Dirty rooms ><

[Whyyme]

i have a situation where i have a kitchen 3x10 connected to a freezer 3x20 and dirt just keeps pileing up in the kitchen from all the haulers carrying in food from outside to freeze/for cooking use. any suggestions?

[Hedgie]

More paths or more cleaners should help

[Gamefever]

Dirt is built up by number of pawns moving through a room. All pawns both animal and human cause a build up of dirt per time entered into a room.

So having kitchen seperate from storage is a big deal. Coming up with a way so haulers wont move through kitchen to get to storage is a big deal.
Another simple trick is to put a storage shelf in dining room containing the cooked meals...This way pawns that eat dont need to enter the kitchen or storage to get food.

Main thing is to keep the cooking area clean and free from dirt. Food problems are caused by dirt in the kitchen when the food is cooked. So if we can ideal is to just have only cooks moving through the kitchen an dropping off meals too dining room or food storage.

So if Dining Room has access to a shelf of cooked meals, diners dont need to access the kitchen or the food storage, although how dirty food storage is does not matter...Its just how dirty kitchen is upon cooking.

Cooked meals have 5 days under normal temperature before spoiled so you dont need to keep them cold. Typically a stack size is 10 and a shelf stores 2 stacks of 10. Which should actually be enough shelf space to feed 10 pawns twice in a day before restock.

Other than that, "sterile tiles" the very same tile you use for medical room is ideal for floors in Kitchen area.

[olympe]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1718190143

Allows you to place waste bins that do all the cleaning for you within their area of influence. 15/10, would use it again (and again and again).

[Whyyme]

Thanks guys

[Dr. Uncredible]

To build onto Hedgies suggestion, when pawns enter rooms after having walked around in dirt outside they bring dirt in, minimize this problem by making sure there are stone-tiled paths for your pawns to walk on outside of the building you keep the kitchen in, no need to have it everywhere as your pawns will prioritize walking on the tiles as it´s faster.
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Your pawns will generate -some- dirt by themselves as well, or "trash" as it´s refered to in-game, this can´t be prevented, only cleaned.
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Animals will also generate dirt, I think dogs and cats might be an exception from this, but pretty much all other animals will. Keep them out of the kitchen.
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The speed bonus on stone tiles alone is a good reason to have the base tiled in all honesty.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Dr. Uncredible:

Animals will also generate dirt, I think dogs and cats might be an exception from this, but pretty much all other animals will. Keep them out of the kitchen.

All animals have a base filth rate, which is how often they create animal filth when walking on floored surfaces (or rough stone). As stated, cats and dogs (not wolves, wargs, or big cats) never create animal filth. Other animals make it, generally based on how big it is and how wild it is.

[Dr. Uncredible]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Dr. Uncredible:

Animals will also generate dirt, I think dogs and cats might be an exception from this, but pretty much all other animals will. Keep them out of the kitchen.

All animals have a base filth rate, which is how often they create animal filth when walking on floored surfaces (or rough stone). As stated, cats and dogs (not wolves, wargs, or big cats) never create animal filth. Other animals make it, generally based on how big it is and how wild it is.

Good, solid clarification! Thanks!

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Whyyme:

i have a situation where i have a kitchen 3x10 connected to a freezer 3x20 and dirt just keeps pileing up in the kitchen from all the haulers carrying in food from outside to freeze/for cooking use. any suggestions?

Exactly what sort of stuff keeps piling up? Dirt? Filth (poop)? Blood? Clutter/Litter?

Pawns pick up filth like dirt/blood. They have a "counter" and will redeposit it randomly (I think) as they walk until the counter is depleted.

A few vanilla tips:

Always make sure your kitchen area is not directly connected to the outside or where filth is common. The more squares between that and the outside, the more chances pawns will empty their counters before reaching it.

(Note: I seem to recall something similar to what Gamefever stated about pawns generating dirt as they move between rooms. But, I'm not really sure about that. In any event, that's not something you can really control for - Pawns have to move between rooms to get raw food to the freezer. I think the mechanic Gamefever mentions is ancillary to the main causes of filth generation and tracking it, not the primary cause of it. It's something that only really comes into play for pawns that never go outside or in filthy areas.)

