Building an outdoor walled patio garden - any Rec Room vs Dining Room issues?

[The Man with No Name]

I want to build an outdoor walled patio garden with table and stools, flower pots, statues and a horseshoes court.

When the horseshoes pin is placed, the room counts as a Rec Room, but the addition of the table and stools turns it into a Dining Room. Does it matter? I already have a Rec Room, and also a Dining Room by the kitchen, so the patio is probably not going to become a primary venue for either either of these uses. Will the horseshoes joy activity be hampered at all by taking place in, in effect, a Dining Room?

[Vlad0mi3r]

Nope not one bit.

In fact if you are tight for space building your rec room into your Dining room (Horse shoe pin and table in the same room) means you only have to improve one room to generate multiple mood buffs. so +2 for nice dining room and a +2 for nice rec room just because you put carpet and a good statue in a room.

[The Man with No Name]

Cool. I might put a couple of wood-burning torches in it - it should be a cool place to hang out, day and night.

How does multiple Rec Rooms work with the Rec Room bonus? Is it the highest score Rec Room, combination of all Rec Rooms, or maybe the Rec Room the colonist most recently visited?

[Vlad0mi3r]

If my memory serves me correctly it is the best one in the colony not an average.

I always put outdoor tables near work areas just the small ones with a couple of stools. To avoid the didn't eat at table debuff. I still get the impressive dining room buff for my main room near the kitchen that gets loaded up with statues and a big high quality table and chairs.

[Canute]

Mosttimes i have a big all in one room.
One side for workbenches, one side too cook and eat, other side for joy, middle for research.
Just the horseshoe pin is outside, to cover cabin fever.

[Harry_Dicks]

Why are the room definitions not clearly defined, or have I just not been looking in the right places? I would guess it's just whatever the most of that's in the room will define it. Also, are there any benefits to what the rooms end up being named? Does it matter if something is a laboratory or a barn? Maybe in the future it would be cool if we could have more control over this system, and certain room types could bring certain advantages to whatever. A barn could increase fertility rate or decrease gestation time, kitchen increases food production or decrease chance to poison, a hospital-you already know. Maybe research better benefits over time as well. I always thought it would be cool if researches could give passive benefits or active benefits/skills/anything. Or maybe that would be a cool "perma research" thing you have end game, for example you have the "Increase colonists' work rate" going from the "perma research", and the more research points per hour you can put out, the more the buff will increase. I think that's a great alternative to endgame pointless infinite research that some mods do. Or if you could split it up and have multiple different benefits going at once, if you have multiple researchers. One could be increasing work rate, another move speed, one mining, whatever.

[jamaicancastle]

Also, are there any benefits to what the rooms end up being named? Does it matter if something is a laboratory or a barn?

Not in the slightest. Any room-related thoughts will fire as though it were a room of that type (e.g. eat a meal there -> counts as a dining room) and room-related attributes (chiefly cleanliness and temperature) will affect any work benches there equally.

The one thing it does control is what attributes the environment display draws your attention towards. For instance, it will highlight beauty and impressiveness if it detects a bedroom or dining room, but not a workshop or laboratory. However, this is just a display thing.

kitchen increases food production or decrease chance to poison, a hospital-you already know.

Building your room with sterile tiles will reduce the odds of food poisoning, reduce surgery failure rate, and increase research speed. (Well, technically with research speed it doesn't go above 100%, but it does make it resistant to dirt being added to the room.) Anything else you might want out of your rooms I think would be better modeled by a linked facility (like the tool cabinet or vitals monitor) to avoid weird shenanigans with people switching room types around or having a thousand workshops or whatever.

On the other hand, a type of endgame research that buffs your colony while you work on it sounds interesting. It kind of reminds me of Civilization's city developments, where if you run out of buildings to build and don't need any units, you can have your city work directly on producing gold or food or whatever you need.