Is there a Idling-Recreation Room mechanic?

[Magheat2009]

In one of his videos Francis John said that duplicants prefer to idle in the recreation room. However, in my own play-through I have not been able to reproduce this behavior consistently. In my base game world, it did seem like duplicants were found to be idling in recreation room quite often, but not always. Sometimes they would just walk back and forth in some random location.

In Spaced Out it seems even more inconsistent to me. I can hardly say if such a mechanic actually exists in Spaced Out. Duplicants preferring recreation room is a clever mechanic, and gives that almost useless room a purpose. Can someone enlighten me as to this mechanic and how it works?

[MiniDeathStar]

I think they idle in the recreation room only in their downtime schedule. Otherwise if they have nothing to do at work they stroll around their last errand's location.

[arvenil]

Yes, only downtime schedule. Never had issues with this mechanic. Easily spotted if you have only mess hall, once you build recreation room they start to hang there instead of mess hall.

[ghkbrew]

On 6/8/2023 at 5:55 AM, MiniDeathStar said:

I think they idle in the recreation room only in their downtime schedule. Otherwise if they have nothing to do at work they stroll around their last errand's location.

They do seem to have some preferences when idling during working hours too. They prefer places at room temperature and high decor. They'll also avoid things like areas with water on the ground.

[mathmanican]

Manual generators set with priority 1, on a 30 second timer (29.8on/0.2off) is one way to force them to idle in a specific high decor spot, and still grab their attention for other jobs when you're ready for them.