So, I wanted to share a few thoughts and observations that I had and made when testing different comfort configurations in domes, because I did not realize a few of those things, particularly the interplay of residence vs service comfort, until quite recently. Wall of text incoming.
EDIT: Despite pretty extensive testing I still misunderstood some things. Updated.
The Basics: Every colonist has a number of interests they will try to satisfy daily. For a colonist with no traits or specialization these are social, relaxation and shopping. When adopting a specialization, a colonist will lose 1 interest in favor of a different one depending on their specialization -- see here. Certain traits like workaholic or glutton will also influence these interests, but almost all colonists will share at least two of the "base" interests, which means you can, and should, mostly worry about satisfying them. Every colonist also wants to eat a meal at either a grocer or a diner every day; if they are unable to do so, they will take a special "unprepared meal" comfort malus of -3 in addition to the standard -10 malus for being unable to satisfy an interest. This means that satisfying social + food with diners and shopping + food with grocers should usually be a priority over relaxation and other needs.
Comfort capacity: Almost all service buildings can maximally serve (max visitors)*6 visitors if they run 3 shits, except parks, which for some reason seem to be capped at 4*max visitors daily. So up to randomness of colonist interests, a building running 3 shifts will have the capacity to satisfy one interest of (max visitors)*6 colonists, or 2 interests of (max visitors)*6 colonists. It's important to remember that every colonists eats a meal every day, so to satisfy social + food for 60 colonists, you need at least 2 diners, one for 60 daily meals, and one for 60 social interests. So to completely satisfy 60 "vanilla" colonists with interests social, relaxation, shopping and food, you will need either 2 space bars (60 social 60 relax) and 2.5 grocers (60 food + 60 shopping), or 1.25 art stores ( 60 shopping), 2 diners (60 meal 60 social) and 1.5 large parks (60 relax). Compared to a space bar, a diner + 7 park hexes has the lower service comfort for relaxation, but a higher capacity (30 social 30 food or 60 social + 28 relax vs 30 social 30 relax), so I generally consider it superior.
Food comfort, interest comfort, residence comfort:
If a colonist cannot satisfy a need, they will take a -10 hit. If they can, their comfort will rise by +10 for low service comfort buildings or more for higher service comfort buildings if their current comfort is below service comfort. This means you do not need to satisfy every need of every colonist, in particular if you have high service comfort buildings, but it is generally a good idea to satisfy more than half. The penalty for unprepared food (grocers/diners full) is only -3, but will be taken every day, instead of only on the days the colonist randomly picked the interest that was missing a service. For this reason, and because grocers are by far your cheapest shopping option, it is generally a good idea to fill food +shopping and/or food + social with grocers/diners first, and relaxation and other needs last. Almost all colonist will be interested in both social and shopping, so it does not hurt to overdo your food capacity a little using both grocers and diners.
Notable exceptions are botanists, who only want to shop, and scientists, who only want to socialize, so you will want to lean more towards grocers/diners to satisfy food in farm/science heavy domes.
Colonists will also receive a +6 bonus when resting if their current comfort is below the comfort of their residence.
High Comfort and Basic Comfort: A colonist's comfort will only increase if their current comfort is below the service they visit. It will only decrease if a service is completely missed. If a colonists satisfies their social need with service comfort 70 daily, it does not matter if they satisfy their shopping need with comfort 60 or 50, or if the comfort of their residence is 69 or 35. For this reason, I find it convenient to distinguish two kinds of comfort in each dome:
EDIT: Despite pretty extensive testing I still misunderstood some things. Updated.
The Basics: Every colonist has a number of interests they will try to satisfy daily. For a colonist with no traits or specialization these are social, relaxation and shopping. When adopting a specialization, a colonist will lose 1 interest in favor of a different one depending on their specialization -- see here. Certain traits like workaholic or glutton will also influence these interests, but almost all colonists will share at least two of the "base" interests, which means you can, and should, mostly worry about satisfying them. Every colonist also wants to eat a meal at either a grocer or a diner every day; if they are unable to do so, they will take a special "unprepared meal" comfort malus of -3 in addition to the standard -10 malus for being unable to satisfy an interest. This means that satisfying social + food with diners and shopping + food with grocers should usually be a priority over relaxation and other needs.
