Juicer and Espresso machine need buffs.

[Apprisco]

Let us look at the only comparable source of morale: Soda Fountain, and Soda Filled.

Soda filled is a 1.2 cycle effect with 4 morale, gained from some water, some co2, and some power, all easily obtainable resources.

In fact, if you have normal, non deep diving lung dupes, they will self-sustain the amount of co2 needed for soda.

All you need is an extra water supply, and each dupe will simply have to drink once per cycle.

Now, we run into our issue.

Espresso Machine and Juicers are incredibly hard to keep up. For each dupe, you need

and 1kg of pincha peppernut, which is quite insane especially for a big colony.

However, that all goes out of the window when considering THESE are 0.75 cycle effects, not even lasting a whole cycle.

The morale bonus, athletics, and other bonuses are just plain not worth it obtaining from these.

Not to mention that it isn't possible to keep the foods for these automated in an infinite storage without shenanigans as the water will freeze.

 

The soda fountain is incredibly overpowered compared to these machines, but the soda fountain itself is already very taxing to keep up machinery for. The best way to buff these two machines would be to make the espresso machine buff last 1 cycle, but consume less pinchas- maybe even 10% of what it costs now.

The juicer bonus should last for 4 cycles, not 0.75.

 

[Primalflower]

you use language that implies that the soda machine & these other buildings are in competition with eachother. they are not. they can be used simultaneously. Though I disagree with how you got there I do agree that the juicer & espresso machine could totally be made easier to maintain. The calories the juicer uses up is pretty notable

[blakemw]

I agree. I never use the Espresso Machine, Juicer or even Soda Fountain. The Soda Fountain is generally quite easy to supply compared with the other two, but I still don't use it because it has an poor "usage time to benefit" ratio, a dupe spends 30 seconds using it to get +4 morale for 0.75 cycles. Compare the Arcade Cabinet where a dupe spends 15 seconds using it to get +3 morale for 3.95 cycles, the Arcade Cabinet provides fully 7.9x as much "morale per usage time" compared with the Soda Fountain. The Arcade Cabinet is particularly good by this metric, but even a more moderate building like say the Mechanical Surfboard which provides +2 morale for 3.95 cycles with a usage time of 30 seconds, still provides 2.6x more "morale per usage time". 

But it gets worse if you're a "micro shifts" enjoyer (you only have 1-2 dupes per shift), not only is the Soda Fountain kind of bad, it is also in my experience highly attractive to dupes probably because the +morale number is large and they don't care about the buff duration. The Soda Fountain will be used every  cycle, and will provide on average 3 morale and +0.75 science.

Dupes will tend to prefer using the Soda Fountain and this will interfere with them getting the better-value buffs from the Arcade Cabinet, Jukebot, Mechanical Surfboard and Sauna - I list these buildings as they only need 15 or 30s per usage and for each the buff lasts for 3.95 cycles, these buildings will be used while the buff is already up (a dupe who has recently danced can dance again if they have no rec building they can get a new bonus from), but if they have only a little time each cycle to initiate using a rec building they'll cycle between the 4 buildings over 4 cycles thus achieving almost +9 average morale while spending less time.

The longer-usage buildings like Hottub have even better value buffs due to extremely long duration, but the long usage time can interfere with schedules.

This problem isn't as pronounced if you use large shifts, if like 6 dupes get off work at once and there's only one Soda Fountain, only one or two dupes can be afflicted by it each shift, it's not that it's not being harmful, but it's less harmful to your dupes morale if they can't use it most the time. This goes doubly for the even more bad Espresso Machine and Juicer, if you have many dupes on the shift and only one Juicer only one dupe can be afflicted by using it.

I think there are a few problems:

1. How dupes decide which rec building to use. I feel that don't take adequately take into account the buff duration, perhaps it could just be more random too.
2. The buff duration, it's just too short. At least be 0.95 cycles. 
3. The usage time. 30 seconds would be acceptable for a 2.95 cycle buff but is too long for a < 1 cycle buff, if it was 15 seconds a dupe would be more able to use a second rec building (as a note: it seems there's a ~0.75 cycle lockout on using the other two drink machines after using a drink machine)
4. The resource cost for the Juicer, it takes 1400 kcal of food which is 140% of the daily calories requirement of a normal hunger difficulty dupe which is ridiculous, with the food furthermore being the annoying to produce mealwood and mushrooms, both these foods have sustainability problems in the late game.
5. The resource cost for Espresso, 1 kg of Peppernut needs 70 kg of pwater which by normal water-to-kcal exchange rates is about 1200 kcal.

So basically for me acceptable balance would involve either increasing the buff duration to like 2.95 cycles, reducing the morale to +3, and leaving the rest of the stuff the same. This would mean the 3 drink machines give +9 morale on a 3 cycle rotation, like the four 3.95 cycle rec buildings, they would be more annoying to provision but also give a minor attribute buff for that annoyance.

