Worker ratios

[sandbag58]

Apologies if this is covered somewhere already (I had a look on Discussions and Guides and could not find anything for Update 9.0) but I keep having trouble with my copper ingot production, ie running out of ingots which slows down the production of arrows, crossbow bolts and trap ammo. I'd got up to 450 colonists in my main colony (another 200 or so in Outposts), Threat level circa 500, developing gunpowder tech - generally doing really well, or so I thought. I left the game running while I went to do other stuff, thinking it could tick over, build up the stockpile, but came back to find everyone dead. My copper had run out, meaning ammo had run out and the zombie swarm did the rest. I was relying on traps quite a lot to reduce the food demands and reduce the threat load of having so many colonist guards but the trap ammo is copper hungry.

Has anyone got any suggestions for how many of each work block is needed to maintain a steady supply of copper - for example, 2 mines are needed per smelter?

Similar question for forester and fire wood supply chain and has anyone done an updated food guide? I've seen the oft repeated 1 berry farm (of 5x5) for 50 colonists but these guides tend to mention olives which are no longer a thing... I need to count how many of each field and work block I had because food was not a problem but it felt inefficient - 10 fishermen provided a good baseline while chickens felt like a distraction - so many barley farms needed, even at 10x10 - until chicken poop becomes a resource...

Thank you in advance.

[aRPeaR]

Unlock the stastics board and learn to use it. There are so many variables in the current version of the game, that it no longer fun to make and follow a guide, because you basically are only making a copy of the base in the guide. Perfectionism is a fun killer.

[sandbag58]

Thank you. I've been placing Stats Boards in my colonies and outposts but not actually read them. I am now learning to use them.

I also made a change to my approach - I was trying to establish production lines, so using Tinkers to make planks and Wood choppers to make firewood but this was not working, so I just set the 40 wood choppers with a priority of 1200 planks, second priority of 600 firewood and everything else ranked third. This sorted it and meant I could reallocate 22 tinkers to other roles. :-)

[B〄F Altonator]

How much copper do i need? Short answer, a lot. I must have made over 50 smelters for a colony population of 500. 10% of my colony workers are smelters.
Maybe even more, the smelters are spread over multiple outposts.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

its hard to say really, just increase the number of copper miners by 20% and wait a day to see if you have an excess of copper ore, if you dont then do it again, if you do then start adding in new smelters. If you are desperate for more ammo right this moment then use the jobs tab to take people off of other jobs and put down a lot of new mining, smelting, woodworking and fletching jobs, and then when your ammo has stabilised you can put them back on their previous jobs and start balancing the ammo production day by day til it is stable

I have discovered that its usually easier to just recruiting more people and pumping ammo and food production til you are making a considerable excess of both, then balance them properly, then start using the extra people for other less important industries, and just keep an eye on your food and ammo and only expand those industries when you are beginning to run on a deficit again.

[Hakgova]

One suggestion is to always over produce. It is better to have 10k of every then 100. If you do have an issue, checking the stats board regularly and knowing how to read it can save you a lot of headaches.