Beer good or bad?

[Kadjai]

It seems like there all sorts of negatives to making beer and suffering addictions, lost kidneys, etc, but it's something that takes time and energy to make so surely it must be useful overall?

[sbhink805]

I think the only pro's are a temp mood buff and the market value. Might reduce pain when their buzzed too. I make it in my colonies.

[MortVent]

I make it as a trade good, keep all my colonists on a default no drugs policy (changed the default to deny all of them)

[Kadjai]

Gotcha, so make it for that depressive person who might otherwise break. Otherwise just sell it.

Or not bother making / researching it at all. Seems like there's a big drug component of this game that has very little incentive...

[GhostLee03]

personaly think its good for selling and can always help with a mentle breck with low chances of addiction

[M.K.]

Beer: Cons:
Takes a teensy bit of effort to make.
Potential for abuse by chemheads.
Reduces manipulation by 2%.
Some increased chance of social fight.
Needs to be managed carefully, to get best benefit and least disruption.

Beer:Pro:
Provides an additional pathway of recreation (chemical)
Provides an instant boost to recreation level using very little time. About the same as playing horseshoes for a third of the day.
Provides a long lasting, small (+10) mood buff.
Reduces pain, a bit, which *also* produces a small but longlasting mood buff if the drinker has scars/mechanites/whatever.

So in summary, you have a cheap product, easy enough to make, quick to consume, that saves your pawn about 1/4 of a working day's worth of recreation-wasted time, and makes him 10-25 points happier for the rest of the day.

[Immortalits]

Personally I've never used drugs other than luciferium in the long run.
I've only once made a production chain for go-juice, but after my pawns started to become resistant to the effect, I've steeled myself and suffered a 20+ day of slowpoke colony... then I've decided to only use luciferium, it doesn't have any side effects, only positives, while no drug tolerance reducing the effects. (along with penox, but that's effectively a vaccine, not a drug)

[KalkiKrosah]

I think out of all the drugs it is the best one. Smokeleaf and psychite tea aren't bad either.

Beer really isn't addictive in moderation. Your colonists only drink one beer per sitting so they are very unlikely to binge on it outside of a mental break. The debuff from one beer is insignificant and short lived. It can be mass produced and doesn't require a high growing skill or cooking skill to produce. The only painful part about making beer is keeping the temperature of the room it gets brewed in at a constant safe temperature. This is easy to do with modern tech but tribals may struggle with this if they live in one of the more extreme biomes.

[alexandercasehart]

I use it for trade mostly. After the growers have planted all the necessary crops (usually in a mature colony), hops get planted. They're harvested and put into their own freezer next to a dedicated brewery room full of fermentation tanks. By the time we get to mid-winter, most repairs and mining has been finished and a colonist or two can be spared to start brewing the beer. By the next fall when a new hop harvest comes in, it's fermented and gets sold off.

Like the above posters, I also use it for a mood boost *when necessary*. I keep it off limits most of the time, but when moods are dropping really low for whatever reason (moderate/severe psychic drone, too many organs harvested from prisoners or too many prisoners dying, a bonded pet died), I manually tell the colonists who are in need of a boost to go have a beer. Helps prevent people from going nuts and burning down the house.

[noobscifi]

Beer and joints for me are made to sell, but I force colonists to use them as needed to stop major break risks. Never had an addiction or health issue even with chemical fascinated pawns. Harder drugs are loot only and sold off ASAP.

[Monoxide]

IIRC you can put beer/smokeweed on an every x days regimen and have little risk (or no risk?) of addiction. With that in mind, I set both of these low end drugs to once a day IF mood/joy is below 40%. Earlier in the game it can help hold off breaks a bit.

[The Great Glumbini]

I don't find alcoholism to be too rampant, perhaps because I also have lots of smokeleaf and chocolate as well. I think the more recreational options you have, the less likely colonists are to develop addictions, since they won't always choose to drink. Psychites tend to be much more addictive though, and I find once people get a taste for yayo, they'll almost always drink tea or snort yayo instead of drinking beer, smokeleaf or chocolate. Keep your beer, chocolate and recreational drugs on shelves in your recreation room, so all of your recreation options are in the same place, this makes sure they have plenty of options instead of just smoking or drinking all the time because the drug/beer stockpile was closer at the time. If they happen to develop an addiction however, they'll start ignoring the other options more often than not.

To answer your question about usefulness, I can give you the same answer for all recreational drugs: They can be used to quickly fill recreation, which can sometimes allow colonists to keep working during recreation time because their need for it is already full. Alternatively, if it's early in the work day, a colonist seems upset and you're worried they might break before their rec time, you can tell them to go drink a beer or smoke a joint. This will help them relax a bit and get their stress out so they can continue working for the day instead of having a mental break. Lastly, if neither of the above really interests you beer and drugs make very good bargaining chips for most merchants, so I like to keep a large stockpile to trade. I've made enough money from yayo, smokeleaf and beer where I literally had to refloor my rec room with silver tiles just because my silver was starting to take up too much stockpile room.

All in all; Beer Good.