Or, changing the buff duration to 0.95 cycles, reducing the usage time to 15 seconds, and knocking down the resource requirements for Juice and Espresso to about a third or quarter of what they are now.

[Eppitaal]

9 hours ago, Primalflower said:

you use language that implies that the soda machine & these other buildings are in competition with eachother. they are not. they can be used simultaneously. Though I disagree with how you got there I do agree that the juicer & espresso machine could totally be made easier to maintain. The calories the juicer uses up is pretty notable

Except they do. If they already used one they would be "not interested" in the others, so you can't have all 3 buffs stacked

[Apprisco]

They are in direct competition with each other, because they give similar effects.

Soda fountain gives 4 morale and 1 science.

Espresso machine gives 4 morale and 1 athletics.

Juicer gives 4 morale and 1 strength.

Soda fountain already gives the most important stat: +1 science. That's speeding up ALL OTHER skill attributes.

I believe the soda filled effect lasts 1.2 cycles not 0.75 cycles btw, at least according to the (now outdated) wiki.

 

 

For how much it costs to use the espresso and juicer machines, their effects literally last less than something that just requires CO2 and water.

The most important one is the cheapest and longest lasting.

Drinking soda is sped up by lights, most likely both of the others as well.

 

[Gurgel]

I pretty much agree. I have used all three only once to see how they work. Same, incidentally, for the surf-board, the sauna and the hot-tub. My take is they are intended for an end-game where you want to create a nice overall atmosphere and not for use when they would actually be needed. That is fine by me.

[blakemw]

13 hours ago, Apprisco said:

I believe the soda filled effect lasts 1.2 cycles not 0.75 cycles btw, at least according to the (now outdated) wiki.

In multiple tests I've done in-game the buff duration has been 0.75 cycles. In one test I could swear it was 1.3 cycles but that was a poorly controlled test and I think the Dupe being observed snuck in a second drink when I changed their schedule. There seems to be an exactly 300 second lockout on using a drink machine after using a drink machine, therefore a Dupe can use the Soda Fountain then use it again 300 seconds later, for a total buff uptime of 300 + 30 + 450 = 1.3 cycles or a hair less with lit workspace (but probably not because of walking time).

13 hours ago, Apprisco said:

Soda fountain already gives the most important stat: +1 science. That's speeding up ALL OTHER skill attributes.

That doesn't mean it's automatically worthwhile. There's probably an argument to be made that if the purpose of a Dupe's existence is gaining attribute points (e.g. you are forcing them to run on a hamster wheel all day until they have enough athletics to join the high level dupes) that the +1 science for 0.75 cycles is a worthwhile use of time, so like using the Soda Fountain wastes 5% of a cycle, probably a little more (30s is optimistic even with lit workspace because there's also walking time and refilling time), in exchange, assuming the dupe has zero science, it should get +10% attribute gain while the buff is up.

In the optimized case you have them drink after sleeping so they get the 0.75 cycles during activity and don't waste some of it sleeping. Let's say normal downtime and bedtime is 100 seconds (4 schedule slots) giving the dupe 500 seconds of training, in the perfect case using the Soda Fountain reduces this to 470 seconds of training, and for 450 of those seconds they have +1 science, so they only train for 94% as much time, but do so with a +9.6% boost to attribute gain, coming out 3.0% ahead in attribute gain.

If instead you let them sleep after drinking - which I consider to be the normal way of doing schedules because it's considerably easier to make the dupes get exactly the amount of sleep they need - they lose about 50 seconds of the buff and effectively only get a 8.5% boost to attribute gain, getting an overall 2.0% boost.

But now let's suppose that the dupe has +4 science, since they're a full time hamster it's reasonable to dump all skill points into the research skills then later skill-scrub them. Now they have a base of +40% attribute gain. Now in the baseline case the dupe trains for 500 seconds with a +40% boost, vs training for 470 seconds with a +49.6% boost, now if they drink after sleeping they only gain 0.4% more attribute, and if they drink before sleeping they gain 0.3% less attribute.

The thing is, this analysis is for the best case, when the purpose of a dupe's entire existence is gaining attribute. But it's widely regarded that "gym" is a poor use of duplicant time. When gaining attribute is a side effect of being productive, then the time spent using the soda fountain is a direct hit to productivity.

Of course they also get +4 morale for 0.75 cycles, normally the use of a recreation building strictly lowers productivity in exchange for more morale, while the Soda Fountain gives some morale and lowers productivity while at least not impairing attribute gain. Here we get into more complicated questions, like if you are willing to give dupes 30 seconds of downtime, is that better spent on getting +4 morale and +1 science for 0.75 cycles, or is it better spent on getting a continuous +8.9 or more morale from more efficient rec buildings while spending about 30% less rec time on rec buildings. The greatly increased amount of morale that can be gained from other rec buildings would result in a lot more overjoyed reactions and while few overjoyed reactions are useful for attribute gain, they are often great for general productivity.

