Consumables

Consumables is the colony-wide access chart used to control which foods and medicines each Duplicant is allowed to use. When opened, it shows every discovered or manufactured consumable in a grid, with each Duplicant listed down the left side and each item across the top. The interface is meant for fine-grained rationing: you can permit or restrict specific items per Duplicant, set up permissions for newly created Duplicants, and sort the Duplicant list by name or morale.

The top row of the grid displays icons for all discovered food and medicine items. Hovering over an icon shows its name, available calories or units, morale bonus if applicable, and a short description. Consumables are grouped by food morale bonus or medicine effect, and if the list is too long to fit on screen, the scrollbar or mouse wheel can be used to browse the full set.

Each item has a column of checkboxes for every Duplicant. A checked box means that Duplicant is allowed to consume that item. The checkbox color reflects the item type and quality: medicine and Grisly-quality food use white checkmarks, while food with higher morale bonuses uses progressively more saturated purple checkmarks. Entire columns can be toggled by clicking the corresponding food icon, and entire rows can be toggled with the button at the right end of each Duplicant’s row. The button in the top-right corner toggles all checkboxes at once.

Consumables is especially useful for preventing waste and avoiding unwanted effects:

• Curative Tablet should generally remain enabled for all Duplicants, since any Duplicant can become food poisoned.
• Vitamin Chews and Immuno Reducers are best reserved for Duplicants who actually work in germy environments, so they are not wasted.
• Basic Rad Pills should usually be restricted to Duplicants expected to absorb more than 100 rads per cycle.
• Raw or otherwise unprocessed food that will later be cooked, such as raw meat, is usually best disabled so Duplicants eat the higher-quality finished meal instead. This avoids morale loss and can reduce stress.
• Basic Rad Pills are consumed even by Duplicants who are not currently irradiated, so manual control is recommended.

The interface also matters for special cases such as Bionic Duplicants, who can access Power Banks and Oxygen Canisters through Consumables, even though Polluted Oxygen Canisters are not available to them despite being consumable.