Being a player of the early alpha, I know why they were in the game. For a long time they were honestly the only option for early meals. But these days they've been made redundant by cook stoves, and for some groups they're even impossible to build without a lot of research.
Except for a couple niche situations they're really not that useful anymore. They're space and resource intensive and even a basic meal is better than them.
To give them a bit more use I'd like to suggest allowing them to use Hay as a feed stock. If you're just reprocessing organic matter, the original form shouldn't matter and it would give them an additional level emergency practicality.
Maybe just make nutrient paste last a really long time? Like a high tier pemmican? Or perhaps make that an offshoot research topic?
It is still useful to keep your colonists from puking all over the place, when you have no skilled cook.
But I agree our favorite glop dispenser needs some power ups to stay relevant.
Either with research upgrades to the output ( flavors for less disgusting stuff )
Making it usable by animals, or produce survival rations for caravans.
Actually i was tossing up on using it to make a factory farm from recycled foods. Is there any way to deny colonists food types like drugs?
Sadly not.
I have not found a mod either, but I like the idea using it as a recycler
Actually, having the possibility of stocking it (just like normal meals) and having them process hay (or maybe corpses without malus, since it's simply recombinating aminoacids, and other nutrients), would be a great emergency food supply.
What about giving nutrient paste meals a buff to eating speed for otherwise eating-challenged pawns? If you have someone with a destroyed stomach or jaw allow them to eat at a close to normal speed but only if it's nutrient paste, logic being it's already broken down so easy to chew/digest compared to a normal meal. Maybe even give them a small mood buff rather than debuff because it removes much of the struggle of eating for them (keep the debuff for undamaged pawns though).
Allow a "chef" to interact with it to produce nonperishable food, like pemmican that doesn't spoil but tastes awful. If the food can be used as an ingredient in other recipes, Dispensers would have a late-game use reprocessing unsuitable food into something morally and gastronomically digestible.
For example: NutriBars™, a shelf-stable form of nutrient paste for the modern escape-pod survivor on the go. No journey back to civilization is too long when you have NutriBars™ to eat!
Or NuTrinkies™ - semi-vitrified protective spongecake filled with the tasty* nutrient paste you know and tolerate! Guaranteed to stay fresh until the next end of the world!
*There is a taste.
Quote from: Derp on February 21, 2017, 01:47:35 PM
For example: NutriBars™, a shelf-stable form of nutrient paste for the modern escape-pod survivor on the go. No journey back to civilization is too long when you have NutriBars™ to eat!
Or NuTrinkies™ - semi-vitrified protective spongecake filled with the tasty* nutrient paste you know and tolerate! Guaranteed to stay fresh until the next end of the world!
*There is a taste.
**
** Information that our products may be used as grease by mechanics, construction tools or hunting weapons are not based on facts and anybody found repeating such Information will be contacted by our legal department.
Quote from: Psyckosama on February 20, 2017, 08:07:52 PM
Being a player of the early alpha, I know why they were in the game. For a long time they were honestly the only option for early meals. But these days they've been made redundant by cook stoves, and for some groups they're even impossible to build without a lot of research.
Except for a couple niche situations they're really not that useful anymore. They're space and resource intensive and even a basic meal is better than them.
To give them a bit more use I'd like to suggest allowing them to use Hay as a feed stock. If you're just reprocessing organic matter, the original form shouldn't matter and it would give them an additional level emergency practicality.
Quote from: Barazen on February 20, 2017, 08:43:01 PM
Maybe just make nutrient paste last a really long time? Like a high tier pemmican? Or perhaps make that an offshoot research topic?
I think both these ideas should be incorporated as they sound like the perfect answer to something I also never have a need to use.
Nutrient Paste Dispensers main purpose for me is feeding prisoners.
it allows you to place meal outside the prison and having them extract it in the shape of Nutrient Paste inside of the prison.
saving you time feeding them. well worth the investment.
The benefit of feeding prisoners is it counts as social contact for the sake of converting them to your cause...
And yeah, having paste be easier to digest would be a good idea as an additional bonus.
I just want my colonists to collect the meals so they don't have to cook metric craptons of rice.
Running a refinery project would be much easier.
*need 85k chemfuel (and lots of steel) to make the seven jumps to the friendly AI
Prisoners automatically use them, so it could be expanded to animals. How hard is it to press a button to get food ? If everything else is outside allowed zone and there are no animals they can hunt, they should take from nutrient paste dispenser. And who knows - maybe animals would find it tasty ? But then animal food use would have to be rebalanced as nutrient paste dispensers are ridiculously efficient.
People who see no use for NPD, do you play with EDB Prepare Carefully ? Do you always reroll until you get a good cook ? Have you played ice sheet ?
Typically the only use I get from Paste Dispensers is inside the prison. Quite useful for those. But for most embarks unless things are going very badly they don't get utilized otherwise. Which is usually only in the beginning anyway. It would be nice to seem them get some other use. Maybe those Ascetic people should grab food from them instead of eating raw food all the time.
I'd be reasonably happy with them as is, if they were reduced in size from 3x4 to maybe 2x3 or 3x3, excluding interaction spot. They consume a lot of space used for something that is under utilized.
To be honest they do feel like they need an update. They have hoppers, which are not used anywhere else, and seem an artifact of the past when NPD couldn't be a fueled object. Now fueling mechanic is in, the only concern would be dealing with bug and human meat.
NPD could be less bulky and use less electricity. That would fit with its 'efficiency' theme. 350W is quite high for a work table (cooking stove) and if NPD used only 100-120W that would be a meaningful difference. And there is no logical reason why animals can't use it. Ever heard of Pavlov's dog ?
Yup :) Valid points ..
Well my last start was a total random chrashlanding mod (hard ) so no one able to cook survived ..
Another good thing would be the ability to right click-eat command, becuse this is what i'm looking for sometimes. Of course you colud exploit it by mass preparing meals in few seconds whit no cook skill, this is why i'd accept the actual spoil time and debuff in happiness. But still, as said elsewere, should not be further penalties for human and insect meat as source.
Another good point IMO is that different ingredients in hoppers could give actual nutrient meal as an output while single resource ones give a "low energy nutrient meal" that gives only 60% nutrition. Less nutrition=>more meals=>more debuff
You actually can already produce multiple stacks of Nutrient Paste in a few seconds, but you need to first wait for a pawn to decide that it is meal-time. As soon as they get their paste, draft them and they will drop it on the floor. Forbid that item, then un-draft them. They will immediately take another paste-meal from the dispenser, even if the game is paused. Draft them again and they will drop it onto the forbidden stack. Hold down the 'R' key to quickly cycle them on and off duty until a new stack is formed. Forbid this stack, then hold down 'R' again. Repeat this until the hoppers run dry. Your stacks of nutrient paste can then be hauled off to the freezer as an emergency food reserve.
Cooking a simple meal multiplies the nutrition of raw food by 1.7.
Converting raw food into Nutrient Paste multiplies the nutrition by 3.
Cooking requires labor and a lot of walking back and forth.
Nutrient Paste is produced instantly.
Bad cooks cause food poisoning.
Nutrient Paste is always safe to eat!
Nutrient Paste Dispensers are the most powerful food tool in the game. Their hopper usage is a bit weird though.