Cleaning jobs are absolutely necessary to have once your base reaches a certain activity level. You have to assign a pawn to cleaning and, eventually, you're going to have a pawn or two that does little else but "Clean." It's even worth feeding, house, and taking care of an extra pawn who does little else. But, IMO, it's generally not critical until the early-mid to mid gameplay stage when you're harvesting crops, have some domesticated animals being trained, end up with quite a bit of blood and such near the base, and have a strong need for clean kitchens and research areas, etc.. (So, don't dedicate one in the early game when you need every pawn working hard, just assign it as a secondary for one pawn or so at that point, if needed.)

Animals - Check their "Wildness" level. ANY Wildness above zero means the animal generates filth. (Will poop in interior base spaces.) NEVER allow such animals anywhere near your kitchen/research areas. If you need hauling animals, Retrievers and Huskies are the go-to choice, IMO - No Wildness and can Haul plus be trained for other duties. Keep all other animals zoned away from traffic areas if possible.

Construction (Exterior) - Let's say you have a kitchen separated from the Outside areas by one of the common room types or a decent hallway. The area outside the entrance door to that room/hall needs to be kept clean, too. Lots of pawns will be coming and going through there. Paving it will not stop filth generation, but it makes it much easier for you to actually "see" it accumulating. So, make sure to pave/cobble the areas where your pawns are frequently walking. It'll help speed them up and make filth easier for you to spot.

Zoning - If pawns are not Zoned so they can reach an area, they won't clean it... If some other pawns are moving through that area, being given permission by proper Zoning, and they are not assigned to Cleaning... they are not going to clean it. :) It's a very easy thing to overlook - While that one pawn is keeping the interior spaces clean because that's all they're assigned to, filth is building up in all the other areas because nobody is cleaning them and then being tracked everywhere else. Balance your needs appropriately and make sure Cleaners can reach areas to be cleaned. It can help, in some situations, to assign Cleaners to certain Zones once you have enough pawns dedicated to Cleaning. (I generally do not do that, but I don't usually have a great many pawns moving about.)

Mods... (I absolutely hate recommend mods for vanilla issues. But..:))

Rain Removes Everything/Filth - Filth outside the home area can be a problem. IIRC, a relatively recent patch allowed for or caused filth to degenerate over time or to be removed by weather effects. This is kind of a big deal as blood and other sorts of filth can accumulate and start causing performance issues. I haven't checked to be sure that patch removes all types of filth. (You'll need to check that.) But, if it doesn't remove everything, eventually, then you'll want to use a mod... I absolutely hate recommending mods for vanilla problems, but this sort of problem is in the class of "Development Oversight" IMO. The game needs to dump it's generated map-crap. :) (Rain removes everything is, IIRC, the one I used to do that. IF that patch I mentioned doesn't do it, you should run that mod simply for performance reasons.)

Doormats - I love the Doormats mod. (Make sure you get the latest version.) It is NOT an overpowered sort of mod. What it does is simple: It removes a limited number of filth/dirt counters from pawns as they walk over it and will accumulate those counters at its location up to a certain point. It must still be Cleaned by a pawn, else it will fill up and stop working to remove dirt/filth counters. This means that a cleaning pawn can remove a lot of counters of filth/dirt from one spot instead of chasing down all those counters that got dumped all over the floors in your base. It makes Cleaning a bit more efficient, but won't ever remove the challenge of keeping areas clean.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Animals - Check their "Wildness" level. ANY Wildness above zero means the animal generates filth. (Will poop in interior base spaces.) NEVER allow such animals anywhere near your kitchen/research areas. If you need hauling animals, Retrievers and Huskies are the go-to choice, IMO - No Wildness and can Haul plus be trained for other duties. Keep all other animals zoned away from traffic areas if possible.

It's specifically the filth rate, not wildness, that matters.
Wolves and wargs don't make terribly much filth and are still haulers, so barring them from the kitchen is likely to cause hauling woes and slow down your cook since they need to spend more time running around.

Though really the solution to all this is to use a nutrient paste dispenser since that gives you more food and never causes food poisoning.