Hopper

Hopper

Holds resources for use by machines like nutrient paste dispensers.

Base Stats

Type

Building – Production

Market Value

30  ^[Note]

HP

100

Flammability

50%

Path Cost

42

Building

Size

1 × 1

Minifiable

False

Placeable

True

Passability

pass through only

Cover Effectiveness

50%

Terrain Affordance

Light

Creation

Required Research

Nutrient paste

Work To Make

300 ticks (5 secs)

Resources to make

15

Deconstruct yield

7 - 8

Destroy yield

3 - 4

A hopper is a production building needed to store and feed raw food to a nutrient paste dispenser. At least one hopper is necessary for the dispenser to work.

Acquisition

Hoppers can be constructed once the nutrient paste research project has been completed. Each requires  15 Steel and 300 ticks (5 secs) of work modified by the construction speed of the builder.

Once constructed, they cannot be re-installed, they can only be deconstructed.

Hoppers can only be constructed next to, and with the side spout facing, a nutrient paste dispenser. The hopper blueprint will turn from red to green to indicate proper placement.

Summary

All valid hopper positions.
Gold tile is the dispenser's interaction spot.
Numbers indicate order the hoppers will be drawn from - Note that this order is not rotated if the dispenser is.

Hoppers are installed on any side of a nutrient paste dispenser, except the interaction spot (front center). A total of 13 hoppers can service a single dispenser. 1 dispenser can hold 1 stack of food. A dispenser with 13 hoppers could have up to 975 foodstuffs available for processing, or 162 nutrient paste meals. Meals draw from hoppers from the bottom-left-most tile first, going counter-clockwise from there. The dispenser can draw from multiple hoppers at the same time.

Hoppers act like a stockpile zone, but can only hold raw food other than hay. Unlike with most other haul tasks, hauling to a food hopper is considered both a "Cook" and a "Hauling" work job. Otherwise, it works like any other stockpile zone - you can click the "Storage" tab to select priority and stored items. The hopper defaults to Important priority. Set this priority higher than other food stockpiles to make sure food is hauled to the hopper.

Despite the limitations in the stockpile selection, the machine will consume any type of food (except hay). This includes all biological corpses, any type of meal, and kibble. It is possible to force food on top of a hopper by taking it to a pawn's inventory, positioning the pawn directly north of the hopper, and then manually dropping it in front of the hopper. This can be wasteful; a full corpse will only produce 1 meal, for instance. However, reprocessing kibble or pemmican is technically more efficient than using raw food.

Gallery

• 

  When you build a NPD, the game will notify that a hopper is needed

• 

  Hopper storage menu to select ingredients

• 

  Hopper mouse indicator will turn from red to green for correct placement and colonists will pick NP meals from the dispenser

Analysis

Placing multiple hoppers is recommended, as hoppers can only hold 1 stack of food at a time. With only 1 hopper, a quantity of 4 meat would prevent colonists from placing 75 rice in the hopper, resulting in food not entering the dispenser. Having multiple hoppers allows multiple small stacks of foodstuff to be consumed by the machine at once. Should this "jamming" occur and adding hoppers be infeasible, the existing hoppers will need to be emptied before more of a different foodstuff can be added.

Unless you get food from many different sources, you'll only need a few hoppers to the dispenser to avoid jamming. Small shelves are cheaper to create and hold 3 items rather than 1, so they are a better general storage option.

Since neither hoppers nor NPD's can be uninstalled but only deconstructed, plan carefully for placement of both the NPD and your preferred number of hoppers, plus room for haulers to load the hoppers.

Version history

• 

  The Old Hopper Texture

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Architect

Production | Neolithic

Art bench • Brewery • Butcher spot • Butcher table • Campfire • Crafting spot • Fueled stove • Fermenting barrel • Simple research bench

Medieval

Fueled smithy • Hand tailor bench • Stonecutter's table

Industrial

Biofuel refinery • Deep drill • Drug lab • Electric crematorium • Electric smelter • Electric smithy • Electric stove • Electric tailor bench • Fabrication bench • Hi-tech research bench • Hydroponics basin • Machining table • Nutrient paste dispenser (Hopper)