Thank you for this analysis @digital-wisdom!
Some 'essentials':
There is a third card in Tom Essentials. It will be an equipment which allows one character to have bonuses when exploring the planet.
There is something going on which is very important about the happiness provided by Tom Essentials products.
Please note that these are complementary options. If you have 10, 15, or 20 people, or one, two, or three running games, or less cargo, Tom Essentials can really complement your options.
Now let's see some details to feed 10 people:
It's interesting to compare these two so I use your angle in that, and try to bring some more information:
Option Premium Buddies only:
- Total cargo used: 3
- 8 cards for 2 Foodie Moodie (upgraded to food +5 and happy soda +2)
- 1 WHC
- Lasts 25 days, then you have to find energy for your Foodie Moodie in addition to 10 water/day (or at least 6/day).
- You have some happy sodas (4 / day) for happiness
Option Tom Essentials:
- Total cargo used: 2
- Lasts 20 days, then you have to find 10 food/day and 10 water/day
- You have +3 happiness per people
This bonus happiness?
Let's talk about the 'happiness model'.
eXode is made so that having non-maxed happiness is "OK", this way players can handle much in collection variety and power.
But in the first model I want to try out:
- Citizens can't be traded away (sold to supply market) before having their happiness maxed.
- This means that more happiness per day means "faster to market", which can be very important for 'serial runs', as "minimal time to market" becomes an important factor here for supplying new citizens to the supply market.
- I don't want to give perfect options to make everything "faster to sell", because mastering supply is essential to guaranteeing value (and avoiding too many mini-launches and mini-runs to dump the market). but Tom Essentials happiness is still a nice way to manage events or offset the evacuation consequences in crew morale.
In happiness, the Beauty Air and Happy Food of Tom Essentials may be more effective than having 40% happy sodas for 10 people.
Also, you can actually bring Foodie Moodies and WHC + have happy sodas too, to accelerate happiness for the persons you want to sell later!
For instance, for 5 cargo slots, you get the two sets (the one from Tom Premium Buddies, and the one from Tom Essentials)
Also note that there is a third card in Tom Essentials, giving an exploration bonus. ;)
In Closure?
If we understand that correctly:
- you are still free to have either Tom Essentials or Tom Premium Buddies
- you are not forced to have both, and not losing terribly by having only one option.
- but having both gives excellent happiness options and the best "time to market".
- Tom Premium Buddies is actually great for your lasting colonies and Tom Essentials is good for the first days.
- Tom Essentials needs less cargo and gives more happiness. Also an exploration item.
- it's sad if you have none of these two. If so, you should then hurry and make your citizens find food/water/energy sources, and assume some consequences!
Ah very interesting, I was curious about the happiness dynamic. I feel like this comment just gave me lots of new insight.
Another thing I noticed about the Tom's Essentials is that so far they are not installations whereas the foodie moodie and whc are, so i imagine this means they don't take up space inside your walls or underground protection which could be a bonus on hostile planets?