Crops and Algae Farm Question

[Gov McFly]

I am fully aware that crops are clearly more inefficient than algae farms. But do crops provide any stability benefit or might they in the future? From what I can tell they produce "real" food as opposed to insects or algae or mushrooms.

I ask as I did get some event when I had crops for x time that said people liked the food more than the insects before. I am just curious if there are any other hidden benefits or not at the moment.

If not, it would be nice if in future updates you could get benefits for crops or other food sources from an RP standpoint. (cows/fish/ect). Clearly these would be less efficient but I'd hope colonists would not want to eat bugs or algae after being in space for so long. I saw how it turned out in SnowPiercer.

[YangDou]

From the building stats shown on various website, the Crops farm are far more efficient than Algae farm in term of "food produced per water". Never found the need to use Algae farm, but I imagine it may have its unique advantage, something like "food produced per rotation"?

[douglasduck]

The in-game stats for the buildings are:

Crop field 1.5 water -> 1.7 food (fully upgraded) = 15 food/cycle for 40 workers and 34 power, harvests every 10 cycles

Algae Plantation 4 water -> 5 food = 30 food/cycle for 35 workers and 45 power, harvests every 5 cycles

so algae makes more food, faster, for less water and workers in roughly the same floor space as the crop farm.

I've heard that crop farms do produce more waste per cycle but the buildings don't say how much waste they actually produce so I can't confirm this.

Haven't seen any events relating to the algae farm either after building it.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Originally posted by YangDou:

From the building stats shown on various website, the Crops farm are far more efficient than Algae farm in term of "food produced per water". Never found the need to use Algae farm, but I imagine it may have its unique advantage, something like "food produced per rotation"?

The thing to keep in mind is that fully upgraded Algae farms produce 5 food for 4 water per cycle or 1.25 food per unit of water. Fully upgraded Crop Farms use 1.5 water to produce 1.7 food per cycle (I think, I need to double check that) which is actually slightly less efficient than crop farms.

Additionally Algae Farms are a LOT more efficient in terms of workers, power and space. A fully upgraded Algae Farm with six fields produces almost twice as much food per cycle as a
Crop Farm with 9 fields with about a third more power, slightly fewer workers and 7% more area.

Even with the maximum crew you can feed everyone with just two Algae Farms but would need about 4 Crop Farms for the same crew size.

[YangDou]

"1 crops field converts 1.5 Water into 1.3 Food per Cycle, and is harvested every 10 Cycles"
"1 Algae field converts 36 Water into 6.6 Food per Cycle, and is automatically harvested every 5 Cycles"
- Taken from an online Ixion building guide

There could be a typo in it, may be it was supposed to be 3.6 water into 6.6 food.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

I think that guide might be out of date. In game the Algae Farm says 4 water into 5 food (with upgrades).

EDIT: Wait I know, the 3.6 is the water usage with the 10% Specialization discount. I'm not sure how it's going from 5 to 6.6 though.

[Tibbleton]

One potential consideration I just ran in to is Crop Farm upgrades are necessary for the Mess Hall upgrades while Algae Farms are not. I went Algae Farms to start, so did not even look at the Crop techs, then had to go back and get them all in order to boost my Mess Hall. Had I known I'd be max upgrading Crop Farms anyways I might have started with crops.

edit: ...I am assuming Crop Farm upgrades that say things like +10% farm production are only applying to Crop Farms and not also to Algae Farms? If those apply to both then I really missed out on these upgrades for much of chapter 3.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Originally posted by Tibbleton:

edit: ...I am assuming Crop Farm upgrades that say things like +10% farm production are only applying to Crop Farms and not also to Algae Farms? If those apply to both then I really missed out on these upgrades for much of chapter 3.

I'm actually not sure. There is Something that's boosting the Algae Farm output since it starts at lower than the 5/cycle I mentioned above. However I'm not sure if it's the Crop Farm upgrades or if it's just a hidden part of the Algae Farm upgrades. I'm planning to restart and test it more thoroughly at some point.

[Gov McFly]

This is originally about water usage as tool tip made it seem like Algae Farm was more efficient in water. Then the second poster mentioned it was wrong.

But:
For comparative purposes to get 85 food each:
Crops (fully upgraded): 50 Cycles: 85 Food requiring 75 Water
Algae : 17 Cycles: 85 Food requiring 68 Water

So Algae is clearly more efficient and working as intended. Numbers above are also with all research completed. I just ran a list of cycles 1-100 in excel and multiplied 1.7 by each cycle until I hit a multiple of 5 then calculated how many cycles it would take for the algae to produce same food amount. That way it was just easier visually.

