Slate blocks
Slate blocks
Blocks of solid slate. A dull-looking rock that chips easily.
Base Stats
- Stuff Categories
- Stony
- Market Value
- 0.9
- Stack Limit
- 75
- Mass
- 0.9 kg
- Beauty
- -12
- Rotatable
- False
- Path Cost
- 14 (48%)
Building
- Terrain Affordance
- Heavy
Stat Modifiers
- Beauty Factor
- ×1.1
- Beauty Offset
- +0
- Work To Make Factor
- ×1.3
- Work To Build Factor
- ×6
- Work To Build Offset
- +140 ticks (2.33 secs)
- Max Hit Points
- ×1.3
- Flammability
- ×0
- Melee Blunt Damage
- ×1.0
- Melee Sharp Damage
- ×0.6
- Melee Cooldown
- ×1.3
- Door Opening Speed
- ×0.45
- Rest Effectiveness
- ×0.9
Creation
- Crafted At
- Work To Make
- 1,600 ticks (26.67 secs)
- Resources to make
1- Product Amount
20
- defName
- BlocksSlate
- Color
- (70,70,70)
- Stuff Adjective
- slate
Slate blocks are a stony material and are the lightest weight of five types of stone blocks.
Acquisition[edit]
Slate blocks are cut from slate chunks at a Stonecutter's table. It takes 1,600 ticks (26.67 secs) of work to cut a single chunk into 20 blocks.
Usage[edit]
Slate blocks can be used as a material for stuffable items with the Stony stuff tag.
Slate blocks can be used in the following recipes:
Analysis[edit]
Comparison to other materials[edit]
Slate blocks don't have any unique recipes and are only used in stuffable items and buildings. As such, they must be considered in comparison to the other stone types, which share all the same recipes.
With the second lowest HP factor and stats that are otherwise baseline for other the other stone types, slate blocks are an objectively inferior choice for all use-cases when compared to other stone types. However, the differences are slight enough that aesthetics or availability can easily make up the difference. Their one standout quality is their low weight, which makes slate a better choice for transporting stone blocks or chunks via caravan or transport pod when quantity is the primary concern. Slate is 90% the weight of sandstone, 82% the weight of limestone, and 72% the weight of marble, and 72% the weight of granite. The practical utility of this is minimal however, as rarely will it be relevant to caravan large amounts of stone blocks.
Slate is slightly more beautiful than other stone types and is fifth for most beautiful material for sculptures after gold, jade, silver and marble and tied with sandstone. Generally speaking, one of these materials should be used instead, however if they are unavailable, slate is a high-work but non-flammable option with decent beauty.
Stone generally[edit]
- This section is transcluded from Stone blocks analysis.
Stone blocks are an important option for construction throughout the game. Stone is cheap, available in large quantities on all maps, and is incredibly useful at all phases of the game as a fireproof, low-wealth material for sturdy walls & buildings and beautiful floors and sculptures. Yet stone is slow to work with, heavy, and makes for absurdly slow doors, making other materials better choices in many circumstances.
Wealth management[edit]
Stone blocks have the lowest market value of any material in the game after bioferrite.
Not only does this make them easy to acquire in bulk through trade, it means using blocks for construction and beautification (and keeping stockpiles for said construction) will result in fewer raid points, and therefore raids that are slightly easier to deal with. Stone is half as expensive as steel, and 1/10 as expensive as plasteel, which directly translates to half or 1/10th as many raid points, respectively, resulting from those stockpiles and constructions.
Resilience[edit]
Buildings made from stone blocks boast some of the highest HP totals in the game. Even the lowest-HP blocks, marble and slate, are rivaled only by expensive plasteel and uranium, and fire-susceptible bioferrite. Given this, they are a solid choice for exterior (and even interior) walls, providing you with a longer timeframe to respond to sappers and breachers, as well as some peace of mind against fire.
Beauty[edit]
Stone blocks can be made into sculptures, one of the easiest-to-use tools for improving room impressiveness. While wood and steel are both much faster to work with, all stone types besides granite and limestone have beauty factors of 1.1 or higher, acting as a multiplier on the final beauty value. Between this boost and stone's low market value, sculptures made from stone have a higher beauty-to-value ration than any other material, besides wood in certain cases. Marble, particularly, is excellent for this purpose, with a beauty factor of 1.35.
