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Currently the "Do until you have X" jobs in the different production stations do not have a sensible upper or lower limit.

For example, I give a bill to cook simple meals until I have 10. The colonists will cook 10 meals and carry on with their day. One person comes by and eats one meal, there are still 9 meals left and thus, the 10 meal job is no longer satisfied. A cook will come to the kitchen and make another one meal.

It is not efficient for the cook to do this, it would be preferable if you could apply some "hysteresis" to the whole process, that is to say set a lower limit and an upper limit. If there are ever less than 5 meals, cook until you have 10. This way instead of the cook doing many small jobs, he will work smarter and work in batches while still maintaining a good amount of products in storage.

I think that rimworld need this because I'm tired my cook to walking across whole map to cook just 1 meal.

This is brilliant! Then cooks can do other things other than cooking ALL the time!
I like this suggestion a lot :D

I love this suggestion. This would honestly be my favorite addition to the game right now.

Edit: I'd like to add that this would be great for cleaning. Currently either you prioritize cleaning so low that it never gets done, or you prioritize it high enough that it does get done but the person can't really do anything else because every time there's a minor dirt patch that pops up the colonist gets distracted from their other jobs and moves halfway across the home area to clean it.

I like the idea of hysteresis and I support it.

Having said that, if you set your cook to cook and clean only, he/she will never leave the base and I'd be surprised if he/she ever had time for anything else. :)

Cook until you have: 10
AND, in the same bill:
Cook if less than: 5
Something like this would be golden.

While we're at it, I want something like this for stockpiles!!! I often use 1 tile stockpiles in kitchen: one for meat, one for vegetables, so the cook can focus on cooking. But a hauler is often stuck there refilling a 70 rice stockpile.
"Take from if more than X units"
"Refill if less than Y units"
This would also be very good for remote mining operations. Create a local steel stockpile with "take if more than 75/150/225", basically a multiple of 75. Also useful for mortars.

The one I would like is this for hauling as well and when hauling just grab what they need.  I will example my prisons.  I have nutrient paste feedingwith hoppers set to a critical priority.  Darn  full time hauler picks up full stack of food and runs it to replace six there and then back to main stockpile with the surplus.  By the time he drops it off, another prisoner has grabbed food and that hauler does it all over again.  It drives me batty.

Just had a thought how you can get sort of a similar effect with current game mechanics by dropping the meals on the floor. There will be a some overproduction depending on how busy your haulers are.

Quote from: hwfanatic on June 03, 2016, 04:32:37 PM
Just had a thought how you can get sort of a similar effect with current game mechanics by dropping the meals on the floor. There will be a some overproduction depending on how busy your haulers are.

I do that and it helps, but you get the opposite effect: haulers only hauling 3 or 5 meals to fridge.

Yes, that is true. Situational.

+1 +1 +1!

This would be very welcome!

Something similar would be nice too, with how storage zones work. Right now I have a high priority zone for meat/vegs, right inside the door of the freezer (because I literally have almost 10000 units of food), and it is annoying that haulers, go haul foods to those stockpiles, even when there is only missing 5 pieces of food. Again making it very inefficient. Maybe this one is harder to implement though.

+1 Yes please!!

+1 Totally agree with this. Love the idea.

This must be a thing for A14 Tynan if you don'twant people comlaining about the game there are two things you can do: Change the art style (don't), or incorporate this system to remove some of colonist's idiocy.

Maybe it could be imitated with manual priorities and an allowed zone ? Set hauling higher than cooking for the cook, and drastically limit his allowed zone to fridge, kitchen, and recreation room/dining room.

But then my current cook can't haul.

Quote from: hwfanatic on June 03, 2016, 04:32:37 PM
Just had a thought how you can get sort of a similar effect with current game mechanics by dropping the meals on the floor. There will be a some overproduction depending on how busy your haulers are.

I deal with this sort of issue myself. Say my main stock for something is at normal priority, I set 2 zones at my point of use location, one at preferred, and a small one at normal closer to the point of use. The normal zone gets burned first but not refilled since it's not higher priority than main zone, once they get into the preferred zone someone grabs a stack, tops off the preferred zone, drops the rest in the normal one.

Also do similar to this for small zones with stackables that get high traffic such as meals, keeps them better stacked saving space and since the bill is drop on floor, gives them a place to efficiently drop the extra. 20 piles of 1-3 meals each is annoying >.>

Edit: Aaand now several days later I see I screwed to quote somehow.. was supposed to be about:

Quote from: Vaporisor on June 03, 2016, 03:14:20 PMDarn  full time hauler picks up full stack of food and runs it to replace six there and then back to main stockpile with the surplus.  By the time he drops it off, another prisoner has grabbed food and that hauler does it all over again.  It drives me batty.

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+1 for lower and upper limits!

Really rooting for this feature being implemented in alpha 14! :3

I've never thought about it.

If foodsuply is higher than *setpoint1* suspend *bill 1* (bill1 being Make fine meal until you have 10) If not, activate bill 2 (make 15 meals)

We already have the tools, only need a setpoint for suspending the bill

I'd like to add my +1 to this one.

Sadly this did not make it in to alpha 14 it seems, I will do a little bump though as I still believe this would make a very good feature.

i agree with the OP. not just for cooking, but for crafting as well.

---

other stuff :

-when doing "do until X" for crafting, i think there should also be a slider for "quality" and a dropdown menu for material. ie : do until you have 10 plasteel longswords of normal quality and upwards. <---- this doesn't count other longswords that are not plasteel, nor would it count plasteel longswords that are below normal quality.

-as for smeltering weapons : there should be an option to set the material type, quality, and health of the weapon. ie : smelt if non-plasteel longsword or if quality is below normal or HP is below 50%

-there should be options for smelting armored vests/power armor and military/kevlar/tinfoil/power helmets. ie : smelt if if quality is below normal or HP is below 50%

On your last two ideas, I believe that those are, mostly, already included in the "Details" section of bills. You can set the HP percent or quality for the items included in the bill. There are currently no options in the bill itself for specific materials being excluded. The only work-around I can think of for that would be to set a specific "Do X times" bill and forbid anything you don't want.
On your last point it's unclear whether you want to be able to smelt these items for their resources (which would be nice) or whether it's the same complaint as the last.

it lets you smelt longswords, but you can't choose material. which is a problem. if you got plenty of steel longswords you wanted to smelt, but wanted to keep your plasteel longswords from getting smelted.

edit :
-yea, there are workarounds to it via forbidding plasteel longswords. but it's a workaround rather than directly addressing the issue.

-for my last point : iirc, there are no options to smelt armor vests, kevlar helmets, power armor, etc.. the only option is to incinerate them in the crematorium.

+1 Please please be a thing in the future