Best crops and food sources?

[Private Pyle]

Has anyone figured out some efficient combos?

What are the must haves and what is good to skip?

Also, any suggestions for plot sizes?

Im basically trying to avoid crippling workload.

[Rockoloco]

beefberries and chew roots yield a lot of food, buttermelons and grain crops work best at maximum field size. I don't make super large fields of beefberries and chew roots cause it leads to an insane food surplus plus they can cause worker overloads

[Flin Fredstone]

I made large crop fields and as soon as they were planted i deleted the field. Then i drew smaller field sections around the planted seeds. That way i can dictate how much will be farmed. Nearing winter i farmed it all and stockpiled it outside the house ( until freezers ) so it lasts longer in the cold temperatures.

[Cotaks]

grain 3 plots and mushrooms 4 plotsall you need, and silica plants a well. plot size 6x6 silica 12x12 or 4x6x6

[Martin]

I will always grow Wheat, Chew Roots (if I can find them) and Cotton as my 3 main stables. Otherwise pumpkins.

I will also eventually grow hay, leatherplant, and the red plant.. my brain no worky today for names..

If there's a lack of trees or bush nearby, I'll grow those as well.

Later on, I'll add mushrooms, sugartubes, tobacco etc. But I usually grow everything there is. Eventually.

Field sizes usually 4x8 max. Or 3x12.

[Bjørn]

Originally posted by Cotaks:

grain 3 plots and mushrooms 4 plotsall you need, and silica plants a well. plot size 6x6 silica 12x12 or 4x6x6

Thanks for the reminder of these. Why not the full 15x15 size, but smaller ones? Same reason Flin Fredstone (lol) mentioned, 'controllable' planting and harvests?

I'm about to come out of my first winter, and noticed I don't have as much food left as I thought I'd have!

There were a lot of those blue fruit bushes growing around the crashsite, so they have helped a lot. They take like 20 days to farm, but I've planted a few fields. They are so handy since they don't give a debuff when eaten raw.

The other foods mentioned, like grain cob, glittercaps (both 8 days, I think) and the melons (12 days) are quicker source of food.

Have not found beefberries nor chewroots.

[kampfer91]

Grain and then one type of veggie / fruit , but mostly grain , so many stuffs and recipes need it .
By end game when you established orbital radio network you gonna have surplus of meat too .

[Joe Coffee]

I try to get everything I can, including meats and heptagonia. I craft 2 of each of whatever I have including rations so there is food variety happiness and I can ensure nobody goes hungry too much.

[wiz12268]

Mushrooms, heptagonia, berries. You dont want to grow grain for food.

Basically anything they can eat raw that you dont have to cook.

Big farms (if you have a lot of animals) never get tended if your farmer(s) are always training or tending. Even with Rita and Hugo and most of my dogs at level 10 and having fields planted for grazing they cant harvest what an 8 person colony needs and get it planted in a timely manner.

Leather plants and smokeleaf can just be harvested in the wild. Same with berries if you have a big enough wild area. But berries are a good crop to have because they can be eaten raw with no issues. Problem is they arent usually gathered and left on ground.

[Legadian]

Originally posted by wiz12268:

....Big farms (if you have a lot of animals) never get tended if your farmer(s) are always training or tending. Even with Rita and Hugo and most of my dogs at level 10 and having fields planted for grazing they cant harvest what an 8 person colony needs and get it planted in a timely manner....

This is not true. You can plant, harvest and cook plenty of food with a colony that size and still get everything else done:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929029478

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929029465

[wiz12268]

Originally posted by Legadian:

Originally posted by wiz12268:

....Big farms (if you have a lot of animals) never get tended if your farmer(s) are always training or tending. Even with Rita and Hugo and most of my dogs at level 10 and having fields planted for grazing they cant harvest what an 8 person colony needs and get it planted in a timely manner....

This is not true. You can plant, harvest and cook plenty of food with a colony that size and still get everything else done:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929029478

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929029465

That is from an old save, you say so yourself. This discussion has been about how its changed since then.

if you want to try and 'prove' something at least bring relevant arguments to the discussion. I can load a bunch of old saves with thousands of food and no issues. Now its changed a lot.

Have 10-12 dogs a dozen or so herbivores, a few birds and a couple scorpions and mantises running around and see how long all that food lasts.

[Legadian]

Originally posted by wiz12268:

....Have 10-12 dogs a dozen or so herbivores, a few birds and a couple scorpions and mantises running around and see how long all that food lasts.

So, you have a bunch of animals you don't need running around and you complain that you can't feed everyone?

I've played 4.5 game years since the patch with no issues feeding my 7 survivors. If anything, the amount of food has increased over that time.

[Martin]

Most dogs I seen alive at any one time is about 2. I've only ever tamed 4 in a single game, found them to be useless. Usually I get 1-2 male ulfen. Supply enough poop for fertilising fields and don't eat alot. Haven't found much use for them otherwise.

I've found keeping field sizes down to around half or quarter size allows them to be harvested and replanted. With 11 people in my colony, I had just over 11k food by end of 2nd year. Funnily enough, due to messing up the activities it dropped back to 800 by the time I realised and that winter was up at 3k, the following and last year, 4th, back to 11k.

So I think using smaller fields reaps higher rewards as they can be harvested and replanted more efficiently.

[wiz12268]

Originally posted by Legadian:

Originally posted by wiz12268:

....Have 10-12 dogs a dozen or so herbivores, a few birds and a couple scorpions and mantises running around and see how long all that food lasts.

So, you have a bunch of animals you don't need running around and you complain that you can't feed everyone?

I've played 4.5 game years since the patch with no issues feeding my 7 survivors. If anything, the amount of food has increased over that time.

Immaterial, at some point those animals will be useful so therefore there will be people who want them. If you cant feed them then what good are they? As it is now the mechanics for herd animals is likely 'broken' because you can bypass all the time and resources needed to feed them from a trough by simply planting fields they can graze in. If that gets 'fixed' then it will be nearly impossible (the way things are now) to feed animals and people.

This is an obvious beta test game at this point. It is clear it has many broken aspects to it. Therefore pointing out those aspects is going to help them fix whats wrong. Its goes beyond what 'fix' they tried this time with speeding up eating. They need to reduce a lot of the 'need' parameters or let players use a slider to determine when survivors do something.

Right now this is basically a TIME management simulator not a survival one. Everything takes time and when there isnt enough time everything else unravels. Thats why I was critical of them adding in new time sinks with the animals when the other issues werent fixed.

When youre 4 or 5 years into the game and everything is basically autopilot maybe. But starting out you never get to that point. I reloaded a save I had with a lot of food, within 14 or 15 days (if I wasnt staying on top of it) the cooked food disappeared and the stores were going down. That was without animals as well. Something changed between last update and this one.

When I loaded that save and tamed animals it broke down in about 7 days to where I didnt have any food but meat. Because it was winter and that was the only option I had. That was with feeding animals 'as intended' with troughs not planting fields.

Go start a game in a desert biome on at least hard difficulty and 50% growth and come back and tell me how easy growing food and feeding people is.

[Legadian]

Originally posted by wiz12268:

....Go start a game in a desert biome on at least hard difficulty and 50% growth and come back and tell me how easy growing food and feeding people is.

So, you play on a "hard desert biome" with "50% growth rate," intentionally try to raise more animals than you need or can support with your self restricted methods (not letting them graze on crops), because "at some point those animals will be useful," and then complain that you can't make it work?

Ok, got it.

[LeftPaw]

Grain. Give the the little bleeders nothing but porridge.