Prepared Meals Automation

[Billy Rueben]

Hello, I Kickstarted this game a while back and just recently started playing. I've been enjoying it quite a bit, even after getting my ass handed to me by mobs of pirates (or my own insane colonists shortly after).

One thing that does bother me a lot is when my colonists run out of prepared meals. The game doesn't inform me, and there is no good way to keep stocked up yet. I've got a few ideas, and I'm sure other people have a few as well. If these suggestions have been made before, I apologize.

First, if there was some way to adjust the cooking table's bill to say:
I want at least X meals ready to go, so start preparing more once I fall below X meals.
I don't want there to be more than Y meals, so stop cooking once you reach Y meals.
That way, when you have less than X meals, colonists will start to prepare more automatically, and once you have Y meals, they'll stop automatically.

Second, and less important, I think it would be nice to have some object in the game that stores meals as "stacks", keeps the meals refrigerated so they don't spoil as fast, and forces the colonists to grab the oldest meal. It can be annoying when there are meals that spoil in half a day, and the colonists reach for the newest one. It can also be a bit of an eye sore to see a bunch of meals laying all over the floor.

Thanks for reading,
Billy

[iskillzi]

First, if there was some way to adjust the cooking table's bill to say:
I want at least X meals ready to go, so start preparing more once I fall below X meals.
I don't want there to be more than Y meals, so stop cooking once you reach Y meals.
That way, when you have less than X meals, colonists will start to prepare more automatically, and once you have Y meals, they'll stop automatically.

This is already a thing, in game after you click on bill and add an item click config > click the thing that says make X amount or whatever and change it to make until X.

Second, and less important, I think it would be nice to have some object in the game that stores meals as "stacks", keeps the meals refrigerated so they don't spoil as fast, and forces the colonists to grab the oldest meal. It can be annoying when there are meals that spoil in half a day, and the colonists reach for the newest one. It can also be a bit of an eye sore to see a bunch of meals laying all over the floor.

This is also already done but it's not in the actual alpha it's a mod, here's the link : http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=3861.0

[Billy Rueben]

Fantastic! Glad to see that is already in the game. Keeping up with those meals was a major headache.

[iskillzi]

Fantastic! Glad to see that is already in the game. Keeping up with those meals was a major headache.

I agree haha, I only played about 3-4 very short games without that mod active so far 

[StorymasterQ]

According to the Changelog, stackable meals were added to the Alpha build, but not in A5 yet. So for now we have a mod, but for A6 it'll be native.

[_alphaBeta_]

Regarding the automated meals: as I mentioned briefly here, what's not available is a bill that can specify that you always want X meals of any type available. From there you can specify the priority of meal quality per the current bills system.

Here's a relevant scenario: My primary cook is level 12 and was cooking fine quality meals. She was injured so i assigned another cook. I forgot that this cook's experience was nowhere near 12 and lacked the ability to cook fine quality meals. The usual message that warns of this situation didn't fire because technically I had a colonist capable of doing this, but they were otherwise occupied healing up. Besides the player not being alerted to the situation, it would be nice if the player could present their intent for situations like this. I want 8 meals available at any given time. My preference would be for them to be fine meals, but make lesser quality if you have to in order to achieve 8.

Another scenario would be running out of ingredients necessary to make fine meals.

The only thing the player can do right now is specify a bill for 8 fine meals, and then another bill for 8 lower quality. While this would solve both problems above, when the proper cook is cooking under normal conditions, I'll have 16 meals on hand, which is not my intent.

Stack-able meals is coming per the change log as was said. I would assume colonists selecting the oldest meal first would be built into that system. I've further said elsewhere that a rationing system under player control to specify what order colonists consume certain meals in would be nice. Sometimes I may want to serve the better food during certain events pursuant to their expiration. To further demonstrate the need, try to capture some PSMs (they are currently considered to be fine quality to the colonists) from a failed siege and get your colonists to save them for a rainy day. Right now you have to flag each one as forbidden as they are retrieved.

[Billy Rueben]

I'd like to reopen this suggestion. I was ignorant of the "make until X" configuration of the bill before, but know that I am not, I'd still like for my original suggestion to be in the game.

First, if there was some way to adjust the cooking table's bill to say:
I want at least X meals ready to go, so start preparing more once I fall below X meals.
I don't want there to be more than Y meals, so stop cooking once you reach Y meals.

The reason being that meals are eaten pretty often, and sometimes at different times. I like that I can set a minimum for my cook to hit, but I get annoyed that as soon as my cook hits that minimum, they stop, only to return to the stove a small time later. I'd still like to be able to say, "Make twenty simple meals, but only start making more again once the count falls below ten."

[Damien Hart]

I like the idea of an upper and lower limit for meal production. Being able to say "Make up to 30 meals, but don't start working back up to 30 unless the reserve drops below say 15." would negate the inefficiency of having the 30 meals, and when someone eats one, a cook stops what they were doing somewhere else, runs over to the kitchen to make one meal, then runs all the way back to whatever they were doing, only to stop when the next person eats a meal.

I also like _alphaBeta_'s suggestion about limits inclusive of all quality types, with a quality preference for certain meal types.