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Zanzibar Ham
Mar 17, 2009

You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.


Grimey Drawer
You either become a front for the mob or get shaken down by the mob. I think Armand made the right choice, especially since this opens up the underground market for illegal recipes or maybe you can hire a sniper to assassinate OmniFood chefs or something.

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Enchanted Hat
Aug 18, 2013

Defeated in Diplomacy under suspicious circumstances

Robindaybird posted:

Thankfully this guy is the least threatening mafisao in history.

I think I stopped when you unlock steakhouses between some of the obtuse mechanics and the story just getting a hair *too silly*

It's been a little while, but I seem to remember that the game also has a really big difficulty spike around that time, when it hands you a restaurant that just gets no customers and expects you to make it profitable.

Zanzibar Ham posted:

You either become a front for the mob or get shaken down by the mob. I think Armand made the right choice, especially since this opens up the underground market for illegal recipes or maybe you can hire a sniper to assassinate OmniFood chefs or something.

Armand gets the mob to smuggle in illegal high-grade Peruvian cinnamon for a 2% recipe quality boost.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

I mean, if you're going to end up taking on a global corporation, I guess you might as well shack up with organized crime. The differences are probably minuscule anyway.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Um, wouldn't adding one hundred tea spoons of cinnamon, presumably one by one, add slightly to the time it takes to cook?

I really miss the pizza designer from Pizza Tycoon now. :(

Mraagvpeine
Nov 4, 2014

I won this avatar on a technicality this thick.
100 teaspoons is roughly 2 cups, I think. Still doesn't make it better.

hopeandjoy
Nov 28, 2014



I like cinnamon as much as the next person, but I think two cups for a few crapes is just a tad too much.

Zanzibar Ham
Mar 17, 2009

You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.


Grimey Drawer
My theory is our friend Don has terrible taste, and our uncle was smart enough not to argue with the mobster but that meant he only had one customer enjoying his meals in the restaurant, which is the real reason it closed down rather than anything OmniFood-related.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Zanzibar Ham posted:

My theory is our friend Don has terrible taste, and our uncle was smart enough not to argue with the mobster but that meant he only had one customer enjoying his meals in the restaurant, which is the real reason it closed down rather than anything OmniFood-related.

One would only hope he made the "Pile of Cinnamon With a Crepe" recipe specifically for the Don, and everyone else got normal-person food.

Speaking of individually-customized meals, I hope that this game has restaurant reviewers, and that you can try to recognize them despite their (no-doubt ridiculous) disguises and feed them better food than the proletariat gets in order to game your restaurant rating.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

*looks up the conversion*

Armand that is a pound of cinammon

eating only apples
Dec 12, 2009

Shall we dance?
From a couple pages ago, but Ibtisam is an Arabic name and Ibticem seems to be a French variation. It's uncommon but not unheard of in France and also in former French colonies like Algeria.

Enchanted Hat
Aug 18, 2013

Defeated in Diplomacy under suspicious circumstances
Oh yeah, I didn't think about the former colonies. In my defence, she doesn't really look like an Algérienne! It makes sense, though, because there was another white customer at Treize à Table with a Vietnamese name, and I was wondering why that was. It'd be nice if the game would actually include some non-white characters and NPCs, though!

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

Enchanted Hat posted:

Oh yeah, I didn't think about the former colonies. In my defence, she doesn't really look like an Algérienne! It makes sense, though, because there was another white customer at Treize à Table with a Vietnamese name, and I was wondering why that was. It'd be nice if the game would actually include some non-white characters and NPCs, though!

Well there are some black chefs you can hire in the USA. They are about as subtle as our friend the Don.

Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Jul 10, 2018

Enchanted Hat
Aug 18, 2013

Defeated in Diplomacy under suspicious circumstances

Jack2142 posted:

Well there are some black chefs you can hire in the USA. They are about as subtle as our friend the Don.

There's exactly one black guy in the Restaurant Empire universe, and I don't want to spoil that yet, because I remember those scenes being pretty great.

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

Enchanted Hat posted:

There's exactly one black guy in the Restaurant Empire universe, and I don't want to spoil that yet, because I remember those scenes being pretty great.

Some of the non-story random NPC chefs can be black, that wander in and ask for a job. I hired two that way.

Haifisch
Nov 13, 2010

Objection! I object! That was... objectionable!



Taco Defender

chitoryu12 posted:

*looks up the conversion*

Armand that is a pound of cinammon
Are you going to argue with the Don's tastes? You'll make crepes with over seven times more cinnamon than flour, and you will like it.

e: tbsp are not tsp.

Haifisch fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Jul 11, 2018

Ibblebibble
Nov 12, 2013

With that much cinnamon in his crepes you could probably hide a hit squad in there.

