Wipe your feet?

[ProjectXa3]

Is there anything I can do to make my colonists track less dirt everywhere? I only have the four of them, so it's hard to pry one of them off their tasks to dust unless it's critically affecting someone's mood, but it still sticks in my craw a little to look and see all the dirt everywhere. Anybody have any advice?

[BetaSpectre]

Don't know if this is the case, but if you destroy every last bit of dirt on the map there should be no place where colonists can drag dirt around. This entails replacing the entire map's flooring with stone or some such.

[O Negative]

There's a mod that adds a doormat, and it does exactly what you're thinking.

[ProjectXa3]

Good to know! Don't think I'll do the "Chromed Future" route anytime soon, and I kinda feel like the weebles generate dirt just by doing jobs too. I see dust clouds rising periodically around my researcher every few seconds on 3x speed.

Maybe we'll be lucky and the Doormat mod will be added to Vanilla sometime soon. Thanks for the heads-up on it, but I don't think I'll be using it anytime soon- I like to keep my game vanilla as a blanket policy to promote stability.

[niklas7737]

Maybe we'll be lucky and the Doormat mod will be added to Vanilla sometime soon.

I wouldn't get too hopeful though. I can't seem to find the original article but I think the almighty Tynan himself once stated that he didn't like how the doormat mod made the cleaning job too easy.

[ProjectXa3]

Ah, nuts.

[Gohihioh]

I think that doormat is broken(I use it but still). It pretty much reduces cleaning job to almost none.
Although I think there should be ways to reduce dirt which pawns make.
My idea is footwear. Better quality footwear would reduce the dirt pawns create.

[Snafu_RW]

How about a prioritised area? So kitchen/freezer/dining/rec/research rooms would have high priority cleaning jobs, but other areas would be left as low(er) priority..

[Sola]

Don't know if this is the case, but if you destroy every last bit of dirt on the map there should be no place where colonists can drag dirt around. This entails replacing the entire map's flooring with stone or some such.

You know.. as long as I've been playing this game, you figure I'd have thought of this.

[ProjectXa3]

How about a prioritised area? So kitchen/freezer/dining/rec/research rooms would have high priority cleaning jobs, but other areas would be left as low(er) priority..

See, this idea I like. Priority Cleaning Areas. Any idea how we can get that into A18?

[Ragnarok]

You don't have to floor up the entire map to reduce dirt. Floor up your buildings and also make floored paths between buildings. Sure when they go out of your home zone and onto dirt they'll track some in but it atleast should be a lot less dirt than if there was dirt between or inside buildings.

Could anyone try this out? A youtuber do a test or something? No flooring at all, flooring only in buildings, and flooring in and between buildings. See what happens and how much dirt gets tracked all over the place.

[Weyrling]

Could anyone try this out? A youtuber do a test or something? No flooring at all, flooring only in buildings, and flooring in and between buildings. See what happens and how much dirt gets tracked all over the place.

I can't provide video evidence, but since I started regularly putting 3 wide floor paths leading everywhere I've never needed more than 1 guy on dedicated cleaning duty.

This has a huge up-front cost to mitigate upkeep and I'd wager your colony has to survive for a really long time for this to be cost/time efficient.
For my average colony this eventually costs something upwards of 10000 resources, but that's just a guesstimate.

In the interim, regarding speed, it's better to start your path from both sides rather than go from one side to the other.

IE, it seems like a pawn would rather run over 10 stone tiles and then 60 tiles of mud instead of 10 tiles of mud and then 60 stone tiles.
So the floor starting directly from one area towards another is very important for guiding which path your colonists will automatically take when leaving that area.