Question about Open Doors

[WarWise]

Ok, I understand why doors are important. If you make them heavy, it takes a lot of time for pawns to open them. Open doors also allow heat to pass, at least slowly.
Im wondering about keeping doors permanently open.
Is there any debuff about it? If you leave bedrooms doors open, do pawns get any debuff. What about room beauty or anything else?
Instead of using autodoors Im prone to just create doors made of whatever material, leave them permanentely open and close them if the need arises.
What is your opinion?

[Gunner]

no debuffs , and beauty depends on material of door i think

[HunterSilver]

Open doors still make a room count as enclosed but present the issue that they don't block noise and animals. For bedrooms this means that people walking by the bedroom can cause the 'Disturbed Sleep' unhappy thought, which can compound to a pretty hefty negative for anyone trying to sleep.

For storage areas, animals can wander in and consume food. Open doors also do not prevent prisoners from moving about as they please and even allowing them to make escape attempts.

Overall it's fine for most rooms but for sleeping spaces, hospitals, prisons, and food storage it might be best to leave doors closed.

[gimmethegepgun]

Generally you should keep external doors closed to keep wild animals and enemy raiders out, and keep your temperature regulated if outside isn't a temperature you want. Internal doors can generally be left open without penalty except for prisons and the freezer.

[WarWise]

Thanks guys.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by WarWise:

...
What is your opinion?

For all interior spaces and workspace access, it's wooden doors all around. I will power wooden doors for freezer areas and some access points if I notice significantly decreased efficiency issues. But, wooden doors are fast.

For outer defenses/walls, I'll generally use some sort of stone for the door material.

That's it. There's no reasonable reason to use anything but wood for doors with the occasional door that may need to provide some resistance to raiders being made of available stone.

I've never deviated from the above except when experimenting or just "playing around." I've never once considered "beauty" as meaningful for a door. That may be because it doesn't contribute to that stat or it's relatively meaningless - Some things are just muscle-memory, these days, with the reasons behind the actions forgotten, having being learned in the Long Ago Times...

[frumple]

Steel doors are quickest to open. Wood a little slower.
Where speed is important, use steel autodoors.
When HP is vital (prison, outer walls to deal with manhunters or raiders) use Uranium autodoors.
If Uranium is not an option, use Granite autodoors. They're about as quick as wood doors.
Stone doors of any type are immune to fire.

Uranium doors and autodoors have 400 HP, Granite 270. Everything else has less. Remember that it's possible to repair doors even when they're being attacked from the other side.

Generally, you want to keep outer doors closed to keep wild animals out. There is no convenient way to close doors quickly in case of a raid, so keeping all doors open is going to end badly eventually.
My advice is to use steel and eventually switch to steel or wood autodoors once components and electricity are not a concern.

[SuburbanHermit]

Originally posted by frumple:

Steel doors are quickest to open. Wood a little slower.

I thought wood was faster? Unless I missed something in an update.

[Astasia]

The main issue with leaving a bunch of doors open around your base is internal defense, and specifically infestations or center drop raids. If a door is held open, raiders can see what's on the other side, and they can path directly to it. If you have your workshops open they are going to go break your machines, if you have your powerstation open they are going to go break your generators, if you have your farms held open they are going to go burn your fields, etc. If everything is closed then these attacks are generally pretty contained to the area they drop into and you can form a centralized defense position or draw them out to a specific area you want. If everything is open these attacks will spread out and do a ton of damage and controlling them will require a lot more moving around. The danger of these raids is not to your colonists usually, it's a smaller number of enemies or easier enemies to deal with, the danger is in how much they destroying having instant access to your internals.

If you have a door you are considering holding open because it gets a lot of traffic, replace it with an auto-door. By late game most of the doors in my base are plasteel auto-doors, though I usually keep bedroom doors as just normal wood doors because those are fast enough for how often they are used.

Originally posted by frumple:

Steel doors are quickest to open. Wood a little slower.

