Ration Box

Ration Box is a building used to store food out of reach of hungry creatures. It prevents hungry animals and other hungry entities from taking food placed inside, making it useful when you need to protect supplies from wandering Critter populations or from animals that raid food stockpiles. The Ration Box is explicitly not a preservation device: food inside a Ration Box continues to spoil at the same rate it would if left exposed.

Place food into a Ration Box when the primary concern is theft or consumption by non-Duplicant entities. A Ration Box will reliably block hungry Critter behavior directed at food items it contains, but it provides no thermal insulation, no gas sealing, and no reduction to spoilage timers. Any spoilage mechanics that normally apply to a given food item continue to apply while the item is stored inside a Ration Box.

• Use Ration Boxes to compartmentalize and protect valuable or rare food from being eaten by nearby animals. They are effective when animals roam freely and might otherwise consume planted or stored food.
• Do not rely on Ration Boxes to extend shelf life. If preservation is required, pair Ration Boxes with independent spoilage-control methods such as refrigeration or processing into non-perishable goods (these preservation methods must be provided by separate buildings or systems).
• Ration Boxes are appropriate when the game problem is theft/consumption rather than decomposition. Position them where animals can be excluded or where Duplicants can access them for distribution without exposing the stored food to hungry fauna.
• Ration Boxes do not alter the chemical or physical state of food; they simply block hungry creatures from reaching the contents.

In short, Ration Box is a theft-prevention storage building for food that does not influence spoilage. Use it to stop animals from eating your supplies, and use other systems to actually preserve those supplies.