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
- 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
- defName
- MealNutrientPaste
- Preferability
- Awful
A nutrient paste meal is produced from a nutrient paste dispenser, using raw food ingredients.
Acquisition
Nutrient paste meals are created at a powered nutrient paste dispenser instantly, using 0.3 nutrition of any food inside its hoppers. 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.
These meals can't normally be stockpiled. 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.
Summary
A nutrient paste meal can be eaten for 0.9 nutrition. As paste takes 0.3 nutrition to make, it has a nutrition efficiency of 300%. Nutrient paste cannot cause food poisoning.
When consumed, nutrient paste gives a −4 Ate awful meal moodlet. This mood penalty is not applied to Ascetic pawns and those with the Eating Nutrient Paste: Don't Mind ideoligious precept.
Analysis
Nutrient paste is the most efficient way to prepare a meal, noticeably better than simple and fine meals (180% efficiency). This makes nutrient paste useful in a famine, even if you don't plan to use it indefinitely. In addition, no cooking is necessary. This avoids food poisoning entirely and can save a lot of time off a cook's hands. Nutrient paste is a poor choice for caravans, given how quickly nutrient paste spoils and the tedious micro required to make stacks of them.
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, leaving them to the volatile ones.
Nutrient paste is also the most efficient animal food, who don't care about mood, assuming it can eat the full 0.9 nutrition without overeating. But using it as such requires a pawn to manually produce nutrient paste meals, since animals can't use the dispenser.
The mood penalty is negated if the colonist eating it has a precept "Eating Nutrient paste" as "Don't mind" for their Ideoligion, making it a powerful choice for day-to-day work flow.
Gallery
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.