Take to NEAREST stock pile

[Lurmey]

So here's the setting: I have a dining room with attached refrigerated room for meals, connect to said refrigerated room I have the kitchen and connected to that I have my freezer. On the other side of the colony is my hospital. I don't want my doctors running across the whole place just to bring a meal to a wounded colonist, while another could be bleeding out in the meantime. So I put a 1-tile stockpile in the hospital set at a higher priority than the fridge, just to hold 10 simple meals for emergencies. Now the problem is that my cooks decide, since this stockpile is a higher priority, to take single meals across the whole colony every time one is made until that stockpile is full. I don't want them doing that, I want one of my haulers to do that.

Please, can we just have the added option to tell the cooks to take meals to the nearest stockpile as opposed to the best?

Edit: In case anyone else has this problem too, a temporary fix is to create a new area covering the whole map except the hospital's food stockpile and assign the cooks to it. It works for now I guess, but if anyone else decides to cook they'll have the same problem. That's not so bad though, as long as the main cooks are working as intended it should be fine.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

So here's the setting: I have a dining room with attached refrigerated room for meals, connect to said refrigerated room I have the kitchen and connected to that I have my freezer. On the other side of the colony is my hospital. I don't want my doctors running across the whole place just to bring a meal to a wounded colonist, while another could be bleeding out in the meantime. So I put a 1-tile stockpile in the hospital set at a higher priority than the fridge, just to hold 10 simple meals for emergencies. Now the problem is that my cooks decide, since this stockpile is a higher priority, to take single meals across the whole colony every time one is made until that stockpile is full. I don't want them doing that, I want one of my haulers to do that.

Please, can we just have the added option to tell the cooks to take meals to the nearest stockpile as opposed to the best?

Edit: In case anyone else has this problem too, a temporary fix is to create a new area covering the whole map except the hospital's food stockpile and assign the cooks to it. It works for now I guess, but if anyone else decides to cook they'll have the same problem. That's not so bad though, as long as the main cooks are working as intended it should be fine.

Another option:

Make a small stockpile around area of cooking. Set this stockpile to hold nothing. Set your cook to drop meals as he makes them, he will no longer haul them anywhere, yet they are in a stockpile so they will count against bills. Haulers will now come and take them to the appropriate places.

[Lurmey]

That's a possibility, but requires more time for my haulers than the current solution. There'd be multiple of them picking up several stacks of meals as opposed to just one taking a stack of 8-10 to the hospital every time it runs out. I have hauling hysteresis, which means I can tell them to only refill it when it gets down to 20% or so.

I still think it would be a good option to have "take to nearest stockpile" as well as the current two options of "drop on ground" and "take to best stockpile". Not only on the stoves but on every crafting station's bills. Tailors, smithies, stonecutters etc.

Edit: Something that I don't think is necessary for the base game, but I would love for a modder to add, is designating certain items for certain tasks. Glitterworld medicine for surgery instead of ordinary healing, a specific stack of food for feeding patients, not ordinary eating. That would be a nice touch.

[Mikhail Reign]

'Nearest' stockpile won't work. The game uses a priority system. If I have 3 stockpile, each one further away - pile 1, pile 2 and pile 3, only one of them is going to be the correct priority for the item to end up in it. Let's say the priority is P2>P1>P3. The second that a colonist took it to the 'nearest' (P1) it would be in the wrong stockpile because pile 2 has space and is a higher priority.

If you want stuff to end up where you want it to end up - use the proiryu system correctly. Just make the stockpile closest the highest priority. Also the zone and priority system used together can create complete hauling protocols. Eg: in my colony's, no crafter will retrieve raw materials. Haulers deliver and retrieve. Crafters are only aloud to use the materials near the bench, which overflow from storage.

[Lurmey]

Mikhail, it's not that simple. I can't just make the stockpile in my fridge a higher priority than the one in the hospital because then the hospital will always be empty until the fridge is full, at which point the cook would start doing exactly what I don't want him to do. He'd be running across the colony one meal at a time to fill up the hospital.

I can't see how it would need completely rewriting just to tell the pawns to take their completed product to the nearest appropriate stockpile as opposed to the highest priority. I'd prefer one hauler to take a stack of ten meals to the higher priority hospital stockpile, as opposed to the cook making ten consecutive treks between the kitchen and hospital.

[Mikhail Reign]

Set a zone marked 'Cooks'. Allow everything except that space. Put your cools in that zone. When they finish meals they will put it in the correct spot.

Or just drop them on the floor, instead of taking them to the stockpile. If cooks have hauling as a lower priority then cooking, they won't touch them and a hauler will come  and grab the lot. Marking the ground around the stove as a stockpile that accepts nothing allows you to still keep count of meals you have in storage for the brief time they are on the ground.

[Lurmey]

I'm afraid you must not have read my whole post, I have already done this as a temporary measure. I shouldn't have to go through the hassle of creating a new zone to cover the whole map except one small area just for two colonists! This also has the added problem of those two colonists not being able to haul medicine and other items into the hospital, and not being able to tend to patients if need be. (One of my cooks is also a proficient doctor, and tends to patients when my primary doctor is busy.)

I've tried the dropping on the floor with an empty stockpile strategy, but this puts extra strain on my haulers as the meals start piling up into three or four stacks, requiring multiple trips or multiple haulers to move them to the right place. It'd be easier, if that's the case, for my colonists to just walk 5 more tiles into the kitchen to get the meals.

Would it not just be easier to tell the cook to take it to the nearest appropriate stockpile? I don't see any problems with this, I'm sure it can be easily done as all the framework is there - even one of my mods literally says that the colonists will take the items to the nearest stockpile! If a modder can do it, so can Tynan.

