Excess food blocking freezer door.

[Noobshock]

It's happened to me a few times before and either resolved itself or didn't cause that much trouble, but this game my colonists just keep dumping excess food on the door tile that goes to my freezer, resulting in a really cold dining room and freezer constantly emptying itself of its cool air. No, there's no stockpile on the door tile. I want my colonists to stop using the door as a dump because it's just really dumb. Suggestions?

[Klitri]

Make a backup stockpile with low priority so that if the main freezer is filled, the rest is transferred to the backup until a spot is opened up in the main one.

[Noobshock]

That's a good short term solution, but say I consistently produce more than I consume (and therefore the other stockpile eventually overflows too), there's no way of making sure they don't jam the door?

[TLHeart]

to make sure they do not jam the door, you must always have an available stock pile spot... no spot, they will drop it as close as possible to the stockpile, and that is the door.  You can tell them to stop sowing an area, until you need the food resources again.

[Noobshock]

I hope that's something that gets addressed eventually, where the colonists would drop the excess items on the closest non-door tile. Because tbh creating extra stockpiles for everything abundant just to make sure your doors don't get stuck open is not a very elegant solution. But thanks for the suggestion anyway

[TLHeart]

I honestly doubt it will ever be addressed, as there are so many other ways to prevent it from happening.

Delete the 1 cell of stock pile inside the door, they will then use that spot. Or expand the cooler freezer, or stop growing, create a second stock pile/freezer.... many options.

[Noobshock]

I'm not debating the fact that there are many "workarounds", just that they are exactly that: workarounds, and that they are counterintuitive (why would colonists dump excess cargo in doorways in the first place rather than the next tile?) and/or inelegant.

If this is low priority in your opinion that's fine. But from what I see, considering how rather well-designed and elegant RimWorld is as a whole I don't think Tynan would want the average player to be using workarounds to avoid door jams with excess materials. Colonists could just see doorways as non eligible for dumping excess cargo. It's about as complicated as adding an "if door then next closest tile plx" clause. If that really takes more than a couple minutes to address then MYBAD.

[RickyMartini]

Well it's a workaround to a very specific problem, that has also been self inflicted. That's going to be hard to address when there are dozens of ways to solve it easily imo..

We could also argue that you made a bad job designing your own base. For example, my freezers always have a walkway in the middle of the room. I also mostly build more of a "hallway" into the freezer and kinda waste some space. But then at least there is no chance a freezer will explode with food and all the excess goes into another room

[Noobshock]

Doors are used as blockades against enemies and are relevant to temperature control in this game, why would it be "normal" for colonists to use doorspaces as a discarding spot rather than the next tile over, just to create extra tedium? So I should leave an empty walkway or create an extra stockpile because why? Because colonists are too daft to leave doors unencumbered and dump stuff on another tile? It's an easy enough workaround for me, but if you perceive that kind of thing as a "failed challenge" in "designing your base" rather than inelegant design, well holy crap. It's just something that's obnoxious and confusing for the type of player who isn't passionate enough to come read forums etc etc.

You both seem to take it as a personal offense that I find this particular pawn behavior below the game's overall standard of quality. Chill out?

[Mertle]

Couldn't you just put a stockpile/dumping pile down on the door-tile and deselect everything but something rare? A colonists' body or something. Wouldn't they avoid putting the excess on that, due to it being a different stockpile? (Not tried it.) If that makes sense!

[Dave-In-Texas]

to make sure they do not jam the door, you must always have an available stock pile spot... no spot, they will drop it as close as possible to the stockpile, and that is the door.  You can tell them to stop sowing an area, until you need the food resources again.

try putting a stockpile in the door that is not allowing anything.  they won't leave the food in the door for long, if at all as long as they have somewhere to take it.

[RickyMartini]

I would consider to just have a second room for any excess. If you always have a zone for food, things like that would never happen. As soon as colonists fill up a stack and don't find another tile on the map to put the rest, they naturally lay down the food on the next tile (which could be a door).

[Euzio]

Its pretty good to always have a 2nd freezer. Usually I make my freezers pretty huge. 11x11 (13x13 including the walls) as a minimum. But I do this method whereby I would hunt any muffalos or elks that appear. Partly for food but mainly for the leather so that I can have a ready supply of clothing for my colonists. The consequence is that I would end up amassing lots of meat. Couple that with farming and I fill my freezers up fast. So a 2nd freezer really helps in storing access food. The only thing is you gotta really plan for it. I only thought of my 2nd freezer after I realised my 1st was getting too full. End result was my 2nd freezer was located in a not to convenient location. My next colony will incorporate a planned expansion for a 2nd freezer for sure.

[MarcTheMerc]

Add another stockpile to the door and set it to not contain anything the colonists should empty it

[Goo Poni]

Another thing you could try doing is going into the core game files and increasing the stack size. I would recommend the use of Notepadd++ or a similar program for proper formatting (don't use regular Notepad or Wordpad). Navigate to game folder/mods/core/thingdefs/itemsmeals. Find the <stacklimit> at the top of the file and bump it up. Personally, I put it to 100. All meals can then stack up to 100 for me. Once you've done that, you can establish a temporary storage for your meals, give it higher priority and get everything shuffled there. Then delete it and shuffle everything back to your freezer to compress the meals.

The alternatives is, a larger freezer (duh) or an overflow stockpile, preferably also adequately chilled and set up with a beacon so you can sell off your excess food. If you have the space to dedicate a whole beacon to excess food, you can basically have your cook(s) baking food for the entire day, every day as long as the crops and wildlife don't run dry. Trade ships should come by often enough for you to unload your excess produce.