BETA 51A "Basic" food question.

So I've been playing CE since about February and I'm still not sure if I understand standing orders for food. I guess my question basically amounts to "how much food should I be making per day?" Should I have one kitchen just making basic food with all five ovens and another for the fancier food? Should I set all of them to produce as much food on standing orders as I have people? I try to have as much output from my staple crops as I have people, but I still get shortfalls.

 

Early on you should be making lots of basic food, yes. It's the only thing you really can make early in the game, and will satisfy all hunger requirements, even if some colonists would prefer better quality food. You can't make too much of it, so always be making it. You always want a surplus. You never want to fall behind the food production curve, or the hunger-death spiral starts where colonists start eating raw ingredients. 2 dedicated stone ovens in a kitchen with a dedicated crew in a cornfield will feed the colony for the early game and well into mid game.

By that time you want to research more advanced crops in the lab (commonly wheat but depends on biome). Get a vat up and running to make some alcohol out of whatever crops you have available so you can start making refined food. Overseers prefer refined food, so switch over an oven to making it. Add a small iron oven or two from the metal shop you should now have which make food in larger batches, and you'll never want for food again.

If you can't get a lab made and you see your food supplies are starting to go down, rather than up each day, add a second field of whatever your starting crop is.

Basic and refined food are the two food staples. All the other more specialized food items are currently window dressing, but will presumably cater to specific tastes as the different colonist classes become more developed in the future.

 

Sadly, I almost never make it to the "making crops with SCIENCE!" stage, or even the "iron ovens everywhere!" stage, before I run into a save-ruining crash (or a new release rendering my current save unplayable), but hopefully with the game going into beta I'll have a bit more time to get into that stage. Currently my setup is: 1 cane field + as many chili fields as I need to equal or exceed my number of colonists (I don't usually wind up on biomes where wheat is available at the outset); we'll see how sustainable that is.

 

I had that problem as well until this build where I would hit a performance wall between 50-60 colonists. But in the current build Ive been able to play all the way to 100 colonists before my CPU started crying.

The yields between the different crops and biomes may be different. I rarely choose anything other than temperate/wooded for testing purposes, but it sounds like you're probably running more farms than you need, at least early on. A single corn farm (starting crop for temperate) with a dedicated 2-3 person crew, and a 2 person kitchen with a couple stone ovens is usually plenty for me until well into mid game. Then I add a wheat field with its own crew (beer and bread), a vat for beer and and therefore refined food, and an iron oven, and that would probably be enough for the rest of the game, assuming I add more people to the crews as required. But then I add another iron oven and a pumpkin field for kicks, and end up with enough food to feed a third world county.

I use standing orders only for alcohol (which you dont need that much of) or luxury specialty foods. Staple foods like basic food you should always be making. You cant have too much, and running out can be lethal.

Alavaria will probably be along before too long and can give you mathematically optimum numbers for production.

 

Ok, I just tried a dessert start and chili fields kind of suck, so maybe double up on those. If you're going to go for the challenge of a dssert game, you probably want to prioritize getting a lab and researching better crops if that's possible. One of the other starting loadouts may be more helpful than the default.

 

The "Dauntless Dare" in the desert start is one of my favorite challenges.

The main problem for me isn't food, it's lack of wood.

 

I'd literally just realized that you can mine in spaces that don't have pips yesterday after someone pointed it out in an update thread, so "drop a mine near town, get sand ASAP" is definitely on my list of things to do. Now if only mines consistently produced clay as well.

 

I noticed there's a loadout that comes with enough starting materials to build your first two workshops with extra workers, so that may be helpful. I also tried the science loadout thinking I could get an early Lab, but it doesn't come with the lacquered planks necessary to build the lab.

 

If you want to go in the desert, just use the military one, it should have enough logs to get you until you can call up the Novorus guy to buy wood from them

 

Yeah, it doesn't seem logical that colonists couldn't build buildings out of alternate materials like sand, clay and stone, does it? It seems more important than the other biomes to use your starting soldier squad to scout the area to find wooded areas before putting down too many roots.

 

Man, those chili pepper farms are a cruel joke. It took three of those things just to barely break even on food production for a colony with a population in the 20s, and that was with a nice patch of berries I found to supplement it.

