Eating Raw???

[BWCDawg]

Hey guys.  Sorry if this has been asked/answered already...

Why do my guys eat raw meat when there are plenty of available fine meals a few steps away?

Any insight anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated!!!

[EscapeZeppelin]

Like their preference for survival meals over anything else I suspect it's because colonists are idiots. It's a weird thing and mine have done it occasionally as well. I've seen them eat raw potatoes when they had to walk over stacks of meals to get it.

Make sure your fine meals aren't forbidden or inaccessible and I think you have to chalk it up to occasionally strange AI behavior. You could report it as a bug.

[Feniks]

There has been change in search algorithm they look for food in smaller radios it is to prevent situation where colonist would choose to go to the end of a map and eat fine meal rather than eat raw food in a base and as a result he would die from starvation on a way.

[BWCDawg]

Yeah, but if they're literally side by side and they choose the raw meat over the fine meal then what?

[Feniks]

Then no idea i haven't encouner that problem in my game.

[tommytom]

Might be a bug.

I know "food poisoning" has been implemented where bad cooks make tainted meals. Maybe they are smart enough that they got sick and refuse to eat the bad meals? Kinda doubt it, but maybe...

[cultist]

It seems to me that colonists reserve the entire stack of anything they go to interact with/pick up. So if you have only one stack of food that's not forbidden and two desperately hungry colonists try to eat at the same time, one will reserve all the food and the other will go for raw food because he thinks that's all there's left. Not sure if this applies to your situation, but I've had that issue multiple times.

[tommytom]

Solid theory. Maybe. Maybe try to reproduce it in dev mode.

[REMworlder]

Do you have a screenshot? If anything the meal pathing is supposed to be optimized in A9.

[BWCDawg]

No, no screenshot.  Since I wrote the original post, I've deleted the game and started over.  Sorry.

[Idunyken]

Another theory: because colonists now ignore better food that is further away, when they go far away from any food source they will target the nearest food. Meaning they will target raw food even if there's meals just 1 tile further away from where they were.

[tommytom]

Another theory: because colonists now ignore better food that is further away, when they go far away from any food source they will target the nearest food. Meaning they will target raw food even if there's meals just 1 tile further away from where they were.

OP says they are side-by-side, but they could be one tile "further" depending on pathing.

[Tynan]

Another theory: because colonists now ignore better food that is further away, when they go far away from any food source they will target the nearest food. Meaning they will target raw food even if there's meals just 1 tile further away from where they were.

This sounds like the most likely explanation actually. Blast. Guess I have more work to do!

And nice work thinking of that. I was having trouble puzzling it out until you wrote that. Thanks.

[puddlejumper448]

Might I suggest, if its possible and simple, that you have tiers, so they will search 10m for raw food, 15 for simple meals, 20 for fine, etc., that could fix this problem.

[tommytom]

Might I suggest, if its possible and simple, that you have tiers, so they will search 10m for raw food, 15 for simple meals, 20 for fine, etc., that could fix this problem.

Excellent suggestion. *thumbs up since there isn't an option for this*