Is Growing Algae And Mushrooms Worth It?

[Valentin_126]

It takes SOOOO much water and it takes so long to grow, so is it even worth it? Or is it just better to invest in dirt and dynamite and create more farmable land?

[Red]

TLDR: To establish food early I recommend either rushing Kohlrabi into Corn, or Kohlrabi into Algae. Skip mushrooms.

If you do the numbers, one hydroponic garden growing algae produces 30 food per day, at the cost of 5 water per day.
In terms of raw food production, it's pretty big. However, it requires more supporting labor than corn food chain.
Mushrooms are less efficient than algae, but do not require oil. Early on I would skip them.

In terms of stabilizing food supply I've seen two approaches: Kohlrabi first, then rush either corn or algae.
Corn requires less labor, but more farmland. Algae requires more labor +water, but produces a ton of food.

I've done both methods, and both work just fine. In the end you will want to produce everything anyway (if you care about well being).

[QueenPixxa]

@Red are you sure about corn wanting more land? I always go directly to corn after kohlrabi and cassava, and my corn field is half the size of kohlrabi's.

[Red]

Originally posted by QueenPixxa:

@Red are you sure about corn wanting more land? I always go directly to corn after kohlrabi and cassava, and my corn field is half the size of kohlrabi's.

I meant to say corn requires more land than algae. Poor wording on my part.

But you're right. A corn tile makes 1 food per day. Kohlrabi tile makes 2/3 food per day. So yes - corn patches will be smaller, and also more labor efficient, since they take longer to grow, so you need less workers to work the same size field.

I play this game by feel, and don't like to math too much. If I see numbers going down, I panic-plop-down more fields/facilities until the numbers start going up :)

P.S. If you google "Timberborn efficient storage" you will find a youtube video by Skye Storme (great youtube series by the way).. Anyway, he shows a brilliant design that allows to stack 20 large industrial piles in a 6x9 area.

This works just as well with hydroponic gardens, as they are the same shape. Packing 20 hydroponic gardens into a 6x9 area makes for some pretty high food density.

[SteveTMH]

The main advantage of Mushrooms and Algae is that they don't require as much space as farming food does. It's just water and time. This saves you your fertile land for trees, if you are limited in that regard. And the key is that you are not supposed to be using just one Garden. They stack for a reason, the real price is how many beavers you dedicate to it. Also, you don't have to worry about Bad Water poisoning them.

I like to set up a Mushroom growing District and then overproduce water to feed it. Just one fermenter is enough for 3-5 Gardens. Again, it takes more beavers to upkeep than just growing Kohlrabi, but can be made much more compact due to the stackable nature of the Gardens.

This is just how I play. Sometimes you need to test around with stuff to see if it works for you.

[jonnin]

mushrooms can be your only food for a massive colony. You can have 2-3 stacks of hydroponics 6 or more units tall producing food for what, 200+ guys? All for just a few tiles, a warehouse for raw shrooms, another for cooked, the cooker building(s) which are small, and the hydroponics slabs. You can avoid that bulky and power hungry food processor, big kolarabies farms or other farms, farm houses, etc. The production is very high and the footprint is very low, in other words.

algae is another story. Algae is terrible: you have to have a farm growing canola, which is slow, an oil press for those seeds, barrels for the oil, a seed warehouse, ... a ton of extra infrastructure to get about the same output as mushrooms which require none of that stuff.

it comes down to how you are building. If you want maximum well being, you need to make all the foods, at least in smallish quantities. That requires a good deal of farmland and buildings and workers and all to accomplish for both factions. If you just want to feed 1000 hungry workers, shroom pallets are hard to argue against.

[QueenPixxa]

Originally posted by Red:

I play this game by feel, and don't like to math too much. If I see numbers going down, I panic-plop-down more fields/facilities until the numbers start going up :)

Hahah I do much the same. Sometimes I put a couple of farms away from my district centre and only use them if/when food is getting low.
But I have to say I was very surprised by how many mushrooms I managed to grow in only 3 hydroponic gardens! I always underestimated those gardens, it seemed to me that they produced very little; but after a while the production catches up and now I have 5k fermented mushrooms, made with only 2 fermenters.
Of course it's not the only source of food, I also have the other 3 crops that don't need oil, still it's a very good produce return for just water.

