Tell me what's wrong with my base (big pics)

[hoffmale]

You nailed some points. 

• Playing on "Some challenge" with "Phoebe".  I begrudgingly had to back down to her from Cassandra as I just could not keep up with the pace of disasters.
• I have no tactics or ideas for defending against raids.  They've been a nightmare.  In the lower left was my attempt to have a place to run when the next raid hits to defend and shoot.  But it's probably too far away?
• I had never considered separate stockpiles for stuff.  But it has been very frustrating as it takes my colonists forever to grab what they need to bring it back to make stuff. In fact I have a mod that allows from more items to be stacks.  I chose to double stack numbers instead of going 10x like most of the stacking mods.  It just felt like the right balance.
• I have had a terrible time procuring enough medicine. In fact I just got these meds before I took this screenshot (Summer Year 2)
• In all my other games I've had like 10 people by this point.  I'm worried I will not fill things out very well but maybe I don't have to be as concerned playing with Phoebe.  I'd like to switch back to Cassandra though.
• The freezer is actually pavement.  So I did save my sterile tiles for kitchen and hospital.  Is my kitchen way bigger than needed?  Do I need to have separate hospital rooms or can I cram even more beds in there?
• I'm way behind in research because I've been so worried about getting a surplus of food.  Like I mentioned, I really hate watching my people die of starvation and even more-so my pets.  Which leads me to a question of, how are people surviving with like 1/10 the amount of farmed space that I'm using?

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to help me.  I really appreciate it

Answers point by point:

• Cassandra can be a bit overwhelming, especially when you are just getting started in Rimworld. Don't worry about it, you'll know when you are ready for some challenges
• Against normal raids it helps to create a choke point (e.g. by building a wall around your base and leaving 1 opening) and trying to kill them there with the assistance of traps and turrets (kinda cheesy for some, but effective!). Strategies for other kinds of attack are a bit dependent on your map/personal preference. I suggest you look a bit around in the forum as these have been discussed multiple times before. (Your attempt is probably better than nothing, but not really that effective  )
• Well, I personally really like to have many specialized stockpiles. This helps keeping materials close to where they are needed and boosts productivity - at the cost of a bit more micro-managing on setup and sometimes hauler work time (though you can get animals to do that for you).
• Currently, the medical system is a bit of a pain point. Penoxycycline basically eliminates some diseases for you, but without it your chances aren't very good. I try to get 2-3 penoxycycline per colonist early, and expand that stock later. Medicine (any of herbal, normal or glitterworld) amounts depend on your general plan for your colony: If you wanna play a lot of doctoring or direct combat you'll need more than if you're going to sit safely behind a killbox. You could add some more growing space for healroot and try to buy every neutroamine you can afford from traders.
• The number of colonists you have (along with your general wealth) corresponds directly to the strength of raids you'll have to face (it actually goes as far as some players rejecting any pawn that doesn't have good traits/stats on higher difficulties because of this mechanic). Sometimes less is more Other than that, first make sure you can afford that many colonists, otherwise you will get problems.
• Okay, I wasn't 100% sure which floors you used in the freezers (since they look kinda similar when below stockpile zones).
  That said, your kitchen size is only slightly larger than required for a "spacious interior" moodlet (with the current furniture in there, you'd need ~53 tiles of space and you have 60). OTOH, if your colony grows much bigger (so you'd need 2 cooks, although unlikely for the time being), your kitchen would be prepared for a second stove.
  You can cram more beds into your hospital, but I'd suggest investing into hospital beds for that (when you can afford them, as they require 10 normal meds each). It's also a bit of a trade-off: While colonists are in the hospital, they might get negative moodlets when they are disturbed during sleep or for not having their own room, but generally your pawns won't be using your hospital for long (if one colonist has to use it for a longer duration, it could be beneficial to give him/her an own "hospital room").
• Don't worry too much about your technological progress: Once you have the essentials (e.g. penoxycycline, geothermal generators, turrets) you can take your time with the rest.
  A surplus of food isn't a bad thing (unless it rots during heat waves!), especially if you unexpectedly get 2+ new colonists to feed just after the growing season ended. This also depends a lot on the map you're playing on (places with year-round growing periods need to store much less food and thus can save on growing spots) and how much you're hunting (you can survive without growing anything at all if you can get enough meat from hunting/breeding). Also, they might feed their pets (and sometimes their colonists!) with human flesh (which gives every non-cannibal colonist a mood debuff, so it isn't recommended) on the more extreme maps, as raider corpses are rather easy to come by with a solid defensive setup.
  Also, people tend to use the type of crops that's most efficient on the terrain: rice for hydroponics, potatoes for gravel, corn for rich and mostly for normal soil (with maybe some rice or strawberries in year 1 to get the food supply started).

