Fiber corn.... um, why?

[marcusaddamsson]

I finally let a field of fiber corn grow and harvested it. It wasn't the largest field, only 50 squares. And I got about 100 wood from it. That's a double bed!

Why would you plant this stuff? When you're on the tundra and you literally can find wood anywhere?

[di eshor ribly]

Mountain maps where they don't get enough sunlight/room to grow real trees. It's a cave plant, there's not much use for it in other maps.

[pan terrorizer (with OnlyPans!)]

It's main purpose is for biomes who barely have any plant life or none at all. Like extreme deserts, ice sheets, underground mountains, etc.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

The wiki provides reasons for planting them:

It requires no skill or research to plant, and it matures quickly. It can be grown indoors, and unlike most plants can grow under the light of a torch or standing lamp - this similarly means that a field of fibercorn can grow year-round, while a grove of trees will stop growing during particularly hot or cold seasons. On maps with little soil it can be grown in hydroponics basins, although it gains almost none of the fertility bonus. It can be planted in one-row strips when necessary, allowing far more flexibility in field shape. Finally, for certain ideoligions, fibercorn provides a reliable source of wood that doesn't incur mood penalties.

If you're in a tree-abundant biome and follow a non-restrictive ideology, there's not much reason to plant them.

[eMYNOCK]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

I finally let a field of fiber corn grow and harvested it. It wasn't the largest field, only 50 squares. And I got about 100 wood from it. That's a double bed!

Why would you plant this stuff? When you're on the tundra and you literally can find wood anywhere?

if you're ideology is that of a tree hugger... dare you to cut trees... but you still need at last some wood.

hence, fiber corn.

[Astasia]

Fibrecorn is less work for similar wood per day compared to many trees, it's a good option on any map if you are needing a grown source of wood. One fibrecorn plant takes up ~1/4 the space of a tree in optimal grid layouts or 1/9 the space of just a random single tree, and is ~24 times faster to sow.

I think the only thing all around better are Teak trees, but you have to wait 60 days for those and can't plant them under roofs. Cactus is faster wood per day but massively more work per wood. Fibrecorn is just flat out better than trees like maple or pine, and more or less equal to oak.

Just for some numbers, a single fibrecorn plant is 0.18 wood per day on normal soil, a maple tree is 0.54 wood, and a pine tree is 0.73. 4 fibrecorn is 0.72 wood per day. If you micro-manage your tree grid you can get pine trees and fibrecorn outputting the same amount of wood per day in the same space, but generally if you just make a grow zone and factor in the edges the pine trees are going to use more space than that and output a bit less wood per tile than the fibrecorn.

So ya, you look at a single fibrecorn plant and think, "this is terrible." But the reality is it's a pretty decent source of wood with some very real advantages over trees. There is of course very little reason to plant fibrecorn or other trees on like a rainforest map though or anything with a stable enough source of wood nearby to use. It's mostly useful in deserts or cave bases.

[marcusaddamsson]

Thank you, everyone. I kinda figgered I was missing something... haven't had a tree-hugger in my camp for a while now, fergot about them. And I didn't notice the 30% light requirement... that is kinda huge.