I'm a new player, just started here in a18 and host a dedicated server for myself and my friends.
We are having a blast designing our base, learning about what works and what doesn't and trying new things each time. We play in a pretty vanilla setup with just a few tweaks in the xml files. After doing a little reading here I wanted to offer some feedback from a new player:
I'm happy to hear about phasing the loot. I feel like we've very quickly achieved the high tier loot (day 42 horde we had two level 5 m60s) and there's just not a lot more to look forward to in that regard.
More in detail: I have to imagine balancing this part of the game is really hard, especially when you consider that progression is also tougher to balance when more players are added. We have a group of five, so that means a lot of specialization, as well as a lot of people out looting and that will naturally speed progression up. I think what I'd want is for weapon mods to also have tiers, but in order to "level up" your tier of mod creation you need to read multiple schematics.
For instance, storage pockets already has this, but instead of having different schematics for one, two, and three pocket mods just have one and allow characters to use multiples. The first schematic opens up crafting one pocket, the third opens up two pockets, and the seventh opens up three pockets. This lets us be excited for finding these schematics multiple times.
Regarding cooking, it looks like you are adding new recipes that use canned goods. I like that a lot. I'm also a big fan of the idea that certain foods will give timed bonuses. Beyond that, your system is fine, and the balance is pretty good as is.
I like the sound of the other stuff you've mentioned.
As a new to the game player just a few weeks ago I think you've done a really great job keeping new players in mind. I do think that you need to expand inward on progression, as the rate at which we progress is really solid, but the speed at which we hit the top is too fast and makes the game a little too easy beyond the first fifteen or so hours (but that first fifteen is gold).