New game mechanics/UI: food choices done in groups as schedule, more space automation

[SuperUser13]

Problem1: food in late game in big colonies can become a micromanagement thing to do. Yes I do have 6.000.000 frost burgers, which i feed to Tree that eats like crazy. So I want to feed some of my dups SPARE food, e.g Frost buns, Grubfruits, etc, and once something is depleted - I have to switch manually to another food. (obviously its possible to create set of rooms with different food types on weight plate, and depending on weigh - allow access to it or not, or rather since you have access to Grubfruit - you cant have access to Frost Buns. Also sometimes when dups build smth in space I need to apply Rad Pill to ALL, but then I removed Rad Pill form ALL and manually reassign it to pilot dups.

Solution1: apply UI of Schedules, where dups can be placed in groups per schedule, but instead of schedule, make a food choises. So a Dup1, Dup3, Dup8 are elligible to food choices of X, and all other dups to Y.

Problem2: multiple POI travel is purely manual, with no automation possible. Not clear whether or not rocket gathered artifcact, no indication on Artifact restored no info, Planet mass restored no info

Solution2: Simply adding Artifact restored in POI = true/false, Planet mass restored to max = true/false via Automation Receiver or some new item, or smth like Starmap location sensor.

Problem3:  Also lets say there are some small POI that I want to dig, or couple big ones no matter - I need to resuply rocket with diamonds. Either manually by landing on planet (sometimes impossible due to absence/distance) or returning back. 

Solution3: Resuply Diamonds to rocket can be costly, involving some additional resources, whatever, but it should be possible as it would make not grind for resources by travelling back and forth, but automate space more, improve Interplanetary Launcer. Obviously in order to make delivery rocket should not move. 

[blakemw]

On 10/1/2023 at 7:48 AM, SuperUser13 said:

(obviously its possible to create set of rooms with different food types on weight plate, and depending on weigh - allow access to it or not, or rather since you have access to Grubfruit - you cant have access to Frost Buns.

There's actually an easier way to do food priorities in the existing game.

Dupes choose what food to eat based on a combination of the food quality and the distance, effectively every 5 tiles further away a piece of food is, that's equivalent to 1 lower quality, or a dupe will walk 5 extra tiles for each additional level of food quality. So you don't need any doors or automation, you can simply store food you want dupes to prioritize closer to the bathroom or wherever you predict dupes to be when they are ready to eat.

I know this isn't an absolutely perfect way of managing what dupes eat, it has both a (very small) cost in commute time and doesn't hard forbid, but it tends to suffice very well to prioritize or deprioritize one kind of food. Like I often use distance to deprioritize Berry Sludge, you can store it a few tiles further away to get dupes to eat other 3 quality foods first, or store it even further away to make them eat low quality stuff first.