Dome services discussion: A case for smart homes and against diners.

[YertyL]

So, at first a diner seems extremely neat -- 10 colonists served on 3 hexes, compared to almost all other social buildings that serve 10 colonists on 10 hexes. At the same time, smart complexes have less space than regular living complexes and cost electronics for maintenance? Miss me with that.
Except.....
Consider the following domes:

The lower 2 are most comparable: They satisfy all needs of unspecialised colonists (shopping, social, relaxation, and food) in the same space. At first, a diner + parks looks better than a space bar: Same service value (60) but 10 capacity for social plus 7 for relaxation, instead of 10 for both. There are however 2 things to note:

1. Colonists will only satisfy one of their interests every day, but eat every day. Assuming all colonists have 3 interests, that means that a 10 capacity building can on average fully serve one normal interest of 90 colonists (3 shifts per day, and only 1/3 of colonists will pick that interest that day), or two normal interests of 45 colonists, or (only) the food need of 30 colonists.
2. When a colonists with comfort below 60 visits a diner, his comfort is increased by 10 points. When a colonist with comfort below 60 visits a bar, his comfort is increased by 15 points each time (see here). This means that on average, the spacebar will increase comfort both more often and to a greater degree than the diner.

And lo and behold, when I let both domes run full for a while, the dome with 2 grocers + spacebar did quite a bit better than the dome with 2 grocers + diner + parks, at about 65 vs 60 average comfort.

Now compare the third dome from below -- regular apartments, gym + 2 parks for social + relaxation. The comfort value will be a bit lower (roughly 55 in my test), but you save 6 people in the service workforce, which saves housing, farmland, children and senior domes, etc. Housing + farming for 6 colonists will already take at least 5,5 hexes in dome space (hence me adding 2 parks for fairness), not to mention the downstream costs of "producing" and sustaining colonists. Also, the gym will make many colonists fit, which combats any health damage without cost, as well as adding the "exercise" interest that can be easily satisfied using parks and gyms. So comfort value is a bit lower, but the part of your colonists that is only there to sustain the other colonists (service + medics) is reduced by a third. Effective workforce is 56-12=44 vs 56-18=38.

Which brings me to the top dome. A smart home gives +5 health and +15 sanity each sol. In combination with a gym, this realiably makes medics obsolete. In my test the top dome does have the highest comfort, but more importantly, its effective workforce is larger than the 2 lower domes (48-6=42) and they can constantly work night shifts/heavy work loads while remaining in green health and sanity.
High comfort, health and sanity are +5 performance each, while heavy workload is +20 performance. So compared to heavy workload + clinics this means +10 production from high health and sanity while saving the workers needed for clinics (which you would need quite a few of, since clinics only have 5 capacity). I believe this is well worth the ~0.2 electronics spent per sol (2 maintenance).

TL: DR: Space bars actually often perform better than diner + 7 hexes of park at the same cost.Gyms and smart homes save you indirect costs in "unproductive" labor force (services, farmers, medics), and smart homes + gym lets you run constant heavy workloads without clinics, which can make them well worth it.

EDIT: Contrary to my previous belief, colonists actually do gain comfort from visiting food service even if that does not satisfy one of their interests (e.g. a standard botanist from visiting a diner). Updated a section.

 

[YertyL]

Some other interesting things to note when considering which services to build:

A colonist that eats an uncooked meal will lose 3 points of comfort. A colonist that cannot satisfy a service need will lose 10 comfort, but AFAIK he will only pick one interest each day. So for a colonist with 3 interests + food need, satisfying each of those interests is roughly as important as satisfying food need (-10 every 3 days vs -3 every day).
A colonist will also (potentially) gain comfort from meals and housing every day, which makes fully staffed diners a very good option if you aim for a medium comfort range (60-70), and high housing comfort pretty fantastic in general.

