How do you make food in boreal forest/tundra zones?

[Zef]

So i wanted to make an all sanguophage/vampire colony in a secluded location and i found the perfect spot for it, a boreal forest map with in the middle a giant lake where i could built a castle on with nice killboxes.

However i noticed quickly that my food upkeep greatly outpaces my food production. (drain caskets, moose/horse farm, colonists)

The main bottleneck is that only during a very select period of the year i can actually farm, half of the time the entire map is covered in snow, which not only destroys crops but also halves movement speed.

To offset this i'm trying indoor farming but i still need massive amounts of haygrass for my moose/horse farm to get it through those winter months.

Is there anything i can do to crank up my food production in this kind of scenario?

[HunterSilver]

Indoor farming is going to be the most stable solution. You don't need hydroponics right away, but a sunlamp + heater should be enough to grow crops year round.

[Zef]

HunterSilver eredeti hozzászólása:

Indoor farming is going to be the most stable solution. You don't need hydroponics right away, but a sunlamp + heater should be enough to grow crops year round.

Can you do this outdoors? (sunlamp + heater)

Or do you need to make like walled off greenhouses in order for this to work?

[Astasia]

Can use solar panels to power sun lamps, the cost is pretty minimal, just make enough of them. Don't need to worry about "getting through the winter" if you are growing the food you need all year round. Make sure you aren't letting your animals graze on live haygrass, it's extremely inefficient. Otherwise, you may have too many animals if you are struggling to feed them. Cull the herds down to what you can manage until you have the infrastructure to feed more.

[HunterSilver]

Heaters don't work outdoors, so you need to make the room qualify as indoors. The easiest way to do this, without just bleeding all of the heat out, is to be in a fully roofed indoor room.

[Zef]

HunterSilver eredeti hozzászólása:

Heaters don't work outdoors, so you need to make the room qualify as indoors. The easiest way to do this, without just bleeding all of the heat out, is to be in a fully roofed indoor room.

That's what i thought, damn that's going to be a crapton of heaters, my electricity needs will be through the roof.

[Zef]

Astasia eredeti hozzászólása:

Can use solar panels to power sun lamps, the cost is pretty minimal, just make enough of them. Don't need to worry about "getting through the winter" if you are growing the food you need all year round. Make sure you aren't letting your animals graze on live haygrass, it's extremely inefficient. Otherwise, you may have too many animals if you are struggling to feed them. Cull the herds down to what you can manage until you have the infrastructure to feed more.

What do you mean with "live haygrass" exactly?

My current setup is a barn inside of their pen with seperate section inside that stores the haygrass after harvesting.

[VitaKaninen]

This is using Wall sun lamps:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3191982608

This provides WAY more than enough power. Around 65kw.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3191982670

[Astasia]

Zef eredeti hozzászólása:

What do you mean with "live haygrass" exactly?

My current setup is a barn inside of their pen with seperate section inside that stores the haygrass after harvesting.

That is correct then. You want to harvest it and feed them the hay. The "haygrass plant" provides very little nutrition, but a common thing players try is growing haygrass in their animal pen and letting animals eat it without harvesting it thinking this will save their colonist's time. It doesn't. The vast majority of the nutrition from haygrass comes from harvesting the hay.

[MadArtillery]

Just did this and yes indoor farming. One heater should handle one sunlamp worth of plants. Not always well but enough for everything to grow. Now I just need to do it on a frozen desert without any soil to get it up pre hydroponics.

[Steelfleece]

Tundra and boreal forest often have a number of predators and herd animals for the predators to eat. Usually too big for them to eat the whole thing. There's no shame in scavenging to supplement if you have a spare hauler.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Surprised that nobody suggested eating nutrient paste.

Trim your animal herds as Astasia suggested, make use of wild animals to supplement food stocks, and consider foraging the nearby areas for berries ahead of winter if you can spare the time and manpower. If the wild animals start starving you can lure them in with some food and hunt them in close range.

If you can grow sufficient crops you don't need to maintain animals for fine meals, saving you from having to dedicate resources to feeding them. I'd keep just a couple of horses for transport.

Maximise crop planting during the growing season as long as your farmers can keep up; if a tile can grow something, plant something in it. Grow nutrifungus indoors for animals or humans (or both) if the goal is to maximize stocks to avoid starvation; don't need light for them.

[ambi]

i'm playing a non-electrical run in boreal forest.

the trick is once growing season starts, assign EVERYONE who can farm to priority 1. doesn't matter if their growing skill is 0. everyone farms and harvests until growing season is over. just spam those crops. i then spend the winter doing everything else like construction or mining.

[Red Bat]

In Boreal Forest you can usually sustain your colony with just hunting for a while unless pollution is too high or too much of the map is covered in mountain. I'd recommend relying on nutrient paste on any cold map, deserts with bad layouts, or extreme deserts. Even if there are enough animals to hunt, hunting tends to take more pawn work time to produce food than farming does so you really don't want to waste time cooking until you are more situated. Especially if you don't plan on relying on sun lamps or hydroponics and you aren't playing using the tunneler meme.

[Veylox]

You either overproduce by a ton in summer, or you just stop raising animals if they're draining your colony.

You can grow all year with sunlamps indoors, but considering hydroponics don't use corn you're better off just farming a ton in summer

[Zef]

I went the sun lamp route, needed a ton of extra power to offset the electrical costs, but with some batteries i manage to bridge the day/night cycle.