What kind of food should I make to travel???

[Sophie]

I've made over 100 Pemmican and have at least 200 simple meals but when I try to travel, it says I only have food for about 0.7 days still how is that possible?? what am I doing wrong??

[Glerk]

Are you doing it with an animal that can only eat pemmican and not the simple meals?
Btw, most of those simple meals will rot unless you're travelling with a lot of people/animals.

[Comestibles]

If you use pemmican to travel then it should say something like 1.2 years left of food

[BlackSmokeDMax]

100 pemmican is only about 100 / 18 = 5.5 meals

That won't spoil for a long time.

Simple meals, you have a lot, but they will spoil very quickly, so you can't count on them for long travel sessions.

You'll want either a LOT more pemmican. Or research and make packaged survival meals.

[gussmed]

Maybe you're not packing the food? You don't automatically take all the food on hand. You have to add it on the items tab.

Simple meals will rot after 2-3 days, so you can't really use it for anything but very short trips. That's clearly not your problem, because the warning you get is "rots in X days" not "only 0.7 days of food."

Pemmican is your main travel food, but you need a lot. Pemmican is only 0.05 nutrition, compared to 0.9 for a meal. So 18 pemmican = 1 meal. Colonists need 1.6 nutrition a day, which is 32 pemmican. 200 pemmican isn't actually a lot, it just sounds like a lot.

As Glerk pointed out, what animals you take with you matter. Herbivores don't count unless it's winter because they can graze, but other animals need food.

Wargs are the worst for travel, because they can only eat raw meat or corpses. Since both of those rot in under 2 days, you can't just pack the food with you. About the only viable approach for warg travel is to trade for raw meat at villages, and you have to do that almost every day.

[kevinshow]

there is a display error about that caravan food. it seems to use the food that spoils the fastest, to tell you how many days of food you have.

so just count that as long as you have a lot of pemmican and simple meals, you can make your trip for a few days.

however, the long-term solution is that you should make packaged survival meals (on the research tree) when you get a chance to study it and cook it.


i usually take 6-10 people on caravan, and i'll do about 30 simple meals (3x the number of people going), 300 pemmican, and 75-100 survival foods. I don't need all the survival food but I want to come back with extras rather than realizing I"m cutting it close . For example, there were some times that I'm out for 3-7 days longer than expected due to hurt colonists needing time to recover, or perhaps I wanted to strip down a particular base and carry back the goods.

[Zorlond]

Pemmican is a smaller item in terms of unit size. Think of one unit of pemmican as a single one-inch bar of Snickers (minus the chocolate coating). It's not a meal unless you eat a dozen or more. So any significant trip, you'll probably want 500+ units of pemmican.

Simple meals are like basic sandwiches. Bread, bit of baloney, bit of cheese. It's a meal, but it's also not preserved in any way, it's gonna go bad soon enough.

[mrChips]

Check you've covered the dietary requirements of any animals you're taking.

Check the food policies set on any colonists that are going. If you normally restrict them from eating pemmican/survival meals at home, you'll want to change that for the caravan members.

[Legion]

100 units of pemmican isn't going to cut it at all, and simple meals spoils too quickly. As others stated, your best bet is get A LOT more pemmican or research packaged survival meals.

[ichifish]

There’s definitely so kind of issue with the “days of food” reporting. I always pack 2x as many survival meals for twice the amount of time I’ll be out and it always tells me I don’t have enough.

[mikvi.mii]

To add to it, 40 pemmician is approximately enough to feed 1 pawn for a single day, so you've got to multiply that by the amount of pawns in the caravan and the rounded duration in days. That may equal to a lot of pemmician even for short trips, so it's no surprise that packed survival meals are more preffered.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by mikvi.mii:

To add to it, 40 pemmician is approximately enough to feed 1 pawn for a single day, so you've got to multiply that by the amount of pawns in the caravan and the rounded duration in days. That may equal to a lot of pemmician even for short trips, so it's no surprise that packed survival meals are more preffered.

This thread is well over 3 years old and was thoroughly answered by multiple people at that time. Pemmican is made in large batches, is lighter per nutrition than PSMs, and is more nutrient efficient than PSMs. Pemmican is a better caravan food, the only downside is it takes longer to make, and it does eventually spoil.