But I was hoping there would be some hidden bonus for crops (maybe a research in the future) that would give +1 stability if food eaten was primarily from crops. Maybe in future update have two foods - real food and algae/insects food or something.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Gov McFly:

But I was hoping there would be some hidden bonus for crops (maybe a research in the future) that would give +1 stability if food eaten was primarily from crops. Maybe in future update have two foods - real food and algae/insects food or something.

The bonuses to crops seem to be on two to three points. With some limited crossover between them.
1) Waste produced. Crops produce more of it so you have more resources for other things that can make use of it in turn.
2) Less space taken up. This one only is only in effect if the algae farms were to be fully upgraded and granted is not much of a bonus unless combined with the above.
3) More points given when working towards Sector Specialisation for less space used. To be fair this one is right on the margins of making a list of benefits over algae and depending on your layouts, or if you even want to get the specialisation to level 2, could easily just be removed from the list.
I mostly just included it because I did the maths back when planning my layouts wanted to get some extra use out of that knowledge.

----

Personal nit-pick/complete farming rant.

Depending on what part of the world you're in algae, insects and certainly mushrooms are real food.

Algae is basically just the official definition of what the rest of us call seaweed. Which is a part of many countries staple diet, mostly in the east Asia areas as I understand it.
Once it's on the plate it would be hard to tell it apart from anything else green grown in the other crop farms.

If you're on or south of the equator bugs would be a common menu item. It's amusing to think that because people on the station complain about eating bugs this means that Dolos likely did most of its recruiting in countries like ours where the idea of eating bugs is seen as....just really weird.
The reasons it didn't work out in SnowPiercer isn't because it was simply bugs .

As to suggesting that mushrooms "aren't real crops", let alone food? It just confuses me someone could think this as you would be hard pressed to find any country that doesn't grow and eat them. At the very least have you never heard of a truffle (and how obsessed some people can be about them)?

[Gov McFly]

Originally posted by Amanoob105:

Personal nit-pick/complete farming rant.

Depending on what part of the world you're in algae, insects and certainly mushrooms are real food.

Algae is basically just the official definition of what the rest of us call seaweed. Which is a part of many countries staple diet, mostly in the east Asia areas as I understand it.
Once it's on the plate it would be hard to tell it apart from anything else green grown in the other crop farms.

If you're on or south of the equator bugs would be a common menu item. It's amusing to think that because people on the station complain about eating bugs this means that Dolos likely did most of its recruiting in countries like ours where the idea of eating bugs is seen as....just really weird.
The reasons it didn't work out in SnowPiercer isn't because it was simply bugs .

As to suggesting that mushrooms "aren't real crops", let alone food? It just confuses me someone could think this as you would be hard pressed to find any country that doesn't grow and eat them. At the very least have you never heard of a truffle (and how obsessed some people can be about them)?

I get that people eat those things in various countries. But you will be hard pressed to find a country that eats mushrooms that would prefer to only eat mushrooms over other things. Can they eat them, yeah. But I'm sure they'd want something a bit more.
And I'm not aware of any country that has a robust space program that incorporates insects and algae into their food as a main source. I mean you really going to just have a plate full of truffles every day? Again, this is just all from an RP standpoint about people lost in space and having some potential stability bonus for comfort food that is a taste of home.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Gov McFly:

I get that people eat those things in various countries. But you will be hard pressed to find a country that eats mushrooms that would prefer to only eat mushrooms over other things. Can they eat them, yeah. But I'm sure they'd want something a bit more.
And I'm not aware of any country that has a robust space program that incorporates insects and algae into their food as a main source. I mean you really going to just have a plate full of truffles every day? Again, this is just all from an RP standpoint about people lost in space and having some potential stability bonus for comfort food that is a taste of home.

Seeing as the crop farms are just endless fields of green, I'm willing to bet most of it is some mix of kale and/or spinach. Not exactly the most appetising of items on their own.
On a related note I'm willing to bet based on the look of the insect farms what they breed there is most likely mealworms. They look as bad as it sounds, but it seems they would be one of the best options.

Small tangent about truffles. If I were to ever see someone try to eat a full plate of truffles, I would want to have a camera handy. As those things are P.O.T.E.N.T.
Back on topic, I doubt the mushrooms in the game taste like them. I'd also argue that having them would indeed qualify as "a taste of home". The problem our crew has with them comes down to what they're being grown on.
Chances are high those sacks of waste being used to grow them aren't the ones coming from the steelworks....if ya get my meaning....

