DAQ food and drink brainstorming

Random thoughts on DAQ-verse food and drinks:

(Note: please do not feel compelled in any way to add any of the following crap to DAQ: I just enjoy worldbuilding, and felt like putting down some ideas to paper.

Additional note: since you're an actual econ major, and I barely know anything about economics, the following crap may seem hilariously dumb/unrealistic. Fair warning.)

On food:

So we know that the majority of the affordable food on the Brick consists of soy, and it's a sign of Niels' fiscal situation that he can afford to splurge a bit on non-soy foods and ingredients. This means that, for whatever reason, the upper management on the Brick decided that soy and similar processed/reconstituted foodstuffs is the optimal nutrient source for the mercs on the Brick.

There is the classic idea, of course, the idea that real meat (and maybe even cereal grains, vegetables, non-soy legumes, fruits, etc.) is sufficiently costly that the upper management deemed it not the most cost-effective way of keeping its mercenaries fed. Given that these are elite mercenaries going on dangerous missions, and since all armies march on their stomachs so to speak, this probably means that the the upper management deemed the morale drop from not having real food was worth taking in exchange for more cost-efficient food. (This is assuming that real food and soy/reconstituted food are equally nutritious, and that StrikeOut is not being hilariously short-sighted by giving their mercs nutritionally deficient food just to save costs.)

Depending on what sort of universe you want the world outside of the Brick to be like....

Maybe humanity has expanded into the stars, but the vast majority of planets can't sustain plant/animal life without expensive and limited hydroponics facilities—meaning most food sources are pricey to produce, on top of all the shipping and preservation costs. Therefore, places like the Brick prefer to grow hardy, nutrient-dense foods in its own hydroponics  like soy and such since importing food from planets is very expensive. This would probably make the DAQ-verse somewhat more neutral in tone—corporations aren't giving their employees shitty food out of just pure greed, but at the same time it's not the replicator-utopia of Star Trek.

Maybe corporations really are just that greedy—agricultural companies might own entire continents on multiple planets devoted to growing food, but collusion between them means food prices are always high. So places like the Brick are forced to either grow their own food in hyrdoponics to not go bankrupt, or must buy the cheapest food they have access to (like soy). This would probably make the DAQ-verse somewhat darker in tone: the Man's forcing us all to eat crappy food, and the Man = agricultural corporations. Though if you spin it right, this scenario may not necessarily be completely grimdark: you could instead play it for humor (“Holy shit sir, we just salvaged a live cow on our drop! A real live cow! Can we take it with us?!”) or to play up the relatively exotic nature of the DAQ-verse.

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The upshot of this is that characters can be fleshed out by their interactions with food. One could imagine a scene like...

Markos: Hey sweet, this restaurant has buffalo wings! At last, real, juicy chicken wings, straight off the bone—

Cy: The little note at the bottom says they're made out of soy.

Markos: FUCKING BITCH WHY AM I ALWAYS SURROUNDED BY SOY AT LEAST MY MOM'S SHITTY HOME COOKING DIDN'T HAVE SOY

Cy: Woah, Mr. Richy Ritch, let's not make a fuss now. If you calm down and ask nicely, I'm sure the waitress could get you some real steak and lobster, with salad dressed in the deliciously salty tears of a hundred babies. Also, trollface.jpg

Markos: fuk u Cy

...which plays up to Cy's relatively lower-income background, and Markos' relatively higher-income background, as described in their respective backstory entries.

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On alcohol:

The same could apply to alcohol; given that alcoholic drinks are effectively ethanol + water + other stuff, one could easily imagine synthetic alcohol (i.e. alcoholic drinks created by mixing industrially-produced ethanol with chemical flavors, rather than alcoholic drinks created by sticking yeast into a sugar source and fermenting the stuff into ethanol) being relatively cheaper. So maybe the Shirley Temple that Ivan got for Markos was actually synthehol since that wouldn't break Ivan's bank, etc. The above stuff about food (StrikeOut is just being economically rational vs StrikeOut is being unnecessarily money grubbing about food) can apply here.

Valk: synthehol is the fukken shit

Maxim: synthefag pls, real stuff is better

Valk: oldfag get out

*Fight*

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All of the above can have an effect on stuff related to the food industry, like restaurants:

Places like the Chinese food restaurant on the Brick can be explained by StrikeOut being nice and partly subsidizing such eateries, to prevent employee morale from flatlining—affordable non-soy food made available for mercs so that they have something to look forward to when they get back from a drop. This could be spun as a sign that StrikeOut considers its employees more than just meatbag tools—or just a way for StrikeOut to make you think that.

If Ivan ever takes his buddies out for a dinner at, say, a steakhouse, then depending on how food works such a thing could be just a relatively fancy dinner with friends, or Ivan splurging on something really expensive because he cares about his friends that much (“Real steak? REAL STEAK?! Christ, Ivan, that's...I thought we were celebrating you clearing out your debt, not you getting back into it”), or something in between.

Buying someone a drink, a real alcoholic drink and not synthehol crap, could be a more emotional, heartfelt gesture than just getting your buddy a synthehol beer on your dime. Real alcohol is rare and expensive on places like the Brick: if Ivan gets Markos a real beer, made with real yeast and spiced up with real hops, then that's a perfect set up for a MAXIMUM BROMANCE moment.