Comfort capacity: Almost all service buildings can maximally serve (max visitors)*6 visitors if they run 3 shits, except parks, which for some reason seem to be capped at 4*max visitors daily. So up to randomness of colonist interests, a building running 3 shifts will have the capacity to satisfy one interest of (max visitors)*6 colonists, or 2 interests of (max visitors)*6 colonists. It's important to remember that every colonists eats a meal every day, so to satisfy social + food for 60 colonists, you need at least 2 diners, one for 60 daily meals, and one for 60 social interests. So to completely satisfy 60 "vanilla" colonists with interests social, relaxation, shopping and food, you will need either 2 space bars (60 social 60 relax) and 2.5 grocers (60 food + 60 shopping), or 1.25 art stores ( 60 shopping), 2 diners (60 meal 60 social) and 1.5 large parks (60 relax). Compared to a space bar, a diner + 7 park hexes has the lower service comfort for relaxation, but a higher capacity (30 social 30 food or 60 social + 28 relax vs 30 social 30 relax), so I generally consider it superior.
Food comfort, interest comfort, residence comfort:
If a colonist cannot satisfy a need, they will take a -10 hit. If they can, their comfort will rise by +10 for low service comfort buildings or more for higher service comfort buildings if their current comfort is below service comfort. This means you do not need to satisfy every need of every colonist, in particular if you have high service comfort buildings, but it is generally a good idea to satisfy more than half. The penalty for unprepared food (grocers/diners full) is only -3, but will be taken every day, instead of only on the days the colonist randomly picked the interest that was missing a service. For this reason, and because grocers are by far your cheapest shopping option, it is generally a good idea to fill food +shopping and/or food + social with grocers/diners first, and relaxation and other needs last. Almost all colonist will be interested in both social and shopping, so it does not hurt to overdo your food capacity a little using both grocers and diners.
Notable exceptions are botanists, who only want to shop, and scientists, who only want to socialize, so you will want to lean more towards grocers/diners to satisfy food in farm/science heavy domes.
Colonists will also receive a +6 bonus when resting if their current comfort is below the comfort of their residence.
High Comfort and Basic Comfort: A colonist's comfort will only increase if their current comfort is below the service they visit. It will only decrease if a service is completely missed. If a colonists satisfies their social need with service comfort 70 daily, it does not matter if they satisfy their shopping need with comfort 60 or 50, or if the comfort of their residence is 69 or 35. For this reason, I find it convenient to distinguish two kinds of comfort in each dome:
- Basic comfort: The only function of these buildings is to make sure a colonist does not eat the -10 penalty for a service missing. Service comfort does not matter, and you should pick the cheapest possible option. Examples are the grocer for shopping, parks for relaxation, and a diner with 1 person each shift or a gym for social, depending on whether or not food is sufficiently satisfied. Note that while a gym is larger than a diner, you will need to house and feed the staff of the diner, which means that total space usage is effectively pretty close. Since service comfort does not matter, basic comfort can be "exported" to another dome via a dome passage with no downside.
- High comfort: The buildings that are meant to increase colonists' comfort to the maximum they can be in this dome. One option for these is a manned dome service building, like a fully staffed diner, clinics and medical centers with the rejuvenation treatment upgrade, and spacebars/casinos. Art/electronics store in principal do the same job, but are too expensive in my book (see above). The second option for your highest comfort in the dome is a high comfort residence. As mentioned before, if you have high comfort service buildings, you will not need high comfort residences, and vice versa. So you will optimally want to pick and pursue one of the two. Which leads us to...
- Urban comfort dome: The classic strategy of most players. You can mostly ignore residence comfort (i.e. use apartments) as long as you have one or more high comfort service buildings, and basic comfort satisfaction for more than half of all needs (i.e. fill food, mostly ignore rest). A diner running heavy workloads will often be your best early high comfort option. Once you get to rejuvenation treatment clinics and med centers or casinos, you can ignore an increasing percentage of colonist needs, since their bonus of +20 or more on each visit will compensate for a lot of missing/full service malus.
- Rural comfort dome: The opposite strategy: Highest comfort are your residences. This will generally mean living complexes or arcology with some other bonuses. The daily comfort increase of a residence is mostly only +6, which means you will need to satisfy most needs with basic comfort, because you can maximally eat one -10 malus in 2 days if you want to increase comfort. The upside is that in a good situation, you can generate a lot of comfort for a lot of people with very little investment in manpower and materials. The base comfort of a living complex is 50. On this you can add the following effects: vistas (stack), dome bioscaping (+15 in smaller domes), biome engineering (+5 for each farm in the dome), home collective upgrade (+10), hanging gardens (+30), and the arcology breakthrough. As an example: After researching the dome bioscaping and biome engineering techs, living complexes in a barrel dome with 2 farms will have comfort 75, and raise average comfort to 81+ with only parks, gyms and grocers. Later, your biggest asset will usually be the hanging gardens with their insane +30 comfort, which means that your living complexes basically get free art store visits.
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