Automatic Food Delivery

[GreezyHammer]

Was doing some digging into automating food delivery and to see what others have done and open a discussion for improvement.

This one is a basic non-space version, since in Spaced Out, solid metered valve and solid filter need some space research.

I think with some solid filters and bit shifting we can really step this up to Factorio-style main bus type setup.

 

[Occam Blazer]

This is my favorite pantry system. (I do like avoid3d's logistics system.)

It prevents over-production of food by keeping your calorie count in hysteresis. I use dupe labor to carry the raw ingredients to one of the conveyor loaders next to the super computer. I just uncheck sweep-only. The other conveyor loader is there for when I need to sweep up dropped cooked food. The loader under the sweeper is for cooked food coming off the grill.

The fridge holds your minimum calories. Set the capacity to the number of calories you would need to run your base until you to fix a catastrophic ranch/farm failure. I typically have 20-30 cycles of food in reserve. The grill/musher/range turns on when the first calorie of food comes out of the fridge.

The weight plate sets the upper limit of how much food to keep on hand. When this goes green it shuts off the grill and your cook can go off to do other tasks for a few spins.

Change the door permissions so dupes can't get in there to mess up that fragile airlock and you're set.

Dupes seem to prefer picking up food off the ground before the fridge although it would be better if the system were last-in-first-out. C'est la vie.

Automation is just a memory toggle.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Check the wiki for converting kilograms to calories. For example, let's say you're running your 15-dupe colony on Spicy Tofu. That delicious stuff is 4,000 calories per kilogram. A regular dupe needs 1,000 calories per cycle, so you need 15,000 calories every cycle. To keep those dupes alive for 25 cycles you need a fresh reserve of 375,000 calories. That's 93.7 kg, rounded up to 94. Set your fridge at that. I'll set my weight plate to keep a couple cycles on hand, let's say 3 cycles on the ground. That's 45,000 calories or 11.2 kg. Se the weight plate to go green when the mass is above that.

 

Here's a previous forum post with all the reflections of the automation.

[Occam Blazer]

16 hours ago, GreezyHammer said:

I think with some solid filters and bit shifting we can really step this up to Factorio-style main bus type setup.

On a side note, I build a big dumb materials handling system using avoid3d's concepts. Kept a minimum safety stock and working stock of up to 32 materials with automatic production of each finished good. Automatic delivery of raw materials. It worked pretty well, but needed a good deal of pre-planning to keep your bored dupes from stealing supply tasks. Ran it in survival for a few hundred cycles.

[Flydo]

In my case, i just finish to test my congelator with automatic deliveries, just a trouble with the counter filter that not permit me to only let pass 9 kg of food.

so i put another automatic in the mess hall to reput  the excess food in the congelator.

 

The five thermoregulator was only here to speed up the cool down, now it's cool i think i can only put one to prevent heating up.

[GreezyHammer]

I noticed something interesting (tested in DLC), if you put refrigerator in a vacuum and turn it on, it doesn't heat-up.

Seems like it only transfers the heat to gas or liquid and not to itself.