In any case, I am comfortable in my belief that the +1 science for 0.75 cycles is inadequate compensation for the time spent using the Soda Fountain, and I think my above analysis for the full time hamster is "the exception that proves the rule", the margins for benefit are razor slim even in the best case and largely evaporate if you take other reasonable measures to increase a Dupe's science attribute.

8 hours ago, Gurgel said:

Same, incidentally, for the surf-board, the sauna and the hot-tub. My take is they are intended for an end-game where you want to create a nice overall atmosphere and not for use when they would actually be needed.

I actually consider the surf board a great early-mid game rec building. It has low power consumption for a rec building particularly in the context of not overloading circuits (in terms of energy consumption per morale it's actually worse than Jukebot), and is pretty trivial to plumb: you can either make a closed loop (it conserves water) or build it over the water cistern and plumb in a random water pipe like the bristle blossom irrigation and let the dupes carry the output water to the supercomputer (it'd have to be used continuously for 33 cycles to add 1 ton of water to the cistern so the chances of causing an overflow are minimal).

The Sauna is trickier, for one you have to scrounge up some wood which is not trivial on some maps, then you have to make a steam chamber and some recirculation plumbing, though I feel the complexity is about the same as an ST/AQ if you know what you're doing, but you only need 50 kg of steel or gold amalgam for the gas pump, the aquatuner can be common ore. It also provides a little cooling on the side and is very energy efficient though the power usage is spiky if using an Aquatuner. If I'm willing to build a dozen ST/AQ style setups for various volcanoes and stuff I don't resent provisioning a Sauna.

But the real advantage of the Mechanical Surfboard and Sauna is how they complement the Arcade Cabinet and Jukebot, those are the best rec buildings as they provide a +3 or +2 morale buff for 3.95 cycles for only 15 second usage time. The more of these rec buildings you have, the more efficient they become because dupes are more likely to get the full buff duration before re-visiting the building. If you only have an Arcade, dupes will use it every cycle and get +3 morale for 15 second daily usage time. If you have an Arcade and Jukebot they'll alternate between them and get +5 morale for 15 seconds daily usage time (+67% efficiency improvement). If you have a Mechanical Surfboard they'll alternate between the three and get +7 morale for an average of 20 seconds (+5% efficiency improvement), if you finally add the Sauna they get +8.9 morale for an average of 22.5 seconds (+13% efficiency improvement). And the difference between spending 15 seconds or 30 seconds is small enough that dupes can compensate by sleeping in more during the work schedule.

The Hot Tub, Wind Tunnel and Beach Chair are more efficient than Surfboard/Sauna but their massive usage times requires some serious schedule engineering to ensure dupes can use them without being interrupted and ideally not spend half a cycle passed out exhausted. And then what's worse is these buildings generally seem to have only a 300 second lockout before they can be revisited, dupes only re-visit rec buildings they already have the buff for if they don't have alternatives but trying to get the full 7.95 (or 11.95) buff duration without it being needlessly "refreshed" is another factor that requires engineering by providing "cheap" distraction rec buildings. Essentially, putting aside an unlit beach chair in a Spacefarer, I consider the long-usage rec buildings to be only something for the "I've given up caring about efficiency" phase of the game and when I don't mind just giving dupes 5 downtime slots.

[cyberwarlord]

Honestly wish they would just use them faster. And yeah buff the duration. I'm getting +3moral for how long it takes to use the recreational builds.

On 9/22/2023 at 3:41 AM, Apprisco said:

Let us look at the only comparable source of morale: Soda Fountain, and Soda Filled.

Soda filled is a 1.2 cycle effect with 4 morale, gained from some water, some co2, and some power, all easily obtainable resources.

In fact, if you have normal, non deep diving lung dupes, they will self-sustain the amount of co2 needed for soda.

All you need is an extra water supply, and each dupe will simply have to drink once per cycle.

Now, we run into our issue.

Espresso Machine and Juicers are incredibly hard to keep up. For each dupe, you need

and 1kg of pincha peppernut, which is quite insane especially for a big colony.

However, that all goes out of the window when considering THESE are 0.75 cycle effects, not even lasting a whole cycle.

The morale bonus, athletics, and other bonuses are just plain not worth it obtaining from these.

Not to mention that it isn't possible to keep the foods for these automated in an infinite storage without shenanigans as the water will freeze.

 

The soda fountain is incredibly overpowered compared to these machines, but the soda fountain itself is already very taxing to keep up machinery for. The best way to buff these two machines would be to make the espresso machine buff last 1 cycle, but consume less pinchas- maybe even 10% of what it costs now.