You have that backwards. Wood is 120% door open speed, steel is 100%. Plasteel is also 100% and is generally more than fast enough for auto-doors.

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by Astasia:

You have that backwards. Wood is 120% door open speed, steel is 100%. Plasteel is also 100% and is generally more than fast enough for auto-doors.

I believe both plasteel and uranium autodoors effectively have 0 opening time and plasteel actually has more health. I know that plasteel has a flammability multiplier of 0.1 but I believe plasteel autodoors have 0% flammability regardless. In either case you're correct, it absolutely is fast enough, and you can build them out of either material, whatever you have excess of at the time.

[frumple]

Originally posted by Astasia:

The main issue with leaving a bunch of doors open around your base is internal defense, and specifically infestations or center drop raids. If a door is held open, raiders can see what's on the other side, and they can path directly to it. If you have your workshops open they are going to go break your machines, if you have your powerstation open they are going to go break your generators, if you have your farms held open they are going to go burn your fields, etc. If everything is closed then these attacks are generally pretty contained to the area they drop into and you can form a centralized defense position or draw them out to a specific area you want. If everything is open these attacks will spread out and do a ton of damage and controlling them will require a lot more moving around. The danger of these raids is not to your colonists usually, it's a smaller number of enemies or easier enemies to deal with, the danger is in how much they destroying having instant access to your internals.

Well said.

If you have a door you are considering holding open because it gets a lot of traffic, replace it with an auto-door. By late game most of the doors in my base are plasteel auto-doors, though I usually keep bedroom doors as just normal wood doors because those are fast enough for how often they are used.

Agree about autodoors. I pick stone doors for bedrooms though. They won't burn down and i often use spare bedrooms as ad-hoc prisons in the early to mid game. Wooden doors are bashed in seconds by prisoners on a mental break.

Originally posted by frumple:

Steel doors are quickest to open. Wood a little slower.

You have that backwards. Wood is 120% door open speed, steel is 100%. Plasteel is also 100% and is generally more than fast enough for auto-doors.

The wiki has been lying to me then. I haven't noticed steel being slower though. Much like you, i switch to autodoors, though i prefer uranium because i have no use for it, and it's hard to sell it. Or steel autodoors for busy pathways where no delay is important.
Plasteel is needed for crafting things. Back in the Alpha days it was plentiful enough to make benches out of, but these days it's pretty rare.

[Burki from Turki]

Keeping them permanenlty open allows raiders to pass through.
Which is a mechanic I exploit while making heat mazes.

[Kittenpox]

When it comes to Door Speed / Flammability, I use Jade doors for that purpose. Pricey, but an option. :-)

[frumple]

Originally posted by Kittenpox:

When it comes to Door Speed / Flammability, I use Jade doors for that purpose. Pricey, but an option. :-)

Would that not be a little risky? Jade doors are very weak, and raise wealth. I don't normally care about wealth though, just the HP.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by frumple:

Originally posted by Kittenpox:

When it comes to Door Speed / Flammability, I use Jade doors for that purpose. Pricey, but an option. :-)

Would that not be a little risky? Jade doors are very weak, and raise wealth. I don't normally care about wealth though, just the HP.

Fragile when attacked, but not flammable - which is the main issue I use them for - and if I'm using jade on outward-facing doors rather than internal doors (which remain wood) then the price of them shouldn't be disastrous, certainly not when compared to my food stockpile etc.

I guess I don't play on high enough difficulties that it has ever come up. I build walls out of granite (lined internally with another wall for insulation) but don't usually worry about doors except where opening speed is concerned. :-)

[Astasia]

Jade is fairly low value, using jade to build stuff out of isn't going to raise building wealth noticeably. Back when it was a small material it may have been a more realistic concern.

Assuming the beauty bonus works as expected on a door, that would be a pretty solid option for bedroom doors. I hadn't realized jade no longer has similar penalties as the other stone blocks anymore, jade doors used to be just as slow as the other stones.