Storage Filters: Get Cargo to an Accepting Destination

How do you assign a food or non-food area?

Select a marked floor tile or a container belonging to the connected storage area. The 0.9.17.1 announcement gives three policies: All cargo, Food only and No food. Choose the policy for that area, then check the other area that should receive goods the first one no longer accepts.

The settings persist with the world. More importantly, the developer conditions relocation on an accessible, accepting destination. Changing a label does not establish that such a destination exists. It also does not demonstrate that every container will empty immediately or that every available resident is currently delivering that cargo.

What should you check when goods stay in the wrong place?

Check the source policy, destination policy and route as separate prerequisites. An area reserved for food cannot also be assumed to receive rejected building materials. A destination accepting those materials still needs to be reachable. This gives a useful diagnostic order without inventing a fixed delay or throughput guarantee for every settlement.

For cargo on a raised floor, the earlier 0.9.15.1 notes describe reachable standing positions, lifts and approaches to their crank. They do not establish that any arbitrarily blocked elevator setup will recover itself. Keep the actual access problem distinct from a category-filter question.

Why do crate contents and packing matter?

Large crates separate food from non-food goods; the contents determine the category until the crate empties. An older save may contain a mixed crate that retains its contents while haulers move incompatible goods once appropriate storage is available. Seeing that older mixed state is therefore not, by itself, proof that the new policy was ignored.

The same notes describe idle haulers combining nearby partial containers of the same material up to real capacity. Their plank example changes six plus five into eight plus three: the material is consolidated, not multiplied. Empty containers remain reusable. Do not apply that example’s capacity to every food, tool or cargo type.

Does sorting improve food safety or reset freshness?

Food-containing containers gain a muted green tint, including during transport, which helps identify the category. However, moving, splitting or combining food preserves its batch age, and save/load do too. Sorting is not a freshness reset. Heat and poor storage can accelerate aging; better conditions reduce that acceleration without extending the stated maximum lifetime.

If construction still reports missing supplies, use the material-state checklist to distinguish free stock from incoming or already delivered materials. A saved building plan is not proof that deliveries are ready, and dismantled objects do not establish an instant, universal resource refund.

If a reachable, accepting destination still receives nothing, preserve the state and report the demo version, policies, cargo and route with screenshots. This is dated developer guidance through the 0.9.18 period, checked November 6; no personal hauling benchmark or universal cargo-repair command is claimed.