Tips for getting/sustaining food on bigger colony?

[Butterlord]

Have been struggling with food for awhile. Just got to my 17th colonist and not going to let anymore in. Playing on an oasis biome and haven't gotten lucky with the wild animal spawns. I put all of my animals in their own rooms/pens and make sure they can't snoop around. Trying to grow a really big farm both in and outdoors but I'm worried by the time I get the bulk of the harvests I will have lost guys to malnutrition. What are some tips for sustaining food for longer once you have a lot of colonists?

[Veylox]

Overproduce food instead of waiting for it to be a problem. Once you can freeze it, no reason to not go ham on the production, and if you're worried about wealth, just stop planting for a while waiting for your stock to dwindle a bit. If you have a big colony, you can spare 2 or 3 colonists on 24/7 growing/harvesting/hauling duty anyway.

In the very first days of a very high difficulty run you may want to keep your food stock low, but in any other situation just plant a lot and harvest a lot. Some events can make you skip a harvest entirely, so to be safe you kinda want to have food for several seasons at all times, especially on maps that have winter.

I don't really have experience with oasis, I'm guessing there isn't a lot of planting ground available, and if that's the case you can always rely on hydroponics.

If you're on the brink of dying already and can't afford to wait, just kill everything in your map on sight to get meat, and if it's not enough you'll have to buy food from traders. If traders don't come to you, send a caravan and buy food in a nearby settlement.

You sound like you have a lot of animals, you could always kill them too for a nice amount in a crisis

[Steelfleece]

Yep. Always overproduce when possible. Excess food can be sold/donated to some caravans or hauled to a nearby settlement to either sell or gift for faction rep. I usually like to have a stock of 1000-2000 spare corn sitting around for bad times, even on smaller colonies.

[XelNigma]

If you need food fast, grow rice.
Once you have food grow corn.
Definitely start with planting too much and dial it back as you see your way over producing. But dial it back slowly.

A nutrient paste dispenser is nice to have as back up Incase your cooks are hospitalized. Iv had too many situations where my people resort to raw food because my cook was killed or hospitalized or even sometimes just on a caravan trip.

[ichifish]

Good tips above. I wanted to add that hunting isn't a reliable way to support a big colony, especially in a desert.

Assuming you can grow year-round, your farm animals should be a reliable way to get animal products, even if they can't graze on a big field. Most animals are nutrition-positive, meaning if managed well they consume less nutrition than they produce (and provide textiles as a bonus). In the case of superstars like cows and chickens, they are extremely efficient. If you're having trouble keeping them(or your colonists) fed, make your system more efficient (for example, make sure you don't spend a lot time hauling to/from the pens or feeding too many). Of course, slaughter all but 1 male and a good number of females in hard times.

Iguanas, a common animal on your biome, can be useful because they are zoneable. Feed them corpses and occasional plant produce. If you have electricity you can make a room just for their corpses, and put their sleeping spots outside. You can also just zone them to wherever the corpses are and then to the unused growing spaces on the edges of the map. Eat some eggs and let some hatch. Slaughter most of the males. If you run out of food, slaughter them all. If you get a raid, use them to distract it. Either way you'll have a full belly and be making the best lizard skin hats on the rim.

Speaking of putting corpses to use, if you don't mind the occasional war crime AND you have a single bloodlust/cannibal/psychopath AND the colony mood is relatively high, butcher up some raiders and turn them into kibble! Delicious and nutritious! The "we butchered humanlike" mood hit is only -6 and it doesn't stack. Just make sure you've got some pick-me-ups and everyone will let it slide. Turn that human skin into a comfy armchair that your pawns can sit in while they reflect on their own morality.

If you have a decent animal handler, you can have them tame and immediately slaughter non-dangerous wild animals instead of hunting. The amount of meat and leather you get is far higher than if they are hunted, and the time investment can (can) be lower if you have easy-to tame animals like dromedaries or donkeys on the map.

That said, if you are already struggling with food you should get your growing stabilized before worrying about animals. Don't be afraid to get 0-skill plants pawns out planting (not harvesting) to get big fields sowed.

I would add to the above that big harvests, especially something like a lot of corn, can spike your wealth. If you're playing at higher levels, this is something to keep in mind.

As for supporting a larger colony, here's a couple of general tips:
1. Keep mood high
Beautiful rooms are the most reliable way to do this. Art is stupid good. Jsut decent art and regular floors in a big room is enough. Drugs are OK but are harder to manage. Fine meals have the same nutrition input as simple ones, so if you have animals and cooks that's easy. Use biphasic scheduling (two sleep/rec periods per day) if necessary.

2. One room to rule them all
The bigger the colony, the more efficient a combined barracks/dining/rec/workshop/everything room is. Every time the room gets bigger or you add another bench or a shelf full of stuff the impressiveness goes up and dirt has less impact. You need to compensate for the lower mood bonus from sleeping in a barracks, but it's worth it unless you need rooms for thematic reasons, greedy pawns, royalty, etc. I personally like to play more thematically and move away from barracks when times aren't so tough (early-mid game), but there is no denying their efficiency.

