Food woes

[Valravn]

Everytime I play this game I feed my colony with farming rice and hunting humans/animals but when I get to about 6 colonists with a few slaves and animals the amount of farming I'm having to do to feed everyone takes up a huge amount of time and I still manage to struggle in winter.

Clearly I'm doing something wrong. Do I need to farm different crops for better yields? Is ranching worth the investment? Any tricks to maximise food from labor?

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Corn has the lowest work hours to nutrition yield of any crop while rice has the highest. Don't forget that you don't require hydroponics to grow food indoors during winter if you have fertile soil, just needs a sun lamp (and a pair of solar panels with a battery will usually support a lamp).

Mechanitors can make Agrihand bots and Lifters to reduce the human effort required by you then need to deal with toxic waste.

Ranching many animals is worthwhile, chickens are easy to ranch for meat or eggs and while you will need haygrass for winter (don't grow it in the pen) you won't need much and it won't hurt if a few hens die of starvation so long as you still have some hens and at least one rooster.

[sooshon]

You can check stats of the crops in game using the little i in the info box. The most immediately relevant for comparison purposes are...

Harvest yield:
-Rice: 6
-Potato: 11
-Corn: 22

Grow days:
-Rice: 3
-Potato: 5.8
-Corn: 11.3
(note that grow day refers to the amount of time the plant must be exposed to sunlight in order to grow, so for example if there is only light for 12h / day then rice would need 6 actual days to fully grow)

So if you think about ratio of yield / day of growth:
-Rice: 2
-Potatoes: 1.89
-Corn: 1.94

The point is these are pretty closely comparable, so if you are planting corn you might have to wait nearly four times as long but you also get nearly four times as much food. The difference is the work efficiency: with a rice crop your colonists would have to do four times the planting work and four times the harvesting for the same amount of food. So basically, rice is good for maybe your first crop, but as soon as you have the means to switch to a crop that gives a better yield per work you put in, you should, also factoring in whether you have enough time to grow the crop before you can harvest it.

[Valravn]

Thank you for the great info both. If I'm not mistaken, fine meals are the best meals to make nutrients wise?

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Nutrient paste is better but fine meals are good so long as you have a source of meat or similar which can be eggs.

If your colony has transhumanist as part of its ideology the paste is the better choice, otherwise Fine Meals are the goto option.

[AldouzTek]

Grow lots of corn outside your colony wall and if you have stone blocks to spare walled it.
It also function as distraction for raiders espesially sappers.
I learned that from an old thrumbo.
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Legends say that an old thrumbo is the wisest creature in the universe.

[Playzr 🐵]

If you stick to rice there'll be lots of work. The thing about rice is it grows fast. You should start off with a patch of rice, then when you have a good amount start growing a big field of corn. Corn takes a long time but you get a lot from it. This will reduce the amount of farming you do. A freezer full of corn will get you through winter. There's also the hydroponics that could provide food in winter but it's more efficient to just grow plenty of corn. If you have farm animals then feed them hay.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Valravn:

Do I need to farm different crops for better yields?

No.

Rice is the best food income and is the least affected by things like botches, blight or cold snaps since the loss of one harvest is less impactful. Rice is basically the same amount of hauling work as corn, and marginally more planting work, considering sowing and harvesting rice/corn is very fast. Personally, I don't grow corn, it's not worthwhile, it doesn't really save much time, it just makes your food income less consistent. I do not recommend corn to anyone in any situation.

Berries have lower yields but can be eaten raw without mood penalty, they are mostly useful for caravans. Potatoes are just bad and have no functional niche anymore, don't grow potatoes. On like an Extreme Desert or Ice Sheet where there is very little normal/fertile soil, Nutrifungus is the best yield on stony soil, it's also easy to grow in winter without needing sun lamps or any power (can be heated by a campfire). It's lower yield than rice on normal/fertile soil (better than berries), but if you just want to grow a single crop indoors all year long it's a viable option. Nutrifungus is also immune to blight.

I can't really say what you are "doing wrong" as keeping a colony fed on simple meals made of rice takes very little effort. You only need about 20 tiles of rice per colonist on normal soil for simple meals, so a small 10x10 of rice will feed 5 colonists. I would guess what is happening is you are feeding animals with your rice/meals or something, which you generally should not be doing. Most animals can graze/hunt for their own food.

Originally posted by Valravn:

Is ranching worth the investment?

It can be, as long as they are mostly grazing. It's not necessary though.

Typically I just grow rice for food, and I turn that rice into fine vegetarian meals. That's the only food source that is really needed these days, but vegetarian lavish meals made from rice are also an option late game.

[Valravn]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Valravn:

Do I need to farm different crops for better yields?

No.

