Transporting perishable foods by caravan for trade. How?

[Randal Miser]

So, I have a problem and I'm not entirely sure on what to do here.

As most of you know, in Alpha 17, food can now rot during transit while traveling by caravan, meaning that most foods will easily rot away within a mere 3 days or so, probably to put emphasis on bringing pemmican and survival meals.

This is fair, but at the same time this has completely broken the ability to trade food at all.

Let me explain,

Right now, I have this little village to the east, that has put out a trade request.
They want (me) to trade them ca 1800 corn, in exchange for some neat items.

Now the problem here, is that they are roughly 7 days of travel away from me.



The corn rots in 6, and I'm not hearing anything anywhere about a way to keep perishables refrigerated, or packaged transport of food, or anything of the sort.

What exactly am I supposed to do in this situation?
Are drop pods the only way to do long distance trading or something?
Is this type of randomly generated objective impossible to complete with the way food rots in transit now?

[Perq]

Hmmm, seems to me that this is pretty fair, actually. They need the food now - probably starving. :@
They don't really care how you will do it. It feels about right.

Random events aren't always useful, so it feels like maybe random quests shouldn't be neither? On the other hand, if it happens too often they become absolutely worthless...

If there as to be added a way to transport food refrigerated, it would need a lot of investment, so that packed meals are still useful. Not sure about that, too.

[Blastoderm]

So far only way is to launch corn by pods and pick it up by caravan one tile from destination.

[Randal Miser]

So far only way is to launch corn by pods and pick it up by caravan one tile from destination.

Figures.

And that in turn requires a major investment and is locked behind tech from later on, and also only has a maximum range of 66 hexagons.

Seriously feel like there has got to be a less obnoxious and gimmicky way of transporting perishables for long distances, like, I don't know, a vehicle, a truck, a carriage filled with ice or something, sealed containers with a weight penalty, oh well.

Thanks anyway.

[giannikampa]

Not that sure corn rots in 6 days of travel only. I can think you read that in 6 days some food in your inventory is going to rot. The sistem tells you the minimum rotting time between all the food you are carrying.

My concern (almost) about the topic of this post is wether caravan members will eat the fastest perishable food in their trip then pemmican/packaged meals.
But wait, there is more! In the case metoned above,  will they randomly eat that corn then arrive to destination to discover they have not enought corns to fullfill the request?

[Perq]

Not that sure corn rots in 6 days of travel only. I can think you read that in 6 days some food in your inventory is going to rot. The sistem tells you the minimum rotting time between all the food you are carrying.

My concern (almost) about the topic of this post is wether caravan members will eat the fastest perishable food in their trip then pemmican/packaged meals.
But wait, there is more! In the case metoned above,  will they randomly eat that corn then arrive to destination to discover they have not enought corns to fullfill the request?

Well, of course it doesn't, lol. What were we thinking. But given that this is yet another time I see someone (me included) being fooled by a single number saying after how long food goes bad, I think the way people get information about food going bad could improve a little. Maybe next to each stack of food (+the overall number we have now)?

About eating order - I assume they would go with standard one, which is best food first. Quuuite sure this would also mean they would use meals first over raw plants.

[Randal Miser]

Not that sure corn rots in 6 days of travel only. I can think you read that in 6 days some food in your inventory is going to rot. The sistem tells you the minimum rotting time between all the food you are carrying.

My concern (almost) about the topic of this post is wether caravan members will eat the fastest perishable food in their trip then pemmican/packaged meals.
But wait, there is more! In the case metoned above,  will they randomly eat that corn then arrive to destination to discover they have not enought corns to fullfill the request?

Christ, I think you might be right.

Actually I think the corn will rot in 58 days POSSIBLY, unless the game is lying to me, and that the calculation is basing it off of the damn simple meals everyone are carrying around.

I'm gonna give this a shot and see what happens.

[Calahan]

and that the calculation is basing it off of the damn simple meals everyone are carrying around.

This. Here is a quote by ison (one of devs) that offer a bit more explanation regarding how the days worth of food and rotting numbers are calculated.