The juicer bonus should last for 4 cycles, not 0.75.

 

 

[Sasza22]

9 hours ago, blakemw said:

The Hot Tub, Wind Tunnel and Beach Chair are more efficient than Surfboard/Sauna but their massive usage times requires some serious schedule engineering to ensure dupes can use them without being interrupted and ideally not spend half a cycle passed out exhausted.

If you schedule your breaktime after sleep it`s enough to make sure they won`t get interrupted and get enough sleep. All they lose is worktime.

[Gurgel]

20 hours ago, blakemw said:

The Hot Tub, Wind Tunnel and Beach Chair are more efficient than Surfboard/Sauna but their massive usage times requires some serious schedule engineering to ensure dupes can use them without being interrupted and ideally not spend half a cycle passed out exhausted. 

Actually, that one is easy: Just put Downtime after Bedtime. The dupes currently using a Beach Chair, etc. will continue to do so over the end of the Downtime and everyone will get enough sleep because that happens before. 

[goboking]

Two changes would that might tempt me to use these buildings are to allow us to set priorities on recreation buildings (dupes would use higher priority buildings first) and allowing dupes to use them two at a time (which would probably mean the Soda Fountain needs to be changed to a 3x3 building*).

* I'd like to see this change made regardless of any other tweaks to the Soda Fountain.  As is, it's a 2x2 metal box.  It has none of ONI's soul.  If it was 3x3, the artists could give it some charm, make it something that's worthy of building a recreation room around, aesthetically speaking.

[QuQuasar]

Wow, lots of information here I had previously lacked. A few thoughts:

I agree that the cost too high. If I'm reluctant to use the water cooler, I'm not about to double my dupes resource requirements just so they can have juice.

With that said, maybe we're looking at this wrong: maybe these buildings are supposed to be used with wild-planted crops you're not using as a food staple. If your main source of calories is frost burgers, you might as well throw any otherwise useless meal lice and mushrooms you have lying around into the juicer and increase your chances of proccing a happiness overload. Unfortunately for that idea...

I had kind of just assumed the drinks all had a similar animation time to the water cooler, as compensation for the resource cost. Surprised to learn that they don't. That's extremely unfortunate.

[cyberwarlord]

Personally I'd like to hear from the development team on this topic.

I would love to have a use and a reason to run as many as possible.  

And maybe add the rocket carousel mod to the game??? It really fits so well. I made a flight training area that looks awesome and has function  

[Apprisco]

Would love dev comment as well.

Making all three machines usable for every dupe at any time, as well as making the buffs a little better might be worth doing.

[Charletrom]

7 hours ago, cyberwarlord said:

Personally I'd like to hear from the development team on this topic.

I would love to have a use and a reason to run as many as possible.  

And maybe add the rocket carousel mod to the game??? It really fits so well. I made a flight training area that looks awesome and has function  

I’d also love a way to train piloting

[Nogard78]

On 10/3/2023 at 3:29 PM, Charletrom said:

I’d also love a way to train piloting

Build control statoin on mechanized airlock, put it on 20 red 1 green timer sensor, go to space. In a few cycles your dupe will have 20 piloting. 

[cyberwarlord]

Bump.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

On 9/23/2023 at 1:00 AM, Apprisco said:

They are in direct competition with each other, because they give similar effects.

Soda fountain gives 4 morale and 1 science.

Espresso machine gives 4 morale and 1 athletics.

Juicer gives 4 morale and 1 strength.

Soda fountain already gives the most important stat: +1 science. That's speeding up ALL OTHER skill attributes.

I believe the soda filled effect lasts 1.2 cycles not 0.75 cycles btw, at least according to the (now outdated) wiki.

 

 

For how much it costs to use the espresso and juicer machines, their effects literally last less than something that just requires CO2 and water.

The most important one is the cheapest and longest lasting.

Drinking soda is sped up by lights, most likely both of the others as well.

 

They would be in competition with eachother if they cancelled one another. Truth is, you can stack them. The question is more about how convenient they are to use.

I do use the espresso machine quite a bit since it not too difficult to set up. The plus 1 athletics is actually a good bonus as my dupes have to travel a lot.

The soda fountain. I have not used yet, but I imagine it being easier as co2 is easy to get. The +1 science is a good bonus early game for increasing attributes, but becomes less and less relevant later in the game.

For funsies I am using the juicer as well my current colony. Imo, the bonus is not worth the effort as you need too many ingredients for too small a bonus. The +1 strength is not significant enough.

Especially the juicer could use a rework.

[Pproy]

A neat idea could be that there would be different recipe for the juicer that leads to different buff. Not all start have the slime biome to make mushroom for the juicer. Also, such recipe could be upgraded with brackene to make the equivalent "brackshake", leading to bigger buff.

A recipe using water and balm lily flower to make tea at the expresso machine could be fun.