How to actually use fertilizer?

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Build several hydroponics greenhouses on the last map, filled with those lice plants, but something seemed to not be working.

My (max level) farmers never actually use those farming stations, despite having plenty of fertilizer.

So... any tips for a noob? Keep running into starvation despite 1/3 of my base being farming, and it's very annoying.

Should I just take the hit on water and have a few other plants, or something?

[snuggleform]

I'm not sure if this helps but from what I've noticed, the farmers will indeed use the farming station but they only use 1 application per plant and it only lasts 1 cycle. (farmers touch buff)

The fertilizer itself gives double growth rate while active, so in effect because it lasts 1 cycle then it shortens the growth cycle of any plant by 1 cycle (doesn't half the growth cycle since it doesn't last the whole time).

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Must be missing something then or running into a bug, because my farming stations are constantly showing red lights and unmanned.

[L37]

IMO, apart from some very specific cases, it is not that usefull.
You save some water, but use A LOT of dupe time (They need to fabricate a thing from fertilizer, then apply it it a plant. For each plant each cycle.), which then requires more resources as you need more dupes to do the same work.
If you do not have massive water shortages just use more plants...

[僕の名前 (仮)]

Do you put them in Greenhouse room?

IMO, apart from some very specific cases, it is not that usefull.

Also produces natural gas which may be useful, though not sure if it's cost-effective.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Lord Of Dorkness:

Must be missing something then or running into a bug, because my farming stations are constantly showing red lights and unmanned.

Oh if it's showing a red light you need to make sure it's actually a greenhouse room, i.e. max 96 tiles and enclosed space with farm station.

Also note that they will not use the farming station on meal lice plants.

[L37]

Originally posted by ммм, тортик v2.0:

Also produces natural gas which may be useful, though not sure if it's cost-effective.

Yeah, was usefull at some point, not anymore. Not for power at least.
10g/s for 120w (even if we ignore all the things it needs, like dirt), NatGas generator requires 90g/s to generate 800w...

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Originally posted by wsc150:

Also note that they will not use the farming station on meal lice plants.

...Really?

Would have been useful to know that a few hours ago. Meal lice just seems like the best crop, since they don't consume any of the valuable water, but that's seemingly a big downside.

Or am I over-thinking the water thing? Is this game granular enough that you get that water back from the clones waste water later?

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Current set-up, for the record:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1823693363

[僕の名前 (仮)]

(if my math is right) it could reduce you need 1.6kg of polluted water to make 5kg fertilizer, whereas plants can use lot more water (especially timble rheed). But need energy/time/room space/cost of machinery.

Maybe it makes sense to use after all, to save water. I often had problem running out of at ~100 cycle.

I didnt really used fertilizers myself but now I think....

[僕の名前 (仮)]

Originally posted by Lord Of Dorkness:

Current set-up, for the record:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1823693363

Actually, do you even need that much plants? You wont even have time to cook all. Or you eat uncooked?

Also they're bad quality food, giving bad morale.

[L37]

Originally posted by Lord Of Dorkness:

...Really?

Would have been useful to know that a few hours ago. Meal lice just seems like the best crop, since they don't consume any of the valuable water, but that's seemingly a big downside.

Or am I over-thinking the water thing? Is this game granular enough that you get that water back from the clones waste water later?

Is water really an issue though? With all the geysers, it may become problematic only if you get A LOT of dupes and unlucky map.
Also meal lice uses dirt, which is by far more problematic than water in a long run.

[僕の名前 (仮)]

There are new maps which have less water I think, havent played them yet.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by Lord Of Dorkness:

Originally posted by wsc150:

Also note that they will not use the farming station on meal lice plants.

...Really?

Would have been useful to know that a few hours ago. Meal lice just seems like the best crop, since they don't consume any of the valuable water, but that's seemingly a big downside.

Or am I over-thinking the water thing? Is this game granular enough that you get that water back from the clones waste water later?

Yeah I learned the hard way too about meal lice and greenhouse requirement. My guess is that it doens't work on meal lice because it's just too easy to grow already.

I would suggest graduating to mushroom caps; they don't take any water either and they're a much better meal (+1 level food instead of -1 level food). Pretty easy to grow at the bottom of your base where the C02 is pooling up, good yields, you can fertilize if you want to. Can also tolerate a little more heat than meal lice in case your base heated up past 30.

[L37]

Originally posted by wsc150:

Yeah I learned the hard way too about meal lice and greenhouse requirement. My guess is that it doens't work on meal lice because it's just too easy to grow already.

I would suggest graduating to mushroom caps; they don't take any water either and they're a much better meal (+1 level food instead of -1 level food). Pretty easy to grow at the bottom of your base where the C02 is pooling up, good yields, you can fertilize if you want to. Can also tolerate a little more heat than meal lice in case your base heated up past 30.

And then add some waterweed to those mushrooms and you've got really good quality food only needing some slime for mushrooms, bleach stone for waterweed and some small amount of salt watet (IIRC 5k/cycle/plant) for waterweed. It works so good that i might even consider getting more bleach stone from space later on...

[僕の名前 (仮)]

I tested it and it's actually super nice. Producing food much faster and use less water (when I manage to make my salt water cleaning faster, I will not have problems with wanter, but now I have them)

One thing I noticed, fertilizer synthesizer produce so much more fertilizer than I ever need, so machine is off most of the time. Maybe I need more greenhouses.