Curious to know if anyone has made sense of the consumables. I see a lot of overlapping effects with varying durations - and I really just don't know how to make good use of them. 

I know medical skill unlocks more inhaler slots to plop items into, but I have like singletons of everything, so it's not like it's saving me that much inventory management because after one pop my second slot is already empty. And I don't know what I should be shoving into my extra inhaler slots anyway (does +200% passive regen really help out in a fight or is it mostly useful to eat on its own?)

If you drop in e.g. a food item with a 200% recovery increase and another that is 25% total health buff the game will search your inventory for similar items and slot them in when a stack of anything particular runs out. The duration of the effects doesn't seem to enter into it with foodstuffs (although I will admit, vaping your dinner seems a bit odd) and this was a good use of the additional slots that used up a number of the heavier items without me caring very much. Be careful, if you start off vaping candy, you'll end up on the hard stuff, like Raptidon meat before you know it. 

Oh. so it does not have to be the same exact item? Just has to be the same effect? if so then that is good because it seemed mighty tedious if you had to fill that  slot everytime  xD

8 hours ago, Clawdius_Talonious said:

If you drop in e.g. a food item with a 200% recovery increase and another that is 25% total health buff the game will search your inventory for similar items and slot them in when a stack of anything particular runs out. The duration of the effects doesn't seem to enter into it with foodstuffs (although I will admit, vaping your dinner seems a bit odd) and this was a good use of the additional slots that used up a number of the heavier items without me caring very much. Be careful, if you start off vaping candy, you'll end up on the hard stuff, like Raptidon meat before you know it. 

Oh thank God, I thought I had to manually keep reslotting similar effects. Thanks!

12 hours ago, Clawdius_Talonious said:

If you drop in e.g. a food item with a 200% recovery increase and another that is 25% total health buff the game will search your inventory for similar items and slot them in when a stack of anything particular runs out. The duration of the effects doesn't seem to enter into it with foodstuffs (although I will admit, vaping your dinner seems a bit odd) and this was a good use of the additional slots that used up a number of the heavier items without me caring very much. Be careful, if you start off vaping candy, you'll end up on the hard stuff, like Raptidon meat before you know it. 

If you picked the Food Additive Tester aptitude (which you can't change once you start the game even if you respec your stats) then this would've given your character a permanent +3% in all food duration. Same 3% stat increase for the beverage Service tech. Polygon has a nice summary list of them here:

https://www.polygon.com/outer-worlds-guide-walkthrough/2019/10/25/20927274/attributes-stats-skills-perks-flaws-build-character-creation

only used body attribute ones to increase carry weight