Freezer room

[olarnser]

YouTubers playing this game have been showing videos of freezer rooms they built. I tried to do this but one air-con unit only lowers the room temp to a few degrees below outside temp. Does anyone know how many aircons are needed to make a freezer room work?

[Stimpacker]

It depends on the room size. I made a little room 4x6, enough for 4x 4 tile long shelves and that's plenty for raw food storage, leaving just 2 empty wall tiles - 1 for a thermostat and 1 for the air-con, set to turn on when temps are above -2C. Works perfectly well.

[OverThere]

A freezer room is definitely a cool idea (cool idea! get it!) but even if a freezer room could be made to work reliably, the economics don't add up.

- a freezer uses 12 electricity and provides 20 storage slots for three tiles
- an air conditioner uses 16 electricity while a three tile storage shelf provides 15 storage slots

So the real question is whether a reliable freezer room is cheaper than just having a bunch of freezers.

In my limited experience with the game, three freezers are the most needed. Even that arguably gives too much storage as if you are stockpiling that many years of inventory you are being seriously inefficient.

Given that, is there a reliable design for a freezer room that provides at least 60 inventory slots and consumes less than 36 electricity (that is, two air conditioning units)?

I have not tried, so I could be wrong, but it just seems like a freezer room would be uneconomic even if it worked.

Plus it is a no brainer to place the freezers between the cook stove and the dining table so that trips to prepare, place, retrieve and eat food are as short as possible. In contrast, a freezer room forces one to add lots of travel to the most common trips in the game.

For my base, this is the optimal design for a kitchen/dining area:

w?c- > dining table with six chairs, ? as a one tile storage shelf or wall item
wcDc >
wcDc >
w-c- >
d--- > door to outside is in this row to quickly access food or cooking ingredients
w- FF- > two freezers containing finished meals and meal ingredients
w- FF- >
w- FF- >
w
w- SS > one stove

The cook has near instant access to meal ingredients and can quickly place finished meals (including the all important coffee and tea!). Everyone else can sit down and eat right away after grabbing a meal.

You can't do that with a freezer room.

[OverThere]

Originally posted by Stimpacker:

It depends on the room size. I made a little room 4x6, enough for 4x 4 tile long shelves and that's plenty for raw food storage, leaving just 2 empty wall tiles - 1 for a thermostat and 1 for the air-con, set to turn on when temps are above -2C. Works perfectly well.

A proven design! That is better than I have managed.

A 4x4 shelf gives 21 storage slots at a cost of 16 electricity when temperatures are too high and the need for a 4x6 room, complete with floors and walls.

A freezer is 20 storage slots for 12 electricity taking up a 1x3 space.

So, I remain convinced that the economics of a freezer room are worse than just using freezers.

[Bjørn]

Originally posted by Stimpacker:

It depends on the room size. I made a little room 4x6, enough for 4x 4 tile long shelves and that's plenty for raw food storage, leaving just 2 empty wall tiles - 1 for a thermostat and 1 for the air-con, set to turn on when temps are above -2C. Works perfectly well.

This is a good tip, but the A/C-unit has a built-in thermostat, so you don't really need a separate one. I just keep it at -10 C.

Been trying a 5x3 room in the last game, with door in the center of one of the long walls, A/C-unit on one of the short walls, and shelves on the other long wall and for the 2 tiles next to the door.

I haven't done the maths like OverThere, but I use a mod that gives a lot more storage space for shelves, so no problems with room for everything, 10s of thousands of it.

[𝐎ᥣᑯ𝐑𝖾ᑯ𝐅ⱺ𝗑]

My air-con keeps dropping out but not malfunctioning. The temperature just goes up.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Running Red Fox:

My air-con keeps dropping out but not malfunctioning. The temperature just goes up.

Make sure you have it facing the right way. If you placed it such that the red arrow is pointing into the room, you have it backwards, and it is trying to cool off the outdoors.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by olarnser:

YouTubers playing this game have been showing videos of freezer rooms they built. I tried to do this but one air-con unit only lowers the room temp to a few degrees below outside temp. Does anyone know how many aircons are needed to make a freezer room work?

I use just 2 units, always, in my freezer rooms. Typically I build them at a size of either 8 x 10 or 8 x 8. 2 units is enough to keep the room at the lowest possible temperature that they can be set to on Desertum maps during heat waves.

The reason for the 8 x is that I like to have 4 rows of storage with a 2 double-width walkways through the room. Which requires a width of 8 tiles. I typically put 2 doors on each side as well, two coming from the outside for material delivery and two going into the kitchen (1 into each of the walkways from each direction).

The double wide walkways is so survivors don't get the "cramped" mood debuff when there's heavy traffic. I have room for 4 a/c units pointing outside (between the two exterior doors), but I have yet to ever need to turn on more than 2 of them, even when I do build more than just the two (backup is good, for if one malfunctions).

Edit; Note that the material you make the floor, walls and ceilings out of matters a lot too. I'm talking brick construction (initially) for what I do.

[Bjørn]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by Running Red Fox:

My air-con keeps dropping out but not malfunctioning. The temperature just goes up.

Make sure you have it facing the right way. If you placed it such that the red arrow is pointing into the room, you have it backwards, and it is trying to cool off the outdoors.

Also note that if there is a lot of traffic in and out of the room, the temperature will rise.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Bjørn:

Also note that if there is a lot of traffic in and out of the room, the temperature will rise.

Not by that much though. Stranded is not Rimworld when it comes to that sort of thing. Airlocks are not needed. The most I've ever noted my freezer rooms change by is 2 degrees (F), which is still well below freezing temperature if you have them set as low as they will go.

