I was able to join in on the latest Steam Build and am loving the Alpha 12 preview. So far most bugs I have encountered in the past have been mostly resolved. (minus the random ladder issue, but that’s a different story).
I have a question regarding the new effects for rotting food (love it by the way!). It is mentioned in the notes of the release that it has sound effects along with visual (flies! awesome!), but there is no mention on what to do with it. I mean, are my hearthlings going to eat it anyway? How can we clear it? Does it count towards total food? What is the timeframe for food to go bad?
Well, there’s multiple options we could have in the future. Here are my preferences:
Throw it out: Hearthlings will make it a priority to throw the rotten food out of your stockpile so it doesn’t spoil anything else and they’ll drop it outside your town.
Mulch it: Have a class idea I previously mentioned called the mulcher turn the rotten food (as well as things like animal waste) into fertilizer, which can make plants grow faster.
Potion ingredient: Nuff said.
As for the time frame: I dunno. But what I do know is that when the cook cooks food, it’ll take longer to rot.
I definitely think that food placed in stockpiles or crates that are underground should rot slower, since that’d encourage cellarage simply by mechanics rather than needing to allocate anything specifically. Flag the stockpile/container at creation time and check them every day or so, to keep the logic simpler on the actual mechanics. Rotten food that isn’t used for anything should disappear after a couple of days too, just to keep the world tidy.
This is a good idea. I know brewing is planned, but I’m not sure what specifically is planned for it. I know wheat and pumpkin can be used in beer - well, anything can be used in beer if you’re brave enough, but those are the two major players I know of - and without grapes, berries would be a fine analogue for wine.
I’d personally prefer if high-level farmers - say, the level after they’re able to be promoted to cook, so your second farmer - were able to make a compost heap. Once it’s set up, workers would move rotten food into it, and when the food rots away and disappears naturally it creates compost in the heap based on crop growing time. Carrots and turnips create one unit, corn would create three. If there’s other uses for that specific rotten item hearthlings can just remove it from the compost heap for their own purposes before it disappears.
Farmers can then take compost from the heap to fertilize probably 3 tiles of dirt (66 usable tiles in an 11x11 field = 22 units of compost for one full field; with backpacks one farmer can carry 8 units of compost = 3 farmers to fertilize a whole field without stopping to get more compost) when they plant seeds. All farmers can use it so you don’t get half-fertilized fields when only half your farmers are high enough level, but you need a farmer of sufficient level to allocate the heap and start the process.
The clear tool should also work (without the need for the console). Open the harvest menu and use the Clear tool (last button, red X), then select what you want to delete.
That destroys the chest, but can’t select the rotten food in chest until chest is destroyed, so need to destroy chest, move everything (I do before) to a new chest elsewhere, remove rotten food via destroy or harvest menu clear, then put a new chest there, and move everything back?
Seems like there should be a way to get them to toss out rotten food… or be able to select it in a crate and destroy just the rotten food… Am I missing something?
This is quite an old threat brian, though if you really dislike rotten food, theres a stockpile mod that does give you the option to designate a stockpile for rotten food. it’d be nice in the longterm if it wasn’t mod required but for now it’s a working point.
@groms, @SirStafford said he was storing it in crates, As I would imagine most people would store foods in, instead of leaving it on the ground, 5 second rule not withstanding.
@Golden, Hearthlings have no where to remove it, I can have half of them idle and still it sits there. If there is a setting or technique for having it removed to somewhere, I am unaware of it and would love to know. Otherwise I will chalk it up to an ‘alpha thing’ that will get fixed someday. But rotten food hanging out in the same crate as good food bothers me. Yes, Even in a game. I am ‘quirky’ like that.
I was answering Rick_SuUp, he asked [quote]What destroy tool[/quote] and I answered his question.
That was, more or less, not related to the original question and how to remove rotten food from chests.
Rotten food should “vanish” after some time without you doing anything at all.
