How to prevent repeated play of the same entertainment facility?

[O.J.Vodka]

……

[SharraShimada]

Several rooms with doors locked/opened on intervals?

[Farsight]

Each entertainment building creates a timed buff. During that time, the dupe won't go back to that building.

Dupes also tend to favor the highest morale buff option.

So there shouldn't be any need to micromanage their entertainment, as they'll usually get the best buffs they have time for.

To get them more and more varied buffs, give them more time off, so they can do multiple things during their down time.

My last rec room had one of nearly every building, and with enough down time each day, dupes would visit all of them eventually.

[blakemw]

I've written this out before, but I didn't want to again, so I made a wiki page explaining exactly how Dupes decide what rec building to use:

https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Recreation

In short, if the problem is a Dupe using a Drink machine or Party Line Phone every cycle, JUST DON'T PROVIDE THESE BUILDINGS, they are downtime poison (if you "must" provide them, then use automation to restrict availability to once every few cycles).
If the problem is reusing other rec buildings, just provide more variety.

Edited March 14 by blakemw

[Charletrom]

Man that’s a fantastic article. One downside I see though of using the high duration buildings is that you need to provide enough downtime each cycle for them to complete the process. Since this buff isn’t needed every cycle, this could lead to excess downtime on cycles where the dupes don’t use the buildings. Have you found this to be the case?

 

one minor point worth considering is how cute the animations are… if you put a soda fountain next to an espresso machine it looks like the dupes are having a little party

Edited March 14 by Charletrom
typo

[Farsight]

If you put downtime after sleep but before work, dupes will always finish whatever recreation they're doing before going to work, and won't miss sleep.