[stanley37861]

I use the hydroponic garden for mushrooms because all I need is water to grow them. So i can have a town built by where I pump water and another one built on the bottom of the maps making trees and corn (and others). I level the map and build from bedrock to the skycap. With the new transport system this may no longer be needed.

hydroponic garden are good if you need to have a area that has water needs food but does not have access to ground to grow food with. I have been trying out a n water canal to keep the whole map watered and its working out with no need for pumps. I will try a system like that with dirt so I can have a multi level farming build. With all of that I think the age of the hydroponic garden being useful is quickly coming to a end.

[oyssoyss]

you'll need it for wellbeing score.

[jonnin]

Originally posted by stanley37861:

I use the hydroponic garden for mushrooms because all I need is water to grow them. So i can have a town built by where I pump water and another one built on the bottom of the maps making trees and corn (and others). I level the map and build from bedrock to the skycap. With the new transport system this may no longer be needed.

hydroponic garden are good if you need to have a area that has water needs food but does not have access to ground to grow food with. I have been trying out a n water canal to keep the whole map watered and its working out with no need for pumps. I will try a system like that with dirt so I can have a multi level farming build. With all of that I think the age of the hydroponic garden being useful is quickly coming to a end.

currently the transport system is extremely limited. Its awesome, but its only in straight lines, no elevation changes or turns allowed. I am having trouble on most maps making much use of it -- the time saved in the tubes is lost getting to and from the tube stations. It may work better if you map flatten, but I build into the map and only do minimal teraforming for irrigation or grav batteries(folktails) or the like.

[stanley37861]

Originally posted by oyssoyss:

you'll need it for wellbeing score.

im on cycle 64 right now and have not even built my first house for them. wellbeing is not the most important thing for me.

[stanley37861]

Originally posted by jonnin:

Originally posted by stanley37861:

I use the hydroponic garden for mushrooms because all I need is water to grow them. So i can have a town built by where I pump water and another one built on the bottom of the maps making trees and corn (and others). I level the map and build from bedrock to the skycap. With the new transport system this may no longer be needed.

hydroponic garden are good if you need to have a area that has water needs food but does not have access to ground to grow food with. I have been trying out a n water canal to keep the whole map watered and its working out with no need for pumps. I will try a system like that with dirt so I can have a multi level farming build. With all of that I think the age of the hydroponic garden being useful is quickly coming to a end.

currently the transport system is extremely limited. Its awesome, but its only in straight lines, no elevation changes or turns allowed. I am having trouble on most maps making much use of it -- the time saved in the tubes is lost getting to and from the tube stations. It may work better if you map flatten, but I build into the map and only do minimal teraforming for irrigation or grav batteries(folktails) or the like.

I am on the exp build and you can do turns and level changes. As far as I can tell you need to do one line and have a 2nd line drawn into the first to do turns. Which I think is the same thing you do when you are building roads. you need to use the solid tube to go up and i have tubes running up 16 block high walls right now. Tubes are great since they use the tubes as a path to build the tubes. So no need to build a road or stairs to build them. I really have nothing bad to say about them. I need to find out if they can build the station thou the tubes as well.

[nordstern]

From the efficient factor... or how many food per day and tile we can make aspect algae and mushrooms are really nice.

Berries: 0,33
Kohlrabies: 0,67
corn: 1,0
Eggplant: 1,5
Cassava: 0,80
Soybean: 0,83
Mangrove: 0,6
Musrooms: 2,5
Algae: 3,89

I know that their is alsom oil needed. But not for the mushrooms and the corn and egglplant need oil too. With this the efficience of corn, eggplant and algae will fall a bit but thats it.

The backside is that they need much water... the other plants need no water.

[stanley37861]

Originally posted by nordstern:

From the efficient factor... or how many food per day and tile we can make aspect algae and mushrooms are really nice.

Berries: 0,33
Kohlrabies: 0,67
corn: 1,0
Eggplant: 1,5
Cassava: 0,80
Soybean: 0,83
Mangrove: 0,6
Musrooms: 2,5
Algae: 3,89

I know that their is alsom oil needed. But not for the mushrooms and the corn and egglplant need oil too. With this the efficience of corn, eggplant and algae will fall a bit but thats it.

The backside is that they need much water... the other plants need no water.

As far as I know corn does not need oil it just needs wood and corn. maybe its different for the forktail