The hygiene meter kind of stinks

[Lord_earthfire]

Hygiene is a mechanic that looks great on paper but is detrimental in-game for the purposes of roleplay enhancement. Any time spent having to remove stink lines is time that could be spent in areas where socializing realistically happens.

In short, motives makes you go out of your departments (and we should maybe look at methods like pouring beakers on you and give them a nerf) and to a different destination.

In case of hunger and thirst, it's the bar. In case of the showers, it's a somewhat arbitrary location. This means the socialising does not happen in the showers, but in the public market you walked past while visiting the shower or the changeling turned into a shambler in your way.

In that way, it could be a good idea to look at shower locations and move them more inbetween points of interest.

TL;DR Hygiene removes social interaction instead of improving it

If this social interaction would happen with the person you are RP'ing with all round, this is a good thing.

Game mechanics obviously make you loose time you could use for socialising. If this wouldn't be the case we would be a chatroom instead of a game.

Really, it almost is arbitrary to which place you are forced by the mechanic to go, it can be the bar, the shower, the nerd dungeon. For as long as the mechanic inconveniences enough to move your ass out of the department and somewhere else, it has accomplished its goal. We could replace hygiene with the need to do bodybuilding in the gym and it would suffice.

Vending machines or a break room water cooler? Normal places to walk to with a coworker or chat with folks already there

Vending machines and water coolers are among the reason why hunger and thirst do not work as well as hygiene for shuffling crewmembers around the station.