"Ate without table" should become "Ate with table"

[DubskiDude]

"Ate without table" has been a Rimworld meme for a while now. I'm guessing its function is to convince the player to make a dining table for their pawns. Problem is, pawns don't always eat at the table, because they're either too far away or just dumb. This makes for a relatively common -3 to most pawns that don't stick around the colony when doing their tasks. You can see the disconnect that's happening here.

I think its a no-brainer that it should be changed to "Ate with table", which gives a +3 rather than a -3. This means that it becomes a bonus rather than a nuisance. Pawns won't whine if they have to eat without a table (it is a brutal world out there, not everyone has a table), but will feel better if they eat at one. "Makes me feel more at home". Thoughts?

[patoka]

honestly, i think both are really weird thoughts to have. has anyone ever felt bad in rl eating without a table, or felt especially good about themselves for eating with a table? no way. honestly, it's only purpose is to give you an incentive in the beginning to rush tables, when you're on caravans and pausing somewhere that you should also build one and most importantly (and most annoyingly), when your pawns wander off into the map and pick nick in the woods. it's super annoying, because it can happen whenever, because the pawns dont walk very far to the closest table. you really have to litter your base in late game with tables in order to make sure your pawns dont get that debuff. the thing is, late game -3 mood doesnt mean much. it's generally much worse that your pawn suddenly doesnt have the huge buff of your impressive dining room.

so really, what i'd suggest is either make pawns look for tables to eat on in a much larger radius (or maybe even give the player a slidebar to adjust the search radius for tables for each pawn) or to just get rid of the debuff alltogether.

edit: maybe make pawns eat slower without a table? so it's kind of like the difference between using a butcher spot and a butcher table. the spot is cheaper but slower, just like using no table is cheaper but slower. additionally, comfy chairs (which can easily be built from the skins of wild game you hunted earlier anyway) give you a comfiness bonus, so sitting down to eat especially in good ass dining rooms should be a good way for getting nice boni to happiness. but i guess the debuff's real intention is to teach new players what tables are good for, so as a last resort, change the debuff to -1?

lastly, we shouldnt forget that tynan (probably) believes, that mood balancing is in a fairly good place as of now, otherwise he wouldve changed it by now or told us he was working on it. that said, i dont think the ate-without-a-table-debuff is part of this balance. what i really think is that it is just an occasional debuff that hits some of your pawns like bad mood. so it really is just annoying. so keeping it as a debuff that teaches new players what to do in the game, you could indeed just make the debuff smaller to be less of an annoyance for mid- to lategame.

[Jumper]

Thoughts?

I posted this in the 1.0 thread 3/4 days ago. Almost word for word 
The "ate with a table" would make more sense as its a comfort thing. Just nice to sit at a table and eat. It's such a small buff it should make little difference to balance

[Greep]

I think these memes are funny   But there is no difference from 0/-3 mood to +3/0 mood than just adding +3 base mood.  Other than losing a bit of humor that is.

[Firestonezz]

"Ate with table" already exists in the form of "Slightly/Very/Extremely/etc impressive dining room."

That being said, I wish we could manually adjust the table search radius, similarly to how you can adjust the material search range for workbenches.

[giltirn]

It may be coincidence but my current base is quite spread out, and usually this means that pawns whose bedrooms are far away from the dining room will eat on the spot after they get out of bed; however in this run it seems they will always go up to the dining room. The only time I've seen people eating elsewhere is when they are far away from the base. Maybe something has changed?

[Injured Muffalo]

honestly, i think both are really weird thoughts to have. has anyone ever felt bad in rl eating without a table, or felt especially good about themselves for eating with a table? no way.

You talk like someone who never had to have lunch in the dirt.

Now let me qualify that by saying having a chair to sit in is 2/3 of the issue, but then some foods just don't eat right without table. Some do, some just don't.

Personally I have had to sit in hot dirt near fire ants and have lunch; I can attest that I had a -3 mood penalty for the rest of the afternoon as a result.

[Greep]

honestly, i think both are really weird thoughts to have. has anyone ever felt bad in rl eating without a table, or felt especially good about themselves for eating with a table? no way.

You talk like someone who never had to have lunch in the dirt.

Now let me qualify that by saying having a chair to sit in is 2/3 of the issue, but then some foods just don't eat right without table. Some do, some just don't.

Personally I have had to sit in hot dirt near fire ants and have lunch; I can attest that I had a -3 mood penalty for the rest of the afternoon as a result.

Yeah but did you go murderous rage and kill your best friend because Reason: ate without table?

[mndfreeze]

Who knew picnics were such terrible things. 

[DariusWolfe]

I've definitely had my share of miserable meals in the dirt... And it really wasn't the table or lack of table that really mattered. It was the quality of the meal (MREs or heated from a tin) the conditions (hadn't bathed in a week, barely sleeping) or comfort (sitting on your own helmet or doing the Forrest-and-Bubba thing) that made those meals miserable.

I think speed, comfort and cleanliness are good reasons to eat with a table. The chairs already handle comfort, but having the table buff eating speed a bit, plus having it negate penalties for food poisoning chance and dirt-generation would be plenty good reasons to use a table without a mood buff/debuff.

[mndfreeze]

I like the idea of changing around the ate without a table thing to something more in line with the rest of the game.  Now that we have comfort it makes sense that pawns sitting at the table would get a comfort bonus, and having it be a speed based things definitely feels like it fits more with the current state of the game compared to how the game was way back in the day.

Some legacy systems don't really fit anymore because the game has changed so much over the years.  To me this sort of feels like one of them.   Though at least its a pretty minor one in the grand scheme of things.

[Koek]

Did you ever eat without a table? It's pretty annoying. Nothing that ruins your mood for the rest of the day, but it's pretty crap nonetheless.

[mndfreeze]

In a lot of countries thats how they eat every day, normally.... on the floor on pillows or rugs with no table in sight.

[Aerial]

I don't really want an "ate with table" mood buff, but I'd love a "family dinner" or "sit down meal" buff to pop if several pawns eat at the table together.  Then it could be more of a social thing.

[Azrael_Itaru]

For the first 14 years of my life, I would always eat on the floor, out of choice. Sitting and eating at a table has always been uncomfortable to me.