Also, if you are much into pre-planning bases (for some advanced bases), you might want to take a look on "supply chains" (which jobs require which resources, and what jobs are dependent on their results). If you can plan your workshop and stockpiles around that, you can really improve efficiency due to less walking distances for each task. One of these supply chains might look like this:

animal corpses (freezer) -> butcher room -> meat (freezer) -> kitchen -> food stockpile (freezer) -> dining room

These might be different areas in the same freezer, or different freezers altogether (as needed/player preference). Of course, while butchering you also get leather, which is required for tailoring and constructing, and you'd need some vegetable raw food "input" to make fine meals in the kitchen, ... (you get the idea)

[hwfanatic]

There is nothing inherently wrong with it, but there are a couple of things others may have mentioned that I want to turn your attention to as well:

- There seems to be some disparity between the number of people and the size of the base. Not a huge deal, but keeping the distances shorter helps.
- Tables have can only be used from 2 opposite sides effectively.
- Your whole base is one monolith structure and it is made out of wood. I probably don't have to tell you how much of a fire hazard that is.
- A lot of energy seems to be going into lighting the complex. While looking nice, realistically you do not need to light every corner. Places where pawns work and gather are the ones you should illuminate - others not so much.
- I personally would air condition the corridor and use the ducts for rooms. Not necessarily a big deal. Also, every door that you have between indoors and outdoors adds to the total wasted energy.
- Try to limit pawn traffic through the kitchen. They carry dirt around and dirty kitchen breeds poisoned meals. Design your base around it.
- Using steel to make floors seems like a waste at this stage of the game. A turret would have been nicer instead. Or armor.
- Move your important potato zone to directly under the cooks feet. If set to drop meals, this will ensure the cook doesn't move at all when creating batches.

Just things from the top of my head. Your base still needs proper defenses. I don't even know where to begin. 

[taha]

@Stormfox Due the small size of the bedrooms and bad placement of the workshops you are losing the +5 mood bonus from spacious interior. Placing "wardrobes" in bedrooms might be good for role play but surely is bad for colonist mood when rooms are that small.

I'm not saying your base is bad, I'm saying there is a lot of room for improvements. Nah, is plain bad, and you are bragging with it.
For example your crops. Rich soil -> rice. Gravel -> potatoes. No need to mix them.
Power generation. If you are trying to tell us that you mantain a base this size, with only 5 solar panels and 1  single geo... sorry but I find that hard to believe. (or you are posting from a modded / cheated game, and that makes your advice less than reliable).

Know what? Play your game on vanilla settings. Then come on forums and post advice.

@OP
Your base is too large for the number of people you have. Long pathways waste your colonists time, (eg instead of making 10 fine meals, you cook will make only 6 because he had to walk to storage, take raws, cook them then walk again to put the meal in fridge).

Use "drop on floor" option instead of "take to best stockpile" and have designated haulers to carry final products in storage.

Make small storage areas near the workbenches. Set priority to important and allow only the raw materials needed for the specific production. Like 1x1 square near the stove, with allowance for raw vegetables.

Make corridors at least 3 tile wide, so you wont get the "cramped environment" debuff if colonists are forced to spend much time there. Bedrooms should be at least 8x8 with bed in center. There should be 2 tiles from workshop to wall (both for "spacious interior" buff)

Use carpet flooring, is among the best floors (beauty wise) you can have, and it helps to diferentiate the rooms.

Make double layered walls (wall-space-wall), with exterior one from tough material (eg granite). Each material have different properties and the item you construct inherits them; use the "i" sign from detail window to see them. Example: a wooden bed have better resting value than a marble bed. A stone door is tougher than a wooden door, but opens slowly.

Back to your base, before anything, plan it. In Architect -> Zones you have a great planning tool (the one that looks like a white cross). Plan your base, try to predict each pawn path and try to place rooms in optimal position. Having 20 bedrooms in one side of the base the storage outside and workshops on other side might look nice for your OCD, but is impractical.

