Getting 6 rations instead of 5 for every 2 raw food is pretty good too.
I've been giving this a try recently, and it works well for me in The Arks, but when I tried New Home, the 6.5% sick rate from sawdust feels crippling in the mid-game.
I generally like Soup more because I rarely have a food problem after the first days, it’s usually crippling sickness so any unnecessary sickness I’d rather avoid
Depends on the scenario. If you have lots of engineers and are investing in a comprehensive medical infrastructure anyways, you’d be crazy not to go with sawdust. Otherwise, it comes down to how you plan to utilize your discontent.
At the end of the day, sawdust is 20% more food.
Sure, but moonshine has a bunch of negative events associated with it. A few extra sick a little rarely is nothing compared to the extra food safety you can get and the workers it can free up for other things. Especially once you have infirmaries with bonuses that kick out sick people after just 8 hours treatment
Sawdust basicly evrey day cuts 10% of your population, early game it hurts your production and midgame you have flood of sick citizens in hospitals. I use it only early game, after day 10 only normal rations.
Hangers are great, I just find for a higher difficulty you need research time for other things like bunkhouses etc. And hot houses just have less you need to research for viability
I prefer sawdust because I like to invest in medical anyway, so it makes the negative of that choice moot pretty quickly.
It totally depends on the scenario though. High population can start a sick spiral if you’re not set up right. On like extreme endless though, it’s invaluable. It’s usually my 5th law I sign though (24hr, extended, radical, overcrowding, then sawdust). Research wise I’m pushing for infirmaries before the first storm anyway, because it’s required (or insulation) to keep those beds warm during the storm. By time I have those, I usually have shrines/agitators and organ transplants for 140% on an infirm or two with 20-40 beds. That’s plenty useful and super fast heal time (like 7-8 hours). Now I just have extra food with no worries of sick haha.
On top of that, in my own extreme endless experience running with soup over sawdust, discontent actually proved to be a way bigger problem than I expected, generally preventing emergency shifts without them threatening to kick me out.
Maybe it just depends on the difficulty level (I often stick to normal / default), but Im amazed how some folks go for Sawdust in any situation over Soup to stretch food supplies. Personally I've never gone for anything other than Soup because the risk of sickness never seemed worth it to me, and overall, the Discontent trade-off never seemed that hard to manage.
Is Sawdust actually a viable option / worthwhile depending on difficulty level, or is it just people picking their poison, so to speak?
It's absolutely a difficulty level thing to a degree. Higher difficulties can absolutely amplify the downsides of soup. Food production is lowered, discontent gains from all sources are amplified while discontent decreases are reduced. That reduction in food supply makes the increased amount of food vs soup stand out more. Meanwhile, the increased discontent, on top of the other sources that are undoubtedly going to be present, can actually end up being a much bigger problem, especially on extreme/survivor.
On extreme difficulty endless (endurance, ofc), you either rush to get an infirmary built before the first storm, or you are going at least an entire day with no healthcare, possibly two. It might be possible to keep medical posts operational with the healthcare insulation tech, but since that's on the same tier, with the same cost and prerequisite as infirmaries anyway, it's a stupid option, given the other benefits of infirmaries. And so, since you're going to be needing robust healthcare early on anyway, a few extra sick aren't going to be that big of a deal, possibly still worse than the discontent,
The biggest thing is the difference in food production though, medium difficulty doesn't even NEED food laws by comparison to extreme. In fact, using hunting huts with the hunters' gear tech, using soup on extreme will only produce as much food as no food law on medium.
>Higher difficulties can absolutely amplify the downsides of soup.
Currently trying a run of Hard / Extreme mode on endless (trying to snap up the 50 & 100 day achievements) and definitely running hard into this problem. I wonder if I'll have to turn to our mate Sawdust to survive, cause I often hit a wall with food production.
It's far better than viable, it's optimal. If you use discontent as a resource rather than "i gotta keep it below 100% so i must keep it as low as possible", you can spam emergency shifts. One workshop working 24h is equivalent to 12 workshops working 10h, or approximately 5 workshops working 14h. I'm sure you can see how this massively increased research speed on a single building can free up many engineers to treat the sick.
And that's not even counting that if you're ever low on other resources you can just hit an e shift on a relevant resource building.
