Wood floor
Wood floor
Wood floor is a one of the most basic floors that can be constructed. It is flammable, but cheap and quick to lay even with low skilled pawns.
Acquisition
Each tile of wood floor constructed requires 3 Wood and 85 ticks (1.42 secs) of work.
Summary
Wood floor gives no beauty positive or malus. Cleaning filth on it takes 100% the work, and like other constructed floors, there is no movement penalty. Wood floor is flammable and it leaves burned wood floorbehind when it burns.
Analysis
Wood floor is clean, more beautiful than dirt floor, rough stone, or concrete, and does not slow walk speed like natural terrain. Wood is plentiful in most biomes, as opposed to concrete and paved tile, which require the high-demand steel. It is more tolerant of low-skill constructors, as little is lost in case of failure. Most other floors require at least Stonecutting researched, which New Tribes do not start with.
Wood floors should be phased out after the early game, however, due to the fire risk. Its flammability may only be 22%, much lower than the 100% flammability of a wood wall, but fire will still rapidly over a fully covered room with wood floors. This can result in devastating losses of structures, items, and even pawns. Stone tiles are an upgrade; they are nonflammable, more beautiful than wood, and stone is often as common as wood. However, cutting stone blocks and laying the tiles will take a fair bit of work.
Comparisons
An alternative is to simply not build a floor. Rough floor slows colonists down, reduced Cleanliness will hurt any medical-related work, and rooms will be less impressive. However, dirt only has -1.0 Cleanliness; it takes at least -2.0 Cleanliness for the food poisoning chance to be more. If your colonists are happy enough in the dirt, then the fire risk can be forgone.
Concrete is another viable alternative. Despite requiring the aforementioned steel, it actually has a lower Market Value than wood floor. In many maps, compacted steel is plentiful enough to use on flooring. In addition, concrete is nonflammable while being 25% faster to clean. The beauty malus is often overstated; it can be tolerated, especially with use of sculptures. If beauty is a concern, then paved tile can be used as a functional upgrade to both wood floor and concrete.