I never said those countries ate those foods in space. In fact now I think about it I'm not aware of any country that grows any sort of food in space, space program or otherwise.

From a RP perspective it's interesting that the first option we ever get a hold of for food production in space is the insect farm. This would seem to suggest that any sort of off earth food production would likely have also been of that nature.
I wouldn't surprise me if the Urshanabi, where we're getting a lot of that early game food from, was basically just a big ol' bug barge to make food to feed anyone working in space.

I don't disagree with the idea of some sort of moral bonus for growing things in space that give people more options than bugs, but if such a bonus could come from the crop farms, then it should also be able to come from the algae farm as there's not a lot of difference between their end results.
I would also argue mushrooms, but only if the people can get over what it's being grown on. So that one likely cancels itself out .

When it comes to the idea of other farm types such as animal husbandry, even if only for RP, cows seem extremely unlikely. Way too much effort to get there up there and way to much effort to look after them for far too little return.
The UN ship makes mention of the farming of galliform (a.k.a. birds like turkeys, chickens, quail, and other landfowl). Far easier to have in the large numbers you would need to avoid inbreeding while allowing you to harvest plenty of them and quicker to grow to maturity.

Fish farming wouldn't be too hard. Bring them up as eggs to be hatched on site. The algae farm could be converted for the purpose without much trouble.

[psionyx]

Originally posted by Gov McFly:

I am fully aware that crops are clearly more inefficient than algae farms. But do crops provide any stability benefit or might they in the future? From what I can tell they produce "real" food as opposed to insects or algae or mushrooms.

I ask as I did get some event when I had crops for x time that said people liked the food more than the insects before. I am just curious if there are any other hidden benefits or not at the moment.

If not, it would be nice if in future updates you could get benefits for crops or other food sources from an RP standpoint. (cows/fish/ect). Clearly these would be less efficient but I'd hope colonists would not want to eat bugs or algae after being in space for so long. I saw how it turned out in SnowPiercer.

The only thing I can think of that came up for me, is a notification that the people were excited about eating crops in space, and I got a trust bonus of I think +.10% for it. Not sure if it's a unique boost from crops, or if algae would also provide it? Before bringing the crops online I was all bugs/mushrooms. Within about a week in game of having crop food in rotation, the notification popped up. Wasn't an event, like "provide crop food for 30 days" or anything just "Hey Administrator, just FYI, the peeps like it that you are giving them actual veggies, instead of bugs and poop mushrooms. Here is some more Trust"

Beyond that I haven't seen anything come up specific to crops, and I've been running a full crop sector for probably about a year now, in game.

[yarekt]

Originally posted by Gov McFly:

As to suggesting that mushrooms "aren't real crops", let alone food? It just confuses me someone could think this as you would be hard pressed to find any country that doesn't grow and eat them. At the very least have you never heard of a truffle (and how obsessed some people can be about them)?

Hah, I think people are missing the fact that those mushrooms are grown out of trash. No, not compost with poo and the like... Actual trash bags are left out on shelves until they grow disgusting mouldy fungus, presumably that's collected and then called food. :D Zoom in in game.

I'd be totally happy eating just actual mushrooms all my life though.

[psionyx]

Originally posted by yarekt:

Originally posted by Gov McFly:

As to suggesting that mushrooms "aren't real crops", let alone food? It just confuses me someone could think this as you would be hard pressed to find any country that doesn't grow and eat them. At the very least have you never heard of a truffle (and how obsessed some people can be about them)?

Hah, I think people are missing the fact that those mushrooms are grown out of trash. No, not compost with poo and the like... Actual trash bags are left out on shelves until they grow disgusting mouldy fungus, presumably that's collected and then called food. :D Zoom in in game.

I'd be totally happy eating just actual mushrooms all my life though.

Actually compost/poo is part of the mixture, because if you use the mushrooms long enough, you get that mission where they ask you to give them another food source, because they are tired of eating the nasty mushrooms. The quest dialogue says the people jokingly say they taste the same as the stuff they are grown in, implying they taste like $hit

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by psionyx:

Actually compost/poo is part of the mixture, because if you use the mushrooms long enough, you get that mission where they ask you to give them another food source, because they are tired of eating the nasty mushrooms. The quest dialogue says the people jokingly say they taste the same as the stuff they are grown in, implying they taste like $hit

Well of course they would taste like ♥♥♥♥, they're mushrooms .

Jokes aside I doubt they ones in the game taste all that bad, assuming they taste of much of anything. People are mostly just making a fuss because they don't realise how manure worked back on earth or they do realise and just don't like the idea of the "manure" used.