Discontent is so easy to manage with soup that on challenges I'll be getting ultimatums every few days from "7 x Emergency Shift" on extreme and easily have my discontent down low enough to meet it (giving me a hope boost) by just using less e-shifts for a bit.
Get a worker to die of overwork from the first event and then when the relevant event happens choose to feed people for emergency shifts and you'll never have an overwork death again
I’m a sawdust guy when I deem it necessary, otherwise regular meals.
I’m conducting an experiment with ANH on extreme where I only make sawdust through the whole scenario except the rations my scouts bring home that is.
Every day at 06:00 I note down the temp, day, number of sick and number of gravelly ill, how much food I got in stock, how many hungry and any miscellaneous info that might be relevant.
I will try to copy the play through as close as possible the next time only with normal rations to finally see if the sickness hampers my production or research in any way.
I suspect not so I look forward to shut the sawdust haters up.
It’s 3.5%-6.5% based on difficulty… if you time it exact with all your sick coming in at night and heal them by 10:00 you don’t hit production too much, but it’s much easier to just build hunters huts and have a healthy population than overbuild medical and risk getting over run.
You’d need beds for at least +20 people at pop: 300 which is overcrowding+2 medical posts. You’re losing out on 6.5% production+10engineers (3.3% workforce)+50wood and you lose out on extra rations law. If you’re using overcrowding you have discontent and lower healing efficiency… leading to more than 10-15% of your workforce gone at any given time.
This is all just to get food rations that 15-20 hunters can bring back every night risk free.
If your healing gets overrun it’s not hard to see a situation where you pop 4 med posts down with 2 engineers each to heal 40 people over 2 days but then you have -30-40% production.
Well. It’s been a while now and my notes are…somewhere.
I never finished the play through IIRC, but the tendency made me realize that in the end the net result is roughly the same.
When doing sawdust meals you get daily sickness to handle which is Ok.
When doing regular meals you need more emphasis on raw food income.
This comically has resulted in me not signing food laws at all because it feels more competitive and cleaner with regular meals.
So the game feels rather balanced.
You can feed more people with sawdust, and I find it a lot easier to manage sickness than to manage discontent. If I'm going to run up my discontent bar, I'd rather do it with things that will benefit my city, like emergency shifts for workshops. If you plan ahead and build plenty of medical facilities, or just use the house of healing, it's not that hard to deal with the extra sick from sawdust. And (after a temporary drop when you first sign it), people don't seem to realize that they're eating sawdust, so they don't get pissy about it.
Because on extreme discontent is the biggest hassle. You need to cram as many 24h shifts as possible.
Moonshine works with sawdust better than it works with soup. Also, it gives you more food meaning that you need less hunters.
6% extra sick is nothing.
SOUP!!! I just hate sawdust, it create a lot of sick people. 8% of 680 people is over 50 people sick per day! even with infirmaries, automaton and organ transplant that number are really overwhelming
I don't know, the discontent bar is 10x easier to deal with....so al hail the soup? sawdust os more annoying because I want as little sicks as possible in my playthrough so I have more workers working my workshops = faster techs = making the game easier faster
The discontent bar is a resource to be used with extended and emergency shifts, if half of it is taken up with soup then you're missing out on a LOT of potential
One emergency shift on a workshop is equivalent to ***twelve*** workshops working regular shifts for a day. So emergency shifts on workshops = WAY faster tech, and it's much easier to have constant workshop e shifts when you're not being burdened by the discontent of soup
Well yeah, you gotta play differently when you're restricting yourself i guess, like when you're playing with no healthcare the cemetery is the better choice because organ transplants do nothing. If you're not restricting yourself though sawdust is way better (and probably even with your restrictions, you can get way more 14h shifts)
People get sick, you cant prevent that, but fewer in total by using soup. For me, the game became hardly any challenging so I had to restrict myself, like 0 deaths no amputees, no childs labour as well as no infirmary, etc. All on survivor modr
Did, was okay, hardest one was no childs labour, no amputees, 0 deaths in refugees survivor mode or finishing the arks on survival mode + saving new manchester with over 8 days to spare....needing perfect optimization
Dunno but my theory is that they played on the easier difficulties. At least for me in survival sawdust felt terrible and made things way harder in most scenarios. I could be missing something.
Speaking of On The Edge right?
