frame. Perhaps there could be a puzzle in Heat Frame cooling the Aerial Interface to prevent this from happening when it's in your inventory.

Perhaps you could add a challenge to this via Amadron, Players could automate all the different flavors of Deep Fried Ice cream and list them on Amadron, then you could have a mechanic where some "customers" occasionally buy a random ice cream from the player (even in SSP worlds) for Emeralds, so the player would have incentive to automate all of the flavors to maximize on the buy potential.

Perhaps you could also be a little zany, and add some new decorative blocks, where 4 Ice Cream Scoops could be crafted in a 2x2 pattern to make 1 block of Ice Cream. It'd have the same texture as snow, but a different color depending on the NBT of the flavor it was crafted with. These could then be crafted into Bricks, which could themselves be crafted into Staircases and Slabs.

If everything in this suggestion were to be implemented (even the zany stuff), it'd add the following items/fluids (based on the Vortex Tube, for the decorative blocks, I'm assuming it is possible to change the color of a rendered block via checking NBT, but it may be worth having the decorative blocks be static to avoid performance issues where these are used heavily in builds):

- [Fluid] Liquified Air
- [Item] Bucket of Liquified Air
- [Fluid] Nitrogen
- [Item] Bucket of Nitrogen
- [Fluid] Ice Cream (with NBT designating flavor)
- [Item] Bucket of Ice Cream (with NBT designating flavor)
- [Item] Ice Cream Scoop (with NBT designating flavor)
- [Item] Raw Breaded Ice Cream (with NBT designating flavor)
- [Item] Deep Fried Ice Cream (with NBT designating flavor)
- [Item] Ice Cream Block (with NBT designating flavor/color)
- [Item] Ice Cream Brick (with NBT designating flavor/color)
- [Item] Ice Cream Brick Slab (with NBT designating flavor/color)
- [Item] Ice Cream Brick Staircase (with NBT designating flavor/color)

And the crafting recipes would look like this:

Air Canister (5.0 bar) -> TPP (<0c) -> 5000mb Liquified Air & Empty Air Canister
1000mb Liquified Air -> TPP (<0c) -> 100mb Nitrogen
1000mb Nitrogen + 1000mb Milk -> Fluid Mixer -> 1000mb Ice Cream (Regular)
1000mb Ice Cream (Regular) + <ingredient> -> TPP -> 1000mb Ice Cream (NBT designating ingredient flavor)
1000mb Ice Cream (<flavor a>) + 1000mb Ice Cream (<flavor b>) -> Fluid Mixer -> 2000mb Ice Cream (<flavor c>)
1000mb Ice Cream (<flavor>) -> Crafting Grid -> 4x Ice Cream Scoop (<flavor>)
Ice Cream Scoop (<flavor>) + Sourdough -> Raw Breaded Ice Cream (<flavor>)
Raw Breaded Ice Cream (<flavor>) + 250mb Vegetable Oil -> TPP -> Deep-Fried Ice Cream (<flavor>)
4x Ice Cream Scoop (<flavor>) -> 2x2 Crafting -> <flavor>'s respective decorative Ice Cream Block
4x Ice Cream Block -> 2x2 Crafting -> 4x respective decorative Ice Cream Brick
... and the same for staircases / slabs

Of course, everywhere I mention "Bucket", I mean a bucket's worth - it being in an actual bucket is not important, the recipes could work with PNC Tanks of Ice Cream as well.

And no, you don't need to worry about adding in-world versions of these fluids. That makes no sense as the Ice Cream would just melt and the liquified air would just become regular air. Although, if you wanted to add such a thing, you could make the Nitrogen an in-world fluid, which could be used as a cold heat source for the TPP / Heat Frame / Thermostatic Compressor / etc. It could turn into a single snow layer (like how lava cools to obsidian)

I realize that this may seem like a lot of microcrafting, but I personally enjoy the complexity of automation puzzles like this one, for me, the more steps and the more different those steps are, the better. Makes me prouder of what I've built when it's a challenge.

I was having a couple more thoughts on this recently and I realised that this feature would be pretty interesting in relation to the Aerial Interface because it would introduce an emergent gameplay mechanic; that of being able to remotely quell negative potion effects (if that part of the suggestion is added) and remotely apply potion effects (if that part of the suggestion is added) by feeding the player Deep-Fried Ice Cream via the Aerial Interface.

