Hopper

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 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 ==
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 ===
File:Nutrient paste dispenser no hopper.png|When you build a NPD, the game will notify that a hopper is needed
File:Hopper storage cropped.png|Hopper storage menu to select ingredients
File:Nutrient paste dispenser with hopper.png|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 ==
OldHopper.png|The Old Hopper Texture
Category:Production
Category:Food Production