Not sure if it's explained properly/obvious from gameplay but hot dog only needs to contain one of the 2 ingredients they like to make them go away. Main reason for using ingredient CDs was that you could fire another hot dog combo when waiting on cooldown from previous ingredients. Which in turn was suppose to add some more decision making as in which ingredients do i put on CD based on enemies that are coming.
E.g. 2 businessman are coming; i only use one of the ingredients they like so I can fire another hotdog with the other ingredient they like right after. Or 1 lawyer and 1 critic are coming. Lawyer is closer but I need to save one ingredient that is critic's weakness when firing at the lawyer. This is a decision that would not happen if you wouldn't have ingredient cooldown as you could just pick whatever for the other 2 ingredients as long as the 3rd one was a weakness for that enemy.
Would obviously have to try it out in practice to see if it makes a difference to just have cooldown on fire for more clarity and making the decision to fire the hot dog feel more impactful while keeping same level of engagement.
Thanks for the suggestion and thanks for playing until the end!
Viewing post in Ricky's Hot Dog Stand jam comments
Ah, I see! I didn't realize that only one ingredient needed to match someone's taste. I played under the impression that I needed to get two correct ingredients and the third could be wrong. That does make more sense for having the cooldowns tied directly to ingredients. I think for players who are faster than I am, it would definitely impact their decision making progress. For myself, I was always rushing, focusing only on the nearest person to try and deal with them without seeing the bigger picture. :)