It's because the days worth of food readout shows the minimum number of days before any of the selected pawns runs out of food. So if you assign someone (like a fox) who doesn't eat rice at all, then no matter how much rice you assign the readout will always show 0. It's explained in the tooltip on mouseover.

The food will start rotting in 1.8 days because Kyra has some food in her inventory, which also counts as caravan food. It's indeed a little bit complex, but it makes sense.

[Perq]

While it does make sense, it isn't particularly useful. :@ The amount of confused people is a good proof of that.

[Randal Miser]

Corn Quest went fine, and other than what felt like an abnormal consumption of survival meals (32 meals for 3 people gone in... 3-4 days of travel? What?) and an ambush, the trip wasn't so bad and the corn made it through safely.

Game should definitely not calculate caravan food rot for the quickest to rot food ONLY though.
There has got to be an option or list or something that displays how long each type of food/perishable goods has before it is destroyed, since there is no easy way to tell if you are stashing everything in your freezer and are unsure how long they will last on the road.

[Canute]

Don't worry i bet there will be a mod soon, portable frezzer, that prevent caravan food from roting ! :-)

[DariusWolfe]

Regarding food, the daily food intake of colonists is something like 2-2.5 nutrition (can't find the solid source anymore). Based on 2, you'll naturally be consuming at least 2 survival meals per colonist per day, so 18-24 over 3-4 days; If it's based on 2.5, or if they eat again because nutrition is less than full, then they'll be consuming 24-30.

Also, your route planning seems kind of insanely long, based on my experiences. Do you have someone injured or pregnant selected for the caravan, or is it due to winter snows? With roads, I can usually cross half that distance in a little more than a day, so I'd expect travel times at 3-4 days for that route.

Edit: I'm not in-game, but I think checking the "items" tab during travel displays rot times? I also know that it displays the rot time for the food you're transporting on the menu you use to add items to the caravan.

[AngleWyrm]

Not that sure corn rots in 6 days of travel only. I can think you read that in 6 days some food in your inventory is going to rot. The sistem tells you the minimum rotting time between all the food you are carrying

This morning I got a new A17 event to go and raid a pirate base, so I took three guys ( btw DON'T take three guys XD ) and gave them a bunch of pickled vegetables and salted meat, figuring they have a good shelf-life.

But when they got out on the road, the food counter showed days to rot of less than three days, and all their food just up and disappeared at the end of the count-down.

[Randal Miser]

Regarding food, the daily food intake of colonists is something like 2-2.5 nutrition (can't find the solid source anymore). Based on 2, you'll naturally be consuming at least 2 survival meals per colonist per day, so 18-24 over 3-4 days; If it's based on 2.5, or if they eat again because nutrition is less than full, then they'll be consuming 24-30.

Also, your route planning seems kind of insanely long, based on my experiences. Do you have someone injured or pregnant selected for the caravan, or is it due to winter snows? With roads, I can usually cross half that distance in a little more than a day, so I'd expect travel times at 3-4 days for that route.

Edit: I'm not in-game, but I think checking the "items" tab during travel displays rot times? I also know that it displays the rot time for the food you're transporting on the menu you use to add items to the caravan.

It's bizzare, because they essentially consume a minimum of 3 survival meals per day and person.
A survival meal provides 0.9 nutrition, so if 2.5 is the minimum per day then this makes sense.

In contrast, pawns normally consume about two meals per day in actual play, once for breakfast and once for dinner (unless they have a penalty of some sort to their stomach), so you can kinda see the disparity there I guess.

The party was unremarkable.
Three pawns, two fully healthy, and one with movement at 95%, no snow since its all hot jungle.
The planner (which calculates at default speed, assuming everyone are healthy) also stated it to be 7 days of travel, probably because the last stretch is just a crummy dirt path followed by a longish segment of dirt road.

And you're right, apparently it does in fact list how long it takes for perishables to rot based on average temperature in the region when you select them for transport, I must have missed it, sorry about that.

[DariusWolfe]

Three pawns, two fully healthy, and one with movement at 95%, no snow since its all hot jungle.

This might not be true. There's a bug report about snow slowing a caravan near the equator.