Pawns require 2 meals / day, 1st one in the morning. So placing chairs, table & small (4x4) fridge room near sleeping area might be a good idea.

Bleah, post too long. Hope you find some useful things in it. Have fun.

[hwfanatic]

Make corridors at least 3 tile wide, so you wont get the "cramped environment" debuff if colonists are forced to spend much time there. Bedrooms should be at least 8x8 with bed in center. There should be 2 tiles from workshop to wall (both for "spacious interior" buff)

No longer true in A16. Single-tile corridors work fine if they are at least 10.5 tiles long. 3x5 bedrooms also work very well. They can even be made decent with superior furniture and some floor tiles.

Also, do note that furniture and pawns themselves no longer fill space in the same way they used to.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/5l4oe6/another_unsung_minor_improvement_in_alpha_16_that/dbt3byt/
I can confirm this to be true in practice.

[taha]

No longer true in A16. Single-tile corridors work fine if they are at least 10.5 tiles long. 3x5 bedrooms also work very well. They can even be made decent with superior furniture and some floor tiles.

Also, do note that furniture and pawns themselves no longer fill space in the same way they used to.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/5l4oe6/another_unsung_minor_improvement_in_alpha_16_that/dbt3byt/
I can confirm this to be true in practice.

@work, can't verify, but if this is true (no offense) means average base size can be cut in half. Thanks for info hwfanatic.

[Stormfox]

@Stormfox Due the small size of the bedrooms and bad placement of the workshops you are losing the +5 mood bonus from spacious interior. Placing "wardrobes" in bedrooms might be good for role play but surely is bad for colonist mood when rooms are that small.

Not only are they fluffy, but in that case, they are modded and give a small boost to the bed next to them. Also, not everything has to be 100% efficient, and I never claimed my examples were. In fact, I specifically stated that they are a bit small but a compromise between size and effect that I chose.

I'm not saying your base is bad, I'm saying there is a lot of room for improvements. Nah, is plain bad, and you are bragging with it.

Not only wasn't I braggin in the least - the screenshots were there to give visual examples of what I was talking about - but I really, really do not understand why you chose to attack me out of the blue? I was not even talking to you?

For example your crops. Rich soil -> rice. Gravel -> potatoes. No need to mix them.

Yep. I know. Never said otherwise. Still, it is not that big of a difference and I like having a few different crops for visual diversity. Also, that was entirely not the point of that screenshot or what I wrote to that. I was talking about how big growing zones need to be, and making an example of an arrangement that would easily satisfy a need that the OP would likely encounter soon in his playthrough. I specifically mentioned that it was a rough showcase of how much space I had dedicated to growing back when I was in a similar colony stage as he seems to be. It was meant to convey a rough impression, not talk absolutes.

Power generation. If you are trying to tell us that you mantain a base this size, with only 5 solar panels and 1  single geo... sorry but I find that hard to believe. (or you are posting from a modded / cheated game, and that makes your advice less than reliable).

Come on, now you are just looking for ways to make needless attacks. Not only was that again not in the least the point of that example, you did not even read it correctly. I actually stated that for the case I again outlined above (having 5-10 people and not a fully teched and built up base yet), I had roughly 2+2 power plants next to the growing zones, because that sufficed. The screenshot was from the current save of course, which is why I added the paint frames. And since I posted a totale screenshot of the entire base further up, everyone can see that these are of course not my only power supplies for the entire base. You can clearly see the fueled plants next to the crematorium and the in-house geothermals, as well as might have noticed the power lines going out of my base to outside geothermals as well.

Yep, there are modded things in there, too. In regards to this particular point, though: I think I have *one* advanced fission plant (which is simply twice as effective as the normal ones for about twice the size and less than twice the cost). I could have just built two normal ones or another fueled and it would make no difference. In fact, I could deconstruct it and it would make no difference because my surplus is large enough.

Know what? Play your game on vanilla settings. Then come on forums and post advice.

Or how about you take your elitist attitude and stuff it somewhere safe instead of pointlessly attacking people that try to help with actual examples of how things can be done?

In addition to that, nothing I talked about and nothing that was relevant to those points in my screenshots would not be acchievable with a completely vanilla game in about the same in-game time. That was the entire point of my post and why I opted to make some screens and explanations to each one.

