Nutrient Paste Dispensers

[Psyckosama]

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.

[Barazen]

Maybe just make nutrient paste last a really long time? Like a high tier pemmican? Or perhaps make that an offshoot research topic?

[SpaceDorf]

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.

[Barazen]

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?

[SpaceDorf]

Sadly not.

I have not found a mod either, but I like the idea using it as a recycler

[Wex]

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.

[Texaskimo]

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).

[Derp]

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.

[SpaceDorf]

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.

[jpinard]

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?

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.

[Ace_livion]

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.

[Psyckosama]

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.

[Thyme]

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

[b0rsuk]

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 ?

[BoogieMan]

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.