[DeadSilent]

Originally posted by OverThere:

Originally posted by Stimpacker:

It depends on the room size. I made a little room 4x6, enough for 4x 4 tile long shelves and that's plenty for raw food storage, leaving just 2 empty wall tiles - 1 for a thermostat and 1 for the air-con, set to turn on when temps are above -2C. Works perfectly well.

A proven design! That is better than I have managed.

A 4x4 shelf gives 21 storage slots at a cost of 16 electricity when temperatures are too high and the need for a 4x6 room, complete with floors and walls.

A freezer is 20 storage slots for 12 electricity taking up a 1x3 space.

So, I remain convinced that the economics of a freezer room are worse than just using freezers.

I agree that freezers are better if you're doing small to medium sized storage and building space is a factor, but if you're doing mass storage and you have plenty of space, a freezer room may be better. A 20x6 freezer room only needs 3 air-cons to keep everything frozen year round. The only exception are extreme heatwaves where the temp may go just above frozen, but a few days of being refrigerated instead of frozen isn't a huge factor. The only time I build a freezer room is when playing the Trading Outpost scenario where stockpiling massive amounts of ingredients to process into other goods for sale is crucial. Otherwise, you can get away with a small number of freezers and do just fine.

I think too many players are stuck in the typical survival/sim mind-set where stockpiling large amounts of things is encouraged and often required for any meaningful progression. This game makes it possible to run a razor-thin line of producing just enough to get by, plus a little extra for emergencies.

[Jazzman]

I generally have only two storage areas set up. One area outside covered by shacks normally 2-3 rows of 30-42 for only building materials. The other area is my freezer room that is always 16x16 with storage shelves filling the entire space except for leaving 1x1 area in front of walls or a 2x2 area in front of "main" entrance from the living area (another 16x16 area). Yes this takes a long time to set up, and yes I generally spend 1 year living in shelters gathering materials and defending the base.

In a 16x16 area I have noticed one AC unit can increase / decrease the outside air by varying amounts (5-8 degrees) depending I assume on initial temp at drastic changes (cold snaps and heat waves). In practice I use 6-10 units in each 16x16 area (living and storage so total 12-20 per level)). Less on sobrius and more on desertum/saltu as the temperature fluctuates wildly and hits extreme temps on both. Obviously, carbon rooms are the goal and they can limit how many AC units you need too.

After discovering freezer rooms I have never looked back to freezers except in some extremely long games with multiple 5 story houses and keep a freezer unit filled with ONLY cooked food next to the eating area. Freezers do not seem efficient as far as utility goes in larger bases. Sure in a solo game or a game you want to end quickly a freezer is probably more time efficient than building a whole area. However, if you plan to have many years of gaming a storage room/house gets rid of the worry of things going bad. In my longest game on insane at the moment (18 years and counting) I have 2 floors dedicated to storage as the first filled up with berries and cloth stuffs. I highly doubt I will ever not have farmable materials. The resources you run out of in longer games generally are stone, scrap, and by extension alloys which then leads to less electronics... that being said the new scenario easily takes care of everything except for stone.

[Olleus]

Originally posted by DeadSilent:

I think too many players are stuck in the typical survival/sim mind-set where stockpiling large amounts of things is encouraged and often required for any meaningful progression. This game makes it possible to run a razor-thin line of producing just enough to get by, plus a little extra for emergencies.

It's also that so many resources can be grown in vast quantities with minimal effort. With a couple of work days worth of farming spread out over half the year, a single dude can grow enough grain to feed a whole base for a year. Why bother having storage that lasts forever, when it's easier to just regrow stuff? Having a freezer room to keep grain edible for multiple years ends up costing a bit in repairs for AC units and wind turbines/solar panels, while simply regrowing it is trivial. But there's definitely a psychological issue here that we simply hate wasting things.

It's puzzling that this is a survival game where cooking food is a vastly bigger time dump than growing it...

[Stimpacker]

Hi Olleus, yes, I have complained about the cooking time in another recent thread. Seems dumb.

Freezer rooms may be necessary depending on one's playstyle. You can be barebones like that guy in your "rate my base" example. Get Orbital Radio ASAP and get the hell out. I prefer to leave only after all tech is researched and I enjoy defending against strong attacks. I also enjoy providing comfort for my survivors. That means:
1) Lots of grain for ale and moonshine.
2) Lots of bushfruits for wine.
3) Past Year 2, they only eat Tasty recipes and Chef's recipes. These need fruit and raw meat.
4) Freezer for good amount of antibiotics and healing balm. In Insane difficulty, those are needed a lot, even with good defenses.
5) Lots of storage for insect meat while they wait their turn to ferment. Fuel is needed in late game to print Carbon nanotubes. I don't want to cheese by farming nests plus there's a map that has no nests.

Note I do have a freezer. It's next to the dining table and stores only cooked food.

[jamesglen7]

I always have multiple freezers and refrigerators but that's not enough when a unit fails. You need cold rooms for backup & storage space. Note the storage requirements for items to prevent spoilage. One cold room is at -2 degrees C with a single AC unit and the other is set to 11 degrees C with a single AC unit. Once the AC unit is constructed you must set the temp for each one. The size of my roofed wooden cold rooms are 8x8 without windows.

Consider this option... build your cold rooms in a single structure and have a wall dividing the two temp zones. Keep the structure close to your kitchen and away from sleep quarters.

[mitropower]

I made mine pretty large, but I made it from Carbon I mined from a destroyed nest. It kept the temperature at -2C even during heat waves.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3105530308