[taha]

@Storm fox: Ok, maybe I was too harsh and I appologise for that.


... but my point about modded games still stands Lets say you have 2 power plants producing the output of 10 geo plants. You need less amount of space, less amount of materials. Also - I might be wrong here - as long is not in the list of "important objectives" for a raider, they will ignore it just like they ignore standing lamps or a wooden bed. So no trouble defending them either.

Placing embrasures makes AI super vulnerable - there is no script for that kind of situation. Placing door mats ( ) lightens the amount of work on your hauler/cleaner pawn => more time for more hauling, or for joy or whatever. That leads to prosperity or better mood => 120% work speed bonus => even more prosperity => more free time, etc. Using better storage mod makes your base smaller => less walk time => more production time => prosperity easier to achieve than in vanilla game. And so on.

My point here is, getting used to a modded game can make you unable to see real problems in a vanilla game session. OP plays a vanilla game, and is doing more than decent for a new player.

Hmm... I just can't resist I wonder how *well* you would do in Sea Ice Community Challenge (un-modded). Try it.

Again sorry for my bad mouth in previous post.

[jpinard]

Make double layered walls (wall-space-wall), with exterior one from tough material (eg granite). Each material have different properties and the item you construct inherits them; use the "i" sign from detail window to see them. Example: a wooden bed have better resting value than a marble bed. A stone door is tougher than a wooden door, but opens slowly.

Pawns require 2 meals / day, 1st one in the morning. So placing chairs, table & small (4x4) fridge room near sleeping area might be a good idea.

Oh cool, so there's 2 things I didn't know and might need some explanation to understand better.
* Are you saying I should build all my walls that face the outside with 2 materials?  Like wood AND granite?  I never, ever knew there was a difference in opening speeds.  That makes me mad because I replaced all my most important powered wooden doors with powered granite doors.  I felt like they were opening slower, but I thought that was just in my head.  So the 2 types statement.  Was that for insulation or am I misinterpreting what you were saying?

* I didn't even realize my people were eating twice a day.  Is there a reason they won't go back to the dining room to eat a second meal?

* Also someone mentioned that poeople will only eat in certain orientations so I had too many chairs at the table.  Will they not eat side by side is that it?  Or they won't eat/sit kiddie corner?

Putting everything you said into practice as well.  Awesome!

[Lightzy]

Just inefficient..

Food storage must be directly adjacent to the dining room (I like having a big fuckoff fridge, but shared room with dining hall and chairs right against the wall, so it's a travel distance of 4 tiles from food to table)

Also just too big which is wasteful on materials and movement time.

Also the plantation is way way too far from the door. It should be right against the door. And you have too many doors.
Generally I try not to have more than one entrance if possible (mountain base) and I guess 2 if it's an open-air base. just to make stone-cutting easier. But then too the entire thing will be walled off with only one entrance.

And everything should be made of stone, not wood.

And you need an outer wall encircling the whole thing, and a double line of doubled sandbags, one behind the other. Put turrets behind the first one, and then you can park your pawns with sniper rifles behind the second line.
I do it this way because abusing the AI with deathtrap mazes just stopped being fun. But you can do that also... just build some good flooring outside your base and put traps on it. The AI is drawn to better floors, so..... yeah.
ETC


Movement time is the most important currency. Make things efficient and it'll be good for you.
That said, when you put an endgame colony on display, it's more or less meaningless. It's already long past when the game was supposed to be over and isn't representative of the game in progress.
I hope in the future the game progression will be slower, longer, so that there will be more necessity to change and alter your build while in progress.

[Catastrophy]

1 tip for crafting (here: cooking)

Place cooking table. Place stool or chair in working position. Place stool next to chair. Place raw vegetable (rice, corn, whathaveyou) stockpile on stool (high priority so it gets filled).
Command 100 basic meals, drop on floor(!) in options. Watch cook start. You can place meal stockpile to his side. Or just forbid the meal he drops for LATER collection. Watch him immediately continue cooking. Doesn't get up. Doesn't carry stuff. Just goes on cooking.
Works with fine meals, too (another stool to the other side + stockpile), but you need a cooled room so it doesn't spoil so fast.

Works on chemical station, too. Any workplace.

Make fine stools. Fine chairs. An excellent sculpture. And they happy on all the jobs that get done in NO TIME. Except for butchering enemies... Don't forget hauling the stuff you might have forbidden.