3. One pawn one job
After about ten pawns, every pawn should have just one main job, and pretty much everyone should have crafting, hauling, and cleaning set to the same priority (like 3 or 4). When you need stuff like hauling and cleaning done, shift-click that job to set everyone to 1, then set it back. Setting jobs like this makes it easy to see when there's a problem, like if you see your cooks out hauling instead of making tea, you know something's up. Make sure crafters, cooks, and researchers have their own workbenches.

Finally, oasis seems like a tough biome. I haven't played on it, but I played on a similar one, a desert caldera, and I gotta say, having a big pool of water in the center of the map makes for a challenging start. There's a lot of wasted space, as it's not feasible to build on the water till you have a steady supply of wood (in the desert!), even if you want to risk a wooden base. Instead of having the base in the center it's on a side, and the slices of soil surrounding the water may be a considerable distance away (or a slow, mood-dampening walk through water). If you don't have hills or mountains it's also hard to defend because the walls need to contain the water and the growing zones around the edge of it. All of this adds a considerable walk-time penalty, which in turn makes easy mood enhancers like biphasic scheduling harder, at least for handlers and planters.

Good luck!

[Astasia]

Rice only takes like 2.5 days to get a partial yield from, when you first get a low food warning you have plenty of time to grow some emergency rice, even if it doesn't reach 100% you can do an early harvest to recover. Unless it's not the growing season and you have no indoor growing, in which case it might be required to "reduce your population" and "create a few extra meals."

I don't think there is anything special to maintaining food supplies, just always have a certain amount of excess and if it starts dropping expand your farms. Keep something like 200+ rice on hand per colonist at all times if you have a year round growing map like a desert/oasis. Then like 5-10+ prepared meals per colonist in your freezer. This gives you a couple weeks to react to food income shortages. I'd recommend rice for maximum stability and less storage required. One rice blight wont really mean anything with the above numbers. If you want to grow corn instead you'll want a much larger buffer and require more storage space, since one corn harvest is two weeks and a blight could mean 3-4 weeks without a harvest, so at least like 600 raw corn in storage per colonist to be reasonably safe.

[The Blind One]

For early game, It's recommended to get ~25 crop tiles per colonist in regular soil fertility.

So plant per colonist a 5x5 patch of corn, potato or rice and you should have ample food supply for simple meals. You can get away with just 20 tiles but you have to account for accidents and other factors such as bad harvests. If you supplement with hunting, you can half your crop tiles requirements while cooking fine meals but this isn't feasible in bad biomes.

If you want to go fine vegan meals, add 50% crop tiles for ~38 tiles per colonist or a 6x7 patch per colonist.

To calculate what you need for winter is relatively simple. The calculation = (60 days / growing days * 25 = how many crop tiles you need.

Multiply the resulting number by:
x0.5 if you have a stable protein source from hunting or animal produce (see further below*).
x1.33 for fine vegan
x2 for lavish vegan
x0.6 if you use nutrient paste

For example:

A Boreal Forest biome only has 30 growing days.

You will need 60 / 30 = 2
x 25 crop tiles
= 50 total crop tiles per colonist on average for simple meals year round.

x1.33 if you want fine vegan meals = ~67 crop tiles per colonist
x0.6 if you go nutrient paste = 30 crop tiles.
Etc.

If you have a lot of fertile soil the calculation is a bit trickier but generally speaking you can get away with planting 1/3rd less crop tiles. (discount 33% per fertile tile)

If you have a hydroponics bay you can get away with 2 bays per colonist (8 crop tiles) with a good surplus to spare. A full hydroponics bay setup can get you 24 bays, which would provide food for ~12 to ~15 colonists using 1 sunlamp.

To quickly calculate how many animals you need for regular fine meals from animal produce*:

For chickens, geese, ducks: You need 2 females per colonist.
Cows: you need 1 female cow per colonist for steady milk.
Yak, Elk, Dromedary: You need slightly more than 1 female per colonist, so just keep 1 extra every 5 colonists.

2 female chickens are then as good as 1 female cow for example.

You will generally need more than 4 animals per colonist if you want to go full on carnivore BBQ and get all your food strictly from meat. (only important for ranchers with maximum carnivore precept)

My normal setup is then something like this.

15 normal fertility crop tiles per colonist + 1 cow per colonist (or 2 chickens) on a temperate biome (assuming 20 days of winter).

If i have 10 colonists then I need 15 tiles x 10 colonists = 150 crop tiles of either rice, potato or corn and 10 cows for fine meals everyday.

TL:DR
> Plant 25 crop tiles (or a 5x5 crop patch) per colonist on regular soil for year round simple meals.
> Add 2 egg laying animals or 1 milk producing animal per colonist to half your needed crop tiles per colonist and get fine (vegan) meals.
> 2 hydroponics bays with sunlamps per colonist.
> Use nutrient paste to slash 33% of your food costs if you're desperate.

[brian_va]

In addition to a caravan to buy food, send a handful to a nearby tile, settle it and hunt everything. Repeat as necessary