item consumtion priority D:

[woolfoma]

we need this type of thing in the game, like with the manual priorities except for items not jobs.
so I could tell everyone to eat the simple meals before to packaged survival ones or use the herbal meds before the real meds (or vice versa depending on preference), also potatoes before berries when making meals, things like that would be amazing for this game.

[skullywag]

Im starting to feel this way about a lot of things ingame. Good job getting that 1 skilled crafter to do stonecutting and another crafting job if both set to forever.....I know Tynan doesnt want that complex screen of priorities but at the moment we dont have enough control, everything seems to be based on proximity and that just plain wont work in the future.

[Boboid]

A system that allowed you to assign a particular colonist to a particular workbench would be sufficient for a lot of tasks.
Or to assign specific priorities to various benches that fall under the same category.

For example I want my Tailoring to be done before my Stonecutting.
And I want my Butchery to be done before my Cooking and so on.

There's a fine line between unnecessary complexity and a total lack of control.

[monkeystyxx]

Perhaps a more elegant solution would be for the colonists to remember what you last told them to prioritise, and keep prioritising that until you tell them otherwise?

For example, if you tell them to prioritise tailoring, and they go off to eat something/sleep, when they finish eating/sleeping they'll currently just go back to doing whatever is closest. It'd be better if they remembered "I've been told to prioritise tailoring" and go back to that.


For cooking/butchering, it's tricky because it depends on the needs of the player at the time. As to when it's preferable for them to prioritise butchering.

For instance, I keep all my carcasses in a freezer. So the only time I need them to prioritise butchering is when we don't have enough raw ingredients to make a meal. The colonists seem to realise this on their own, I think it's their default behaviour. "IF we have enough food according to the cooking stove bill OR we don't have enough ingredients to make the thing on the bill AND we have animal carcasses, do butchery".

The only reasons I can think of off the top of my head for colonists to get butchery "wrong" is:
- If you have the stove bill on Do Forever, which will mean they only do butchery when they totally run out of ingredients and can't make the next meal. Frankly this is your own fault for having cooking on Do Forever in the first place. How many damn colonists do you have that a full time chef is even an option for you? :p
- If you have animal carcasses stored outside and they go rotten because you never have enough cooked food but loads of potatoes or berries and are only cooking simple meals, which prevents butchery because the pawns only use the vegetables. Again with the 'it's your own fault' thing, and there's always the option to force the colonist to prioritise butchery manually.

Maybe there's a problem with butchery that I'm not seeing, but...


As for the other things though, totally agree. It'd be nice to be able to have a "tailor" and a "stonecutter", instead of two "crafters". Not suggesting that they use different stats, just that we should be able to tell each colonist what to prioritise when crafting.

Assigning them a workbench might work. The only issue with that is if your assigned Tailor is busy doing something else (or gets his leg blown off, for instance) then nobody else can work the tailoring bench without you manually reassigning/unassigning it. It could be argued that this would be a rare enough occurrence for it to not matter, though...

And in response to the actual OP, my GOD is it annoying watching someone walk half way across the known world to get that packaged survival meal that a raider dropped, when there's a fridge FULL of fine meals right next to him. I once had this happen TO THE COOK. She was RIGHT THERE next to ALL THAT FOOD but thought "nope, I'ma walk for 10 minutes to get to this packaged survival meal, that's some tasty stuff right there. Then I'ma eat that s*** off the floor and moan about eating off the floor for a few days".

[TheNewTeddy]

Putting per-day limits on tables would be good. IE smash 5 rocks per day, then go do something else, then come back tomorrow and smash 5 more.

[loc978]

As much as these problems absolutely need to be addressed officially at some point, we do have a fix available for the packaged survival meals problem. [MOD] ( Alpha 8 ) Space and Prison Meals! (V 1.5.1)

Been using that one long enough, I actually forgot meal priority was an issue.

My two cents on crafting priority: I'd like to be able to check/uncheck colonists from the bills menu the same way we do ingredients. That way you could have your chef on cooking with your hunter on butchering... or your inventor on swordsmithing with your janitor on stonecutting, et cetera.

[skullywag]

Meals wont be an issue in A9, its been fixed theres now a local search for food before global.  The issue here is items of the same type of different material/different quality, the category system doesnt support them.

[RemingtonRyder]

They'll still eat hoarded space meals unless you forbid them, though. They just won't travel to the other side of the map uphill through hard snow. *shrug*