How do you guys handle your foods?

[VladK02]

Do you build individual farms for a specific food types / food processors?

Or do you build a line of farms, like 8x, grow almost identical rotations on them, and 'main bus' the food types via sorters to a central food processing area?

I have a feeling as my settlement grows past 2k people, i need to 'main bus' the farms. A farm here, a farm there, a bread bakery in a corner somewhere....not quite cutting it anymore.

[xsliceme]

I currently have a pop of almost 6k. I originally had all farms leading to one belt which would then circle around and sort into each food processing. The idea was that it would all get sorted out and used up. Then, all finished products went on another belt which was also in a loop config to supply the pops. The idea was that it could be modular and I could just continue to add processors, markets, etc. While having a loop system did work, it didn't work how I thought and would often get backed up when one food item grew in access and couldn't be used up quick enough.

I just recently moved my farms down after making space and reworked the entire process and so far its working perfectly (playing on you shall not pass). What I have now done is created a main belt of 8 (excluding poppy and flowers) each 4 farms output to this main bus with sorters. https://ibb.co/vwm148R I then have them run through a storage buffer so I can balance my farms as needed. If one product is filling up too much, I can swap my rotations out with a different product. https://ibb.co/gFrVF3K

After the buffer, I have them branch off to the new modular food setup I have with primary products first, secondary, and then tertiary (bread and cake). something like corn and potatoes will also continue down the line to the markets. https://ibb.co/PxD7T7W

Now, I haven't gotten to move my pops down to the same level as my farms yet, so I am temporarily feeding to one belt again, but I have the sorting setup by the markets. This is the last part of the process. https://ibb.co/Gd3mwg3

Hope this helps!

[jwc123]

If you (or someone else has) figure(d) out that magic solution, please share. I've seen the wiki and all the number crunching but that's simply too much for this simpleton.

I'm at 2K people and doing okay with the following. Ideal? No...but in my world it's worked pretty well..

3 level 2 greenhouses handle anything settlement food related. Bakeries, food processors, and the like surround these greenhouses and are within spitting distance of the grocery stores at the settlement.

No belts.

Food processors etc lined up around farms have their raw food intakes facing the farms. This way truck runs are incredibly short. This came after noticing trucks picking up on all 4 sides of a farm and so I've capitalized on that. It hasn't bitten me....yet.

Remotely 1 level 1 greenhouse and 1 irrigated farm are dedicated to animal feed production. These ARE belted and automatic. From the farms it goes to a mixer then to a big container supplying 4 chicken coops.

It works pretty well. A buffer of level 2 storage containers for every food item going into the settlement and set to "keep full" and locked so it can't be yanked out later provides a nice cushion. The settlement store is switched "off" so nothing can weasel its way in or out. A similar storage system is set up food processors and bakeries.

The digesters, composters, mixers, etc are set up similarly physically but retain default settings so they can be fully accessed. No importing/exporting, dedicated trucks or changes in priority have been set up on anything food/farm related.

Caveat: I'm the sort that prefers looking at the side of #2 storage container to see the inventory levels during flyovers versus looking at numbers on the right side of the screen. Assessing the situation and making future projections is easier and faster it seem though less accurate.

Again, better solutions surely exist. I consider this setup "decent" only because everything else previously attempted was worse or found it overwhelming. It still requires occasional fiddling but so far has never jammed up the work trucks or caused starvation or mutiny.

And of course the low demand items like sugar cane, canola, tree saplings, flowers etc tend to run low just about the time things settle in on autopilot.

In my world these items aren't used enough to warrant planting even 1 crop over a full rotation. But by then something more "critical" is usually running a little low for my likes or am busting at the seams with it.

Here's the best discovery of all if you were't aware. It's the stopgap that allowed the above to set up and lets me sleep at night.

After playing hundreds of hours on the same settlement, shelf life on food has never been flagged. It finally realized what a gifted horse that is though remained skeptical for the longest time.

Finally, for what is now many eeons ago, I overproduced, stockpiled, and put under lock and key every farm grown item. No withdrawals allowed unless there was a train wreck in progress. Thus far it has never been touched. This enabled fussing over the numbers, fertilizers, crop rotations, etc without all the risks and stress.

Want some hundred year old potatoes?

Good luck.

[SpeedDaemon]

My current game's goal is 50k pop sustainably, so I've got a setup laid out for 100+ farms...

I'm using a bus to get food from the farms to processing. One important consideration is how you deal with overflow. This lead me to separate the belts like this:

Fruit & veg: Overflow goes to digesters. Also only ones that require unit belts, so they have 2x T3 belts on the bus with sorters/overflow before the processing input buffers.

Corn & Soy: Overflow goes to mixer for animal feed. These two share 2x T3 U-belts, also with sorters/prio in front of the buffers.

Canola & Sugar Cane: These don't have a (simple) way to deal with overflow, so they each require their own belt that can backstuff without clogging things up.

Potato, Wheat, Poppy: Overflow to digesters. These share 2x T3 belts and get sorted before the input buffers.

This implies some restrictions on which crops can share farms.
- Fruit and veg can share with anything, but priority should be to pair with canola and sugar cane, because:
- Canola and sugar cane can't share with any crop requiring u-belts (so only fruit and veg)
- Corn and soy can share with each other and fruit/veg
- Potato, wheat, poppy can share with each other and fruit/veg

You could actually lump corn and soy with potato, wheat, and poppy, but I needed so much corn for animal feed that it made sense to use separate belts.

Saplings have their own farm near the forestry area.

The only thing not laid out completely yet are some farms (empty space in top left), and digester array, which only has 8 of the eventual 64-72 required. This should be able to supply 51,520 pop with food and medical supplies.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3086432598

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3086431570

EDIT: End of the bus with sorting. Eggs and meat come in from the right separately.
Bonus shot of the connection point to the 16-pipe underground bus in the top right.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3086447904

[jwc123]

[

Originally posted by xsliceme:

... What I have now done is created a main belt of 8 (excluding poppy and flowers) each 4 farms output to this main bus with sorters. https://ibb.co/vwm148R I then have them run through a storage buffer so I can balance my farms as needed. If one product is filling up too much, I can swap my rotations out with a different product. https://ibb.co/gFrVF3K

After the buffer, I have them branch off to the new modular food setup I have with primary products first, secondary, and then tertiary (bread and cake). something like corn and potatoes will also continue down the line to the markets. https://ibb.co/PxD7T7W

Hope this helps!

That's a really nice setup! Far better than my 2 bit hack and 5 levels higher than my pay grade.

I hadn't considered something like this yet it sure seems worth a try in my little world. It appears it could be scaled down for a 2-3K population settlement without much difficulty.

Not sure why my post shows up after yours...note the time stamp....
Perhaps the post published edit performed to fix a major error or ?
Not a big deal but if yours had shown before mine, I'd never walked on stage and learned a thing or two in silence instead of ....

[Healy]

On my longest playthrough, I had 10 top level greenhouses fed by fertilizer 2.
All the item belts and all the u-belts were connected and the resulting 2 belts fed to a processing area.
Each food type was then split off and sent to be stored/processed, with a 'priority' splitter preventing backpressure on the main line by sending most excess food to either AEDs or mixers to make animal feed, and excess animal feed it turned into compost.
Sugar cane is a bit different, you have to turn it to sugar and then the sugar to ethanol. Burn off the ethanol and biomass in a priority power plant.
This leaves just canola. I dont even bother farming this, it is a pretty useless crop, it only has 1 final product that you make from soybeans anyway.... If you *really* want to farm it, relive backpressure by turning to oil, and chem planting the oil into diesel, then burning the diesel in a priority power plant..