Probably an easy solution to this .. food storage

[phod]

Hello all,

I have an auto sweeper that picks up food at the grill, and stores it in a 1x1 square with CO2 using the conveyor chute. This works fine. I wanted to let dupes drop off wild harvested food and ingredients to be placed in the conveyor loader also. This works as well, but now the dupes are in an endless cycle of picking up the items that were dropped off by the chute, and loading them back into the conveyor loader. I realize that 'sweep only' could stop this, but I was hoping to just let them harvest wild items without interaction.

I tried a couple ideas using doors and timers, but it feels like I'm over complicating this. 

Any thoughts?

Thanks

 

[Mariilyn]

A simple alternative would be to prevent dupes accessing the main CO2 square storage. Build another auto sweeper to deliver the food to a conveyor receptacle covered in CO2 or a single powered fridge.

Here are some ideas : 

 

[qda]

Something like this works quite well. The left chute is fed by a loader set to accept all ingredients, everything that is meant to be cooked. It isn't reachable by any dupe but the autosweeper can reach it and load the grill/oven. The loader you can see is set to accept cooked food and drops it at the right chute, in CO2 and in my mess hall for an easy access.

[Ecu]

3 hours ago, qda said:

Something like this works quite well. The left chute is fed by a loader set to accept all ingredients, everything that is meant to be cooked. It isn't reachable by any dupe but the autosweeper can reach it and load the grill/oven. The loader you can see is set to accept cooked food and drops it at the right chute, in CO2 and in my mess hall for an easy access.

That is really neat.  I might have to snag that kind of design.  Is there any downside to storing food in a square like that vs. storing it in a container?  I'd think there would be performance issues, but I'm honestly not sure.

[qda]

8 hours ago, Ecu said:

Is there any downside to storing food in a square like that vs. storing it in a container?  I'd think there would be performance issues, but I'm honestly not sure.

I honestly don't know, I usually don't stockpile huge amounts of food so I can't really say. However, cnosidering the amount of materials piling up on the map, I'd say the performance cost of this might be negligible, but again, I didn't test it extensively.

[kawur]

8 hours ago, Ecu said:

That is really neat.  I might have to snag that kind of design.  Is there any downside to storing food in a square like that vs. storing it in a container?  I'd think there would be performance issues, but I'm honestly not sure.

I'd like to know that, too. In particular, it would be interesting how the pathfinding compares to the scheduling in terms of performance. Right now, I'm actively blocking areas where no work should be done, which takes care of both. But I'm also storing everything in containers and I'm not sure that's necessary compared to just dropping everything in one spot, accessible or not.

[nakomaru]

When chutes were first introduced there was a bug where they would drop things individually in 25kg chunks that wouldn't stack (especially for me in these 1x1 rooms). I haven't seen it recently, but if it still exists that is one way that doing this can impact performance. In general stacking debris together, and blocking off materials from dupes as this does, should improve performance or at worst have no change.

Great design qda.

[qda]

Thanks ! Although it is inspired from different designs I've seen here over time, just congrats everyone !

Food has an additionnal variable, freshness, for stacking rules, if I'm not mistaken. Two food piles of different freshness will not stack.

Since every cooked food will spend an equal amount of time in O2, it will all have 99% freshness and stack.

However, when it comes to ingredients, since they are picked at different times from different spots, they will have different freshness and not stack much, resulting in a lot of different piles. So you might be right, it could affect performance with high amounts of ingredients.

[nakomaru]

It was changed that food should stack when within 10% a little while ago. In theory you should only get around 9 stacks at most per type, up to 25T, and usually not that many. And it's still better than having a bunch of fridges or something. Basically as long as there's no bug with the chute, it is better to do this!

[qda]

OH okay, didn't know about the 10% rule. Not that freshness matters in that setup, but do you how does the stack's freshness is calculated ? Is it averaged, rounded up or down ?

[nakomaru]

Haven't really tested but I believe the new stack will use the weighted average of the two freshnesses.

e.g. 10kg 90% + 1kg 100% = 11kg 91%.

[LiamBlack]

 

 

 

 

 

3

On 12.07.2019 at 3:08 AM, phod said:

Hello all,

I have an auto sweeper that picks up food at the grill, and stores it in a 1x1 square with CO2 using the conveyor chute. This works fine. I wanted to let dupes drop off wild harvested food and ingredients to be placed in the conveyor loader also. This works as well, but now the dupes are in an endless cycle of picking up the items that were dropped off by the chute, and loading them back into the conveyor loader. I realize that 'sweep only' could stop this, but I was hoping to just let them harvest wild items without interaction.

I tried a couple ideas using doors and timers, but it feels like I'm over complicating this. 

Any thoughts?

Thanks

 

 

It is a pity that it is impossible to install a real model in the game, for example, a grill or a sewing machine, while maintaining the same drawing style. It would be interesting!

[Chthonicone]

You can set the conveyor loader to not be accesible by dupes, then they won't load it.

[Lancar]

I use a similar, but slightly different approach.

I don't have any pictures (I'm at work atm), but I'll try to explain it.

- The food storage area is a chamber beneath the kitchen, flooded with CO2 to prevent spoilage. It contains 2 food storage bins and 4 fridges, as well as a sweeper with loader and a chute.
- The Kitchen above is fully controlled by dupes who fetch ingredients from the chamber below via ladder. A sweeper with loader is above the grills and ranges.
- Above the kitchen is the great hall, designed like shelves made of airlock doors with the tables on top. Underneath the bottommost shelf is a sweeper and loader (contained as a seperate room). Before entering the great hall, dupes pass a 1x2 hole with a chute & weight sensor, sealed with a few grams of water, filled with chlorine.

- Anything dropped on the floor in the kitchen is swept and sent to the chamber.
- Any cooked food registered as available for dupes to eat is sent from the storage chamber to the chlorine hole.
- The shelves in the great hall opens for 0,5% once a day to drop any leftovers (dupes really have no manners) down to the sweeper beneath to take back to the chamber.

- The two food storage bins are set to only accept things that the dupes do NOT eat, in order to prevent looping dupe deliveries.
- The 4 fridges are setup with automation to regulate water flow to the farms in order to not over-produce sleet wheat and peppers (which are the only things they're set to contain).
- The weight sensor shuts off the kitchen appliances when triggered, preventing overproduction of foods.
- To minimize dupe labour, conveyors deliver everything from the farms to the CO2 chamber, but it's not strictly necessary.

Now, the reason this system works is because my dupes only eat pepper bread, surfnturf and omelettes. All of which do not occur outside the kitchen/chamber/great_hall loop, and thus is never manually handled (except when eating). I'm not sure how you could make it work with something like mealwood, or anything else eaten raw.

[Gurgel]

I like to do food-storage in chlorine, because that cuts down on germs. Does not work too well, unfortunately, you either get long ways or you have to do a chlorine-room in your base with a liquid lock. I feel we should be getting real airlocks at some time, probably the first DLC.