What's a Nutrient Paste Dispenser good for these days?

[Thunder Rahja]

If I don't have anyone with cooking skill 3+ or if my colonists are spread too thin to have a dedicated cook, I build a nutrient paste dispenser. All you do is put food into it and you get instant meals. Sure, it reduces happiness a little, but in the early game when you have only three colonists, it can save you a lot of time.

It can also be quite useful as a backup meal source later on when your cook is incapacitated or otherwise occupied. -8 happiness for eating nutrient paste is half the penalty of -15 for eating raw food.

[Col_Jessep]

The difference with the stove is that you can stockpile food for 2 or 3 days though. A solar flare becomes a non-issue that way. The last thing I want is having everybody sitting in the dark with a penalty due to not so tasty food on top of that. You have to put down some serious carpet to forget a raw potato meal... xD

[Quasarrgames]

I use nutrient paste dispensers a lot because cooking takes too much manpower. I found that you basically have to have a guy at the stove all day to cook meals for 5 colonists, even if that person is really good at cooking. Nutrient paste dispensers do it automatically and in seconds, and eating nutrient glop is normally the least of my colonists' worries.

[Dr. Z]

In my current colonie, I disclaimed the NPD at the start and figured out that cooking is way to much work when I have only three colonists, so in the future I will use the NPD again and eventually recruit a cook if I find one.

[bigwolf2101]

I gess its good for eating power and taking up to much dam space

that's my gess

[christhekiller]

Is there a use for the paste dispenser that I missed? Maybe in your prison?

I think there should be an option to reserve the dispenser only for prisoners.   Just sayin'     

Or just an option on what to feed your prisoner. One of the first fine meals I ever had made was given to a prison and I was so pissed about that for so long.

I mainly use the nutrient past dispenser near the begining as I rarely pick someone with a good cooking skill off the bat

[StorymasterQ]

...
Or just an option on what to feed your prisoner.
...

Hmm, that ought to be an improvement idea. If Tynan is reading this, he ought to think about perhaps adding the option. So we already have 'Gets Food' for prisoners. And now we need an option as to what food does each prisoner get, say, Raw, Vegetarian, Meat, Human meat, etc.

[UrbanBourbon]

NPD is the lazy man's colonist feeding system.
The more meticulous and enthusiastic players employ chefs and set their meal stockpiles right on top of dining tables (or under them, it's hard to tell). The Cooking Stove and the NPD wage eternal battle.

NPD is good when:
...You are in late game, have a lot of colonists, and have several happiness-boosting structures.
...Very early in the game when you still have the "new colony optimism" bonus to counter the paste meal penalty.

NPD is risky when:
...You dig rooms into the mountain in the beginning and do not clean up the places or smooth the floors in proper time. Then you get penalties from dirt, rough rock floors and nutrient paste while your "new colony optimism" has worn off.
...You get a solar flare. Then you eat raw food if you have no meals in stock, turning the paste meal penalty into something worse.

Cooking stove is good when:
...You have plenty of meat and vegetables in store. You could stop growing altogether and have your growers do something else. The difference between a fine meal and a paste meal is 13 happiness, not entirely insignificant amount.
...You suffer frequent raids. Corpses and wounds are no fun. A good meal can be the difference between a rampage and a simple mental break.
...You have a someone with potential to become a good chef, and that guy isn't good for much else. Most chefs don't clean or haul, so you might as well give them a stove to play with.

Cooking stove is risky when:
...You don't have the manpower and there are more urgent jobs.

The differences are subtle and complex but largely irrelevant if you know what you're doing. NPD is still a slightly greater risk over cooking stove but when it comes to mass feeding, NPD delivers every time. NPD does not require sleep, unlike your chef. It'll always be there for your colonists. Also, I suspect NPD can process human meat without any penalties but I haven't checked it.

[Sinsults]

Could go wrong easily, because your colonists need more units of raw food to get full than a dispenser use. Also strawberrie plants don't produce as much units as a potato plant, farming is less effective in Alpha 4 and there's always the possibility of a blight.

Blight doesn't effect wild strawberry patches, so far as I've seen.
I've had my colonists saved many times by the large patches of berry bushes near the houses.

[Dr. Z]

Could go wrong easily, because your colonists need more units of raw food to get full than a dispenser use. Also strawberrie plants don't produce as much units as a potato plant, farming is less effective in Alpha 4 and there's always the possibility of a blight.

Blight doesn't effect wild strawberry patches, so far as I've seen.
I've had my colonists saved many times by the large patches of berry bushes near the houses.

Ahh, you're talking about the wild ones, yeah that's right I thought you mean the planted ones. That actually sounds like a good idea. Will try it out next time

[milon]

Blight affects only your own growing zones.  I often designate a large berry patch, then remove the growing zone once it's going - it'll spread itself and it's blight-proof. 

[Mathenaut]

NPD used to be the best way to manage prisoners, as there is presently no way to manage the quality of food that you give them, and no way to manage the resource cost of holding prisoners.

Since it was removed, managing large groups of prisoners is a pain.

Would be less of an issue if traders weren't a once-in-a-blue-moon thing late game.

[RemingtonRyder]

I've got a Prison meals mod.  You can set stockpiles inside prison cells and have a number of meals delivered directly by the cook.  Naturally, that works best if your cook stove is in close proximity to the prison.

But it sort of opens up possibilities of having a stove that is dedicated to producing meals for prisoners, for example.

[Wex]

I just stick to berries since they don't lower happiness at all.

Oh, didn't know that! Strawberries for EVERYBODY! =3

Could go wrong easily, because your colonists need more units of raw food to get full than a dispenser use. Also strawberrie plants don't produce as much units as a potato plant, farming is less effective in Alpha 4 and there's always the possibility of a blight.

That's why I love building in a forest. Food growing by itself, laying around ready to be harvested by anyone. Yes, the fires are a sensible problem there, with any boomrat or storm starting several at once...

[MajorFordson]

I'd love to see the NPS

1. Be able to turn human flesh into non-cannibal food source
2. Be able to turn inedible organic matter into food source. Why not somehow allow full corpses to be deposited, and the whole thing is broken down into nutrients, not just the meat.
3. The ability to research and use mood stabilising chemicals. Being able to pick from a list of enhancements with pros and cons would be great. So perhaps a drug that increases happiness but slows people down.

Always good to have multiple options for the player to have their own game style, as long as it makes sense and there are reasons to choose one way over the other. Currently this isn't really the case.