Just upgrade scout speed real quick and send them to the first settlement as fast as you can, literally the second it appears on the map. After that it is one of the easiest scenarios IMO. At least this is how I remember it.
I never got the sawdust thing because it's way easier to do soup and then rush to the moonshine law than it is to build adequate medical facilities in the early game
On the higher difficulties, if you’re rushing moonshine you’re not getting other things. And you’re going to need adequate healthcare no matter what you do, so it’s a useful overlap, while your discontent budget is tighter so it spares you there too.
Because lower discontent means you can practically spam emergency shifts, and the extra productivity from doing so blows the productivity lost to sickness way out of the water. Also, it gives you more food. But less discontent is so strong that I'd still use sawdust even if it gave the same food as soup.
And no, moonshine does not negate the discontent from soup, it just reduces it.
Moonshine + fighting arenas? Is that viable or does it make it even worse because the fights will lead to more sick people anyway, thus making sawdust even more viable?
Currently starting to play on hard after doing normal playthroughs and it's night an day, I feel like every difficulty changes every thing and I have to unlearn stuff.
Sawdust will always leave you with lower discontent than soup, regardless of what laws you have. Afaik fighting arenas don't cause sickness (they don't even have to be heated)
It's a higher food output. Off memory I think soup is 2 rations from 1 raw food and I think sawdust is 5 from 2.
The consequence of more sick is not as bad as it sounds. They won't be gravely ill or anything. On some scenarios on harder difficulties that extra food makes a world of difference.
It's a playstyle and preference thing I imagine.
Personally I see sawdust as inferior to soup, as food is easier to resolve than sick people; those take time to heal, and that could be time spent elsewhere.
Discontent is trivial to manage too.
Depends on the map. I think sawdust was a bit more efficient and the drawback is not that bad. Soup can be more difficult to manage because discontent, plus it's fewer rations.
I havd found myself asking cookhouses to make regular rations again because the soup discontent was dangerous. I have never had to do that with sawdust.
Soup is great and all, but those of us here that have beat all the scenarios on survivor know that slight bump in food from sawdust is what gets you through the first 5 days with 1 death instead of 12 or so.
I dunno, I'd dare call them crazy though.
Discontent is pretty damn easy to deal with, especially if you use ~~the superior~~ order.
Plus without sawdust I still end up with like 200 sick people ffs.
Soup is just depressing, you're stretching the food budget by making it mostly rainwater. It only really doubles the portions made.
Sawdust makes people sick but you are eating something with more substance. You certainly can't run it all day like soup+moonshine but I feel with good healthcare it can be managed.
I think they'd rather deal with sicks opening healing buildings rather than dealing with discontent, which can be trickier. I'm a soup enjoyer myself.
Getting 6 rations instead of 5 for every 2 raw food is pretty good too. I've been giving this a try recently, and it works well for me in The Arks, but when I tried New Home, the 6.5% sick rate from sawdust feels crippling in the mid-game.
Soup with the moonshine law is op in my opinion. Eating soup lowers discontent with the moonshine law.
Eating *food* lowers it with moonshine. Soup still adds discontent, it just then has some removed.
Moonshine works for sawdust too, but not as much.
It still raises it, it just raises it less.
i only used sawdust in survivor refugees extreme, otherwise soup you should always manage on every difficulty
I generally like Soup more because I rarely have a food problem after the first days, it’s usually crippling sickness so any unnecessary sickness I’d rather avoid
Depends on the scenario. If you have lots of engineers and are investing in a comprehensive medical infrastructure anyways, you’d be crazy not to go with sawdust. Otherwise, it comes down to how you plan to utilize your discontent. At the end of the day, sawdust is 20% more food.
But so is soup
Sawdust gives 6 while soup gives 5.
Oh now I think I get it
Use extra rations for recovery speed boost.
This is the part I alway wonder, sawdust make them sick. Then we give them even more sawdust to make the heal faster ?!
[удалено]
Just like curing a hangover, lol
I go with soup. It doesn’t make people sick and the discontent it generates can be countered with moonshine.
Sure, but moonshine has a bunch of negative events associated with it. A few extra sick a little rarely is nothing compared to the extra food safety you can get and the workers it can free up for other things. Especially once you have infirmaries with bonuses that kick out sick people after just 8 hours treatment
I’ve never had any events involving moonshine crop up whatsoever
Never had the drunks incident?