Having noticed a couple of potion trends in other mods, for example:

• Botania's got the flask system - which holds more sips than regular potion bottles, and some of the flasks offer mixed effects.
• Factory Tech back in 1.12 had the Potion Mixer, which allowed you to combine potion effects into a single bottle.
• Ars Noveau has the Potion Jars, Potion Melder and two different Potion Flasks. You use the Potion Melder to combine two potions together into one. Both of the Flasks hold more than one sip of a potion. One of the Flasks increases the duration of a potion, but reduces it's strength. The other Flask increases the strength of the effect, but reduces the duration.
• Create's potion brewing mechanics

... I thought about how PneumaticCraft could expose similar features through this suggestion, so I'd like to make a few amendments to it and see if you like the idea:

• (Regular) Ice Cream acts just like milk and clears all potion effects.
• (<Any Single Flavor>) Ice Cream clears all the negative potion effects.
• (<Any Mixed Flavor>) Ice Cream clears one random negative potion effect.

Following that comes the actual potion effect imbuing mechanic: Combining Ice Cream in liquid form with a brewed Potion in the TPP imbues the ice cream with that potion effect, regardless of the flavor. This changes the effect of the Ice Cream from clearing however many potion effects to instead providing a single potion effect. This would only work on (<Any Single Flavor>) ice cream.

So, you'd put Bucket of Ice Cream (Chocolate, Clears Negative Effects) + Potion of Strength into the TPP and get a Bucket of Ice Cream (Chocolate, Strength) out. When this is processed into Ice Cream Scoops, they act as Splash Potions of Strength when tossed like a snowball. When processed into Deep-Fried Ice Cream, they provide the player with the Strength effect for a short time and thus can be consumed even when the player's hunger bar is full.

Furthering on that concept, the flavors can then be mixed further to combine potion effects.
Mixing (Apple, Clears Negative Effects) and (Melon, Clears Negative Effects) would produce an (Apple Melon, Clears 1 Negative Effect). However, Mixing an (Apple, Strength) with a (Melon, Resistance) would produce an (Apple Melon, Strength + Resistance).

There is one flavor however that is comprised of three flavors, that flavor being Neapolitan. This flavor would be a bit special - as it consists of three flavours, it can hold three active effects. If you for example mixed (Chocolate, Strength) and (Strawberries & Cream, Regeneration + Resistance), you would get a (Neapolitan, Strength + Regeneration + Resistance). Neapolitan, being the most popular and thus ultimate of all Ice Cream flavours, would need to be balanced somehow, and I suggest giving it the same cooldown mechanic as what the Bandage item has, but longer, and it would just be ignored by the Aerial Interface.

Lastly, the introduction of a new food mode to the Aerial Interface w/ a Dispenser Upgrade: Gluttony Mode. Right now it has "Frugal", "Greedy" and "Smart", all of which will only feed the player when the player's hunger bar is partially empty. In contrast, "Gluttony" mode will attempt to feed the player as often as possible, as long as the item it is feeding the player is a valid item that the player is allowed to eat with a full Hunger bar, such as Enchanted Golden Apples or Deep-Fried Ice Cream.

This Gluttony Mode would also serve as the balance requirement for providing the player with a way to empower themselves even more than what PNC currently provides - in order to facilitate remotely removing negative potion effects and remotely applying new ones - they will have to create a big enough infrastruscture to keep up with the demand of the Aerial Interface in Gluttony Mode. If the infrastructure is insufficient to keep up, they would exhaust all their Ice Cream stock very quickly, within a matter of seconds. It could also have a marginally increased air cost per tick to keep the Aerial Interface running when in this mode.

Any thoughts?

I went and made a whole chart showcasing how this would fit into PNC's current processing: https://tinyurl.com/tk7dwwnb

Well, top marks for thoroughness! Another thing to consider from a design perspective is what potion effects these various flavours would have, making them good enough that it's worth making ice cream over going the vanilla (haha) potion making route, without being totally OP.

From a technical perspective, this will require adding milk as a fluid (which can be a bit awkward, since special interaction with milk buckets might be needed). This would probably also need fluidstack NBT support being added to the TPP and Fluid Mixer (not a showstopper, but will take some work).

I'd also probably allow liquid air to be extracted from air canisters at less than 10 bar, the amount produced being proportional to the pressure (or more correctly, the amount of air in the canister).

Also occurred to me that maybe the Refinery is a better option than the TPP for splitting liquid air, although a use would need to be found for the other products (nitrogen, oxygen, argon, CO2). And of course liquid CO2 isn't really a thing without a lot of pressure, but a bit of handwavium could be used there...

Well, top marks for thoroughness! Another thing to consider from a design perspective is what potion effects these various flavours would have, making them good enough that it's worth making ice cream over going the vanilla (haha) potion making route, without being totally OP.

