how to optimize cactus farms

[--<[ Blei ]>--]

Hi

i'm tech level 3 and my outpost is near a city (to shops there)
i used to feed my buddies mostly by buying food, which wasn't a problem at all, since i started to make huge amounts of CATS by it.
So now i found out how to automatize tasks (dig copper and bring to storage)...cool...(just took me 30h to realize LOL)
however, since my team is 17 people now, the two stores aren't enough to feed them and i wstarted making cactusfarms for making chewsticks.

but it's so hard to make tasks work.
Make wwater, fill it to 3 farms, chopp of the cactuses, now the cook has to bring it and cook it, which is also impossible to make it work...

is there a was to get this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to work, so that you don't have to spend like 70% of your time to watch if the foodsupply/farms work correctly?

[johntarmac]

Your farmer....

Shift + right click on each farm.
Do the same on your water storage.

Finished.

He will now work and water each farm while taking the cactus to it's storage and fill the water storage from the wells.

[--<[ Blei ]>--]

thx 4 the answer....sounds very primising

hope it works :)

[johntarmac]

Your cook....

Have the stove set to make Dustwich on repeat.

Shift right click on stove.
Do the same on the bread oven.

Finished.

Your cook will now make dustwiches and place them into food store. When he runs out of bread he will make that also.

[Stryderunknown]

If you've got some guys doing Mining (Copper/Stone/Iron) they will only mine while there is space for them to fill (Storage or resources for crafting) so eventually some of them might start idling (If you have places to sit they might idle there if you have it turned on in settings).

In any event you can setup the mining guys to act like farmers as well, just make sure it's lower down on their priority list than mining, that way they won't idle they instead will help out farming.

It really just working out which jobs are full-time and which ones are part-time, never setup someone to do two full-time jobs, but you can have a part-time job set higher in priority than a full-time one to have them do two jobs ;)

[--<[ Blei ]>--]

thanks guys, it really helped and works now.

my money is increasing extremely and (more important) food is also made in large quantities and without "manual" management.

finally i have some time to expand and explore

[BoogieMan]

Base running tips:

1. Having backpacks on people assigned to labors, especially ones that require hauling large items like wheatstraw, water barrels, weapons, armor and so on helps a lot. Especially trader backpacks that let you stack items.


2. Once you have enough people, make dedicated haulers with backpacks assigned just to storage containers. This helps train their athletics and strength pretty well and reduces the load on your crafters, so they spend more time crafting and not hauling.

Note: Don't have the same person loading two different of the same types of storage as they can get stuck in a loop.


3. Have extra storage containers for common building items (building materials, iron plates, electrical components) that are not assigned to be hauled to so that your engineers have a place to dump their excess materials when there is no construction project, and keep those storage containers from getting full.


4. Make sure people crafting anything that has a quality (weapons, armor, bows) are standing in a well lit area, if it's dark it can drastically reduce the quality of their products.


5. When possible, utilize racial bonuses:

Best Cooks: Greenlanders
Best Farmers: Greenlanders, Hive Worker Drones
Best Scientists: Greenlanders, Hive Princes, P4 Units
Best Medics: Hive Princes, P4 Units
Best Turret Gunners: Hive Worker Drones, Skeletons
Best Laborers: Hive Worker Drones
Best Engineers: P4 Units
Best Smiths: Scorchlanders, P4 Units
Best Roboticists: Skeletons, P4 Units
Best Archers: Soldierbots
The best haulers would then be defaulted to Shek and Soldierbots as they aren't skilled at non-combat skills.

Note: P4 Units and Soldierbots are rare and only show up as random recruits.

6. If you're planning on upgrading bread into better food items , make sure your bread storage is less accessible than your regular food storage or download the mod to stop them from grabbing bread from the bread basket.

7. If you have multiple farmers, assign them to work the fields in different orders, to ensure faster watering.

8. Animals eat a lot. Don't buy too many unless you have a specific plan for them. I find Garru better than Bulls because they carry plenty and are good deal faster.

9. Animals and anyone else who doesn't have a job, order them to follow someone who moves around a lot like your haulers, so they keep working athletics/strength.