Food vs population

[MrFrengLitch]

Not gonna lie, managing food vs amount of population is pretty rough atm. Atleast for me.

I got 7 insect farm for 400 people and I can barely feed them. Not to mention sometimes the game gives you non workers instead or workers. Like why are there non workers in a space mission???

The more I play it the more I see what people are complaining about. Anyone figured out the perfect way to management food?

[Snaeng]

> Like why are there non workers in a space mission???

They're survivors from YOU blowing up the moon and destroying earth.

[TVMAN]

Yeah, unlock the crop farm and fusion center as soon as you can. The crop farm fully built has a smaller footprint than 7 insect farms, and generates a lot more food. You'll need the fusion center for water, but one fusion center is more than enough to supply a single crop farm and ice is abundant.

The insect farm upgrade to boost production can hold you over until then, but it'll also require careful population management. Don't unthaw more people than you can feed until then. One crop farm can easily replace your insect farms and it'll also free up those workers for other tasks.

[MrFrengLitch]

Originally posted by Snaeng:

> Like why are there non workers in a space mission???

They're survivors from YOU blowing up the moon and destroying earth.

Honestly if the survival of mankind was in jeopardy, everyone would work. Survivors or not. You dont get to chill if the human race is at risk of extinction.

Thats really not the point of the post though. But thanks for clarifying I guess.

[LightManMage]

The biggest thing you need to do is reach a nice safe 'stable' point when you get the upgraded research lab tech for 3 science per 5 cycles and have like 3k~ iron in system in chp 1.

Then you just idle and tech up instead of opening up more pods, just let the cryopods float in space. I spent around 1k~ cycles in Chp 1 just farming science and I got my insect farms researched up to +30% food production. I had like 200-300~ people and sat on that number for a really long time. Now each farm is 8 people to feed 65 instead of 8:50. Eventually you can upgrade the mess hall to increase food feeding %, so you can increase food -> people by 50% and then 100%. AT that point food is no longer an issue as each Insect Farm (even w/o sector spec buff) feeds 8:130.

The game wants you to rush chp 1, don't, rush to a stable position and try to research the 3 research per 5 cycle tech asap. Then continue sending probes to find iron and spend 1k cycles+ in chp 1 researching and optimizing your station.


Worker to Non Worker ratio at like 600 people for me is around 2:1 or I have 400~ workers and 200~ non workers but you only need to scale food for increased population, so it's not that big of an issue. You wanna keep it to 1 sector for as long as possible and try and set things up for you to be able to support 2 sector's with 1 EVA chamber running before opening up a second one.

[Gaz]

hover over the food icon at the top. it tells you exactly what percentage of your population you can feed with your production. i like to keep it at least 110%, so when it does fall under, i've built up a buffer so they wont start starving immediately.

[MrFrengLitch]

Originally posted by Gaz:

hover over the food icon at the top. it tells you exactly what percentage of your population you can feed with your production. i like to keep it at least 110%, so when it does fall under, i've built up a buffer so they wont start starving immediately.

Oh never saw that. Thats a really useful thing to know. Thanks! Im currently at 101%. Guess ill try to up it a bit.

[Gaz]

Originally posted by LITCH:

Originally posted by Gaz:

hover over the food icon at the top. it tells you exactly what percentage of your population you can feed with your production. i like to keep it at least 110%, so when it does fall under, i've built up a buffer so they wont start starving immediately.

Oh never saw that. Thats a really useful thing to know. Thanks! Im currently at 101%. Guess ill try to up it a bit.

Now hover over the population info at the top, see how many workers it claims your sectors have, then hover over the bit at the bottom left where it says optimal or overworked or whatever, and see how many workers it claims you have.

I've never seen them report the same numbers. I can only assume its a bug.

[marciosouzas]

Originally posted by TVMAN:

Yeah, unlock the crop farm and fusion center as soon as you can. The crop farm fully built has a smaller footprint than 7 insect farms, and generates a lot more food. You'll need the fusion center for water, but one fusion center is more than enough to supply a single crop farm and ice is abundant.

