Sanitization vs Cleaning

[zgrssd]

A few tasks - in vanilla Cooking, Medicine and Research - depend on the cleanliness of the room. And especially for cooking and medicine, the cleanliness of the room can literally change the survival chances.

This cleanliness requirement however is very different to that of the normal home zone. A living room needs different cleanlyness levels then a operating room. If we set the cleaning job to high, that person will be playing whack-a-mole with every grain of dirt tracked into any tile of the home zone. But if we do not set it high, people die to Food Poisoning and Infections. Or we have to micro stuff.

We need some way to identify our kitches, hospitals (and maybe research labs) as a "clean room". Something that needs to be cleaned on a way higher priority then the living room. And we need a way to tell pawns that they need to deal with stuff like that on a high priority - higher then normal cleaning. A job that is supplementary, but not replacing normal cleaning of flith.
"Sterilize" or "Sanitization" could be good terms, if that is an issue.
I got a few ideas on how to do that, but I doubt it is anywhere close to what mods can do. It would propably be up to Tynan to implement it:

1. Explicit clean Zone Type 1. We have the Clear Snow Job, currently covered by Cleaning Work Giver. You define a Clear Snow Zone. Pawns will remove snow - something they would not normally do - when there is some and they came down to that priority. You could use it for a Sanitisation Zone/Job similary: You declare teh whole hospital/kitchen as Sanitisation Zone, someone on the Sanitize Work Giver would clean there.

2. Explicit clean Zone Type 2. There is another type of zone. The Grow/Storage zone. What if there was a "Sanitisation" zone that worked similary? Something that needs to be set, needs to cover all tiles to be affected, is mutually exclusive with storage and Grow zone (so people start using shelves). Again, it would be up to some special Work Giver and Job to actually work in that zone with Priority

3. Wherever there is a need. In this variant, no special zoning would be nessesary. Rather, the presence of a stove, hospital bed or research table would mark the whole room as a "clean room".
People that are working there would automatically do the cleaning.
Doctors would clean their Hospitals, Researchers their Labs, Cooks their Kitchen - all as part of their work givers.
The only question is, where to put it in the priority list.
- Doctors should propably patch the bleeding holes in their patients before trying to clean up the blood. If there is a nurse job (as exist in some mods), they could do hospital cleaning just between the "Rescue Patient" and "Feed Patient" jobs. That would avoid people bleeding out, without risking too much blood comming into wounds the wrong way.
- Cooks and Researchers could do it just before starting or resuming a work task. Their job is a lot less time critical and maximising the researchg speed/food safety with a bit of cleaning is more important then any slight disruption of the work flow.

[wwWraith]

It's not that hard to keep all your base clean even in vanilla.
1. Sterile tiles are specially designed to counter filth in areas like hospitals, kitchens and laboratories.
2. Making 1-2 pawns to "specialize" in cleaning (setting it to higher priority), especially if you have some not very useful otherwise (or useful only on rare occasions, e.g. specialists doctors/recruiters/fighters - having no other skills high - can often have a lot of spare time, though it depends on your playstyle, of course), usually will worth it even if sometimes they run back and forth. The same is also useful for hauling.
3. Don't underestimate planning your base layout. Less your pawns go into "important" rooms, less filth they'll carry in. So, either make only 1 door in those rooms, or place them so pawns won't be tempted to go through without real need. You can even forbid temporarily unnecessary doors.
4. Pawns can spread many types of filth, thus the cleaner your base is, the easier it is to keep it clean. Build floors in all rooms, corridors and often-used walkways outdoors. Restrict animals from floored areas. Clean blood after raids as soon as possible, at least in frequently visited areas.

When it comes to mods, there is everything you asked, and even more.
TD Enhancement Pack - auxiliary, to let you have unlimited amount of areas and to hide some of them from colonists/animals lists. And much more.
CleaningArea - to choose an area to clean only there. It's better to be used when you usually have most of your pawns allowed to clean.
Cleaning Priority - to set priorities to clean in several areas. It's better to be used when you have only some of your pawns "specialized" to clean.
Work Tab - to have more precise control over pawns' jobs priorities. I prefer to raise cleaning priority for all pawns for a couple of hours before they'll go to sleep, 20:00 - 22:00. And similar for hauling.
Common Sense - to avoid cleaning snow when it's snowing or raining and, more importantly, to let pawns automatically clean rooms before/after doing most jobs there. And much more.
Doormats - filth will be removed from pawns when stepping on these doormats.
Path Avoid - to discourage pawns from walking on certain tiles (tip: mark entrance tiles to bedrooms/hospitals/freezers, etc. as "strong", and your pawns will prefer to go around these rooms rather than through if possible, except when their job destination is inside).
Misc. Robots (maybe also with Misc. Robots++) or some other mods to get robots (or other creatures, probably) that will make cleaning (and other tasks) instead of your colonists.
Dubs Bad Hygiene and some other mods add buildings increasing the cleanliness of the rooms.
[W] Clear Way - my old (updated now) humble micromod, attempt to slightly discourage pawns from stepping on filth.