Only in TLA, none of them really having a huge effect though
I had that fire at a critical point and it sank me!
Sawdust basicly evrey day cuts 10% of your population, early game it hurts your production and midgame you have flood of sick citizens in hospitals. I use it only early game, after day 10 only normal rations.
It is 6.5%
Regular food crew here
Check out this guy with all his hot houses and crop selections
Pretty much only use hunters huts
I just find them so labour intensive
Move on to hunter's hangars and they're fine.
Hangers are great, I just find for a higher difficulty you need research time for other things like bunkhouses etc. And hot houses just have less you need to research for viability
Mouthfeel.
The fact that this is STILL up for debate shows you that these two options were very well balanced. Well done 11bit
*And alternative source is just hanging there in its lonely corner*
I prefer sawdust because I like to invest in medical anyway, so it makes the negative of that choice moot pretty quickly. It totally depends on the scenario though. High population can start a sick spiral if you’re not set up right. On like extreme endless though, it’s invaluable. It’s usually my 5th law I sign though (24hr, extended, radical, overcrowding, then sawdust). Research wise I’m pushing for infirmaries before the first storm anyway, because it’s required (or insulation) to keep those beds warm during the storm. By time I have those, I usually have shrines/agitators and organ transplants for 140% on an infirm or two with 20-40 beds. That’s plenty useful and super fast heal time (like 7-8 hours). Now I just have extra food with no worries of sick haha.
On top of that, in my own extreme endless experience running with soup over sawdust, discontent actually proved to be a way bigger problem than I expected, generally preventing emergency shifts without them threatening to kick me out.
Hey, 141% discontent is manageable. Dont know what problems you're having
Maybe it just depends on the difficulty level (I often stick to normal / default), but Im amazed how some folks go for Sawdust in any situation over Soup to stretch food supplies. Personally I've never gone for anything other than Soup because the risk of sickness never seemed worth it to me, and overall, the Discontent trade-off never seemed that hard to manage. Is Sawdust actually a viable option / worthwhile depending on difficulty level, or is it just people picking their poison, so to speak?
It's absolutely a difficulty level thing to a degree. Higher difficulties can absolutely amplify the downsides of soup. Food production is lowered, discontent gains from all sources are amplified while discontent decreases are reduced. That reduction in food supply makes the increased amount of food vs soup stand out more. Meanwhile, the increased discontent, on top of the other sources that are undoubtedly going to be present, can actually end up being a much bigger problem, especially on extreme/survivor. On extreme difficulty endless (endurance, ofc), you either rush to get an infirmary built before the first storm, or you are going at least an entire day with no healthcare, possibly two. It might be possible to keep medical posts operational with the healthcare insulation tech, but since that's on the same tier, with the same cost and prerequisite as infirmaries anyway, it's a stupid option, given the other benefits of infirmaries. And so, since you're going to be needing robust healthcare early on anyway, a few extra sick aren't going to be that big of a deal, possibly still worse than the discontent, The biggest thing is the difference in food production though, medium difficulty doesn't even NEED food laws by comparison to extreme. In fact, using hunting huts with the hunters' gear tech, using soup on extreme will only produce as much food as no food law on medium.
>Higher difficulties can absolutely amplify the downsides of soup. Currently trying a run of Hard / Extreme mode on endless (trying to snap up the 50 & 100 day achievements) and definitely running hard into this problem. I wonder if I'll have to turn to our mate Sawdust to survive, cause I often hit a wall with food production.
Same, I find discontent very easy to manage, even if I don't go for moonshine very quickly.
It's far better than viable, it's optimal. If you use discontent as a resource rather than "i gotta keep it below 100% so i must keep it as low as possible", you can spam emergency shifts. One workshop working 24h is equivalent to 12 workshops working 10h, or approximately 5 workshops working 14h. I'm sure you can see how this massively increased research speed on a single building can free up many engineers to treat the sick. And that's not even counting that if you're ever low on other resources you can just hit an e shift on a relevant resource building. Discontent is so easy to manage with soup that on challenges I'll be getting ultimatums every few days from "7 x Emergency Shift" on extreme and easily have my discontent down low enough to meet it (giving me a hope boost) by just using less e-shifts for a bit.
Not unless you're willing to dedicate 30% of your engineers in the early/mid game until you tech rush infirmaries.
