Strange Eating Behaviour

Silvador · February 20, 2015, 05:42:13 AM

I've noticed that since the new version came out, my colonists appear to be very... undecided about where they want to eat their meals. I have a table, with chairs, in a building across from my kitchen and freezer, but my colonists will only take the meal to the table and eat it there some of the time. They seem to randomly decide to just eat the meal right there, in the freezer, even though there is plenty of room at the table to sit and eat. I even caught one of my colonists in a newly made stockpile, well away from both the freezer and the table, eating a meal. There were no meals near this stockpile and it was not set to accept meals, so I can fathom no reason beyond the colonists actively took the meal to this stockpile in order to eat it there.

As anyone else noticed strange eating behaviour among their colonists?

EscapeZeppelin · February 20, 2015, 08:56:16 AM

It could be that the table is too far from the stockpile and your colonists are too hungry to wait. I believe that if the table is too far away they'll just give up and eat wherever.

Silvador · February 20, 2015, 09:38:31 AM

Quote from: EscapeZeppelin on February 20, 2015, 08:56:16 AM
It could be that the table is too far from the stockpile and your colonists are too hungry to wait. I believe that if the table is too far away they'll just give up and eat wherever.

I'll admit that I'd thought of this possibility. But I'd not noticed it before so I wasn't sure if perhaps it had been tweaked or straight up newly added. I did notice in one of my colonies from the previous version that my colonists ignored the table entirely because the it was very far away from where my meals were being stored. But I don't have my table quite that far away, this time, and I haven't noticed my colonists getting urgently hungry, so I wasn't sure if it was that or a bug or what.

Additionally:

The biggest... oddity that had me confused about this behaviour wasn't so much that my colonists weren't going ot the table all the time, but that one of them, apparently, went to a whole different stockpile just to eat a meal. In the picture below, I have the beginnings of a hospital to the right of my main dining hall, with a smaller room off the back, for a medicine stockpile. I never saw them go in with the meal, and there were no meals in there and the stockpile isn't set to accept meals, and yet I spotted one of my colonists in that little room eating one of the fine meals my cook had made.

[attachment deleted due to age]

Vexare · February 20, 2015, 12:33:28 PM

I think I see your problem. Your 'dining hall' is the opposite direction from the door where your freezer room is located. While it's not a super long ways away, it *is* two buildings away and your colonists are forced to go through several doors and switch directions to get there. Pathing AI for these guys is really simplistic so you have to keep your layouts down to "path of least resistance" ...meaning not a lot of directional changes rather than distance being the factor.

Did you ever play Sims 3? Their pathing was insanely irritating. They would sometimes take a meal and eat it at a table farther away (upstairs or even outside) instead of right there in the kitchen.

You learned to make 'nice' eating areas close to the source of the food. I think colonists in this game are similar. They seek areas of least effort. That probably doesn't explain the one-off behavior of eating in a stockpile further away but it's just a comparison because I think it's funny.

My suggestion to you is change the door where your freezer and food storage is to be directly across from your dining hall. The even better layout is to have the dining hall directly adjacent to food storage with only one door between them. That's how I do it and have never had them eating anywhere but the tables provided.

tommytom · February 20, 2015, 01:46:30 PM

As said, better to have only one door separation (just to keep cold air in fridge/freezer). I generally keep my dining hall open area with everything else so it gets "spacious" and every colonist goes in that area once a day, so there is no point in making it hard to get to.

I'd suggest something like this (forgive the terrible quick mspaint work):

This preserves the "airlock", has only one door between the freezer/fridge and eating area, and preserves the sidewalk. Albeit, I bit uglier.

The only reason left, due to pathing, would be the door between the kitchen and fridge. Maybe only put a door on the left side into the hallway and force him to go in the hallway and around into the fridge. His pathing optimisation will not matter that much compared to 100% of your colonists making a daily trip.

Boboid · February 20, 2015, 01:53:12 PM

Just suck it up and put a table some chairs in your freezer.