Thanks! To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. The reason I excluded any info re: potion effects in the flowchart wasn't just because having them would be tedious to draw up, but because I'm not entirely certain about the feature, mainly for these reasons:

• If it's tedoius for me to add to a flowchart, it would be exponentially more tedious to code
• It might be a bit too op
• The process of making ice cream is complicated enough already

But at the same time I do want a player to feel more rewarded for making the ice cream than just giving them a fun and colorful snack. In one of my previous comments I toyed with the idea of players being able to combine potions with the ice cream themselves so they could sort of "build" their ideal ice cream, along with it's effects. That would make it compatible with other modded potion effects, so it could scale in modpacks. 1 flavor = 1 potion effect, 2 flavors = 2 potion effects, neapolitan = 3 potion effects, but with a disadvantage of some kind (perhaps this reduces the duration of each effect?).

If you want a quick way to test this out so you can decide if it's perhaps too OP, Ars Noveau has a mechanic like this, where you mix potions together in the Potion Melder. (It can even be automated with Wixies) - Just bare in mind that the process of getting to Fried Ice Cream is a lot more arduous than it is to make a Potion Melder and enslave a Witch in Ars Noveau.

From a technical perspective, this will require adding milk as a fluid (which can be a bit awkward, since special interaction with milk buckets might be needed). This would probably also need fluidstack NBT support being added to the TPP and Fluid Mixer (not a showstopper, but will take some work).

Will it? Doesn't Forge already change milk into a fluid? If not, you'd think it should, because of the sheer number of mods that do turn it into one.

In regards to the technicalities of this, perhaps then this functionality could live in a separate addon mod? Like a PNC DLC (without the price tag). That way you could keep PNC nice and pure, maybe just make the necessary adjustments for fluidstack support, and then have all the other complicated stuff in the Ice Cream addon. Said addon could then serve as a test bed for how an addon mod would interact with PNC - you could use it to test how "accessible" the PNC api is for addons, perhaps? Idk, maybe it's a bad idea and just better to include it in PNC out of the box.

I'd also probably allow liquid air to be extracted from air canisters at less than 10 bar, the amount produced being proportional to the pressure (or more correctly, the amount of air in the canister).

The whole time I was thinking "perhaps this should be lower than a 10.0 bar requirement" and I generally like your idea, especially if you're willing to put the extra effort in that's required to make it work that way (I imagine a fixed requirement of 10.0 bar would be simpler to code). However, there is an opportunity here to look at this feature and decide if it's an extra incentive for the player to make a tier 1.5 compressor, when/if you ever get around to adding that 😉

Also occurred to me that maybe the Refinery is a better option than the TPP for splitting liquid air, although a use would need to be found for the other products (nitrogen, oxygen, argon, CO2). And of course liquid CO2 isn't really a thing without a lot of pressure, but a bit of handwavium could be used there...

This is a thought that had already ocurred to me and is precisely why I avoided the Refinery, a while back you mentioned you don't want more fluids in the mod and I tried really hard to not have air/nitrogen be liquids, but just couldn't see this idea working without liquid air, nitrogen and milk..

If you're keen on requiring the Refinery for this and you're willing, then I am in agreement, because that means this idea adds even more purpose to even more machines which was my original goal for this whole suggestion :D

As for uses for the other products, we already have a use for nitrogen (making ice cream), for the others, I thought of the following.

• Argon:
  • A new valid input to the Kerosene Lamp, the efficiency of which sits between LPG and Kerosene, but is renewable
  • A crafting substrate for a bunch of new decorative tube lights (think Simply Light, a mod that fits well with the PNC Aesthetic - but now part of the mod itself)
  • Remember our discussion about the Ore Multiplication system and how it was weird to require Diesel as a gas in that process? Well, Argon is actually used for that exact purpose in pneumatic ore processing systems IRL because it's a shield gas - though it's mostly used for specific metals and alloying.
• CO2
  • I'm not sure of the specifics, but perhaps we could devise some way to use this to boost the efficiency of Plastic production
  • When you add a Carbonated Beverage system that is twice as complex as this Ice Cream feature, this could go into the carbonation process 😂 (okay, this one's a bit of a joke, but it is a valid use for CO2 and maybe it might inspire other ideas)
  • It can be used to add an alternative method of producing Concrete Powder, because it's used for that purpose IRL
  • As a new renewable fuel source. If you can put Air into the Refinery to get Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon and CO2, then you could also put Water into the Refinery to get Oxygen and Hydrogen. You could then combine the Hydrogen and the CO2 in the Fluid Mixer to get Synthetic Hydrocarbon which itself could be refined into Synthetic Diesel, Parafin, Butane, etc.
  • I know it's probably going to be a bitch to code but... hear me out... bottle it up, right click the "Bottle of CO2" on any block to give it the same blast resistance as Reinforced Brick
  • Drill a hole in bedrock, inject it with a massive high-pressure stream of CO2, extract Crude Oil. Crude Oil is now renewable
  • A crafting ingredient for another complex process that ends in a form of Wither-proof block
• Oxygen
  • Treating covid patients in critical condition Curing Zombie Villagers
  • Drink cautiously for an explosive suicide
  • TBD