[Mikhail Reign]

So what stops the haulers taking it from the stockpile that's nearest and then putting it the highest priority anyway?

If I have a stockpile for food that's high priority and one for normal I want the high one used and filled first before the normal one. That's what the priority system is for.

[Lurmey]

Are you suggesting telling the cooks to drop the meals, and having the haulers cart said meals to both the hospital and the room nextdoor? This could work, but it's still even more straining than my current solution, even more so than the ideal! I'll show you the problem via screenshot...



The red encircled areas are my refrigerated room where the meals are ordinarily stored (normal priority) and the hospital emergency food (preferred priority). As you can see, it's quite a trek to take a single meal from the kitchen to the hospital ten times. This drastically lowers my production rate for food and left me wishing that I could simply tell the cooks to drop it off at the nearest stockpile as opposed to the highest priority one. For now, I have my cooks limited to an area that simply doesn't have that room accessible to them, but this shouldn't be necessary.

(Just in case you're wondering, the reason it keeps needing to be filled up regularly is because several of my colonists decide that eating from the hospital is a better idea than just going to the dining room. Can't really change that, unfortunately.)

I know that's what the priority system is for, hence why I have the hospital as a higher priority. I want that one filled up at all times! It's important for the doctors to be able to feed their patients quickly and easily, as another could very well be bleeding out right next to them! My goal for this colony is to get it to a state where I can sit back and watch it go by without having to micromanage anything, then I'll start sending caravans out either just to trade, or to slowly make their way towards the ship.

[OFWG]

Wow, that is a super-turbo-inefficient base layout! You're probably better off letting the doctors be the ones to make the long walk since you're always going to need meals but not always patients. You're not going to get any sort of efficiency out of that. Even the 'take to nearest' option would just clog up the hauling jobs.

[Perq]

Same problem when making medicine - I keep my medicine in hospital, but I don't make it there. I make it in my drug lab (or general working area), where I also create other things. Having to place these close together because the crafter refuses to use stockpile that then is transported by hauler is pretty annoying.

[Mikhail Reign]

So why doesn't dropping it on the floor and letting the haulers sort it out work again?

If you had
a single tile @ high priority in The hospital (holds 10)
X2 tiles in the freezer @ normal priority (holds 20)
Make until have 30 - drop on floor.
Make the floor of the kitchen a stockpile that accepts nothing (Handy for keeping count of thing on the floor so you don't make 10000 while you are waiting for the hauler to pick them up)

The cook would work until 30 meals were made
Haulers would fill the hospital first then then excess would go in the freezer.
Since a cook can make meals faster then haulers haul, they would be picking up batches of 5+, limiting the trips.

Obviously you can change the numbers and the amount of tiles, or use a low priority somewhere for over flow.

I rarely find 'take to stockpile' very efficient.  haulers Haul, crafters craft. Carrying a finished time to storage is something haulers should do, not the crafter. L

[Lurmey]

Wow, that is a super-turbo-inefficient base layout! You're probably better off letting the doctors be the ones to make the long walk since you're always going to need meals but not always patients. You're not going to get any sort of efficiency out of that. Even the 'take to nearest' option would just clog up the hauling jobs.

Don't mock my colony. I don't make them to be efficient, I make them to look nice. I play this game for the story and immersion, to have fun, not to tryhard!

So why doesn't dropping it on the floor and letting the haulers sort it out work again?

Indeed it would work, but it would just make more sense to have the cook drop off each meal in the fridge like they would normally do if that's the highest priority stockpile. Apart from the fact that I generally don't see the need to have dedicated haulers the majority of the time. Sure, early on when you have very few colonists and all of them are doing several jobs then having one dedicated solely to hauling can help save a bunch of time, but later on each colonist essentially just has one or two jobs that they do. The rest of the time they either haul, clean, research or idle.

Same problem when making medicine - I keep my medicine in hospital, but I don't make it there. I make it in my drug lab (or general working area), where I also create other things. Having to place these close together because the crafter refuses to use stockpile that then is transported by hauler is pretty annoying.

Right? It makes so much more sense to have the crafters just drop off the items in a nearby stockpile for haulers (or, people who have nothing better to do) to then cart it away.

All in all, I don't see why this has to be such a debate. Why would this addition be a bad thing? It would only help in situations like these and seems like such a simple and logical feature that it should have been there from the very beginning in my eyes.

[Mikhail Reign]

All in all, I don't see why this has to be such a debate. Why would this addition be a bad thing? It would only help in situations like these and seems like such a simple and logical feature that it should have been there from the very beginning in my eyes.

Because basically it functions exactly the same as drop on floor.

Putting something in a stockpile that isnt the correct one, just means that it has to be, and will automatically be, moved again anyway.

Cook drops food on ground.
Hauler carries food away.

is the same as

Cook puts food in incorrect storage pile
Hauler carries food to correct storage pile

What your suggesting is actually more work. The time that the cook spends putting the meal away is waste because the second that he drops it in a stockpile a task will be made to move it to the correct one. The exact same task as would be created if he dropped it on the ground.

[OFWG]

Wow, that is a super-turbo-inefficient base layout! You're probably better off letting the doctors be the ones to make the long walk since you're always going to need meals but not always patients. You're not going to get any sort of efficiency out of that. Even the 'take to nearest' option would just clog up the hauling jobs.

Don't mock my colony. I don't make them to be efficient, I make them to look nice. I play this game for the story and immersion, to have fun, not to tryhard!

Didn't intend to be mocking, the tone doesn't translate well in text so I'm sorry if it read that way. Either you want efficiency or not - if you're not "making it to be efficient" then look at my suggestion again for one solution.

All in all, I don't see why this has to be such a debate. Why would this addition be a bad thing?

Because every so-so change means a better change didn't make it in.


Edit: Mikhail said it way better.