Make it possible to manually set food priorities or details for use

[asanbr]

I noticed in the patch notes that changes have been made, which seems related to earlier suggestions I made that non-cannibals shouldn't eat human meat meals when they can choose normal meals, and people shouldn't eat raw meat when they can choose raw corn and not get a debuff.

Cool!

However, noticed some weirdness yesterday when I tried A14 for the first time and played as tribals.

Situation 1:
I have cooked lots of simple meals and lots of pemmican. I make as much pemmican as I can because it is durable, but when I run out of veggies I cook up meat to simple meals. Playing on a map with infinite animalt so I can get as much meat as I need.

What happens is that people choose to eat pemmican rather than simple meals. I don't know why and I haven't checked the numbers, and I'm not interested.
If I let this go on, all the simple meals will be wasted since they only last 3 days, and it is meaningless to cook them.
Fine, I can forbid the pemmican. Then they will eat simple meals. But when we run out of simple meals, they starve.
I end up micromanaging my food supply in a very non-fun way.


Situation 2: There is raw corn and pemmican. Again, people choose to eat raw corn.
I suspect this has to do with the mood buff from corn, or being gluttonous, or something. But this behavior is not OK, and I end up having to micro my food again.
I want them to eat pemmican and not corn. I only use corn for cooking pemmican (to mix it up with meat) and to tame animals. No one is supposed to eat raw corn in my colony, if they have other options.


Many other systems in the game have detailed priority lists and other things to handle situations like this. If someone can suggest a way to use zones or something to manage it, I would try that. But I would also be interested in a priority order (global or per pawn) of what type of food they should eat, it could be similar to the bills system for crafting. I only have 4-5 types of food so it would be manageable if I could make one rule and make it apply to everybody.

With the clothing system, the stockpile system, quality for crafting, ingredients, etc, I feel like there are many systems already where one or two of those could cover this need as well.

Anyone agree? Opinions?

[Kagemusha12]

I agree, I often would find it nice to have more control about eating/feeding priorities.

Another situation:
When I have nice meals and simple meals and I have prisoners, all too often the prisoners get fed nice meals, instead of the simple ones.

It would be great if one could lay out rules, that prisoners get simple meals whenever possible and that higher quality meals should preferably go to the colonists  themselves

[asanbr]

You can partially solve the prison problem by setting prisoners to "get no food" and then make a stockpile in the prison where you put  human meat or whatever you want to feed them.

It needs micromanagement and causes other problems, though.

[Wex]

Another situation.
You have insect jelly that you would like to use to cook meals. "Would like" because the colonists ignore the meals already cooked and go for the jelly.

[SpaceDorf]

Especially for that in the harvest area and than complain about ugly environment and having to eat from the ground

The easiest solution for prisonfood is to install a slime-dispenser in your prison which is fed from outside.
They can feed themselves. Same thing is when you make a stockpile with dedicated food for the inmates.

My solution for the pemmican dilemma would be to make different staggered stockpiles

The Pemmican is furthest away from the entry to your pantry, together with your corn, then the raw meat and in front a
line of prepped meals.
I am not 100% sure if its work, wanting to try it out for myself, but I am pretty sure it should work, else you can always lock the door to the pemmican if there are meals available.