tldr: pawns should get nutrient paste from dispenser for their inventory, not just for when they want to eat
pawns currently dont go to dispenser to get nutrient paste for their inventory
what it leads to is that if i play a transhumanist base, with only nutrient paste + survival meal, the pawn will go to take the survival meal, which i want to keep in reserve for caravanning. Not efficient use of nutrition
i can of course, disable survival meal from policy too, however, that'd mean manually figuring out who to go on caravan, then switch them to a separate food policy which covers package meal.
Meanwhile, overyone else on a no-package policy at home wont be having any meal in their inventory - a good thing since they'll not ever eat without table, but a bad thing because they no longer have emergency meal and also waste a lot of time to get food from dispenser.
If i decide to enable simple/fine/lavish meals, those're of higher priority than nutrient paste, which leads to the dispenser being useless, and well, why use simple meal when nutrient paste is just much much superior in a transhumanist base?
If you want a mod to learn from (I think I left enough comments), my nutrients mod (https://github.com/et-rimworld-mods/etrw-nutrient-dispenser) will let your pawns use a nutrient dispenser like a stove - they can produce meals whenever, not just when eating. So, that would let your guys take meals in their inventories, although it would also change some other things. First, there's no way for prisoners to feed themselves, but since your pawns can make stacks, they can easily restock a 1x1 pile in the prison. There's also a different meal that's half-way between a packaged survival meal and nutrients, although with a stronger negative mood. Also some fruit leather, and separate meals for insects and human meat, although depending on your playstyle those could be viewed positively or negatively.
Nutrient paste is not designed to be carried with you.
It got no spoil date. It got no sensible trade value. Because it was never expected to be in any storage - including the pawns inventory - to begin with. It was intended to be made on demand 100% of the time.
But maybe now Tynan will finally take a stance and give Nutrient some of those missing values. And/or maybe add a mobile nutrient paste dispenser for Caravans?
QuoteIt got no spoil date.
It got a spoil data, and it even spoil much faster then regular meals.
The image show a fresh created nutri paste meal.
QuoteIt got no sensible trade value.
It got a value of $10.
Simple meal got $15, Fine meal $20.
QuoteNutrient paste is not designed to be carried with you.
But i agree with you.
Since it spoil that fast it would be a waste to carry it around, and it would spoil mosttime overnight.
I believe that meals carried in pawns' inventories don't actually spoil. That might be part of the reason that paste isn't craftable like meals, so your pawns don't stock up on it. However, during normal gameplay pawns will always eat their paste before it spoils, so I don't really consider it cheating. (Even if you do the thing in the default / un-modded game, where you pause a lot and get a pawn to drop their meals right at their feet, effectively "crafting" paste with the default nutrient paste dispenser.)
I do agree with this. In fact, I made a post saying the same a few months back.