Colonist interests ?

[Alchemist79]

I am trying to get all my 12 colonists to 100 comfort with the art store.

I am running a diner, art store and parks to satisfy all their interests. All are non-specialized, none of them have traits that add any interests except fit, which they can satisfy in parks.

I run into 2 problems:
First, it seems some of them, simply refuse to visit the art store. 6 sols later and 2 of them still have never been there. I have tried this art store thing a few times now and each time it's the same. Some just wont visit it even though they have the shopping interest. On this run, one of them even has only 2 interests, shopping and social. Is it truly random, or are they programmed to have some of their interests be stronger than others, making them visit the same place over and over again ?

Second: I have 12 citizens. 2 buildings have a worker in all shifts. So at all times, at least 2 are working. Yet sometimes i get complaints the diner is full and they cant get their social interest and/or have to eat an unprepared meal. How is this even possible when 2 out of 12 are on the job at all times and there's 10 seats in the diner ? Even if that were not the case and they weren't working. If they would pursue their interest at a random part of the day, it would be insanely unlikely for 11 out 12 to go to the diner at the same time. Now i could understand everyone wanting to use the diner at dinner time. It is however rather contradictory with what all the guides write about only needing a diner, infirmary and grocer for 50 people. But those 2 working guys wanting to visit the diner during work....
Oh, i do have 2 children in the dome, but those cant possibly be filling the spots can they ? I can't even select them in any of the screens that monitor colonists, its like they dont exist for the most part. (which is really weird actually, the colonist screen has an age group filter where you can select children, but you simply dont get to see them.)

 

[YertyL]

The best thing I can think of is that either colonists from connected domes or children take up some capacity of your diner. Children will get their food from a staffed building (grocer, diner) when possible, which is why it is a good idea to have specialized child domes that are fed from an adjacent food depot. The comfort of playgrounds and nurseries is so high they can easily take the -3.

But more importantly: Unless you are doing this as an experiment, I would heavily recommend against investing so much resources and manpower into comfort. Art and electronics store especially use an enormous amount of precious advanced resources (0.2 per visitor, which quickly adds up).

The game is a bit misleading because comfort penalties are listed prominently and in red, but high comfort is not worth that much. First effect is +5 morale/performance, but high sanity and health have the same effect and are a lot cheaper to achieve.
Second effect is children, but early game it is easier to fly in new colonists, especially before you have adequate education (schools/universities and the electronics to afford their maintenance). Late game you will have a lot of new comfort bonuses and buildings that often obsolete "classic" high comfort like casinos.

You don't want low comfort (<40), but parks, gyms and housing comfort are often enough to avoid that, without using up the most precious resource: manpower. Later, a single dome with hanging gardens or a medical center with relaxation upgrade will have such a ridiculously high comfort for everyone that even with a few low comfort domes you will have more than enough children. With experience, I have moved more and more away from using any of the "traditional" high comfort buildings (casinos etc) and even use food buildings and bars sparsely except in tourism domes. The small boost in performance and births is IMO not enough to offset the cost in resources and manpower that are often better spent elsewhere. Keeping health and sanity up is arguably more important and a lot cheaper. In that regard, I have come to appreciate gyms and smart homes a lot more.

 

[Alchemist79]

Thank you for answering.

It was not just an experiment. I am playing 1075% so i only get 1 ship with 12 people. They need to reproduce. I wanted to use the art store to give them a quick boost to 100 comfort after which i turn off the art store and make sure they never lose any comfort again. I did do a few runs to experiment with it and found that unfortunately bringing ALL 12 to 100 comfort seems to be nigh impossible. I turned it off when 7 out of 12 had reached 100 comfort. I think it consumed about 6 polymers to get there. So it costed me 100m. This got me to 1 baby every 2 sols. Even though it didn't work as great as i had hoped, i think it was still worth it.

The diner problem must have been a combination of kids visiting it and everyone wanting to visit it because i had closed the grocer (to make sure everyone does their shopping at the art store). It still puzzles me why they all had to go there at the same time though. If they would randomly choose a part of the day to go there, the chance they all go at the same time should be something like 1/11^3. Even if they choose a time when they aren't working it should be 1/11^2. Oh well, next time i try spreadin their workshifts more so that IF they dont visit during work times it can't get to 11.
I am now at sol 50, have 41 citizens and with a only single grocer and diner open we're still doing fine. (41 includes 10 refugees and minus 2 that died trying to fix a broken dome and 1 that died of old age, so 22 martian born between sol 14 and 50)

It sucks they are stupid when you try to make them move homes between domes though. (to replace living area's with apartments they had to temporarily move to a new dome) They wander around homeless and losing comfort for a sol while living space is plenty available. I still have the art store, so when i have some extra polymers ill probably open it again for a bit. I hope the damn renegade refugee cops wont steal al my art. (funny, you can make the renegades themselves be cops, i feel like some corrupt third world narco state)

Another thing that sucks is that i scanned the entire map and found exactly 29 anomalies, needing 30 to get that second rocket.... Deep scanning is a rather expensive research at 300 per sol. But thats entirely irrelevant of course.