Nutrient paste meal

Nutrient paste meal

Nutrient paste meal

A synthetic mixture of protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins, amino acids and minerals. Everything the body needs, and absolutely disgusting.

Base Stats

Type

Food – Meal

Market Value

10 

Stack Limit

10

Mass

0.44 kg

HP

50

Deterioration Rate

10

Flammability

100%

Days To Start Rot

0.75

Path Cost

15 (46%)

Ingestion

Nutrition

0.9

Taste

Awful

Ingested Direct Thought

AteNutrientPasteMeal

Maximum To Ingest

1

Creation

Crafted At

Work To Make

0 ticks (0 secs)

Resources to make

0.3 Nutrition (any)

Technical

defName

MealNutrientPaste

Preferability

Awful

A nutrient paste meal is produced from a nutrient paste dispenser, using raw food ingredients.

Summary

Nutrient paste meals are worth 0.9 nutrition, and consume 0.3 points of nutrition from raw food, for a nutrition efficiency of 300%. When consumed, it gives a -4 mood penalty ("Ate awful meal"), which is still better than the raw food penalty. This mood penalty is not applied to Ascetic pawns and those with the Eating Nutrient Paste: Don't Mind ideoligious precept. The meals are dispensed on demand, and no cooking skill is required. Nutrient paste meals never cause food poisoning. The nutrient paste dispenser requires power to dispense a meal.

Typically, nutrient paste meals are dispensed by a hungry pawn and then immediately eaten; they can't be produced by work bill, and animals won't use a dispenser. However, should the pawn dispensing the meal be interrupted between dispensing and eating the meal, they will drop it. This is done by limiting a pawn's area restriction to just a nutrient paste dispenser, or by simply drafting them. This behavior can be exploited to stockpile meals, but their short shelf life of 0.75 days means they should be immediately frozen. See Nutrient paste dispenser for a more in-depth strategy.

Analysis

Nutrient paste is the most efficient way to prepare a meal, noticeably better (+66.67% improvement) than simple and fine meals. In addition, no cooking is necessary, which can save a lot of time off a cook's hands. This makes nutrient paste useful in a famine, even if you don't plan to use it indefinitely. Nutrient paste also the most efficient animal food, but using it as such requires a pawn to manually produce nutrient paste meals, since animals can't use the dispenser.

However, nutrient paste meals give a -4 mood debuff, which ends up being -9 net mood compared to fine meals. It is advised to not give nutrient paste to pawns with a trait that gives a negative modifier to mental break threshold, because they can push a pawn over the edge. Because pawns prefer normal meals over nutrient paste, you can set restrictions to prevent normal pawns from consuming all of the good meals and leaving none to the volatile ones.

The mood penalty is negated if the colonist eating it has a precept "Eating Nutrient paste" as "Don't mind" for their Ideoligion.

Nutrient paste is a poor choice for caravans given how quickly nutrient paste spoils and the tedious micro required to make stacks of them.

Gallery

• Nutrient paste a.png

  One nutrient paste meal

• Nutrient paste b.png

  Partial stack

• Nutrient paste c.png

  Full stack

Version history

• 0.3.410 - Pawns now try to eat nice meals when they have the choice over nutrient meals.
• 1.4.3523 - Ascetics no longer get a negative mood debuff when eating nutrient paste meals.

• 

  Texture as of some version before 1.0.2096

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Food

Meals

Chocolate • Fine meal (Carnivore, Vegetarian) • Kibble • Lavish meal (Carnivore, Vegetarian) • Nutrient paste meal • Packaged survival meal • Pemmican • Simple meal • Baby food

Raw food - Animal

Meat (Human, Insect, Twisted) • Insect jelly • Milk • Hemogen pack

Raw food - Eggs

Cassowary egg (fert.) • Chicken egg (fert., unfert.) • Cobra egg (fert.) • Duck egg (fert., unfert.) • Emu egg (fert.) • Goose egg (fert., unfert.) • Iguana egg (fert.) • Ostrich egg (fert.) • Tortoise egg (fert.) • Turkey egg (fert.)

Raw food - Vegetarian

Agave fruit • Berries • Corn • Hay • Potatoes • Raw fungus • Rice • Toxipotatoes