Drying rack limits

[chopper [FD]]

Is there a way to limit how much raw meat goes to the drying rack? It seems to be all or nothing now.

[DarkHorse]

I agree I found no way to stop them from drying meat other than ' No Meat ' a limit would be nice.

[Cotaks]

indeed, same thing with leaves, tea needs fresh, pipes need dried...

[Lightup]

i let the first harvest go to the rack first, once reach certain amount i want, i disallow the survivors to place them into the rack further. This is what I do to the stupid AI

[spacedog]

Typically you should always make sure that no storages anywhere accept dried meat, dried smokeleaf, or leather, so they stay in the drying rack once they're done. The large drying rack has a lot of "under a roof" storage space that otherwise goes to waste. This keeps your other storages free for other things.

This would also semi-solve your problem, because once the drying rack is full, the raw red meat would have to go other places.

All that said, I'm not sure what problem you're trying to solve. If you send raw red meat anywhere except a drying rack, it will spoil in a few days. Unless it gets sent to a freezer, in which case it lasts forever.

So you typically only want use the drying rack until you have freezers, then you stop using drying racks. There's really no good reason to waste time making dried meat once you have freezers. (And some recipes specifically require raw red meat, not dried meat.)

The only thing I can think of is if you need to make animal fat for oil lamps before you have freezers... in which case there's no solution I'm aware of other than to micromanage what storages accept what. But that's arguably a pretty niche problem.

[sensates]

Originally posted by spacedog:

Typically you should always make sure that no storages anywhere accept dried meat, dried smokeleaf, or leather, so they stay in the drying rack once they're done. The large drying rack has a lot of "under a roof" storage space that otherwise goes to waste. This keeps your other storages free for other things.

This would also semi-solve your problem, because once the drying rack is full, the raw red meat would have to go other places.

All that said, I'm not sure what problem you're trying to solve. If you send raw red meat anywhere except a drying rack, it will spoil in a few days. Unless it gets sent to a freezer, in which case it lasts forever.

So you typically only want use the drying rack until you have freezers, then you stop using drying racks. There's really no good reason to waste time making dried meat once you have freezers. (And some recipes specifically require raw red meat, not dried meat.)

The only thing I can think of is if you need to make animal fat for oil lamps before you have freezers... in which case there's no solution I'm aware of other than to micromanage what storages accept what. But that's arguably a pretty niche problem.

A limit switch would be handy, I agree.

Spacedog, thank you, I have been ignorantly drying all meat sending it straight to deep freezers.... Why just because I never put any thought into it. You have opened my mind to getting rid of the drying rack or reducing it to the smaller version for smoking weed and hides only.

[gutlor]

Like for cooking, we need a way to designate a quantity being dried or cooked. When 4 people are hungry you don't grab a pan big enough for only 2 people. You grab a bigger pan. I can create a laser, but I cant make a bigger pot to cook in?

[chopper [FD]]

The production of dried products should be controller just like it is for fermentation barrels or the oil press. Right now, it doesn't follow the game mechanics used for other production tools.
The whole game feels a bit under-baked at the moment. Which is fine, it's EA but I hope they get it straight before release.

[spacedog]

Originally posted by chopper FD:

The production of dried products should be controller just like it is for fermentation barrels or the oil press.

I agree this is a strange inconsistency.

I guess one other solution, if they want to treat drying racks like "shelves with side effects", is to allow survivors to take raw red meat that's not dried yet out of the rack to use for cooking and other things, just like if it were a regular shelf.

[Col.Firefly]

Originally posted by spacedog:

Originally posted by chopper FD:

The production of dried products should be controller just like it is for fermentation barrels or the oil press.

I agree this is a strange inconsistency.

I guess one other solution, if they want to treat drying racks like "shelves with side effects", is to allow survivors to take raw red meat that's not dried yet out of the rack to use for cooking and other things, just like if it were a regular shelf.

You can already mate, there is a switch on drying racks labelled 'Retrieve', turn that on and it works like a shelf that never lets meat spoil while it's drying, and a great place for raw smokeweed.

Very handy.

[Elgar]

Originally posted by Col.Firefly:

You can already mate, there is a switch on drying racks labelled 'Retrieve', turn that on and it works like a shelf that never lets meat spoil while it's drying, and a great place for raw smokeweed.

Very handy.

This. Funnily enough, it's among these things which are overlooked by the players, not the developers.

[spacedog]

Originally posted by Col.Firefly:

there is a switch on drying racks labelled 'Retrieve'

Holy crap, there is. And it's off by default, which is why I've never seen then get meat from there.

SIGH. This is totally my fault for not paying attention to every bit of the UI.

That said, the drying rack is a storage device, organized under the production category, with a UI toggle that exists nowhere else on any other device in the game...

This is making me think of all the people who complain there are bugs with power grids, because they didn't fully digest that one part of the UI that mentions batteries can't supply more than 100 power at a time.