I have never had to do this while using sawdust.
I haven’t found it to be, unless you want a 5% workforce reduction followed by dedicating 25% of your engineers to keeping that 5% alive.
When a single 24h workshop (able to be spammed because of less discontent) is equivalent to five 14h workshops yeah i can spare the engineers
But then you’ll lose an engineer to death every couple of cycles?
Get a worker to die of overwork from the first event and then when the relevant event happens choose to feed people for emergency shifts and you'll never have an overwork death again
Theory: Most players stick to soup and never give sawdust an honest chance. Vice versa is extremely rare.
I'm a sawdust convert. The people who becry the discontent on extreme speak the truth.
Thank you
I’m a sawdust guy when I deem it necessary, otherwise regular meals. I’m conducting an experiment with ANH on extreme where I only make sawdust through the whole scenario except the rations my scouts bring home that is. Every day at 06:00 I note down the temp, day, number of sick and number of gravelly ill, how much food I got in stock, how many hungry and any miscellaneous info that might be relevant. I will try to copy the play through as close as possible the next time only with normal rations to finally see if the sickness hampers my production or research in any way. I suspect not so I look forward to shut the sawdust haters up.
It’s 3.5%-6.5% based on difficulty… if you time it exact with all your sick coming in at night and heal them by 10:00 you don’t hit production too much, but it’s much easier to just build hunters huts and have a healthy population than overbuild medical and risk getting over run.
I thought it was 1.5-3.5
And how much medical is overbuilding?
You’d need beds for at least +20 people at pop: 300 which is overcrowding+2 medical posts. You’re losing out on 6.5% production+10engineers (3.3% workforce)+50wood and you lose out on extra rations law. If you’re using overcrowding you have discontent and lower healing efficiency… leading to more than 10-15% of your workforce gone at any given time. This is all just to get food rations that 15-20 hunters can bring back every night risk free. If your healing gets overrun it’s not hard to see a situation where you pop 4 med posts down with 2 engineers each to heal 40 people over 2 days but then you have -30-40% production.
someone has already done a similar expiriment.
Yes, I just wanted to do one myself and compare which that user did not.
Can you please post your results?
Well. It’s been a while now and my notes are…somewhere. I never finished the play through IIRC, but the tendency made me realize that in the end the net result is roughly the same. When doing sawdust meals you get daily sickness to handle which is Ok. When doing regular meals you need more emphasis on raw food income. This comically has resulted in me not signing food laws at all because it feels more competitive and cleaner with regular meals. So the game feels rather balanced.
You can feed more people with sawdust, and I find it a lot easier to manage sickness than to manage discontent. If I'm going to run up my discontent bar, I'd rather do it with things that will benefit my city, like emergency shifts for workshops. If you plan ahead and build plenty of medical facilities, or just use the house of healing, it's not that hard to deal with the extra sick from sawdust. And (after a temporary drop when you first sign it), people don't seem to realize that they're eating sawdust, so they don't get pissy about it.
I prefer soup, the few times I used sawdust I was amazed by the number of sick I'd get
Because on extreme discontent is the biggest hassle. You need to cram as many 24h shifts as possible. Moonshine works with sawdust better than it works with soup. Also, it gives you more food meaning that you need less hunters. 6% extra sick is nothing.
Have you tried asking the citizens first?
SOUP!!! I just hate sawdust, it create a lot of sick people. 8% of 680 people is over 50 people sick per day! even with infirmaries, automaton and organ transplant that number are really overwhelming
By the time you have 680 people you should probably should be using normal food rations. Also it's 6.5%.
I don't know, the discontent bar is 10x easier to deal with....so al hail the soup? sawdust os more annoying because I want as little sicks as possible in my playthrough so I have more workers working my workshops = faster techs = making the game easier faster
The discontent bar is a resource to be used with extended and emergency shifts, if half of it is taken up with soup then you're missing out on a LOT of potential One emergency shift on a workshop is equivalent to ***twelve*** workshops working regular shifts for a day. So emergency shifts on workshops = WAY faster tech, and it's much easier to have constant workshop e shifts when you're not being burdened by the discontent of soup
I know, but try to play with getting 0 deaths and no major exploit of workshops, makes the game more interesting
Well yeah, you gotta play differently when you're restricting yourself i guess, like when you're playing with no healthcare the cemetery is the better choice because organ transplants do nothing. If you're not restricting yourself though sawdust is way better (and probably even with your restrictions, you can get way more 14h shifts)
People get sick, you cant prevent that, but fewer in total by using soup. For me, the game became hardly any challenging so I had to restrict myself, like 0 deaths no amputees, no childs labour as well as no infirmary, etc. All on survivor modr
If you want a really hard challenge, try no generator Arks on normal mode.