Ayndin
Mar 13, 2010

Ibblebibble posted:

With that much cinnamon in his crepes you could probably hide a hit squad in there.

All things considered, if you get the guy to eat a pound of cinnamon in a sitting, you may not need the hit squad.

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


I can honestly say I was not expecting that.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

It almost sounds like you’re repeating a dream.

“Don Corleone came into my restaurant and said he’d give me money if I made him crepes with a secret recipe and let the restaurant be a mob front. The secret was adding an entire pound of cinnamon.”

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

We should remove the crepes from our menu, or at least remove the cinnamon from them. Don't want to be serving our entire spice rack to a single customer.

Mraagvpeine
Nov 4, 2014

I won this avatar on a technicality this thick.
I have to wonder if that "cinnamon" is true cinnamon or cassia.

Flamester
Dec 30, 2012
I decided to look up just what 100 teaspoons of cinnamon actually is. I'm surprised the Don isn't dead yet.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Flamester posted:

I decided to look up just what 100 teaspoons of cinnamon actually is. I'm surprised the Don isn't dead yet.



I don't think anyone will have looser stool than someone eating 552% of their daily fiber in one crepe plate.

Psychotic Weasel
Jun 24, 2004

Bang! You're dead.
I think I'd be more concerned with the extremely high calcium content of such a dish - Hypercalcemia can lead to a weakening of your bones, heart disease, kidney failure and extremely painful kidney stones.

I also have no idea how you're supposed to eat this. I imagine you just prepared the crepes normally then dumped a bag of cinnamon on top of it before leaving the kitchen. Maybe he just slowly licked the plate clean?

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

And given the existence of the cinnamon challenge, a spoonful of cinnamon is unpleasant (but not so bad when spread over the area of crepes), but a full cup of it is just gonna be awful

Aesculus
Mar 22, 2013

Enchanted Hat posted:

This must be for Don Corleone. I remember this was his favorite recipe! I added a dash of cinnamon and vanilla essence to bring out the creaminess of the crêpes.

Armand that is not a dash of cinnamon. Armand you didn't even put in any vanilla essence what are you doing stop

Haifisch
Nov 13, 2010

Objection! I object! That was... objectionable!



Taco Defender
The 'crepes' are actually a pile of cinnamon with normal crepe ingredients mixed throughout.

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

I feel like someone accidentally keyed 100 instead of 10 which would still be ridiculously cinnamony, but not lethal levels of the stuff. Or they just have no clue about cooking like how the Mixed Casserole of Pork has like 8 tablespoons of peanut oil in it.

Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Jul 11, 2018

Nondevor
Jun 1, 2011





catposting


I made a more accurate depiction of what the updated Crepes Marcie should look like. A giant pile of ground cinnamon with faint hints of crepe-like elements shining through for the perfect taste :discourse:

(This game is great, voted 5 for the lovely modded restaurant decor and the cowprint pants)

Miliardo
Dec 3, 2014

I like how blithely Armand accepts an offer you can't refuse from the hunter from Disney's Tarzan, who announces he's in *La Cosa Nostra* in, I imagine, as cartoony terms as possible. Did he even notice?
:cool:: I'm from the mob. I'm a dangerous man. I'd like to invest in your business.
:downs:: Sure! Here's a pound of cinnamon!

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Miliardo posted:

I like how blithely Armand accepts an offer you can't refuse from the hunter from Disney's Tarzan, who announces he's in *La Cosa Nostra* in, I imagine, as cartoony terms as possible. Did he even notice?
:cool:: I'm from the mob. I'm a dangerous man. I'd like to invest in your business.
:downs:: Sure! Here's a pound of cinnamon!

Look, :cool: just doesn't beat out :chef:.

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW
Pretty ballsy of Armand to make the head of a criminal syndicate take the cinnamon challenge.

Enchanted Hat
Aug 18, 2013

Defeated in Diplomacy under suspicious circumstances

Nondevor posted:



I made a more accurate depiction of what the updated Crepes Marcie should look like. A giant pile of ground cinnamon with faint hints of crepe-like elements shining through for the perfect taste :discourse:

(This game is great, voted 5 for the lovely modded restaurant decor and the cowprint pants)

If only I could edit recipe text :allears:

Bifauxnen
Aug 12, 2010

Curses! Foiled again!


Maybe writing down stuff like 100 teaspoons of cinnamon in a recipe was actually part of a ridiculously elaborate money-laundering scheme?

that's all I got

Enchanted Hat
Aug 18, 2013

Defeated in Diplomacy under suspicious circumstances
Episode 5: My account password is "password"



Armand, that was not bad. You have demonstrated, like your uncle, to have both the talent to cook and to administer to a restaurant's needs and realities.

Can I ask you some questions?

