Kitchen calculations

[Bertie]

Hello,

There's been various discussions on the forums about the best way to get meals to all the prisoners, however each once I find tends to focus on a specific issue. I was wondering if anyone has a reasonably reliable rule as to how many cooks, cookers, fridges and sinks you need to satisfy xxx amount of prisoners?

Thanks

[MiriW]

That would be near to impossible to calculate since the time it takes cooks to travel from stove to fridge to serving station is also a factor, as well as the number of prisoners eating the particular previous meal, the amounts of sinks available for cleanup and the time between meals...

[Bertie]

fair enough, I'll have to continue with trial and error!

[MiriW]

I just spotted in a post further down that someone estimates:

1 service table can handle 4 cooker which can handle 40 prisoners

Although I've successfully fed a population of 200+ with 2 serving tables (and a buttload of cookers/chefs)

[Meeeps]

I just spotted in a post further down that someone estimates:

1 service table can handle 4 cooker which can handle 40 prisoners

Although I've successfully fed a population of 200+ with 2 serving tables (and a buttload of cookers/chefs)

If you have less service tables, those might not be ready before eat time starts, a service table has 4 slots with space for around 20 ingredients each, 1 cooker should be able to get 20 ingredients (10/pot) ready around half an hour before eat time. If you have fewer service tables, cooks will wait until there is space again to serve the other pots, which means you need more time for eat.

Depending how you set the quantitiy in the regime (3 ingredients is high, 2 medium, 1 for low), you can set your own calcualtions, example you like to well feed 200 prisoners -> 200*3/20 = 30 cooker needed, one cooker needs one cook or a prisoner.

Also note, the bigger your kitchen will grow, it will trigger a "job delay bug", which means that cooks might idle half of the time and are able to get only half ingredients ready, so you need to change your calcualtions for 200+ kitchen and calc with around 10 ingredients per cooker at eat time, which means there is no food ready at eat time. (Edit: if this bug is triggered, you also don't need that many cooks anymore, around 2 cooks for 3 cooker might be enough)

Edit2: also note (again as of Alpha15, there is invented a new issue with performance boost, the amount of ingredients prepared depends on the gamespeed you set, the slower you let the game run, the more food you will get prepared. (I switch from ">>>" to ">>" at work time, also if I let the game run afk, only at >>-speed)

Edit3: depending on variety of food you need freezes, one freezer can hold 80 ingredients
here a image of a kitchen setup for 200 inmates, one row feeds 35 inmates, I feeded 170 and added the next row to increase inmates to 200:



as you see food is ready before eat (9pm)

[Bertie]

Thanks Meeeps, that's very interesting to know!

[Zorasht]

i got plenty of problems feeding my prisoners, food it is always my no.1 complaint, and fights in my canteen are way too common
i tried having up to three kitchens, and that seems to make things even worse
I´ll try that approach

[Meeeps]

the biggest issue with Alpha 15 is that preparing food depends on game speed, so the additional game speed buttons are useless, as they do speed up by delaying jobs, so you need to run the game on normal (slow) speed at work time, the other issues from Alpha14 are still additional valid, so you might also have troubles with slow speed but less.

Edit: if you really like to do micro management, you could change quantity to medium in the regime. right before eat starts, then you should be able to feed everyone.

[HerrJoebob]

One fairly gamy way to make sure all the meals get prepared is to set variety to 'Low'. If there's only one type of ingredient you can prepare more meals with the same kitchen and staff because of fewer trips out to get ingredients and less competition for cookers.

Each burner can only hold one type of ingredient, so having (say) cabbage on a burner prevents that burner from cooking any other type.