It doesn't take so long to eat that the cold is frequently a problem for clothed colonists nor do they spend enough time in there to contribute a significant mood debuff even if you're storing lots of meat in there.
Corpses are another matter but, as always it's more efficient to immediately butcher corpses than to leave them laying around for any reason.

Beauty be damned, make it practical

Mimic · February 20, 2015, 06:11:41 PM

Quote from: Boboid on February 20, 2015, 01:53:12 PM
Just suck it up and put a table some chairs in your freezer.

It doesn't take so long to eat that the cold is frequently a problem for clothed colonists nor do they spend enough time in there to contribute a significant mood debuff even if you're storing lots of meat in there.
Corpses are another matter but, as always it's more efficient to immediately butcher corpses than to leave them laying around for any reason.

Beauty be damned, make it practical

iv tried doing that and as soon as i put a table and chairs in there, the colonists never used it.

tommytom · February 20, 2015, 08:00:53 PM

I say you draft them and send them into an enclosed steam geyser and lock the door. That will show them.

Darkshadow · February 20, 2015, 08:14:58 PM

Hopefully it is just a case of update changing the balance. That weird behaviour wouldn't be so weird if they choose to eat on the floor if the dinning table is half a map away. This behaviour just needs to adjust the range they are willing to travel to get a seat.

I've not only noticed colonists eating on the floor, but going to the storeroom to eat raw potatoes (yuk!) while stack of cooked meals lay sat in the dinning room, this is probably a related issue.

Silvador · February 20, 2015, 10:58:20 PM

Quote from: Boboid on February 20, 2015, 01:53:12 PM
Just suck it up and put a table some chairs in your freezer.

It doesn't take so long to eat that the cold is frequently a problem for clothed colonists nor do they spend enough time in there to contribute a significant mood debuff even if you're storing lots of meat in there.
Corpses are another matter but, as always it's more efficient to immediately butcher corpses than to leave them laying around for any reason.

Beauty be damned, make it practical

lol! XD

I wasn't aware that more than a couple of doors between the meal stack and the table might be "too much effort" for them to move through. XD I'll be sure ti keep this in mind in the future.

My meals were being stored in that freezer temporarily, and I've since expanded it and made a storage area for the meals themselves, directly to the left of the kitchen. I wasn't sure if this issue was due to some changes in the new version or if it was just something I'd not actually run into previously, for whatever reason. In any case, thanks for the info, everyone.

Rock5 · February 20, 2015, 11:51:11 PM

Talking about doors, maybe the problem is you are using unpowered doors and they take too long to go through. Maybe if they were powered doors they would be more likely to use the table.

Silvador · February 21, 2015, 12:34:27 AM

Quote from: Rock5 on February 20, 2015, 11:51:11 PM
Talking about doors, maybe the problem is you are using unpowered doors and they take too long to go through. Maybe if they were powered doors they would be more likely to use the table.

Possibly. Due to the expensive nature of powered doors I usually stay away from them in the early stages of developing my colony. I'll have to keep an eye on this as well and see if I notice any preferences amongst the colonists.

tommytom · February 21, 2015, 05:34:08 PM

Yes, that is true. Unpowered (normal) doors are quite expensive on movement. The pathing actually seems to take "turns" as more expensive than a straight walk as well. They will walk 3-4x farther in a straight line rather than 1/3-1/4 the distance that is a U-turn with no obstacles.

tommytom · March 09, 2015, 08:24:00 PM

Hmm, I'm running into this now. Basically, if you don't make a tiny, specific stockpile for food, they tend to go to the nearest meal (could be way in the back) and because the crap on the floor makes them move slower, the will just find an empty tile and munch down on it.

I tried making 100 meals to keep a stockpile with my growing colony, but it looks like I will have to go back down to 20/20 (20 simple 20 fine) which is 4 stockpiles right by the door nearest the dining room. Even if you have meals near the door, they find the nearest one to them (say they just dropped down a food item), which makes my haulers always eat off the floor as they keep hauling until hungry.