Thanks for playing! I have gotten similar food related feedback and I'll be taking a closer look going forward at exactly what kind of cost benefit ratio new food tasks present to players. I'm also working on revamping how mana works in the game entirely so always spamming conjured food may not be the most viable option... Don't want to spoil too much there but I'm addressing it.
I appreciate your feedback on all my branching paths! I definitely try and give benefits that could be useful at one point and then switch later down the line depending on where you're at, but both are still good if you just want to set it and forget it. Your comment about the kitchen being the obvious choice is quite funny because I received feedback that the resonance lab was the only obvious choice from someone else! That person also skipped cooking tasks entirely tho and just ate conjured food... which I'm addressing like I said. Anyway...
Glad you liked the automation improvements! I'm still tweaking it and refining for the Act 3 content that I'm working on... "Increlution solves this by having a "fill up on low" option, where food will fill to maximum when an exploration is set to the lowest setting ( I suppose '5' in Incremortal), even if that food is on the lowest setting." Mine does a similar thing but as you mentioned, it may in fact be a bit too sensitive. Any time there's an exploration task whether or not it takes core food tasks away from you it gathers food to full. I will continue to tweak it as I play test and get more feedback, I'll be taking a closer look at this exact functionality because of your feedback.
"was this changed? Seems I can top up Herbs pretty easily now. Maybe this is a queue issue? Or maybe I just didn't understand the automation system as well as I thought I did." - Yes it was. In my minor update devlog I wrote "Tweaked Automation logic slightly to prioritize player input even if doing so was "sub-optimal"" which may have inadvertently also fixed this issue.
"Maybe dedicate a section to Progression instead of Exploration? " - I am working on much more clarity and giving different options for changing how the Automations page displays. I haven't gotten around to giving an option to change it from the standard categories to something like a progression order, but I intend to. I'm also adding "badges" which mark tasks with icons to represent things likes active effects, branching paths, location change, food tasks... here's the WIP. Do not take this as a final product :P I'm just sharing because you have given me a lot of good feedback, some of which I'm already implementing. I guess you also get a sneak peak at my new icons too? I'm doing a lot I guess.
I personally like the blended style where if a task has multiple highlights it blends together... but I also do have a "simple" display that looks like this where it kind of Russian dolls itself and the highlights just stack internally.
Hope to see you in act 3, and I hope you like the NG+ until then!