Any tips for food production?

[PenderBloodfart]

I'm around 240 people now and i'm scared of taking in more because the days of food go too low before my fields can yield crops.
So far i have a hunter hut, a medium size farm and a huge fruit field.

What do you recommend to make my colony more self sufficient?

[c0ri0lis]

I recently started a thread that ended up discussing the complexity of understanding your food reserves when using Farms; some of what's discussed there might be relevant.

In short, the only real way to understand your food production/consumption is on the Goods screen. You can hover over the production/consumption bars in the graph to get a breakdown of how much of a given foodstuff was produced, consumed, exported, spoiled, etc. What I do is examine the previous 4 seasons and mentally add together all of the consumption numbers and compare that total to the amount produced during the harvest season. Naturally, if you have multiple foodstuffs being farmed you have to do this for each one and then add them all together to give a full picture of what your overall food production/consumption is.

My personal experience is that I always underestimated my food production before doing the above. I was always super paranoid though, I'd see the amount of stored food getting lower and lower during the year and fear I'd run out before harvest, hence my over compensation.

What I do at the moment is when I start a new settlement the very first thing built is a maximum size Farm or there about, something like 45x45. I'll take on any immigrants who want to join while that happens - the more hands the better! I just have to be careful to have enough of the crop I want to sow (as it requires 120-150+ to plant the field, but that's where harvesting helps).

Other food tips I'm aware of or have found (and I welcome anyone to correct any of these!):

• Hunting is an incredible source of food but the animals do not respawn or breed at the moment (at least in the wild) so it's a finite resource on the map. It's a good way to support a settlement in the early game while it gets established.
  
• Pastures are rather inefficient in terms of output per worker. The animals in Pastures do breed though so they can be considered an infinite resource.
  
• Food preference really doesn't make a big happiness impact and I tend not to bother trying to satisfy it (especially due to how difficult it is to track supplies of multiple farmed foodstuffs and it makes the logistics simpler). Although if you get rich you can simply trade for whatever your citizens prefer.
  
• Harvesting produces a surprisingly good amount of food and can really help in the early game. As mentioned I sometimes rely on it if I do my strat of rushing a huge Farm.

[Scribonius]

If you use farms it is recommended to use 1/5th of your population. This is a decent amount, and you can harvest wild edibles to supplement it as well. Don't farm grains, it's not worth it until you have the infrastructure for at least bread, or more importantly booze (drinks). Fruit is the best in terms of yield. Iif you are in the warm climates breeding Lizards gives decent meat as well as eggs, and Opiates sell for extremely high prices well (although have no other uses currently).
You may also want to think about taxes in the foreseeable future if your starting region has a high prospect food source, as taxing foods is a great way to get tons of it. I generally fully rely on hunters until I can tax my start region, as hunters currently output massive quantities of food, especially when nearby animals.

[PenderBloodfart]

Originally posted by Puddi_UK:

I recently started a thread that ended up discussing the complexity of understanding your food reserves when using Farms; some of what's discussed there might be relevant.

In short, the only real way to understand your food production/consumption is on the Goods screen. You can hover over the production/consumption bars in the graph to get a breakdown of how much of a given foodstuff was produced, consumed, exported, spoiled, etc. What I do is examine the previous 4 seasons and mentally add together all of the consumption numbers and compare that total to the amount produced during the harvest season. Naturally, if you have multiple foodstuffs being farmed you have to do this for each one and then add them all together to give a full picture of what your overall food production/consumption is.

My personal experience is that I always underestimated my food production before doing the above. I was always super paranoid though, I'd see the amount of stored food getting lower and lower during the year and fear I'd run out before harvest, hence my over compensation.

What I do at the moment is when I start a new settlement the very first thing built is a maximum size Farm or there about, something like 45x45. I'll take on any immigrants who want to join while that happens - the more hands the better! I just have to be careful to have enough of the crop I want to sow (as it requires 120-150+ to plant the field, but that's where harvesting helps).[/list]

So far it's what i'm doing, thankfully most of the land is 85% fertile so i'll start a second max size fruit farm. I might even start making rations so i can store the excess without worrying like i do in Rimworld.
Does the number of farmers i assign matter? I notice a 5th of the people can do the job, not sure why i would need to assign more

[Gamatron]

Originally posted by ManThingYesYes:

Originally posted by Puddi_UK:

I recently started a thread that ended up discussing the complexity of understanding your food reserves when using Farms; some of what's discussed there might be relevant.

In short, the only real way to understand your food production/consumption is on the Goods screen. You can hover over the production/consumption bars in the graph to get a breakdown of how much of a given foodstuff was produced, consumed, exported, spoiled, etc. What I do is examine the previous 4 seasons and mentally add together all of the consumption numbers and compare that total to the amount produced during the harvest season. Naturally, if you have multiple foodstuffs being farmed you have to do this for each one and then add them all together to give a full picture of what your overall food production/consumption is.

My personal experience is that I always underestimated my food production before doing the above. I was always super paranoid though, I'd see the amount of stored food getting lower and lower during the year and fear I'd run out before harvest, hence my over compensation.

What I do at the moment is when I start a new settlement the very first thing built is a maximum size Farm or there about, something like 45x45. I'll take on any immigrants who want to join while that happens - the more hands the better! I just have to be careful to have enough of the crop I want to sow (as it requires 120-150+ to plant the field, but that's where harvesting helps).[/list]

So far it's what i'm doing, thankfully most of the land is 85% fertile so i'll start a second max size fruit farm. I might even start making rations so i can store the excess without worrying like i do in Rimworld.
Does the number of farmers i assign matter? I notice a 5th of the people can do the job, not sure why i would need to assign more

Check the workload, and never have it go to 100% with farms. With food I'd recommend the farms with the highest yields, maybe that's what you're doing. Farm food spoils though, so keep that in mind. Rationer uses 3 fruit for one ration, so it's not so good. Pastures have lower yield, but it's a continuous supply, so spoilage can be minimal. Same with the fishery.

[PenderBloodfart]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

Originally posted by ManThingYesYes:

So far it's what i'm doing, thankfully most of the land is 85% fertile so i'll start a second max size fruit farm. I might even start making rations so i can store the excess without worrying like i do in Rimworld.
Does the number of farmers i assign matter? I notice a 5th of the people can do the job, not sure why i would need to assign more

Check the workload, and never have it go to 100% with farms. With food I'd recommend the farms with the highest yields, maybe that's what you're doing. Farm food spoils though, so keep that in mind. Rationer uses 3 fruit for one ration, so it's not so good. Pastures have lower yield, but it's a continuous supply, so spoilage can be minimal. Same with the fishery.

Yes thanks, i noticed the farms also require very few workers

[Scribonius]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

Pastures have lower yield, but it's a continuous supply, so spoilage can be minimal. Same with the fishery.

This as well as the fact you need it to keep certain races happy, namely Cantor, Dondorians, and Garthimi. Most pastures also make other products too (cotton, leather, and eggs), not in particularly large amounts but still a nice somewhat constant flow.