[Stormfox]

@Storm fox: Ok, maybe I was too harsh and I appologise for that.

Accepted. Everyone has a bad day sometimes. Lets forget about it.

... but my point about modded games still stands Lets say you have 2 power plants producing the output of 10 geo plants.

But I do not. That is exactly what I am talking about. What you are implying is a) not part of a mod I know (most mods for this game are astonishingly NOT overpowered) and b) I just told you what difference disabling everything related to a mod would have on my colony: I would lose 40 uranium because two standard asrgs cost 100 and my single modded one costs 60. Alternatively, I could simply delete that plant and would not suffer any consequence. I could likely kill the two fueled ones, too, since I aquired the third off-base-geothermal a few ingamedays ago.

You need less amount of space, less amount of materials. Also - I might be wrong here - as long is not in the list of "important objectives" for a raider, they will ignore it just like they ignore standing lamps or a wooden bed. So no trouble defending them either.

It actually uses 1 space more - 3x3 for double the output of a 2x2. Not that a handful of spaces would matter, and the same goes for wether raiders attack it or not. Raiders do not attack any of my power plants, period. They are engaged and killed/capture/driven off before that happens. The last two attacks before those shots were sieges. I went out with the 8 guys that can shoot and just killed them. The second siege actually damaged me because they too had snipers.

The most damage my base installations have taken are from zzts, especially the one directly under a vitals monitor that instantly blew up and damaged the adjacent hospital beds. Fires themselves (from pyros, raiders, flashstorms or zzzts) are not a problem if you have a bunch of pawns and all of them have firefighting as their highest priority. So why should my stuff take damage?

Placing embrasures makes AI super vulnerable - there is no script for that kind of situation.

I have no embrasures. I have slightly stronger turrets that I sandbagged in, but those were a) recently built, b) only the two right next to my firing line have ever taken a shot at something so far and c) cost about double the ressources of a vanilla turret which would have served as a nice decoy alternately. And even if some of them explode every now and then, who cares, I got 18k silver and 2k steel or something. My base did not even have a single turret until a year or so had passed. I will give you that those mg emplacements are pretty useful, though. They are basically a static lmg that can be built very early on - but right now, everyone has dropped or self-crafted high quality weapons anyways, so its not as if they were better then just a pawn behind a wall segment.

Placing door mats ( ) lightens the amount of work on your hauler/cleaner pawn => more time for more hauling, or for joy or whatever. That leads to prosperity or better mood => 120% work speed bonus => even more prosperity => more free time, etc. Using better storage mod makes your base smaller => less walk time => more production time => prosperity easier to achieve than in vanilla game. And so on.

And again - I even adressed those points before. None of this invalidates my tips for a new player on vanilla. And to be honest, it would not make much of a difference, period. Before I used extended storage, I tended to have a second, lower priority storehouse nearby for the surplus wood and stone and whathaveyou, and sold a bit more of my food and basic material surplus. It really does not matter in the least, because by the time you have trouble storing your stuff, you are rich enough that you could have done without it and the game has progressed far beyond the stage the OP was at when he started this thread.

My point here is, getting used to a modded game can make you unable to see real problems in a vanilla game session. OP plays a vanilla game, and is doing more than decent for a new player.

If I had not actually commented on those very things and taken care to present points that are 100% usable and reproducable in vanilla, you might have had a point - but I did.

Hmm... I just can't resist I wonder how *well* you would do in Sea Ice Community Challenge (un-modded). Try it.

Likely would get it done because the game is not that difficult once you get the hang of it, but I would not enjoy it. I play simulation games for fun and a bit of challenge, not for tediousness. For the same reason, I never really raided in WoW ten years ago or played UT99 on a league twenty years ago when I was still good at shooters.

Also, such extreme challenges are very different settings than a more typical one like the OPs - of course any advice given here would be bad then, and any progress there would be much slower. I really do not get your point.

[Limdood]

since it came up earlier, this might help some people:

Any number of work stations can be linked to the same 2 toolboxes.  range (and blocking terrain like walls) is the only limiting factor.  A carefully constructed workroom can have all workstations running at +12% (+6% twice from 2 toolboxes) with only having built 2 toolboxes.  The confusing wording is clarifying that you cannot stack insane % boosts by linking 24 toolboxes to your sculptors table...though you CAN link 24 sculptors tables to 1 toolbox.

