How do my floors get dirty?

[Joshua]

Aside from cleaning is there a way to reduce it? If I put floor tiles at the entrance to my home will the dirt go there instead of my rooms? Or is the chance of dropping dirt constant for everywhere in my home?

[gussmed]

Here are the mechanics as I understand them:

1. Colonists walking on dirt pick up dirt on their feet. When they walk on flooring, it eventually transfers. If you pave everything you'll get less dirt, but of course colonists that must walk on dirt (for farming or whatever) are still going to track some in.

Which means if you have flooring in your houses, rather than dirt floors, you want paved sidewalks. Dirt may end up on the sidewalks, but at least it's not lowering bedroom ratings there.

I had a high-fertility crop field in the middle of my town. I walled it off so only the farmers would walk into it, not just colonists going from point A to point B. That helped.

2. Most animals produce filth, but only when walking on flooring. Zone your livestock so they can't walk through your paved areas. If you have a barn, leave the floor dirt.

If you've got filth-producing haulers like donkeys or horses, have them drop stuff on in a shed with a dirt floor, and don't let them walk on your paved streets.

Dogs, surprisingly, are house trained, and don't produce filth. Huskies can haul stuff inside the house without pooping on the floor.

You can look up the "filth production" stat in the help for the creature.

3. Colonists randomly produce trash on paved floors. It's not dirt, and it's not filth, it's litter. It's random and you can't avoid it. They don't dump it on dirt floors (or maybe the game thinks it just doesn't matter since it's dirt).

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Joshua:

Aside from cleaning is there a way to reduce it? If I put floor tiles at the entrance to my home will the dirt go there instead of my rooms? Or is the chance of dropping dirt constant for everywhere in my home?

Dirt/Filth can stack on a tile. Colonists walking over that tile can pick up stacks of filth and then deposit them elsewhere. I think the upper limit is something like a 12+ "stacks" or something like that.

No tiles in vanilla will reduce filth. You'd think that cobblestone paths would help, but they don't... (At least AFAIK for 1.0. I haven't checked for 1.1.)

I have two guilty pleasure mods in Rimworld... One is "Rimfridge" and the other?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1505423207

This allows you to build "Doormats" which forcibly collect Filth stacks from pawns walking over them. That dramatically reduces the number of stacks that can be tracked throughout your interiors. Note: It's not really "cheaty" as it still requires the same work to remove the collected filth. It's just neatly in one location. :)

Animals with a Wildness rating of "0" will not produce any Filth. The more wildness a tamed animal has, the more filth it will produce. Tamed animals with a wildness above 0 are the usual suspects for large problems with filth inside a base.

Having a dedicated Cleaner, when you can afford to do that, is key to having a clean base. Barring that, expand your home zone outside of entrances so those areas get cleaned and can thus have filth dropped on them first, before the pawns get inside. "Trash" is a different kind of Filth and, AFAIK, gets randomly generated by pawns.

When needed, manually order Cleaning in key areas. Kitchen, Medical area, Research. Do not put buildable objects that have intrinsic +Filth values associated with them, like Butchering Tables, in places that you need to have "Clean." They'll contribute to the Filth score regardless of how clean the floor in the room appears. (Don't butcher meat in the ktichen... :))

[Kittenpox]

If you're inclined to use mods, there are a few which cause rain to remove filth from the floor, which helps outside areas stay cleaned.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1508341791
Not specifically what you're after, but may assist in easing the overall cleaning load - especially if you have Wargs or other untidy animals Hauling things through your base, and leaving mess everywhere.

[Joshua]

I was wondering why my kitchen was getting dirty because my cook just moves from freezer to kitchen. But my freezer was dirty so maybe he transferred the dirt from there.

One thing I realised is that kitchen size matters. Food poisoning is based on the kitchen cleanliness and the cook's skill. Cleanliness of the kitchen is not the total amount of dirt in it, but it is the average cleanliness of a tile. So if you have two dirty tiles in a small kitchen that's going to be way worse than two dirty tiles in a large kitchen.

[The Pistol Experience]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Joshua:

Aside from cleaning is there a way to reduce it? If I put floor tiles at the entrance to my home will the dirt go there instead of my rooms? Or is the chance of dropping dirt constant for everywhere in my home?

Dirt/Filth can stack on a tile. Colonists walking over that tile can pick up stacks of filth and then deposit them elsewhere. I think the upper limit is something like a 12+ "stacks" or something like that.

No tiles in vanilla will reduce filth. You'd think that cobblestone paths would help, but they don't... (At least AFAIK for 1.0. I haven't checked for 1.1.)

I have two guilty pleasure mods in Rimworld... One is "Rimfridge" and the other?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1505423207

This allows you to build "Doormats" which forcibly collect Filth stacks from pawns walking over them. That dramatically reduces the number of stacks that can be tracked throughout your interiors. Note: It's not really "cheaty" as it still requires the same work to remove the collected filth. It's just neatly in one location. :)

Animals with a Wildness rating of "0" will not produce any Filth. The more wildness a tamed animal has, the more filth it will produce. Tamed animals with a wildness above 0 are the usual suspects for large problems with filth inside a base.

