Food

[PaulMClem]

As the Spirit patch notes indicated, colonists seem to be eating more food these days. Previously I could have one Hydro farm in my first dome and it would produce enough food to keep people happy. Now founders are starving as food runs out before the next crop is complete. This being the case it seems to make a single Hydro farm a non-starter as your sole food source in your first colonised dome (I am playing as China so have 22 founding colonists + newborn) i.e. will need a full blown farm.

Has there ever been details of how food requirement is calculated...and in general, what are your first dome food strategies?

 

[ainyru]

Yep, noticed same effect. Dunno about exact values.

 

[stavern]

I was under the impression each pop consumed 0.2 food each day/year. They bring along with them enough food to last 5 days. Since always expect harvest failure i send a second shuttle with alot of food. Build 3 hydrophonic farm and replace it with farm when tech finished. Tried this with farming domes to supply other domes but that always lead to starving. Drones dont bother with food i think before there is starving pops. Now always build one farm in each dome and a fungal farm. One huge dome i usually build like 10 farm but that is late game.

 

[PaulMClem]

I was under the impression each pop consumed 0.2 food each day/year. They bring along with them enough food to last 5 days. Since always expect harvest failure i send a second shuttle with alot of food. Build 3 hydrophonic farm and replace it with farm when tech finished. Tried this with farming domes to supply other domes but that always lead to starving. Drones dont bother with food i think before there is starving pops. Now always build one farm in each dome and a fungal farm. One huge dome i usually build like 10 farm but that is late game.

Cheers. For China I think I'll probably need a double Hydro start. A farm needs too many people when I have other things to resource - not enough people. TBH I think game maybe needs a bigger basic house style as 2 x the tier 1 apartments is only 28 unless you luck into the bigger condo early in the tech tree. Means farms consume too many of those people. Probably need to leave a farm for Dome 2...but then go back to Dome 1 and put one in when I can demolish and replace the tier 1 housing with the tier 2 i.e. get more resources.

 

[stavern]

I am sure it is for balance reasons that basic housing hold so few people. I also replace it as soon have tech finished. No 50 square meters apartments on my colonists. They have to live in 25 square meters until can build arcology.

 

[ozmods]

try my automated farms mod on t he steam workshop, set up a dome with power water and oxygen, drop in a pile of automated farms, and your good to go, i set it up that way because i got sick of not having enough workers to deal with food, and the hydroponic farms keep failing, so this was my answer to this..

 

[FeiXue]

Don't see a reason for rushing first passenger rocket until you can build a farm. You can do more useful stuff with that RM money than buying food on Earth. Also Vap upgrade is super early in tech tree. Improve soil. Worship botanists. Sacrifice goats.

 

[SillySMS]

I don't worry a lot about it early game. Food is cheap and light; easy to just use supply rockets to send food. I'll always have a farm in my first dome (more efficient in general), sometimes also a hydroponics farm if I don't have Soil Adaptation by the time I have my first dome running.

Don't see a reason for rushing first passenger rocket until you can build a farm. You can do more useful stuff with that RM money than buying food on Earth. Also Vap upgrade is super early in tech tree. Improve soil. Worship botanists. Sacrifice goats.

I'm not sure I'm following. Unless you luck out on the most absurdly overpowered breakthrough tech in the game, you don't have rare metals to export until you have colonists.

On top of that, the sooner you have colonists, the sooner you can start getting real industry going. If it's Sol 15 and still no colonists, you're probably wasting sols.

 

[Xeorm]

Looking at the wiki, the numbers for optimal harvests are a bit off, so be warned. Not entirely sure how soil quality works either. It doesn't apply to the yield, and I don't know the exact math behind crop failures. I've very rarely seen them pop up, which also to me implies it's not a straight percentage. Would love to hear of more data though.

Comparably, 5 food costs $20M. One rare metal per for the worst sponsors. Hence I'll usually buy food and have my colonists do other things at start and wait until farms are around to start making food. Compare this to hydroponics (2.5 per sol for 3 workers) and soybean production (8 per sol for 6 workers). Rare metal production is ~2.3 per 4 workers on an average deposit, or 11.5 food per sol.

That said, food is incredibly attractive to produce asap. Farms work very well to reduce reliance on Earth. Food's cheap, but you need a good amount of it. For beginning start food-wise I import until I can get farms working. Initial workers are geologists, medics, and scientists followed by botanists. Don't knock the increased workload button either. 20% more food production (or anything really) is fantastic.

Don't see a reason for rushing first passenger rocket until you can build a farm. You can do more useful stuff with that RM money than buying food on Earth. Also Vap upgrade is super early in tech tree. Improve soil. Worship botanists. Sacrifice goats.

I try to rush the first one to get the founder stage done asap. Not only are rare metals great for exporting as a catch-all for any other resource you might need, but the founder stage gives me a good amount of time to get the infrastructure going. More fuel production and water storage + production. No real reason not to start quickly. Food production is a later concern.

 

[Promethian]

There is something up with farms. Skilled workers produce more from the various food sources. You can see this ongoing on the building itself. The thing is, with the longer growing cycles the farm pushes its output up a lot in that time. Its not uncommon for me to get 140 food from a fruit harvest. That is 17.5 food per sol.

On the other hand the fungal farm (I see hydroponics as the newbie farm you get away from asap) rarely does better than 5 food per sol. I expect the fungal farms to produce less. They are out-dome after all. However the difference is just too large due to this bonus food that farms are getting.

 

[Xeorm]

There is something up with farms. Skilled workers produce more from the various food sources. You can see this ongoing on the building itself. The thing is, with the longer growing cycles the farm pushes its output up a lot in that time. Its not uncommon for me to get 140 food from a fruit harvest. That is 17.5 food per sol.

On the other hand the fungal farm (I see hydroponics as the newbie farm you get away from asap) rarely does better than 5 food per sol. I expect the fungal farms to produce less. They are out-dome after all. However the difference is just too large due to this bonus food that farms are getting.

Far as I can tell they both produce base food * building performance worth of food. The farm will slowly add on the average so you can't have 1 worker 90% of the time and swap over to full botanist at the end, but it does average out to the same reward. It helps a lot that fruit trees produce naturally 11 food per sol compared to the fungal farm's 6.

 

[MarQan]

0.2 without Glutton is what I heard as well, but can't confirm. I usually just estimate Food consupmtion anyways, since the harvests have a fair amount of dispersion.

For me Soil Adaptation became a must-have pre-colonist tech with the Spirit update. It usually doesn't delay me too much and I can delay Decomission even more.
Farms were ridiculously strong compared to Fungal Farms and Hydroponics before, but the increased Food consumption increased that advantage as well.

I usually bring 3 Botanists (out of 12), do 2-3 batches of Wheat and then Soy Beans until 100%.

Hopefully the food production buildings get some love and rebalance when Passages comes.

 

[EEE_boy]

At my latest Spirit game, with around 200-300 colonists, six farms with potatoes/soys at 50% soil quality can barely keep up with the food consumption. I have to keep importing full rocket of food for a while.

until I got six farms with boosted 100% soil quality, using apple/corn can have ample food surplus to grow further beyond 300 colonists.

My Botanists occupy rate for all farms are around 75% (3/4 or 5/6 are botanists) at all time.

I started farming dome late though because other priorities such as rare metal/metal and machine parts factory due to starting location restrictions and water access need a tunnel. so importing food to reach 100 colonists.