Anyway, I solved the resource problem in the desert by using the Nature's Harvest loadout, setting all my colonists to only hauling jobs, and using the extra time the bonus food bought me to scout with my militia until I found a favorable spot. The problem with the desert is the sparse resources are less well distributed than other biomes, so its very easy to get a terrible start location which you would normally have to put down roots quickly to get food going.

With the food cushion I let my colonists idle ( you dont want to gather any resources or those will compete with the food when you need them to move it), I took a day to rally scout the map, found a small mixed biome area with enough wood to last me through the game (as long as I dont waste it on bricabrac), and a gold mine in close proximity to Iron and Zinc mines, and a bunch of sand nodes. I created a stockpile there and let my colonists spend a couple days moving all the food there.

Once I had enough food in the new location for a few days, I started building as normal, except in a much richer location. It was a little tough making due with those chili farms until I unlocked corn, but once I did it was smooth sailing. By the middle game I was printing money with an unlimited supply of gold bars and buying out all the metal goods I needed, a ceramic shop I turned into a bricabrac factory with the sand from 4 mines keeping it running to the extent that after the early game I only needed one carpenter. Of course then the trade depot bugged out on me and I have nothing to do with all my riches.

Anyway, it worked so well, I think it might be my default strategy for every map now. It bothers me that you usually have to put down roots so quickly without getting to choose an optimum location. I'm a Nature's Bounty man now.

 

Are you telling me it took 15 farmers to produce like 15 raw food a day? That seems like more than double what you would need...

Were your overseers really unhappy or something?

 

No, I was only running 3 people per farm. I don't find much difference in output between 3 people and 5 on fast low yield crops. After a certain point it seems like diminishing returns, and I'd be better served by an entirely new field. The only crops I put 5 people on are slow/high yield like wheat. 3 people on a single corn farm will feed my entire colony through mid game. Chili farms only output 8 food units.

But yeah, they were all really pissed the first week from sleeping out in the open for a few days. They got over it when the colony exploded in growth from unlimited resources.

 

That shouldn't be the case from having observed the farmers, they're basically independent of each other.

Maxing out workgroups has the benefit of getting skill-ups faster, which is why I would generally recommend doing it.

Chill is is 7.25 labor per unit, with maize being 6.25 lpu

Have 2 overseers for each field, one starting at dawn and the other in the middle of the day, and swap the lowerclass, so you get a lot more out of them. It helps to get those early new overseers as they will be happy making things a bit easier on you.

 

You know buddy, you know a lot about this game and you're generally very helpful on the boards, but you've got a real problem when people deviate from your own experiences or perceived notion of the way they *should* play the game. I find your constant nitpicking exhausting. I just want to play the game my own way, and talk with people who are still having fun with it about my experiences.

If the devs are curious what would drive an active, bug-submitting tester from the forums, just let it be known it's because it's too damn tedious to have to deal with you.

 

Whoa now, I don't think any disrespect was intended. Alavaria's writing style is very concise, blunt, and-to-the point, which sometimes might not come across well via a text-only communications platform. I'd like to err on the side of him just wanting to give advice.

Anyhow, with regards to deserts, I also agree that the bounty loadout is very helpful. A week's supply of food is a lot, and is worth a lot more in time resources than a handful of building materials. I can usually survive until around a population of 30-ish using only a maxed out chili farm and a 2-stove kitchen.

My usual aim is to get about 3-4 foreign offices running by then, and make allies with the Republic ASAP to get the refined food recipe, and also to get a 5-chalkboard lab up and running to unlock maize. They synergize well together, since I can also get lab points from the science expo too.

Once I have a maize field, and refined food, I can supply a colony of 100 people with just a single-manned maize farm, and a single manned kitchen.

 

You don't need to intend disrespect to give it. He's been nitpicking everything I say across multiple threads since I dared disagree with his broken record of suggesting that using money exploits to simply buy everything you need in trade is the preferred or even best way to play the game in every situation.

He wants to be king of this little roost, that's fine. I've got better things to do. But it'll cost the devs an active bug submitter and a Steam review, since I don't feel like I can post the technical concerns for a game I bought without being stalked by pissy little nitpicks in every thread.