Having a dedicated Cleaner, when you can afford to do that, is key to having a clean base. Barring that, expand your home zone outside of entrances so those areas get cleaned and can thus have filth dropped on them first, before the pawns get inside. "Trash" is a different kind of Filth and, AFAIK, gets randomly generated by pawns.

When needed, manually order Cleaning in key areas. Kitchen, Medical area, Research. Do not put buildable objects that have intrinsic +Filth values associated with them, like Butchering Tables, in places that you need to have "Clean." They'll contribute to the Filth score regardless of how clean the floor in the room appears. (Don't butcher meat in the ktichen... :))

The OP part of the Door Mat mod is that you can construct a entrê. Basically a small room with nothing but a door mat, and thus receive next to no filth inside your main living area. Even then if filth is not being produced. Trash will be produced and dropped everywhere instead.

[Jigain]

Originally posted by Dapper:

The OP part of the Door Mat mod is that you can construct a entrê. Basically a small room with nothing but a door mat, and thus receive next to no filth inside your main living area.

I mean... what's what doormats do. It's kind of their purpose.

I'll throw in a life hack here. This works in real life too! Crazy, I know! In my living space, I've got this main door that leads Outside(tm), and ever since I put a doormat there, the amount of sand, gravel, and dirt in my apartment has rapidly decreased! I sent a mail to the company that produced my doormat to explain to them it's too OP and they should fix it, but I haven't gotten a reply yet.

:)

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Dapper:

...
The OP part of the Door Mat mod is that you can construct a entrê. Basically a small room with nothing but a door mat, and thus receive next to no filth inside your main living area. Even then if filth is not being produced. Trash will be produced and dropped everywhere instead.

It still has to be cleaned and the original mod, and this one, only collects just so much until it won't collect further stacks. Each unit still requires the same amount of work to be removed from the Mat, too.

The OP part is that the Filth is collected in one place so the Cleaner doesn't have to run all around the room(s).

I've used it a bunch and the mats do get "filled" with Filth to the point where filth can still get tracked into living areas/hallways/etc. That's why I like the mod - It's not a "solution." It's more of a convenience mod with a bit of flavor/style.

Interestingly enough, of course, the Filth value is still retained. So, for instance, you don't want to put Doormats on the inside of colonist's bedrooms or it will count against the value for the room.

As you suggest, a hallway with a line of Doormats can create a "cleanroom" kind of environment for the interior spaces - It's almost impossible for any filth to get past that kind of "sticky-mat cleanroom" design. :) (Since I generally have multiple entrances to my interior spaces, I don't do a bunch of that.)

And, yes, I love this nifty little mod. Simple, precise, efficient, with nice role-play flavor and "common sense." :)

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by Joshua:

I was wondering why my kitchen was getting dirty because my cook just moves from freezer to kitchen. But my freezer was dirty so maybe he transferred the dirt from there.

Best practice for this is to make the stove area ~10 tiles away from your butcher station, and keep your butcher station in its own small room next to the freezer. Have this butcher station separate and not part of your main path between the kitchen and the freezer so people aren't always tracking blood around. So kinda... A rectangular freezer that is 11x20. On one end is an airlock area with a butcher table. On the other end is your second airlock near your kitchen, dining room, and entryway.

A tiled entryway separate from your kitchen/dining room is also a fairly good idea to keeping your filth concentrated. Once you develop sterile materials you can improve things by having this entryway, the 9 tiles around your kitchen, and your butcher airlock be tiled with sterile tile.

Eventually, the game will give you a colonist that isn't particularly skilled at anything, has no useful passions, or has traits that don't work well with typical hunting, defense, production. Turning this person into a dedicated cleaner can save you from countless problems, particularly if you're building under a mountain. Even if they have unwanted traits like staggeringly ugly, creepy voice, misogynist, ect, you can usually schedule them to work at times opposite to everyone else, and set them up in their own isolated bedroom down the hall to keep them from spoiling the mood of your other colonists... Just like real life servants.

[gussmed]

You guys are whipsawing me on the door mat mod.

On the one hand, I hate how cleaning works in the game. I'm fine with it as a general mechanic, but even after tweaking my base to improve cleaning problems (as I outlined above), it feels like the cleaning never gets done. I've got 20 colonists now and 3 of them revert to cleaning after getting small tasks done, and they're always cleaning. It just feels like dirt and trash generation is excessive.

To be clear, the interior of my base is generally pretty clean, but the cleaners always end up wandering around cleaning... stuff. Areas of rock that I don't really care about, for example. Somehow they're always finding dirt somewhere.

At first blush the doormat mod seemed like reasonable, non-cheaty way of solving that, but then the objections seem reasonable too. It feels like you could use the doormats to keep dirt away from the areas you care about too easily. Even if they do fill up and need to be cleaned now and then.

[Jigain]

Not all dirt. Just the one type that's being spread by your pawns tracking through the stuff. You'll still have litter (pawns randomly generating trash) and animals (who do not wipe their feet) to deal with.

The doormat aside, I always tend to have at least one person dedicated to cleaning, with some small side jobs that are unimportant for backup if everything truly is spick-and-span. Maybe a second and third towards end-game. Never really have trouble with filth, with or without doormats.