Anyone able to automate compost bin?

[TwoTonGamer]

I must be missing something obvious...

I can't get the settlers to add items to the compost bins. They will, however, remove created fertilizer from the bin. I have to manually add recipe ingredients myself.

I have not discovered a way to get them to add recipe ingredients to the bin. Thus, can't automate the creation of fertilizer.

Also, have you noticed no priority setting for composter recipes? Priority level would be needed to fill up chests wioth seeds first and then take excess to the composter.

[TITOMOSQUITO187]

Is there a new "job" added for that to be used? Like Farming, Fishing, etc. "Composting"? That characters don't have?

[Fair]

The job is under crafting. Make sure you have settlers assigned to that. There is no priority because it's not an inventory. They will use ingredients from the closest inventory they find valid ingredients in :)

[Fugitive Mind]

Does the composter have a limited range it will request from? Fair mentioned it will use ingredients from the closest inventory but how do I stop it from taking from inventory I don't want it to touch once its cleaned out the inventory I want the composter to use? Could an optional rule be added to the fertilizer recipe that would require more than a specified number of inventory before it runs the recipe? If there is no range limit and no recipe rule then I don't see a way to stop the composter from either using up all the ingredients or not using enough, thereby forcing me to manually fix the backlog once in a while.

[regiss]

You could probably achieve that with zone restrictions. Having higher priority chest with capped item number to serve as your stock control and then surplus chest somewhere closer to composter to feed it. Restrict anyone going into composter zone except for one loader with access to surplus chest (but not main stock) as well.

I, however, found there's very few items worth composting. Spoiled food sure, but past that just selling or pawning, perhaps after crafting it into something else, gives better profit. Since you can just buy fertilizer for like 4 gold.

[Fugitive Mind]

Zone restrictions are a good idea, I hadn't thought of using them. It should solve the problem but to be honest, I'm not a big fan of the idea of limiting a settler to such a singular job. it feels wasteful. Maybe that's just me being stupid. Mostly I'm only trying to figure out how to manage/automate excess seeds and to a lesser extent saplings without having to manually sell off or compost the ingredients. I'm not that far into the game yet so if there is a way to auto sell items I haven't found it.

[regiss]

I mean that guy over there can do other stuff, it's just so others wouldn't have access to composter and he to main stock. So you could set more forgiving zones.

[pseudo]

Автор сообщения: Fugitive Mind

Zone restrictions are a good idea, I hadn't thought of using them. It should solve the problem but to be honest, I'm not a big fan of the idea of limiting a settler to such a singular job. it feels wasteful.

I keep my "chefs" on a leash in their restaurant. That way when raw food is delivered, and a crafting recipe can be performed, the NPC isn't wandering around the village. It increases settlement efficiency quite a lot (in my head?) and gives the NPC an identity imo. Perhaps I am the stupid one, lol

[Astasia]

You don't need settlers to manage a supply of seeds, you can have them compost/incinerate all of them. Crops stay planted, you aren't going to run out. You can put a stack (or more) of seeds in a chest not managed by the settlement if you want a backup stack, they shouldn't take anything out of non-settlement storage. That said storage is cheap, you can make a chest for each type of seed and I can't see those ever realistically filling up. I just have one chest for all seeds and don't recall ever fill that up in a playthrough.

For food, just don't overproduce so much. I'm a dozen hours into a save on the current update and still haven't fully filled a fridge. If it does get nearly full I'll just pull out a few stacks and sell them. Food stacks to 100 and better food compresses that down turning up to like 10+ ingredients into 1 meal, so there's a pretty huge amount of storage in a single fridge. As long as you aren't massively overproducing with like a giant farm, you should be able to find a balance that takes many hours for food to overfill a storage and by that point spoilage will come into play and handle it. Good meals spoil relatively quickly, I think like sushi rolls only last 2-4 hours for example.

Lastly, you can just let items despawn on the ground. Have a fridge just for tomatoes, if that somehow fills up have no other storage for tomatoes, settlers will IIRC just leave what they harvest on the ground until space becomes available or it despawns which happens fairly quickly.

As for composting/fertilizer. I don't see the point. Crops grow fast enough without it, and you are reducing settler efficiency by dealing with that process. It just potentially saves some space, but I've not found space to be a concern in this game. Make a few extra farm plots, ignore fertilizer. *shrug*

[Morbus Cronenberg]

I can automate the compost bin, but some time ago already, I noticed some peculiar behavior. When I set the allowed ingredients for one compost bin, all the adjacent compost bins will automatically copy those settings. I hope that's not intentional, and will be fixed.