Canteens can't seem to keep up

[Lait]

Hi! I noticed that canteens can never keep up with food demand, it seems like they always run out of food, and even worse, they always cook the same food and there's only one choice at a time, so people keep complaining that they don't get their food preference. I have two canteens pretty close to the warehouses where the food is stockpiled for around 440 people, and they can't keep up. Both have the maximum amount of employees possible.
This is the size:
https://prnt.sc/15pdpi5

And this is the distance to the stockpile:
https://prnt.sc/15pdy7b

The other canteen is much closer and has the same issue (though I can see a small improvement on that one).

I was thinking a good solution would be to have a small stockpile where a canteen worker can keep full of food, and only cook it to keep meals topped up by other workers of the canteen. It would seem that when they need to haul new raw food, the meals are already gone by the time they come back to cook it.
I mean, I can add a hauler, but then I would need to add one hauler for each type of food, which is a lot of wasted workers just for that, and then I have the 8 workers in the canteen too. This is why an integrated stockpile sounds really positive in my opinion.

[Gamatron]

Integrated, or next door would do the trick. If that fails, there's just too much demand and you need a bigger one, or another one. I think you might have missed That you can increase furniture size when building room, ether by shift + mousewheel, or the buttons on the UI. Bigger items are way more efficient usually. Also be careful when building canteens, since it's the cooking-stations that make the food, the tables are just extra, so don't go above 100% on the tables, it's just a waste. I must say your city is pretty!

[Lait]

My mind is literally blown about the furniture size, I now have to rebuild my entire base 😂 I love that, thanks!
That certainly fixed it but only partially. and I say partially because I now have 19 employees cooking food, so the demand is kind of being met, but they still have to haul 1 fish at a time and lose a lot of time doing that, when a single worker could be dedicated to hauling while others dedicated to cooking, being more efficient. Though just my opinion and I think it'd be fine if this is made on purpose.

On the other hand, they still seem pretty fixated on cooking fish only because it's the nearest box, but just 1 box over that there's meat, and 1 more box over the meat there's oranges. So it looks like a strict meat menu, which annoys the cretonians.

Check the number of fish meals vs others:
https://prnt.sc/15qrn6q

I think it'd be really cool to have a balance in what types of meals are cooked. At least when other types of food are readily available to a very similar distance.

And thank you about the city! I must say your game is ridiculously pretty and addictive :D

[Gamatron]

Originally posted by Lait:

My mind is literally blown about the furniture size, I now have to rebuild my entire base 😂 I love that, thanks!
That certainly fixed it but only partially. and I say partially because I now have 19 employees cooking food, so the demand is kind of being met, but they still have to haul 1 fish at a time and lose a lot of time doing that, when a single worker could be dedicated to hauling while others dedicated to cooking, being more efficient. Though just my opinion and I think it'd be fine if this is made on purpose.

On the other hand, they still seem pretty fixated on cooking fish only because it's the nearest box, but just 1 box over that there's meat, and 1 more box over the meat there's oranges. So it looks like a strict meat menu, which annoys the cretonians.

Check the number of fish meals vs others:
https://prnt.sc/15qrn6q

I think it'd be really cool to have a balance in what types of meals are cooked. At least when other types of food are readily available to a very similar distance.

And thank you about the city! I must say your game is ridiculously pretty and addictive :D

Thanks! I don't know what in-game time you are at, but so far the canteen has produced 105 meals, which is enough for 210 people. I gather that from the coal usage, and it seems pretty legit. (on 1x food rations, if you've set that to higher, that's the explanation) Canteens are supposed to be a slightly luxurious service compared to the eatery, which is a lot more efficient. I think you can set workers to 15, which feels pretty ok. Once canteen supply is higher than demand, they'll fill up the fish dishes and start fetching other, more far away foods to cook.

IDK if you can actually service a big population with the top services. I haven't tested it, I usually use slaves to power the services, while not needing to use them. A lot of balancing that way is needed in the days to come.