Food in inventory, eating on ground

[Boboid]

You're not thinking about this logically. This doesn't negatively affect your game except in very specific circumstances.

Mood states are -very nearly- binary meaning that your colonists are either breaking down (0% productivity) or they're not (Very nearly 100% productivity).
Negative mood modifiers have almost no impact on a pawn unless it directly causes them to break down. The % based workspeed modifiers for very low or high moods are tiny.

Because being hungry is a -8 and eating every day is mandatory it's trivial to assume that eating on the floor immediately and suffering the -4 penalty (which in reality is +4 given the circumstances) is a significant improvement in colonist efficiency.
Walking to a table that is outside a colonist's search area involves a significant portion of time that they could spend doing literally anything else. You have to compare the time spent walking to the efficiency lost due to the tiny mood modifier. It's a non-contest.


For comparison think about comparing your meals being eaten off the ground to NPD meals which are also -4. Colonists won't carry NPD'd meals so they're forced to go back to it and use it every time they need to eat.However this means they'll always eat at a table and chair (Unless your base layout is asinine).
The result is the same -4 mood modifier (For much longer actually - NPD meal's penalty lasts 2x as long as eating off the ground) but you've lost a crapload of time every day because they had to walk back to the NPD to eat.

There's an argument to be made about the quality of the environment that you're forcing your colonists to eat in but most environmental modifiers are incredibly short-lived, their duration is entirely the speed at which it takes a colonist's mood to degrade.
I really don't rate it - especially since as I've already covered the effects of both high and low mood on work efficiency are tiny.
There are really only breakpoints that're worth paying attention to and the level of colony fragility required for eating off the ground to cause a chain reaction breaking everything in a high stress situation is comical.
You're not suffering as a result of this change at all.


Really though I doubt I'll change your mind, you're taking the stance that you're being persecuted for something aimed at other people, might as well convince a wall to fall over.

[TLHeart]

puddlejumper,

what bonus do you loose when colonist relax socially at a table by themselves? They get the mood bonus for relaxing socially, regardless of anyone else being around... Maybe you are talking about the social chat bonus, of +1, if they happen to actually chat with another person.

I get it you don't like the -4... and if a -4 is the difference between you surviving, or dying, I feel very sorry for your colonists. Especially since they get a -8 for being hungry.  And you admit it really does not affect your colony, so it comes down to you just don't like seeing the negative number, and it really does not affect your colony in one way or another....

[Euzio]

I think its more of a little OCD issue. I myself do prefer to see that my colonists have no negative mood buffs at all, even if they are extremely happy due to other positive mood buffs.

But having them package meals to go and eat whilst they are out working outside and thereby gain the negative buff for eating off the ground is a small price to pay to ensure that they are more efficient.

Perhaps, what one can do is that in addition to the 3 types of meals we can cook currently. Maybe a fourth option such as a lunch box meal can be made which is strictly for colonists to carry on them (like the Japanese Bento boxes). And eating these won't cause them to gain a negative mood buff.

[Tynan]

I don't think they should eat their inventory meal while inside the home zone

That's a good idea.

[puddlejumper448]

Here's Boboid posting a big long reply to me that has nothing to do with my point, then calls me a wall because he misunderstood my (mostly) clearly written argument. lol

puddlejumper,

what bonus do you loose when colonist relax socially at a table by themselves? They get the mood bonus for relaxing socially, regardless of anyone else being around... Maybe you are talking about the social chat bonus, of +1, if they happen to actually chat with another person.

I get it you don't like the -4... and if a -4 is the difference between you surviving, or dying, I feel very sorry for your colonists. Especially since they get a -8 for being hungry.  And you admit it really does not affect your colony, so it comes down to you just don't like seeing the negative number, and it really does not affect your colony in one way or another....

I admit we got a little off topic there, but this is what I'm trying to say here TL, because you do have some good points. Tynan implemented this feature, and its a good feature I agree, but it's a feature that doesn't bring my play style, and clearly at least a couple of other peoples, any benefit. So this feature helps probably 80% of players and hinders the other 20%. If he were to add a simple little checkbox that makes it so the selected colonist doesn't pack a meal and eats like they use to. This little check box won't affect you at all. This little check box will make a feature that currently helps 80% of people will now help 100% of people. Why not put it in? There is literally no downside to it, but you guys are arguing against it. please tell me why he should't do that, I took 1 semester of coding in high school 7 years or so ago and i could almost completely code this, it couldn't take him more than 30 minutes. if not a check box than the home zone idea qouted above would even be good enough

[TLHeart]

Puddle,

I agreed that a player set radius would be an option to satisfy both. Now you have come up with another option, a check box to not pack a meal, also an option, or as was suggested, they don't use the packed meal in the home zone, which I disagree with, since my home zones do get large.

