How to Stockpile Survival Meals?

[NecessaryWeevil]

...aside from watching the freezer like a hawk and forbidding each pile that my cooks create?

[AlP]

Disable survival meals in colonist food restrictions.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Bottom of the screen, click on 'Assign', select 'Simple' under the column of 'Manage Food Restrictions', for each colonist. Or Click on 'manage food restrictions', select 'lavish', and then under 'meals' you'll want to disable (uncheck) packaged survival meals.

[NecessaryWeevil]

*Blink* yes, of course! Thank you.

[ToddEStan]

Your colonists should prefer just about any other kind of meal before a survival meal (except maybe paste? - I've never actually used the paste dispenser so I'm not sure how it ranks).

However, they generally will grab the first thing they see when they are hungry. So there's two basic ways to deal with this:
1. Make sure they have to walk past a stack of simple/fine/lavish meals on their way to grab a survival meal. i.e. put a zone for survival meals in the back of the freezer, and a zone for the other meals at the front. This really only works though if you have one entrance to your freezer and no side/back entrances.

2. Make sure all the stacks are right next to each other, so they'll see a bunch of different meals, and they'll grab whatever they prefer the most which should not be the survival meals if there's any other kind also there. In other words, put a zone at the front of your freezer and put all meal types there at a higher priority to keep them grouped.

With that said this doesn't seem to be perfect - from time to time a colonist will decide to still eat a survival meal for reasons that aren't clear.

The other way as mentioned is to use food restrictions, but that's annoying because you always have to remember to change the restrictions for caravans, and then change them back when they are done caravaning. Though I believe there are some mods around that will automate that.

[martindirt]

Originally posted by ToddEStan:

Your colonists should prefer just about any other kind of meal before a survival meal (except maybe paste? - I've never actually used the paste dispenser so I'm not sure how it ranks).

However, they generally will grab the first thing they see when they are hungry. So there's two basic ways to deal with this:
1. Make sure they have to walk past a stack of simple/fine/lavish meals on their way to grab a survival meal. i.e. put a zone for survival meals in the back of the freezer, and a zone for the other meals at the front. This really only works though if you have one entrance to your freezer and no side/back entrances.

2. Make sure all the stacks are right next to each other, so they'll see a bunch of different meals, and they'll grab whatever they prefer the most which should not be the survival meals if there's any other kind also there. In other words, put a zone at the front of your freezer and put all meal types there at a higher priority to keep them grouped.

With that said this doesn't seem to be perfect - from time to time a colonist will decide to still eat a survival meal for reasons that aren't clear.

The other way as mentioned is to use food restrictions, but that's annoying because you always have to remember to change the restrictions for caravans, and then change them back when they are done caravaning. Though I believe there are some mods around that will automate that.

This method works, till you begin to mod your game. Some ingredients count as "rare ingredient" (fruits, veggies, animal products). These ingredients giving small (+1) mood bonus to your pawns. Well known, they prefer meals with mood bonus. Now.
Example you have meal from rice, and you have PSMs (at the very back of your freezer) from figs + beef. They will walk for the PSM, and will ignore meals made from common ingredient.

Better if you just assign their food policy to don't eat PSM, and make a different food restriction for caravans, where you allow them anything. (If you get used to it, tts not so annoying.)

[GeneralVeers]

Also set zone restrictions on your pets and livestock so they don't eat your stored food.

On more than one occasion, before I figured out the above, my farmer's dog would get into the fridge and eat the chocolate............