Honestly, what the eff is the point of mushroom walls?

[Captain Seasick]

I mean REALLY!

They produce A LOT LESS food than an insect farm, yet they take up more space, have to be placed on a wall, and needs more workers to function, as well as needing "valuable" waste as an input in order to create anything at all. Oh, and let's not forget they also literally cost more than 4x as much alloys as an insect farm, on top of an extremely precious unit of electronics.

WHY DO THESE THINGS EVEN EXIST?! THEY AREN'T EVEN REMOTELY VIABLE! FFS!

/rant

[Rithrin]

They provide a lot of "Recycling" specialty points, for one, which has a fantastic bonus for pretty much any sector. They will outperform Insect Farms in the very long run with upgrades, and they remove your need to manage Ice and Water. Could probably line your whole station with them and never need to build any other food buildings (produces 900+ food total that way if set up right) and they wouldn't come close to eating all the waste from 4000+ population, so you could run the Waste Factories, too.

[Kanjejou]

Its to have multiple food sources to avoid the -1 temporary then permanant -1 stability if you only use insect farms

Secondly they get way better with improvement that come later, when insect farm reach their max power way sooner, and finaly their form is different to insect farm being more long and less large allowing to control the form of the sector.

You may not use them at all but they have their niche.

also they give recyclign speciality point something that can allow to buff the recylcong sector and other quite a lot

[Captain Seasick]

Thing is, mushroom walls are utter garbage for food production compared to crop/algae farms, and if you want recycling points, well, just build a freakin' water treatment center! Mushroom walls fill NO practical purpose or role WHATSOEVER.

[Kanjejou]

water treatement is tech 5 building that way costlier to unlock/build and may not be usefull if you dotn use building that require water

[Captain Seasick]

ALGAE FARMS. 'NUFF SAID.

[Kanjejou]

another tech 5 building so not available as early

insect farm produce 1/cycle 5energy 8 guys
shroom is 9/3cycle 5energy 10 guys

so from the start shroom produce three time more, for two extra worker

with improvement
insect reach 1.3/per cycle +30%
shroom reach 17/per 3 cycle +90%

thus fully upgraded shroom is way more efficient in everything than basic insect farm and only get better with specialisation as it start with bigger numbers

[martyr]

Originally posted by Captain Seasick:

Thing is, mushroom walls are utter garbage for food production compared to crop/algae farms, and if you want recycling points, well, just build a freakin' water treatment center! Mushroom walls fill NO practical purpose or role WHATSOEVER.

In terms of waste efficiency, Mushrooms provide a better return per waste than Algae or Crops.

[Captain Seasick]

Originally posted by martyr:

Originally posted by Captain Seasick:

Thing is, mushroom walls are utter garbage for food production compared to crop/algae farms, and if you want recycling points, well, just build a freakin' water treatment center! Mushroom walls fill NO practical purpose or role WHATSOEVER.

In terms of waste efficiency, Mushrooms provide a better return per waste than Algae or Crops.

IN THEORY, maybe, but any smart player uses insect farms for the bulk of their food production, as they're cheap, efficient, requires no input, and are extremely effective for building food specializations in a sector. Then you plop an algae farm or two to negate the penalty for going all-out buggy on people's diets, and BAM. Meal is served. Mushroom walls aren't even remotely useful for any purpose.

All the way through the game, you're practically swimming in ice, which is also 100% useless stockpile-clutter unless you're dumping it all into algae farms. So unless/until the devs either balance mushroom walls to be less garbage, OR introduce a way to use water for electrolysis, i.e. separating hydrogen from oxygen to create more nuclear fuel, algae + insects is clearly the superior way to go. (Or a single crop farm, early on.)

[Mordgier]

Originally posted by martyr:

Originally posted by Captain Seasick:

Thing is, mushroom walls are utter garbage for food production compared to crop/algae farms, and if you want recycling points, well, just build a freakin' water treatment center! Mushroom walls fill NO practical purpose or role WHATSOEVER.

In terms of waste efficiency, Mushrooms provide a better return per waste than Algae or Crops.

Crop farms can generate enough waste to feed the water processor (after the upgrade to both the farm and the processor) in the sector making them effectively free.

[Captain Seasick]

Originally posted by Mordgier:

Originally posted by martyr:

In terms of waste efficiency, Mushrooms provide a better return per waste than Algae or Crops.

Crop farms can generate enough waste to feed the water processor (after the upgrade to both the farm and the processor) in the sector making them effectively free.

^ This. Not to mention farms can be placed anywhere.

[Kanjejou]

Both arrive at tech 5 thus hundred if not thousand of tech point after the shroom maker

Shrrom can becomapred to what arrive before or at the same tech level that higher tech are better is not strange...

I could be saying what the point of insect farm once you reach tech 5?
algea+farm+water recycling produce more food for less energy worker and its free of ressources like ice

[Mordgier]

Originally posted by Kanjejou:

Both arrive at tech 5 thus hundred if not thousand of tech point after the shroom maker

Shrrom can becomapred to what arrive before or at the same tech level that higher tech are better is not strange...

I could be saying what the point of insect farm once you reach tech 5?
algea+farm+water recycling produce more food for less energy worker and its free of ressources like ice

There is no sane reason at any point to build mushroom walls. Insect farms are better until you get to tier 5 tech.

Prior waste is better used to turn it into things like electronics and turning it into food instead is absolutely crazy imo.

[MinionJoe]

And there is a chance people will complain about the mushrooms and demand you shut them down for many cycles.

[Kanjejou]

Originally posted by Mordgier:

Originally posted by Kanjejou:

Both arrive at tech 5 thus hundred if not thousand of tech point after the shroom maker

Shrrom can becomapred to what arrive before or at the same tech level that higher tech are better is not strange...

I could be saying what the point of insect farm once you reach tech 5?
algea+farm+water recycling produce more food for less energy worker and its free of ressources like ice

There is no sane reason at any point to build mushroom walls. Insect farms are better until you get to tier 5 tech.

Prior waste is better used to turn it into things like electronics and turning it into food instead is absolutely crazy imo.

iron slicium and carbon are plentifull for the 3 first map at least no need to use all your trash to make some electronic this early, it work yes but it is no required...

shroom wall allow to free manpower for other job for just a little bit of trash.
Manpower being the ultimate bottleneck in this game its a fair trade to me.

later on yes shroom wall lose most of its purpose. but its later most building lose their purpose by being replaced by more efficient ones

[Kanjejou]

Originally posted by MinionJoe:

And there is a chance people will complain about the mushrooms and demand you shut them down for many cycles.

and people can ask you to stop the crop farm or the algea farm too to not waste water so its not an argument