So to fully satisfy 90 colonists, you will need 30 "food" capacity, and 10 capacity for each interest. To only keep comfort from dropping into the red, you roughly need to satisfy half of the (3 interests + food). If enough of your colonists have social, relaxation and exercise interest, parks, gyms and housing buffs alone will be enough to keep them from falling below 40 comfort. Otherwise, a "high comfort" service building, i.e. one that will likely increase the comfort of your colonists each time they visit, is worth more than twice as much as a "low comfort" building, i.e. one that will likely only prevent a -10 malus -- diners give +10, but are visited more than once in 3 days when fully used, while every other building gives +15 or more. As an example, comfort increase from housing (+6 every day) and one space bar (at least +15 every 3 days) compensates for -3 every day from raw meals and -20 every 3 days from two services missing. The reliable +6 comfort increase from living complexes is one of the many reasons why you should almost never build appartments.

Note that it depends on the average comfort of the dome whether a building is "high" or "low" service. For example, in a dome with hanging gardens, a bar will likely be "low" service, and you could replace it with cheaper alternatives (parks, gyms) without loss in comfort. Hanging gardens in general make (almost) any other comfort service obsolete, since they have both an extremely powerful building service (+20, and every specialist wants social or relaxation) and make (non-appartment) housing give its daily +6/+5 bonus even at high comfort. This also means that in a low comfort dome, one fully staffed diner is worth more than 2 low staffed ones (or grocers), while in a high comfort dome, it is the other way around.

EDIT: Colonists do gain daily comfort from meals regardless of their interests. Updated this and clarified some other stuff.

 

[Lycrist Katkiller]

It's all fun and games till you get food fights and your dinner has 70 comfort

 

[YertyL]

It's all fun and games till you get food fights and your dinner has 70 comfort

yeah that event is pretty ridiculous. Not even a breakthrough, just an event option, altough it would be one of the most powerful breakthroughs IMO. Ofc that drastically changes the way you want to approach comfort -- same as the service bots breakthrough.

 

[Jon_Smith]

yeah that event is pretty ridiculous. Not even a breakthrough, just an event option, altough it would be one of the most powerful breakthroughs IMO. Ofc that drastically changes the way you want to approach comfort -- same as the service bots breakthrough.

I got a free Mohole tech on Sol 5 from an event once, the Random events are often absurdly over-powered. There is a reason all the Challenge Maps have them turned off because they introduce so much RNG and if you get a good roll you'll get absurd boosts to your colony.

 

[Promethian]

I didn't realize smart homes helped health so much. That does make a big difference.

I'm trying to remember how close Hanging Garden and Smart Home are in the tree. I know some randomization is present but it is tiered too. Hanging Garden is a 100 quality service that everybody uses. As long as you meet every other need it'll cap everybody in comfort eventually. It kind of nullifies all the comfort theorycrafting after the point in the game it becomes available for you. Which can be very early as one of the sponsors starts with it and one of the breakthroughs lets you order pre-builts.

 

[YertyL]

I didn't realize smart homes helped health so much. That does make a big difference.

I'm trying to remember how close Hanging Garden and Smart Home are in the tree. I know some randomization is present but it is tiered too. Hanging Garden is a 100 quality service that everybody uses. As long as you meet every other need it'll cap everybody in comfort eventually. It kind of nullifies all the comfort theorycrafting after the point in the game it becomes available for you. Which can be very early as one of the sponsors starts with it and one of the breakthroughs lets you order pre-builts.

Well, +5 health +5 sanity is the "default" resting bonus, so the contribution that smart homes themselves make is an additional +10 sanity and high housing comfort. To reliably run heavy workloads without clinics, you need colonists that are fit (+10 health resting) or visit the gym regularly (which restores 10 health or more). Which means that the smart home/gym combo works best for geologists, scientists and regular colonists who have a social interest, while engineers and botanists need to be fit to make it work.
One thing I like to do is make gyms the only social option in my university domes, so young colonists will likely become fit while being trained in a specialization, but that is not a guarantee. By my rough estimation about half of colonists become fit that way.

It really is about the combination of gyms and smart homes. Gyms only keep health green, but almost everything that does health damage does sanity damage as well (notable exception: chronic condition).
Smart homes themselves only reliably compensate one source of sanity damage, so you can run night shifts and out-of-dome buildings, but will lose health on heavy workloads.
But smart home + gym (or fit) means night shifts + heavy workloads (on regular shifts) for everyone without clinics.