Downsides[edit]
Stone is incredibly slow to work with. Not only does it take more than twice as long to build with than any other material, but it is also the only building material that needs to be processed from its raw form to be usable, requiring even more pawn labor. While time is not typically limited in RimWorld, as enemies typically scale with wealth rather than game duration, with one notable exception, consider using other materials in time-sensitive circumstances; stone is a poor choice for emergency defenses, and for most things in the early-game when you are racing to secure food and shelter for your colonists.
Additionally, stone doors open extremely slowly, which can inhibit both productivity and tactical maneuvers. Wood is much faster, but can turn a building that was completely impervious to fire into being mostly impervious to fire. Uranium and plasteel doors can be used in situations where having a firebreak, opening speed, and durability are all factors of concern.
Finally, stone should not be used for colonist beds as it only offers 90% of the rest effectiveness a non-stone materials or jade bed of the same quality. This means more time spent sleeping and less time being productive. Conversely, this can be a benefit for prisoners - time spent sleeping is time spent unable to prison break, and at awful quality, a stone bed has a lower rest effectiveness than sleeping spot. Bioferrite has an even lower rest effectiveness however.
Production strategy
- This section is transcluded from Stonecutting maximization.
Stonecutting speed is controlled by the cutting pawn's General Labor Speed stat which is determined by a pawn's stats and capacities rather than any skill. Thus, maximization is based on improving that stat and removing process inefficiencies rather than grinding for experience.
General Labor Speed[edit]
General labor speed is affected by manipulation, sight and global work speed.
- Sight decreases general labor speed if below 100%, but offers no benefit above 100%.
- Manipulation can be improved with bionic or archotech arms, or with drugs that improve Manipulation or Consciousness such as Go-juice or Wake-up.
- Global work speed can be improved by certain traits, such as Industrious or Neurotic, a Leader's Work Drive
, and the drug Wake-up, which stacks with the drug's manipulation improvement. - General Labor Speed can also be directly increased by +50% Production specialists, and those affected by their Production Command.
- The ability stacks with the role, but a specialist cannot self-buff.
Like other workbenches, using a stonecutter while outdoors, having no light, or under extreme temperature will negatively affect production speed. Care should be taken to avoid these conditions. Pawns with damaged vision / manipulation, or with traits such as Lazy should avoid stonecutting unless they are otherwise unoccupied.
While being a production specialist will lock out a pawn out of many other work types and the quality increase is useless for stonecutting, a stonecutter may want to become a specialist regardless. You can have as many specialists of a type as you wish, and the role can always be removed if the pawn is required for another role or once a sufficient stockpile of blocks has been made. Note that there is a −15 <Role> lost if you decide to switch or remove the specialist role later. If a temporary role switch is still untenable, consider placing the stonecutter table in range of your regular production specialist's workstations to benefit from their aura.
Process efficiency[edit]
Positioning the cutting table next to the chunk stockpile is ideal.
Placing an armchair or other chair will not improve production rates, but will ensure that the pawn remains comfortable and happy while cutting, however it will slow pawns as they path over it.
It's worth mentioning, with the Ideology DLC installed, slaves are ideal as stone cutters as the task doesn't raise any of the pawns skills. The -15% work speed from slaves is offset by a lack of need for recreation. Adding a circadian half-cycler
further increases efficiency by removing the need for sleep at the cost of -15% consciousness.
Gallery[edit]
Stack of 1 slate blocks
Stack of multiple slate blocks
Full stack of slate blocks
Version history[edit]
- 0.7.581 - Added, previously there was only generic "stone".
- Beta 19/1.0 - Slowed constructing buildings with all stone types by 20%
- Stony
- Granite blocks • Limestone blocks • Marble blocks • Sandstone blocks • Slate blocks • Jade
- Metallic
- Gold • Plasteel • Silver • Steel • Uranium • Bioferrite
- Woody
- Wood
- Leathery
- Bearskin • Birdskin • Bluefur • Camelhide • Chinchilla fur • Dog leather • Elephant leather • Foxfur • Guinea pig fur • Heavy fur • Human leather • Lightleather • Lizardskin • Panthera fur • Patchleather • Pigskin • Plainleather • Rhinoceros leather • Thrumbofur • Wolfskin • Dread leather
- Fabric
- Alpaca wool • Bison wool • Cloth • Devilstrand • Hyperweave • Megasloth wool • Muffalo wool • Sheep wool • Synthread