Rice is the best food income and is the least affected by things like botches, blight or cold snaps since the loss of one harvest is less impactful. Rice is basically the same amount of hauling work as corn, and marginally more planting work, considering sowing and harvesting rice/corn is very fast. Personally, I don't grow corn, it's not worthwhile, it doesn't really save much time, it just makes your food income less consistent. I do not recommend corn to anyone in any situation.

Berries have lower yields but can be eaten raw without mood penalty, they are mostly useful for caravans. Potatoes are just bad and have no functional niche anymore, don't grow potatoes. On like an Extreme Desert or Ice Sheet where there is very little normal/fertile soil, Nutrifungus is the best yield on stony soil, it's also easy to grow in winter without needing sun lamps or any power (can be heated by a campfire). It's lower yield than rice on normal/fertile soil (better than berries), but if you just want to grow a single crop indoors all year long it's a viable option. Nutrifungus is also immune to blight.

I can't really say what you are "doing wrong" as keeping a colony fed on simple meals made of rice takes very little effort. You only need about 20 tiles of rice per colonist on normal soil for simple meals, so a small 10x10 of rice will feed 5 colonists. I would guess what is happening is you are feeding animals with your rice/meals or something, which you generally should not be doing. Most animals can graze/hunt for their own food.

Well I'm feeding 6 colonists, 2 slaves, 1 thrumbo, 2 rhinos, 2 dyrads, a megawolverine and a megaspider so I'm trying to balance my limited workforce with feeding everyone.

I was hoping to find an alternative to having huge plots of land dedicated to rice and spamming agribots.

[brian7772]

Another benefit of rice is that because there is a lot of planting and harvesting it raises your pawns levels. So if you have lower skilled pawns botching a rice harvest has less impact than one from corn.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

If those dryads are from royalty they don't need food. Thrumbos eat a ton and rhinos eat a lot too so ideally you want them to stay away from the crops even after harvest.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Valravn:

Well I'm feeding 6 colonists, 2 slaves, 1 thrumbo, 2 rhinos, 2 dyrads, a megawolverine and a megaspider so I'm trying to balance my limited workforce with feeding everyone.

I was hoping to find an alternative to having huge plots of land dedicated to rice and spamming agribots.

You aren't trying to use a colonist with like 0-3 skill are you? Like skill 8 is more than 10 times as fast as skill 0, not to mention all the botches that waste yield at low skill. I can't really see any other way you would be having issues here. One pawn with 6-8 plant skill should be able to easily manage food for that many pawns and animals, even though most of those animals eat a lot more than humans.

[AldouzTek]

Originally posted by Valravn:

Originally posted by Astasia:

No.

Well I'm feeding 6 colonists, 2 slaves, 1 thrumbo, 2 rhinos, 2 dyrads, a megawolverine and a megaspider so I'm trying to balance my limited workforce with feeding everyone.

I was hoping to find an alternative to having huge plots of land dedicated to rice and spamming agribots.

agribots is not the issue, hauler is... you can have 20x20 plots for farm 1x agribots is enough but 1x hauler no way... unless you're using hauling Mod

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Potatoes are just bad and have no functional niche anymore, don't grow potatoes.

You shouldn't use potatoes on fertile soil if that's what you mean. You're way better off planting rice in that case but for ordinary soil potatoes are better to plant labor wise and potatoes definitely still have a niche although not as much since nutrifungus in extreme biomes for example.

I highly recommend people overproduce rice at first and then switch out into potatoes for long-term food consistency at lower labor costs. You can always switch back to rice if your food supply is somehow threatened in some way as rice grows fast enough to bump you through any food shortages.

Sometimes you just don't have a good fertile soil patch (or mountain) near your base and then potatoes are definitely a better alternative than rice.

[Goldtooth™]

Originally posted by Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia:

Corn has the lowest work hours to nutrition yield of any crop while rice has the highest. Don't forget that you don't require hydroponics to grow food indoors during winter if you have fertile soil, just needs a sun lamp (and a pair of solar panels with a battery will usually support a lamp).

Mechanitors can make Agrihand bots and Lifters to reduce the human effort required by you then need to deal with toxic waste.

Ranching many animals is worthwhile, chickens are easy to ranch for meat or eggs and while you will need haygrass for winter (don't grow it in the pen) you won't need much and it won't hurt if a few hens die of starvation so long as you still have some hens and at least one rooster.

and heaters if it is cold

[Kittenpox]

The rule-of-thumb that I use is to give each colonist a 4x4 space for rice-growing, and then have another for the next colonist I recruit, and a 4x4 for corn as well.
So for a 6-person colony, you'd want eight 4x4 spaces (they can be all mashed together).

As the colony grows, it stops being worth sticking to this - because I'll want excess corn for the nutrient paste dispenser, as well as materials for pemmican+PSMs, and I cbf doing the math.
Plus one toxic fallout later, and a lesson is learned.