Farming Options (a.k.a. nerf farms?)

[SillySMS]

So I made a separate post about this comparing in-dome ranches to hydroponics farms, and come bearing a complete set of statistics (attached). This doesn't include the advanced crops unlocked by Gene Adaptation (Quinoa, Seaweed, Fruit Trees etc.) because once you are that deep into the tech tree, then there are a bunch of other modifiers that could make direct comparisons difficult (for example, the tech that makes Botanists work with +20 production would barely make them win that comparison). tl;dr is at the bottom, labelled 'Conclusion'. These are the three 'competitions' or scenarios that I have used to determine which food producing building is the best:

EDIT: Looked more closely, and I see what the actual issue with your analysis is. You're using 100% performance as the baseline for a 100% soil quality farm... when 100% is actually the baseline for a 50% soil quality farm. A full quality farm is actually at 150% performance before taking other factors into account.

I've run my own analysis, with the following assumptions:
1) Water conservation system domes effectively require an extra +0.4 workers per hydroponics farm and +1 worker per regular farm. This is based on one of my typical medium domes.
2) As with you: hydroponics farms are abbreviated "HF"
3) Regular farms operate at 180% performance (+30% from workers, +50% from soil)
4) Cattle ranches operate at 100% performance because ranches don't store overflow food.
5) All other buildings operate at 130% performance (+30% from workers)
6) No Farm Automation.

Below is a spreadsheet with the relevant information. The most important bits are line 33 (food per worker-sol) and 34 (food per water-sol).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ueeoak9qdd46bjg/FarmingMars.xlsx?dl=0

Overall Conclusions
1) Hydroponics and fungal farms are currently just trash for everything other than maybe the founder phase.
2) In the early game, outdoor ranches and farms are quite competitive with each other. Farms in WCS domes are the best for water efficiency by a substantial margin, while pigs and ostriches do well on the food/worker front. Overall, I'd probably lean towards ostrich ranches, courtesy of not needing botanists, good water efficiency before you can afford dedicated farming domes, and working at 100% without requiring effort to bring soil quality up.
3) Once you have gene adaptation, farms just blow ranches out of the water, period, so long as you have the botanists for it.
4) Once you have access to mega domes and farm automation, farms get even better.
5) Once you get to Green Mars, just build some outdoor farms and live in drone-powered space cornucopia forever.

 

[sortulv]

@SillySMS Looking at the numbers you provided, I think you missed how insanely effective indoor ranches are for water. Turkeys provide 2 times the food/water than farms even with gene adaption (that is with soil quality and +10 bot performance). Remember you can use water reclaimation for ranches just as easily as for farms. They are less effective per worker, but that is less of a problem since they don't require any education...

This makes me want to run a non-vegan dome in my next game, designed for turkey farming only. Could be a nice combo with the amature rule...

 

[SillySMS]

By the time you have water reclamation going, though, water efficiency becomes relatively unimportant. When you spend little water on food production, further improvements in water efficiency aren't as important as reducing the number of workers and dome space needed. It doesn't hurt that farms can improve residence comfort and don't affect vegans.

 

[sortulv]

By the time you have water reclamation going, though, water efficiency becomes relatively unimportant. When you spend little water on food production, further improvements in water efficiency aren't as important as reducing the number of workers and dome space needed. It doesn't hurt that farms can improve residence comfort and don't affect vegans.

Not true. If you happened to land in an area with 0 water deposits, every drop of water counts.

 

[SillySMS]

Not true. If you happened to land in an area with 0 water deposits, every drop of water counts.

The difference between a medium farm dome (with quinoa) and a medium indoor ranch dome, both with a WCS, is 1.26 water/hour, less than a single upgraded moisture vapourator. In exchange for the $228M investment in that vapourator, you get 25% more food out of that dome, representing food for roughly 108 colonists (again assuming 6 farms/ranches per dome)... 108 colonists who can be working in RM mines, etc.

 

[MarQan]

I mostly agree with OP, but I'd rather just make the Farm tech more expensive. Having an efficient late-game food producing building is a good thing, and not everyone will get Green Planet. I think it wouldn't be crazy to make Farms cost 10k research, they're a huge help.

Additionally make fungal a mid-game producer. Machine parts for building it, and even upkeep, but more production and/or less workers.

 

[YertyL]

Hydroponic farms seem to have another narrow niche: They are effective at seed production. A hydroponic farm will produce the same amount of seeds as a farm, i.e. 1 per sol, using half the workers and less than half the water (0.6 vs 2). An open farm planting herbs will convert that 1 seed to 10 food, which indirectly is a fantastic amount of food/worker for hydro.

So in theory you have a nice transition: hydro farms -> indoor farms -> open farms supported by hydro farms. The only problem is that use of open farm starts at 10% water, 20% temperature, and at 20% water, 30% temperature, you can plant bushes, which very quickly will solve all your seed problems forever. Alternatively, you can use cover crops even earlier -- 15% water, 30% temperature -- to the same effect.

 

[Foefaller]

I think every type of food production should have a niche that lasts most, if not all of the game.

Like, have Hydroponics actually be the most botanist efficient way to grow food, but at the cost of all that electricity, water and maintenance. Indoor Farms are the cheapest in terms of incoming resources; no maintenance or power needed, and less water than most other options, maybe even enough of a savings to match Hydroponics in workers needed for the entire chain are considered (at least if you aren't (ab)using scrubbers) Fungal Farms are the most water-efficient, but this time are able to stay competitive with other options until *both* advanced crops and automation show up, not one or the other. Outdoor Farms go from being a side grade option to a straight upgrade as terraforming progresses and seeds are more easily produced (though IMO it should be across a longer span than it is now) and Ranches, rather than producing more food than literally anything, should produce a special type of food that makes non-vegans happier, but at the cost of making vegans angry and producing less food per worker and/or per sol than nearly all other options.

 

[YertyL]

Fungal farms also have one pretty specific niche for me: A micro dome with 2 living complexes can be self-sustaining with a single MOXIE, vaporator, and fungal farm. The fungal farm will eat up the overproduction in water and O2, need no dome space, and can almost exactly feed the 28 people that can live in 2 living complexes. So for the minimal mining outpost, they actually make sense.