The insect farm upgrade to boost production can hold you over until then, but it'll also require careful population management. Don't unthaw more people than you can feed until then. One crop farm can easily replace your insect farms and it'll also free up those workers for other tasks.

how do i open tier 2 research? i have no idea, it just happened when i jumped to another system.

[Gaz]

Originally posted by marciosouzas:

Originally posted by TVMAN:

Yeah, unlock the crop farm and fusion center as soon as you can. The crop farm fully built has a smaller footprint than 7 insect farms, and generates a lot more food. You'll need the fusion center for water, but one fusion center is more than enough to supply a single crop farm and ice is abundant.

The insect farm upgrade to boost production can hold you over until then, but it'll also require careful population management. Don't unthaw more people than you can feed until then. One crop farm can easily replace your insect farms and it'll also free up those workers for other tasks.

how do i open tier 2 research? i have no idea, it just happened when i jumped to another system.

thats exactly how you do it. it's not something you choose, it's something that happens at a set time.

[Mirvra]

Originally posted by marciosouzas:

Originally posted by TVMAN:

Yeah, unlock the crop farm and fusion center as soon as you can. The crop farm fully built has a smaller footprint than 7 insect farms, and generates a lot more food. You'll need the fusion center for water, but one fusion center is more than enough to supply a single crop farm and ice is abundant.

The insect farm upgrade to boost production can hold you over until then, but it'll also require careful population management. Don't unthaw more people than you can feed until then. One crop farm can easily replace your insect farms and it'll also free up those workers for other tasks.

how do i open tier 2 research? i have no idea, it just happened when i jumped to another system.

You unlock tier 2 when you finish researching everything from tier 1.

Basically, every time you research an entire ''ring'' you unlock a new tier of research.

[Mirvra]

Originally posted by Gaz:

Originally posted by LITCH:

Oh never saw that. Thats a really useful thing to know. Thanks! Im currently at 101%. Guess ill try to up it a bit.

Now hover over the population info at the top, see how many workers it claims your sectors have, then hover over the bit at the bottom left where it says optimal or overworked or whatever, and see how many workers it claims you have.

I've never seen them report the same numbers. I can only assume its a bug.

Reason they don't report the same number is because one of them takes into account how many of your workers are currently in the med-bay getting treatment, so it only reports the number of CURRENTLY AVAILABLE workers. Since the workers in the med-bays can't actually work.

[Gaz]

Originally posted by Mirvra:

Originally posted by Gaz:

Now hover over the population info at the top, see how many workers it claims your sectors have, then hover over the bit at the bottom left where it says optimal or overworked or whatever, and see how many workers it claims you have.

I've never seen them report the same numbers. I can only assume its a bug.

Reason they don't report the same number is because one of them takes into account how many of your workers are currently in the med-bay getting treatment, so it only reports the number of CURRENTLY AVAILABLE workers. Since the workers in the med-bays can't actually work.

See i thought that was the case, but it often still doesnt match up correctly.

[Roberto]

I found that 3 crop farms upgraded and upgrading the messhalls is enough to feed 5k people while still making an excess of food.

[loqque]

Mess Hall upgrades are massive. That saying, I couldnt be bothered with farming water so I just went through all game on insect farms and couple of mushroom walls. Less resources to farm - the better.

[Rithrin]

Originally posted by Gaz:

Originally posted by LITCH:

Oh never saw that. Thats a really useful thing to know. Thanks! Im currently at 101%. Guess ill try to up it a bit.

Now hover over the population info at the top, see how many workers it claims your sectors have, then hover over the bit at the bottom left where it says optimal or overworked or whatever, and see how many workers it claims you have.

I've never seen them report the same numbers. I can only assume its a bug.

The discrepancy comes from the fact that the readout with higher numbers is taking into account TOTAL population, and the smaller one is ONLY reporting the amount of population that need permanent housing, so it subtracts anyone who is currently in space - they are on a ship and do not need housing on the station, nor do they need to be fed, so they are not reported in numbers relevant to those functions.

I was confused by this at first until I looked closely at the numbers.