Getting a constant food supply...?

[Hellbeholder]

Hey guys, I made it to cycle 70 before stuff started to fall apart. A very good run with 18 dudes. Figured out a lot, especially how to properly set up an (almost) infinitie water filtering cycle and how to deal with hydrogen.

Problems were the following

- Power was getting low due to missing coal, electrolyzers stoped making enough O²
- Buidling the fertilizer mashine was a big mistake, since the natural gas can bypass tiles it seems, getting rid of it is terrible
- Ran out of food because mealworm plant seeds ran low

So, I saw that the plants can produce new seeds if they get the best result possible. But how do I do that? They need the right amount of water, air pressure and heat. Especially the air pressure was giving me trouble later on.

How do you guys set up your farms?

[L37]

The solution to power issues is finding natural gas geyser. It can easily power multiple generators, providing essentially unlimited power.
For fertilizer i went "low tech" way after this update and it seems to work fine. Outhouses, compost piles and when polluted dirt runs low - purify some water.
Use different plants, either berries or wheat. Buld separate room somwhere in ice biome, for air build few algae terrariums there, for temperature you can use lights with thermo switches if you need heating or hydrogen cooling if you need cooling.

[Halifax789]

the algae terrariums use 300g/sec of CO2 and only produce about 80g/sec O2 so it ends up using up my air supply, then the low pressure makes the wormroots 'stifled' due to lack of air pressure

[Ackranome]

I use the initial water I have in the opening to make mush bars.

To sustain myself I first make a mad dash to the slime areas and look for a steam geyser.

After I find the steam geyser I build my base so that the water from the geyser creates a pool under my base either via Pump or by pour (prefer pour).

Once I have infinite water I then create hydroponic farms in an ice biome and plant my blossoms and then set up ration boxes and wheezeworts.

I then set up oxygen generators and gas pumps and pump 02 into the hydroponic farm box I create to maximize pressure to ensure I get a "good" yield for perptual food source.

Power isn't an issue when it comes to farming - finding water is.

There is no real need for the natural gas geyser - you can create a perpetual energy system without it, just using fertilizer makers with CO2 scrubbers, Natural Gas Generators, water pumps, and linking it to your septic system will create an infinite energy source.

The problem is finding out what the perfect system is - and I am still working on that. It is a very strange equation.

[Liy4b-Derg]

Connect at least a couple of Hamster Wheel to each wiring. Keeping it at a balanced priority (that means there are no other higher priorities in the way, but also not the highest priority) will make the dupes frequently recharge them. If you have that many dupes you could remove the other jobs of some of them so they can only use Hamster Wheels or something.

Idk if Natural Gas goes through tiles? It seems not. Maybe they just leaked out from somewhere.

Plant Sleet Wheats and Bristle Berries ASAP. Sleet Wheats might be very slow (20 cycles) but they come in numbers. The berries grow at 10 cycles and once more at the 12th. They're for "backups" while the sleet wheats are still growing. Some mealwoods will do the backup as well, just make sure they will always have Good Yields or you'll lose the seeds.

Sleet Wheat
Standard Yield gives you 8000kcal (25 seeds, 1 for replanting -- cooking recipe requires 3 seeds = 1000kcal -> 24/3 = 8)
At least irrigating them (use hydroponic tiles) and fertilizing will give you twice the outcome.
Imagine planting more than 10 of them lol
Just make sure they are in very cold places.

Edit: Also, put your food container in rooms full of CO2. CO2 will stop spoilage and becomes handy when storing huge amounts of food. For me, my gardens are filled with CO2 (I pump all the CO2 from my base to the gardens), so I strategically built a Rations Box in the gardens. No need for powered fridges!

[Cryten]

If your after a low tech food solution you can just grow lots of average mealwood plants and dig them up after 2 harvests. This requires a lower population run.

