TIP: How to produce something close to ingredients with far-off destination zone

[Chibiabos]

A great specific example is kibble, which requires meat as an ingredient, so I produce it near my freezer ... but I want to store it near my animal beds for the animals to feed (and I don't want the animal zones near my freezer as when they wake up hungry, they'll deplete my colony food first!).  I produce a lot, but like most of my production, I have the bill set to "Do until you have X."

Which is problematic ... either I set it to "drop on floor" which, not in a zone, will make it not count so until a hauler picks it up and delivers it to the destination zone will result in "Do forever" or "Take to best stockpile" which makes them haul it to my far-off kibble storage zone near my animal beds.

I found a better way: set my production station to "drop on floor" AND create a low-priority storage zone around the production station.  That way my colonist working that station will not have to haul and can, instead, just focus on producing.  I'm not 100% on how hauling priorities work, but they do seem to quickly haul from a low-priority storage zone to a high-priority one.

Specific to kibble, I also keep a one-tile high-priority storage zone just for hay next to the butcher table, since I keep most of my hay in a dedicated freezer next to my animal beds; this, coupled with having the main colony freezer with meat ensures minimal delay hauling ingredients for my colonists to make large amounts of kibble quickly.

This technique works for everything, though ... producing food, weapons, clothing, art, etc.  Create a low-priority zone around the production stations, set the bills to Drop on floor and let your haulers haul from those low-priority zones, minimizing how much time your colonists actually making stuff have to haul things instead.

[erdrik]

I actually do this for the ingredients rather than the product.

Specifically for Stone works. I get a two or three tile wide high priority Stone chunk zone next to the stone cutting and sculpting benches, and put the rest of the Stone chunks in a normal priority zone well outside the base.(to prevent beauty debuffs)

A side note, you don't have to worry about your animals eating the wrong foods if you make an animal zone and exclude your food storage area.

[Snafu_RW]

Why put hay in a freezer? It only needs to be covered to last for ~1.5 years, & the growing time offsets that by a large margin

Having micro-stockpiles (appropriately configured WRT priorities etc) near to their relevant production areas is fine tho.. I must remember to do that on my worlds

[SpaceDorf]

Because producing Kibble needs meat. and it is easier to haul one or two bales of hay into the freezer, where your Butchering Table should be anyway, than having the cook go and get it from outside ..

So your Kibble setup can look like this :

H B B B M
H H W MM
E E E E E
H = Hay, B = Butcher, M = Meat, W = Worker, E = EmptyStock  ... set to drop on floor.

I use "Empty Stockpiles" around my Workstations ( set to low, clear everything ) those still count items for your inventory, but those get hauled away immedeately.
For productions that produce unfinished items, the stockpile is set for the unfinished product.

[Chibiabos]

Because producing Kibble needs meat. and it is easier to haul one or two bales of hay into the freezer, where your Butchering Table should be anyway, than having the cook go and get it from outside ..

I used to do this, my cooking stoves too, but now there's a productivity debuff on butcher tables and cooking stoves in the cold.

[Chibiabos]

Why put hay in a freezer? It only needs to be covered to last for ~1.5 years, & the growing time offsets that by a large margin

Having micro-stockpiles (appropriately configured WRT priorities etc) near to their relevant production areas is fine tho.. I must remember to do that on my worlds

I tend to grow a big batch, fill a large freezer with 15,000 or so units of hay, switch to another crop (cotton most likely, I use it as a cheap cash crop to sell) and not worry about it again until there are only a couple thousand left.  I wind up with a giant stockpile of hay that lasts for a very long time.

Wish to hell I could use it on caravans, but no one buys it and animals will eat other foods first (competing with colonists) which sucks.  Hay is not worth taking on caravans :/

[Snafu_RW]

now there's a productivity debuff on butcher tables and cooking stoves in the cold.

This, plus stoves produce heat which makes your freezer coolers consume even more power to fight that offset..

[mebe]

A great specific example is kibble, which requires meat as an ingredient, so I produce it near my freezer ... but I want to store it near my animal beds for the animals to feed (and I don't want the animal zones near my freezer as when they wake up hungry, they'll deplete my colony food first!).  I produce a lot, but like most of my production, I have the bill set to "Do until you have X."

Maybe I've misunderstood something but surely just stockpile the kibble outside the door to your kitchen and ban the animals from entering the freezer - its not like there is any penalty on having the animals wander from one side of your base to the other to get kibble, cant see why it needs to be near their sleeping spots?

[Chibiabos]

Maybe I've misunderstood something but surely just stockpile the kibble outside the door to your kitchen and ban the animals from entering the freezer - its not like there is any penalty on having the animals wander from one side of your base to the other to get kibble, cant see why it needs to be near their sleeping spots?

I buy/breed/tame/generally-grow-big a large number of haul-trained animals to do things like haul crops into the freezer. 

[Sian]

Because producing Kibble needs meat. and it is easier to haul one or two bales of hay into the freezer, where your Butchering Table should be anyway, than having the cook go and get it from outside ..

I used to do this, my cooking stoves too, but now there's a productivity debuff on butcher tables and cooking stoves in the cold.

I stuff my Butcher table and Cooking stove in the the heat lock outside and into the dining room. with them counting as refrigerated