What's the point of Nutrient Paste?

[Aarkreinsil]

Title says it all. The component cost, the power requirements and the mood hit for eating the stuff make it really, REALLY useless. The 10% increase on food resource efficiency isn't quite enough to save it.
Has anyone tried using human meat in their paste dispensers? Does it remove the "Cooked Cannibalism" penalty?
After all, the nutrient sludge could pass as some sort of soylent green.

I just feel like I'm missing out on something for not using the thing. I remember it actually being quite useful in earlier alphas, when you could still research some efficiency improvements for the machine.

[mumblemumble]

Well,  several things.  First,  you can put it in prisoner bays to limit labor of feeding to almost nothing. This also applies to cooking,  that you really don't need to cook food,  so it potentially frees up a colonist. Its efficiency is useful in survival situations, where food might run dry.

So mainly, freeing up labor from cooking / delivering food to prisoners, or to really stretch food out.... Mainly the labor part is nice,  as you won't have starving prisoners if shit hits the fan.

[MythicalEwok]

I've only ever used it to feed prisoners for the past 3 or 4 big updates. It would probably only be good to use if you are trying to save on your food production costs. 6 units of food = 1 meal. And I have never used human meat in it. Thanks for the reminder. ^.^ I'll get back to you on if they get the cannibal mood or not.


*Edit* They do get the Cooked Cannibalism debuff.

[Aarkreinsil]

Well, you still have to keep the hoppers filled and would have to build and maintain a walk-in refrigerator just for them. I just wish it would get rid of the "Cooked Cannibalism" thing. As it stands going the Hannibal Lecter route and preparing lavish, fancy meals from your human victims is actually WAY better for morale and general colony stability than using the nutri-paste dispenser.

With the paste you get the usual -4 + the -18 for cannibalism, for a total of whopping -22
If you make lavish meals out of human meat, you get +10 from the food, -18 for cannibalism, thus incurring only a -8 mood hit.
Even just making simple meals would be better for their mood, and setting up a stockpile of like 10 simple meals in your prison is way simpler than maintaining all of that paste dispenser stuff.

And really? It's 6 units vs 10 units for a meal? How does the nutrition value pass in comparison to a simple meal then?
Afaik the resource cost was the same, just that a nutrient paste meal restores 90 saturation, and a simple meal 85 or so.
Then again every little bit that drives their saturation bar over 100 is completely wasted anyway.

[Mathenaut]

Saves labor, doesn't break down for much, and the debuff is kinda trivial, or doesn't exist if you have a nice dining room.

I'm not really sure what the appeal of cooking is anymore if it isn't fine meals during a psychic drone.

[MythicalEwok]

The nutrition for paste is .90 and a simple meal is .85. I only put potatoes into the hoppers, They last almost 2 seasons before they rot when they are under a roof. (on a topical map, average temp is 80-90F inside the food room) So they never rot away before they are used if you have 4 or 5 prisoners. And when there are no prisoners I just set the hoppers to be empty.

[mumblemumble]

You can use the dispenser as a wall,  have one end in a kitchen,  the other in a refrigerated storage closet with the hoppers.

[milon]

You could always have a psychopath do your butchering, and feed the meals to your carnivorous pets. That would get rid of the mood debuff and would make pet food go a little further. But I haven't looked at the kibble stats to know how the numbers compare.

[EscapeZeppelin]

Saves labor, doesn't break down for much, and the debuff is kinda trivial, or doesn't exist if you have a nice dining room.

I'm not really sure what the appeal of cooking is anymore if it isn't fine meals during a psychic drone.

This. I stockpile meals for solar flares but otherwise I don't even bother cooking regularly until I have at least 5-6 colonists.

[Nictis]

It's a big help if you have other ways of keeping your colonists happy, I personally just train my Labrador in hauling and he actually keeps the hoppers stocked (doesn't haul much else because of it, but it's nice) and it encourages my colonists to actually eat at the goddamn table. I always find that if they carry meals they just eat out in the field for the same debuff, and miss the interesting dining room buff.

Plus cooking sucks, you can't actually dedicate two people to it without getting subpar meals mixed in with the ones that don't poison you...

And if you do cook, it helps when your chef gets his arm shot off or his eyes crushed in.

[christhekiller]

I mostly use it as a back up, always ready, food source. If I'm not confident that food stocks can last through the winter then I'll turn off cooking and have colonists eat from nutrient paste. There's also the feeding prisoners thing which is fantastic.

Also also it saves on labor in the early game, when I need all my colonists doing something else instead of cooking.

[cultist]

Has anyone tried using human meat in their paste dispensers? Does it remove the "Cooked Cannibalism" penalty?

It certainly does... and replaces it with the "Human meat nutrient paste" debuff which is even worse.

On ice sheet or extreme desert, you need the nutrient paste dispenser. Your colony will starve to death before you get a steady food production up and running if you stick to regular meals. Either that or you have to kill and eat anything that spawns in the area, human or otherwise.

[RazorHed]

I tried using it in a prison once and my colonists still took meals to them from my freezer.  Is there a trick i'm missing ?

[Negocromn]

I tried using it in a prison once and my colonists still took meals to them from my freezer.  Is there a trick i'm missing ?

you need to uncheck the gets food box

[RazorHed]

oooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!