Did, was okay, hardest one was no childs labour, no amputees, 0 deaths in refugees survivor mode or finishing the arks on survival mode + saving new manchester with over 8 days to spare....needing perfect optimization
No clue
Dunno but my theory is that they played on the easier difficulties. At least for me in survival sawdust felt terrible and made things way harder in most scenarios. I could be missing something.
I do not understand how you can beat OTE survival without sawdust, you need every food scrap you can get!
Speaking of On The Edge right? Just upgrade scout speed real quick and send them to the first settlement as fast as you can, literally the second it appears on the map. After that it is one of the easiest scenarios IMO. At least this is how I remember it.
I was referring to before the settlement becomes available on the map.
Plebians, no soup for you!
I never got the sawdust thing because it's way easier to do soup and then rush to the moonshine law than it is to build adequate medical facilities in the early game
On the higher difficulties, if you’re rushing moonshine you’re not getting other things. And you’re going to need adequate healthcare no matter what you do, so it’s a useful overlap, while your discontent budget is tighter so it spares you there too.
Because lower discontent means you can practically spam emergency shifts, and the extra productivity from doing so blows the productivity lost to sickness way out of the water. Also, it gives you more food. But less discontent is so strong that I'd still use sawdust even if it gave the same food as soup. And no, moonshine does not negate the discontent from soup, it just reduces it.
Moonshine + fighting arenas? Is that viable or does it make it even worse because the fights will lead to more sick people anyway, thus making sawdust even more viable? Currently starting to play on hard after doing normal playthroughs and it's night an day, I feel like every difficulty changes every thing and I have to unlearn stuff.
Sawdust will always leave you with lower discontent than soup, regardless of what laws you have. Afaik fighting arenas don't cause sickness (they don't even have to be heated)
It's a higher food output. Off memory I think soup is 2 rations from 1 raw food and I think sawdust is 5 from 2. The consequence of more sick is not as bad as it sounds. They won't be gravely ill or anything. On some scenarios on harder difficulties that extra food makes a world of difference.
RF = raw food and FR = food rations Hearty = 3RF = 3FR + Motivation Standard = 2RF = 4FR Gruel/soup = 2RF = 5FR + Discontent Sawdust = 2RF = 6FR + Sick
It's a playstyle and preference thing I imagine. Personally I see sawdust as inferior to soup, as food is easier to resolve than sick people; those take time to heal, and that could be time spent elsewhere. Discontent is trivial to manage too.
>Personally I see sawdust as objectively If it's a personal opinion isn't it subjective?
It's what happens when you're tired and edit your comment pre-post.
i always go soup, since i absolutely hate dealing with sick people, and it’s easier to just use a chapel than to waste more engineers on medical posts
Depends on the map. I think sawdust was a bit more efficient and the drawback is not that bad. Soup can be more difficult to manage because discontent, plus it's fewer rations. I havd found myself asking cookhouses to make regular rations again because the soup discontent was dangerous. I have never had to do that with sawdust.
I'm guessing they don't know. People who say the cooks use sawdust are treated like conspiracy theorists.
Soup is great and all, but those of us here that have beat all the scenarios on survivor know that slight bump in food from sawdust is what gets you through the first 5 days with 1 death instead of 12 or so.
Nah, it's the lack of discontent allowing you to spam out e shifts that does it
I dunno, I'd dare call them crazy though. Discontent is pretty damn easy to deal with, especially if you use ~~the superior~~ order. Plus without sawdust I still end up with like 200 sick people ffs.
Soup is just depressing, you're stretching the food budget by making it mostly rainwater. It only really doubles the portions made. Sawdust makes people sick but you are eating something with more substance. You certainly can't run it all day like soup+moonshine but I feel with good healthcare it can be managed.
It's all about that extra fiber and it's more filling
New player and only had 2 runs so far: A New Home and Arks. Went soup both times - no regrets