All OPTIONS, not get rid of this because I have to change my play style, which you want the people who hate sappers to do.

Discussions bring out ideas and solutions.

[puddlejumper448]

Puddle,

I agreed that a player set radius would be an option to satisfy both. Now you have come up with another option, a check box to not pack a meal, also an option, or as was suggested, they don't use the packed meal in the home zone.

All OPTIONS, not get rid of this because I have to change my play style, which you want the people who hate sappers to do.

Discussions bring out ideas and solutions.

Yeah I never said or meant to imply get rid of it completely, and if I did it it was just a mistype, sorry for any confusion

Also to Tynan, if they pack meals, you should make them eat their packed meal at the closest table if they are in the home zone instead of not eating their packed meal while they are in the home zone, else their inventory meal would spoil if they didnt eat outside of it ever

[Tynan]

If he were to add a simple little checkbox that makes it so the selected colonist doesn't pack a meal and eats like they use to. This little check box won't affect you at all. This little check box will make a feature that currently helps 80% of people will now help 100% of people. Why not put it in?

Every checkbox has a cost. Not just in implementation (which is cheap) but in interface/training burden for players. It seems like a tiny cost, but the benefit here is tiny also. Go down that road and you quite quickly end up with dozens and dozens of tiny options for configuring every tiny little thing - and none of them really make stories or support meaningful decisions. There's just no meat on that feature; it's an "OCD pleaser" at best and the better way to handle that is to elegantly remove the initial cause of the OCD distress.

Trust me man. Lots of game designers are crushed under the weight of hundreds of "little checkboxes" that add up to nothing more than a maze of meaningless minutiae rules. This game is about story; if the player is doing something it should tie into a story.

[_alphaBeta_]

Well let's break this down. What are we trying to solve here? I agree there's an issue. In my typical mountain base layouts the freezer and "kitchen table(s)" is/are on the way out of my base. I don't think colonists should be getting up in the morning and pulling out their inventory meal and consuming it on their bedroom floor. This is especially so when they need to walk past the table and additional meals to go outside. This doesn't make logical sense, and has negative impacts in-game. As a quick tangent, colonists tend to inventory a lesser quality meal for their inventory if given a choice. Management of meals is a slightly different discussion, but my point here is that the player can still control via forbidding/unforbidding which meals their colonists consume. The meal they chose to stock the night before may not be the best meal for the next day, especially if the colony has fallen on hard times and you need the mood boost from a better meal. Not only do you miss the bonus the next morning but you also are hit with the "ate on the floor" debuff, and sometimes that does matter.

As I said earlier, I believe this feature is to avoid colonists from starving "on the other side of the map." I believe this is supported by the fact that colonists take lesser quality meals with them. This all implies to me that the "inventory meal" is meant to sustain life, and in that context I'd agree that the "ate of floor" debuff is negligible. In other contexts, this feature does more harm than good for me.

Also as I said earlier, I believe restricting this behavior in the home zone would help the issue, or at least increasing the search radius in this case. Again, keep in mind what this feature was for. Let's work the problem with some examples to see where the current system is breaking down vs. where proposed solutions would break down. Setting the example, here is a screenshot of my last setup during testing. This should be more zoomed out, but it's all I had handy at the moment right now. This is a mountain base, the autodoor to the east goes outside. My problem is colonists eating in their bedrooms that are visible to the west. It's not that far to me. I worked around this in testing by putting another table and chairs immediately south of that block of bedrooms in the main room. I don't feel this should be necessary. I can post more later, but I would see no impact of colonists going back to this table in the common room if anywhere in my home zone, which includes a large outside portion of land as well. Seems to me most people IRL would do this rather than eating on the ground. Can anyone provide some counter examples for consideration and further discussion?

[Cdr.Keen]

maybe a bit ot, but yesterday i got to lough about it.

got this male colonist, Mai - he got hooked to beer, ending in drunkeness lying down the floor.

i clicked him to look up his mood, and he got the "eating from the ground" buff. remindes me of the hoff:

[spoiler]

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