Fridges?

[Silky Rough]

The (presumably) new spoiling mechanic is catching me with heaps of food spoiling way faster than I'd expect. Base was humming previously now I'm throwing food away.

Do I need to build a freezer room or something? What have I missed here?

PS: And to head off the usual nonsense on this forum, it's not a complaint, it's a question.

[Cotaks]

Originally posted by Silky Rough:

Do I need to build a freezer room or something? What have I missed here?

Yes and you missed the patch notes ;), It needs to be cold now.

[chaney]

Powered fridges will slow but not stop spoiling.

Deep Freeze (-18 C or colder) will help.
Sterile Atmosphere will help.
Deep Freeze and Sterile Atmosphere together stop spoiling.

[Silky Rough]

Originally posted by Cotaks:

Originally posted by Silky Rough:

Do I need to build a freezer room or something? What have I missed here?

Yes and you missed the patch notes ;)

Patch notes I read said it now aligns with DLC. I don't play the DLC.

Originally posted by chaney:

Powered fridges will slow but not stop spoiling.
Deep Freeze (-18 C or colder) will help.
Sterile Atmosphere will help.
Deep Freeze and Sterile Atmosphere together stop spoiling.

Odd thing though, room is 12c, food is 1c. I'm watching it spoil. Seems too fast.

Oh well, I'll experiment. Thanks for the tips.

[chaney]

Not certain - I think spoiling is based on the surrounding temperature (e.g. CO2) not the food temperature, unless stored in a vacuum in which case it is based on the food temperature. A detail I saw "somewhere" but suspect is true.

[Silky Rough]

Originally posted by chaney:

Not certain - I think spoiling is based on the surrounding temperature (e.g. CO2) not the food temperature, unless stored in a vacuum in which case it is based on the food temperature. A detail I saw "somewhere" but suspect is true.

You're right I think.

I now have a fridge in a Co2 room, ambient temp is 1c, food still 1c. The sterile room shows 0% added spoil. Still not cold enough with 5% added spoil despite ambient being 11c lower.

[chaney]

The "Food Storage" section of https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Food_(Resource)#Sterile_Atmosphere
may help.

[Silky Rough]

Originally posted by chaney:

The "Food Storage" section of https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Food_(Resource)#Sterile_Atmosphere
may help.

Thank you for that. My numbers for what I thought was happening are still out though.

Need to run more tests. Currently a sterile room is a -1%/cycle improvement which is hardly worth the effort. All the effort needs to be in freezing the room which makes fridges themselves redundant.

[AlexMBrennan]

Technically speaking you do not need to store 47 trillion kcal in a freezer - you just need the food to last until the next harvest. If uneaten food rots then you could just stop overproducing food.

[caseyas435943]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Technically speaking you do not need to store 47 trillion kcal in a freezer - you just need the food to last until the next harvest. If uneaten food rots then you could just stop overproducing food.

Kind of hard to make the exact amount of food you need.

Yes you can look it up. But what if something goes wrong? Now you don't have enough food.

Should something go wrong? No. But harvesting food. If you don't get it harvesting right away for some reason. Now Dupes go hungry.

Make more and it spoils. Making you go through yet another liquid lock. Why the company thinks these are fun or interesting to build is beyond me. They must think they fun because everything to add to the game makes you build more and more of them.

I'm probably done with this game. The direction they are going isn't fun or interesting. It's just tedious and boring. If that good game design then they'll be rich.

The food change was silly. Their words was to remove an exploit for storing food. Really? ONI is nothing but exploiting game mechanics the biggest one is 1 tiny drop of liquid can hold back the whole map (liquid locks). That's not an exploit? Really. But food. Oh no. Can't do that. Let's make is tedious. What fun? Not really.

We see once the patch they put out actually works Ill give it a go. But I don't see anything they've added worth the pain of doing to keep playing. Just keep forcing more and more liquid locks? My God why do they think these are fun or interesting?

[Mihle]

I personally do not find fridges tedious

[chaney]

"Kind of hard to make the exact amount of food you need."

Even pedantic I do not read AlexMBrennan with that much constraint. The point is that instead of overproducing and having a century worth of stockpile, you can have a couple of harvests worth of stockpiled food. Instead of growing that practical tactical supply without limit, just make food as fast as you are consuming it with a comfortable buffer for safety. It actually seems liberating to know that you don't need more Hatch death machines just because there is space for more food. No liquid lock is required if you are not feeling compelled to stockpile limitless food that will never rot.

[Silky Rough]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Technically speaking you do not need to store 47 trillion kcal in a freezer - you just need the food to last until the next harvest. If uneaten food rots then you could just stop overproducing food.

Food rotting hasn't been an issue. With the changes, now it is, so I posted to get that sorted. Thanks for the advice nonetheless.

[Ekimmak]

Overproducing is better than not producing enough. And now I can't tell whether the sudden drop in kCal is because the new duplicants are eating more than I produce, or because it's simply the point where a lot of the stale food becomes rot.

There's also the pain that Duplicants will always eat fresh food before stale food, meaning the AI is working against your sustainability. You want fridges to get actual use? Fine. But I should have a way to prevent spoilage at all that doesn't involve a very long walk to another biome when dupes want to eat.

[chaney]

If you colony is operating in a quasi-steady manner and your stockpile of food was growing, then you were producing more than they were eating. Keep up your production and let the excess stockpile go, no big deal. It seems likely simpler Refrigerators will slow rot enough to keep the dupes fed.

If you run up a food surplus then shut down food production periodically, then you may run into problems. I have not read of many people doing such a thing, but it is a situation that this change would effect.

[Silky Rough]

Originally posted by chaney:

If you colony is operating in a quasi-steady manner and your stockpile of food was growing, then you were producing more than they were eating. Keep up your production and let the excess stockpile go, no big deal. It seems likely simpler Refrigerators will slow rot enough to keep the dupes fed.

If you run up a food surplus then shut down food production periodically, then you may run into problems. I have not read of many people doing such a thing, but it is a situation that this change would effect.

For mine, this change, under the guise of preventing 'exploiting', will only encourage overproduction and hoarding early game, not reduce it. The alternatives are to stick to garbage food until you can build a freezer, or keep dupe count low, prolonging the early game.

It won't stop 'exploiting' because we can build a freezer and save whatever we want with zero spoil later, when it doesn't matter.

All I see is an extra early game step that makes worse what it seeks to solve.