Shoot. Not literally, but go ahead.

Why did you pull out of the restaurant business?

OmniFood! That's why. These no-good rats! These guys are sneakier in their industry than I am in mine!

I made the big mistake before of relying on chefs with passion. Those nuts always want the best ingredients. Nuts! This restaurant thing is a business, you know? Stay outta the red!

That's why I need to see you perform well economically, Armand. I cannot afford to lose this opportunity again. You stay in the black, and I supply the financing.

Why are you back in the restaurant business?

First of all, I like the food. I like the atmosphere. Ah, what's the point? The reason used to be those, but now it's really because I hate OmniFood! I want revenge! I want to see them topple, that's why!

Never mind…

. . .

So, regarding that loan…

You mean the investment. You still interested?

Yes!

Alright then, here's the money.

THE DON HAS GIVEN YOU A LUMP SUM OF $250,000 FOR EXPANSION PURPOSES – PUT IT TO GOOD USE!

But now, I do expect that some of my demands are met.

Um… Can I back out now?

Nope, you gave me the word. That's as good as a contract back in Sicilia. Capite? [sic]

Can't it wait? I'm just 250 grand richer! Let me revel in my momentary glory!

Money does not reproduce by itself, Armand. You need to put it to productive use. Now are you ready for my demands?

What are these demands?

As I am a man of my word, I'll start you off easy. This is what I want from you.

THE DON HAS GIVEN YOU THE LOCATION OF HIS ABANDONED RESTAURANT.

That's the location of La Cosa Nostra – a restaurant of mine. It's completely abandoned. This guy I used to deal with copped out on me and ran off to LA, leaving me high and dry with my losses.

Anyways, I want you to establish it for me. Get it up and running again. I expect to see a monthly revenue of $60,000 and a customer satisfaction rating of at least 50%, and you have six long months to do it.

But, Don, I'm not an Italian chef! How can I prepare Italian food?

Hmmm. Good point you have there, Armand. Tell you what: I'll get in touch with my brother. His son is studying to become a chef in Verona. I'll talk him into taking an internship with you. How's that sound?

Great! So, when can I expect him to arrive?

I'll have him catch the next plane over. How's that sound?

Excellent, Don!

Thanks for helping me out, Don…

Sure thing, Armand. As long as we both prosper in the long run…

OK, then, off I go. Be seeing you soon!

You bring back results and you'll get results. Remember what we talked about. Keep the customer satisfaction rating above 50% and net $60,000 in monthly revenue. Make me – us rich!


So the Cosa Nostra mafia set up an Italian restaurant as a front for their illegal activities, but then they actually named the restaurant "La Cosa Nostra"?

"Hey, Vinny, I was just thinking – if we name the restaurant La Cosa Nostra and put up this big sign saying 'LA COSA NOSTRA', won't the cops suspect that this is a front for La Cosa Nostra?"

"Tommy, you stupid, is reverse psychology! The cops KNOW we're trying to disguise our front business, so if we name it 'La Cosa Nostra', it'll be the last place they look!"



So this is it: La Cosa Nostra! What this picture might not properly communicate is that this restaurant is HUGE. The ground floor alone is twice as big as all of Treize à Table. We will never have any reason to expand to the top floor, this restaurant is enormous. So why did Don Corleone have trouble with this place?



Well, one issue is that in all the months that the Don and his previous manager were operating it, this giant restaurant didn't have any restrooms. I know that the Don is all about the money, but customers get so whiny about things like this, so I guess I'll have to sort it out.



Normally I would ask you guys to help with the design, but honestly, there's not a lot to restrooms in Restaurant Empire. Stalls, sinks, done. I consider going for cheaper progressive unisex restrooms, but the Restaurant Empire engine will not abide that kind of sinful pooping!



Since the restaurant is so big, you are actually going to lose significant amounts of time waiting for your servers to go back and forth between the tables and the kitchen if you keep the kitchen in its default location. Instead, I downsize the kitchen and move it to the middle of the restaurant so our servers won't have to walk as far.



This is the default look of our menu. To me, this is the worst thing that Armand has ever done – worse than the crepes with a hundred teaspoons of cinnamon. Can you imagine a man – nay, a child – walking into this big Italian restaurant, sitting down at a table, opening this festive pizza-themed menu and finding out that we do not have a SINGLE pizza recipe? Just oily pork, wine and misery?



I put down some temporary tables and open the restaurant. Notice how, even with pretty inefficient use of the space, the tables our one chef can realistically support only fill about a quarter of one floor of the restaurant? I seriously have no idea what the game expects you to do with all this space.



We have our first customer, Diana Aneloni! She was already leaving when I went to check up on her. She just ordered a coffee, then left immediately after being served. I like to think she felt insulted by our shamefully pizza-less menu.