This also works for:
Multi-analyzer.  Any number of hi tech research tables touching ONE multi analyzer will benefit.  In other words, more than 1 multi-analyzer = useless.  more than 1 hi tech research bench = great IF it can be placed touching the multi analyzer.

Vitals monitors.  Any number of beds (obviously a max of 4) can benefit from a single vitals monitor they are touching.  More than 1 vitals monitor touching a bed = no added effect.  More than 1 bed touching a vitals monitor = each bed benefits from the monitor simultaneously. 

Hope this helps anyone who was curious about the interaction with these objects.  Btw, all of these are personally tested and confirmed (connections show all affected workstations, i can research multi analyzer only items at multiple benches with only 1 analyzer touching those benches, and the info tab clearly shows the benefits of the single vitals monitor on all adjacent beds at once)

[jpinard]

since it came up earlier, this might help some people:

Any number of work stations can be linked to the same 2 toolboxes.  range (and blocking terrain like walls) is the only limiting factor.  A carefully constructed workroom can have all workstations running at +12% (+6% twice from 2 toolboxes) with only having built 2 toolboxes.  The confusing wording is clarifying that you cannot stack insane % boosts by linking 24 toolboxes to your sculptors table...though you CAN link 24 sculptors tables to 1 toolbox.

This also works for:
Multi-analyzer.  Any number of hi tech research tables touching ONE multi analyzer will benefit.  In other words, more than 1 multi-analyzer = useless.  more than 1 hi tech research bench = great IF it can be placed touching the multi analyzer.

Vitals monitors.  Any number of beds (obviously a max of 4) can benefit from a single vitals monitor they are touching.  More than 1 vitals monitor touching a bed = no added effect.  More than 1 bed touching a vitals monitor = each bed benefits from the monitor simultaneously. 

Hope this helps anyone who was curious about the interaction with these objects.  Btw, all of these are personally tested and confirmed (connections show all affected workstations, i can research multi analyzer only items at multiple benches with only 1 analyzer touching those benches, and the info tab clearly shows the benefits of the single vitals monitor on all adjacent beds at once)

Wow that is HUGELY helpful!

[hwfanatic]

range (and blocking terrain like walls) is the only limiting factor.

In my experience, line of sight is needed as well. At least for toolbox. I cannot be sure if this is new to A16 or not.

[taha]

Oh cool, so there's 2 things I didn't know and might need some explanation to understand better.
* Are you saying I should build all my walls that face the outside with 2 materials?  Like wood AND granite?  I never, ever knew there was a difference in opening speeds.  That makes me mad because I replaced all my most important powered wooden doors with powered granite doors.  I felt like they were opening slower, but I thought that was just in my head.  So the 2 types statement.  Was that for insulation or am I misinterpreting what you were saying?

* I didn't even realize my people were eating twice a day.  Is there a reason they won't go back to the dining room to eat a second meal?

* Also someone mentioned that poeople will only eat in certain orientations so I had too many chairs at the table.  Will they not eat side by side is that it?  Or they won't eat/sit kiddie corner?

Putting everything you said into practice as well.  Awesome!

2 layered walls are for different reasons.
1. Insulation (wall-space-wall is better than wall-wall-wall).
2. Later on, when you have resources you might want go crazy with beautification and make interior walls from e.g. gold (yeah, I tried that once back in A13) and exterior walls from plasteel. (Colony value went up to the sky and the raids had so many people it froze my comp. But is nice to build your very own Forbidden City)

Meals
Colonists will carry an extra meal with them (check gear tab) if is available when they visit the storage / fridge. If there is a table near their workplace, they will use it when they get hungry. If there is no table, they will eat it standing, and receive "ate without table" debuff. There is a space limit - I think is 49 tiles - in how far the table can be in order for them to use it.

Table
In previous versions of the game, colonists were unable to use the corners on a small table. See, if you put 4 meals on table, they cover the entire surface. So people used to have only 4 chairs on the small table instead of 8 (placed on opposite sides of the table). Apparently this was fixed in A16.

Personally I use only 2 chairs on a small table, because I place it 2 tiles away from wall, and on the wall I place 2 TVs. I also place this near a door so people don't have to waste time walking to the center of the room to eat / watch TV. Using a big table in conjunction with TV screen is a waste because only 1 colonist can use joy furniture at a given time.

Glad to be of help.