*edit* this strategy appear to be fixed. now the seeds remeber how many harvests are left.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Tips from endgame player(had to write this second time due steam being buggy again)
-Use as few dudes as possible , 4-6 is best till you have constant food and oxygen supply , feel free to "deny dudes" all time till you get ones with good traits , preferably ones who use less oxygen(dont worry about destructive and bingeater , ill explain it shortly why) , avoid ones who eat extra calories or oxygen
-USe alge farm , while it uses water it wont be that big deal and ill explain that too shortly , it saves lots elecrticity and saves you on clearing carbon oxyde and will make algee last longer
-Get food production as early as possible , dig into coleer area so you have few titles for extra seeds on temprature -3 to +3 bristle berry , it grows slow but its easiest crop to get seeds from , as even with just good yeld will still give you 1 seed to meitain production , so you just need a bit "ones with perfect condition" to grow enough seeds and then use ones without water and just fertaliser to keep the production runing , also bristle berry needs a lot less space in frige , you can store about 130k calories in 1 frige , saves power
-I never cook anything , less calories , uses power , people never get sick from britstle beries anyway
-Keep your base with clean oxygen , it will make people less sick and happier , making negative traits not be negative as they never ever get stressed
-Shower is not essencial but will make people less stressed , you can make people less stressed , i would sugest 1 shower per 6-8 dudes , build more then you need considering you need "room and planing"
-Spam paitings everywhere , having art person is essencial and its 1 dude you can sacrafice some stats , if you make every location they spend the most time look good , they will never go beyond 20 stress , my base meitains it at 0% , sometimes some guy gets to 5% who then drops
Eventualy as alge gets low you may need to move to making oxygen from water , to save power you can make bottle shaped building without gas filters , hydrogen will gather at smaller compartment ontop , oxygen will alweys bottom , set preasure valves to anything beyond 500 , 500-100 works fine but its system who every 10-30 cycles may need a bit tweaking with ratios but dont worry about it , your saving 240 power from it 2 pumps per 1 oxygen maker(preferably make seperate rooms for each)
Make sure hydrogen is fed to hydrogen generator
-Branchout to find water gaiser its essencial due alge farms and farms using water
-Eventualy find gas one for power(less essencial)

[Thorin]

You don't need anything tricky for infinite food:
Blossom grows with pressure and fertilizer into good harvest, returning the seed, and you can get 12+ in your starting area (enough for 4-6+ dupes), you cen boost your nombers with a few excellent harvest by watering the best ones for a few day (you need to spend fertilizer n them for it, but with outhouse+composter you can get enough fertilizer for 2 per dupe)
Wheat is even simler, dig into the ice biom and use simple palnter box, long growth (20 cycle), but one seed give 25 seed in normal run, you can turn the leftover 24 seed to cook 8 frost bun, so you need 2,5 ped dupe, but you can plat almost unlimited of them per dupe, later you need the wheat for the pepper bread, but pepper is hard to grow in free form.

[Glowth]

18 dupes your problem.
I have 4 and things get done slow but I can easily see them surviving another 50 cycles (at 80 atm) if I focus on survival.

[Vastin]

Even mealworm plants can be used for indefinite food, though they require quite careful tending to keep your seed supply up. You need to maintain their fertilizer and polluted water irrigation supply consistently, keep the air pressure up, and you'll probably need a cooling fan or something to bring the temperature down a degree or two into their ideal range - don't have any extra heat producing objects within 4 tiles or it'll be impossible.

Other plants are probably easier to maintain in the other environments, but I've gotten this to work.

I usually dash straight to oxygen hydrolysis rather than using algea farms. All that algea can be used to make food if you don't use it up making O2, and it's a much more limited resource than water in the long run, at least until you get to the point where you are farming slime from some of the critters.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Vastin:

Even mealworm plants can be used for indefinite food, though they require quite careful tending to keep your seed supply up. You need to maintain their fertilizer and polluted water irrigation supply consistently, keep the air pressure up, and you'll probably need a cooling fan or something to bring the temperature down a degree or two into their ideal range - don't have any extra heat producing objects within 4 tiles or it'll be impossible.

Other plants are probably easier to maintain in the other environments, but I've gotten this to work.

I usually dash straight to oxygen hydrolysis rather than using algea farms. All that algea can be used to make food if you don't use it up making O2, and it's a much more limited resource than water in the long run, at least until you get to the point where you are farming slime from some of the critters.

i dont like mealworms are they take 8 times more space in frige and need more work to make sustainable

[*Yuki*]

dunno about last update, but previously you could set up iceboxes in vacuum, to make them hold food forever without rotting

[Thorin]

You can keep food fresh in ice biom without energy easily (below freezing point everything is refrigerated.)

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Thorin:

You can keep food fresh in ice biom without energy easily (below freezing point everything is refrigerated.)

i seen food spoil in -16 , and ice melt at wierd tempratures , and form ice at tempratures it shouldent

Tempratre is buggy

Also snow not melting at all in water even 56 celcius , wtf

[Ackranome]

Originally posted by The Dragon Who Sold The World:

Originally posted by Thorin:

You can keep food fresh in ice biom without energy easily (below freezing point everything is refrigerated.)

i seen food spoil in -16 , and ice melt at wierd tempratures , and form ice at tempratures it shouldent

Tempratre is buggy

Also snow not melting at all in water even 56 celcius , wtf

If the area is polluted it will spoil.

Even if food is refridgerated I think it is still spoiling - your milk in your fridge doesn't last forever.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by ackranome:

Originally posted by The Dragon Who Sold The World:

i seen food spoil in -16 , and ice melt at wierd tempratures , and form ice at tempratures it shouldent

Tempratre is buggy

Also snow not melting at all in water even 56 celcius , wtf

If the area is polluted it will spoil.

Even if food is refridgerated I think it is still spoiling - your milk in your fridge doesn't last forever.

Frozen one wont last forever ether , to countary belief