Back at Treize à Table, a customer calls Armand over and complains about the way that we're preparing the Crepes Marcie. Personally, I don't know what he could possibly be complaining about.



This is something we haven't seen before, the rare "self-scam" phenomenon. This customer is asking us for a recipe, and she's willing to pay $4,914 for it. Now, I have absolutely no idea what the consequences of agreeing to this is – if it will somehow strengthen our rivals, if it will siphon away customers from our restaurants, or, hell, if it does absolutely nothing. However, I do know that our customers always offer us around $5,000 for our recipes while they demand around $15,000 when they're selling them to us. Therefore, out of a combination of paranoia and spite, I always refuse these offers no matter what kind of sob story our customers come up with. Get your dirty hands off our incredibly sparse Italian recipe book!



The month ends, and of course we… Oh, wait, we failed.

Although we met the revenue target, the Don insisted that we achieve a 50% average satisfaction rating. This sounds like we need to make sure 50% of our guests are satisfied with their meals, but that's not strictly true. Every guest will build up a "satisfaction" score during their stay, and when they leave the restaurant their degree of satisfaction will be a number between 0% and 100%. This is the number we need to fix.



This info panel shows the dishes that our guest Signor Michele Buse ordered for his lunch. Next to each dish is a star rating, showing the actual quality of what we served him, determined by recipe quality, ingredient quality and our chef's skill. Each dish was given two stars, which means a quality rating of about 40%-50%.



When each guest enters the restaurant, he or she will form a quality expectation based on our general price level. This customer, Elena Bianchi, was expecting three star food when she entered the restaurant, but what we actually served her was two-and-a-half star food. When you serve a customer worse food than they're expecting, their satisfaction will go down. If you serve them better food than they're expecting, their satisfaction goes up. Additionally, satisfaction will go down if guests have any specific complaints (usually totally frivolous things like "I'm the driver, why does this restaurant serve nothing but wine?" or "I've been here for an hour, where's my food?")

Since we need to raise our satisfaction rating, we have two options:

1) Lower our prices so our customers' quality expectations will be lower.

2) Improve the quality of our food.

Of course, since lowering our prices IS NOT AN OPTION, what we need to do is increase the quality of our dishes. This happens slowly on its own as our chefs become better at their work, and since we were just 4% below the goal, I expect we'll win the mission in a month or two even if we don't make any changes.



A customer offers us a new recipe, the cold spaghetti salad. This wouldn't normally be very good, but we only have two other Italian appetizers, and they're both low quality with terrible profit margins, so this recipe is a godsend. In the current circumstances, this is a good recipe, and I add it to the menu.



Sure enough, two months later, we make it! In fact, not only do we meet the Don's requirements, but La Cosa Nostra has also become highly profitable. Who knew that getting involved with organised crime would be so lucrative! Next time, we'll see what the Don has to say about our performance, and hopefully we'll also meet another ridiculous cultural stereotype.



Now for the good part! I'll need you guys to help me decide on the décor for La Cosa Nostra. First off, the decorations. The art style for Italian restaurants is retro advertisement posters. This is good for our purposes, because they should be even easier to edit than the paintings. Aside from the posters, we can also put up lyres, mirrors and a big-rear end gondola, which I'm tempted to say is non-negotiable. I really want that big gondola.



These are the floor-mounted decorations. I have to admit, I kind of dig those horse statues.



These are the options for the walls, floor and tables.

Thread poll: what décor should we have in La Cosa Nostra?

Vote on wall, floor and table design. For example, to vote for wall type C, floor type D and table type B, vote "CDB". The winning combination will be whatever has the most votes when I play the next mission. Also, let me know if you want me to add any of the floor or wall decorations.

Added Space
Jul 13, 2012

Free Markets
Free People

Curse you Hayard-Gunnes!
Put a horse statue next to every table, ideally so it looks like it's taking one of the seats.

Zanzibar Ham
Mar 17, 2009

You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.


Grimey Drawer
I think BBA would be best, simply because those are the reddest options which means they'll be best for hiding bloodstains.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

FCD

I propose that the posters all be replaced with mobster movie posters.

Enchanted Hat
Aug 18, 2013

Defeated in Diplomacy under suspicious circumstances
Here are the texture files for the restaurant posters if anyone wants to make any improvements. Remember, WE ARE A FRONT FOR THE MAFIA, so try not to do anything that'll give us away!!! :ssh:

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TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Added Space posted:

Put a horse statue next to every table, ideally so it looks like it's taking one of the seats.

Absolutely this.

We should also have a section of the restaurant that's set up for quiet assassinations. Some screens, maybe a fountain to provide covering noise, and a pair of horses flanking the killer's chair.

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