Food early to mid game?

[test]

So i havent played this in quite some time but decided to give it another go now that its been released as 1.0.

Im having an issue atm where my 36 farm tiles with mealwood on them arent enough for my 7 colonists ... somehow...

I may be doing something wrong but anyway, any tips as to what to do about food (im at cycle 30) ?

Im having to rely on mush bars to fill in the gaps left by mealwood.

[Bokonon]

Don't take so many dupes if you can't feed them ...

https://oni-assistant.com/tools/foodcalculator

[test]

Yes but according to that calculator, i have more than enough mealwood to satisfy my 7 dupes if i make liceloaf which i am ... i must be doing something wrong

[Hedning]

You may miss some food by not harvesting immediately when ready or by the temperature or gas type temporarily being wrong, or by plants waiting for dirt. You may want to have someone be +1 on farming so that they always do that first.

[gimmethegepgun]

Do you have enough labor assigned to harvesting the meal lice in a timely manner?

The more relevant problem is more that you're making liceloaf in the first place. Liceloaf is labor-intensive to make, worse at turning water into calories than gristle berry (and tastes worse), and unsafe when dumping sieved toilet water back into the reservoir. If you're having trouble getting the lice off the plant you might actually be able to feed everyone by NOT making liceloaf and using that dupe labor to harvest the lice instead.

[AquaX]

Or try not to completely rely on farming and have a nature reserve too that grows them naturally. It would help you save resources.

[gimmethegepgun]

Yeah until you get nosh beans or sleet wheat the only reason to use the musher is to make mush bars in an emergency, which then begs the question of what you were doing so wrong as to need to use those. Or if you're trying the "no farming" challenge which might make it worthwhile to use a musher to make food from water with meal lice.

[Elidrin]

Early game I am a fan of liceloaf with mush bar as an emergency I only turn on the mushbar is I get a low food warning and turn it off the moment I do not need. This is because these foods are hard on early water reserves (Especially the bar).

For mid range I am a huge fan of fried mushrooms. I make a run to get mushrooms up and running as fast as possible. They are easy to grow, and use up slime. Plus require no water.

Later game.... All of it whatever I have stuff for I make.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Elidrin:

Early game I am a fan of liceloaf

If you're going to turn water into food you might as well use it more efficiently by making gristle berry instead.

[Elidrin]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Elidrin:

Early game I am a fan of liceloaf

If you're going to turn water into food you might as well use it more efficiently by making gristle berry instead.

Personally I'm biased against Berries, this is just an opinion of mine. You have to pump the water in and supply with light. The only time I mess with berries is I used them as the plants in my parks. If I get one great... if the shine bugs eat it... that's fine too. As I said I make a run for mushrooms, so my time on liceloaf is very limited.

In the picture below the kitchen area is my old lice farm, the moment I didn't need it anymore it got gutted.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2029198686

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Elidrin:

Personally I'm biased against Berries, this is just an opinion of mine. You have to pump the water in and supply with light.

Power usage is trivial. 8W with a floor lamp can cover 8 plants (by putting it 1 tile into the ground) or 10W with a ceiling light can cover 11 (at the cost of more ceiling space) while each plant takes an average of 0.8W to pump water to. For reference the power bleed of a jumbo battery is 3.33W.

[Elidrin]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Elidrin:

Personally I'm biased against Berries, this is just an opinion of mine. You have to pump the water in and supply with light.

Power usage is trivial. 8W with a floor lamp can cover 8 plants (by putting it 1 tile into the ground) or 10W with a ceiling light can cover 11 (at the cost of more ceiling space) while each plant takes an average of 0.8W to pump water to. For reference the power bleed of a jumbo battery is 3.33W.

Not going to get into the lice/berry debate. :)

Early game I'd rather have my dupes digging holes and building new stuff than running on the wheel. If I do not have a fully functional mushroom farm (40 plants) on the basic map by day 30 using 0 power then I have a odd generation in my map. My current map I have 900kCal sitting around and 800K of that is uncooked mushrooms stored in either it's natural sterile environment or moved to a chlorine storage.

Liceloaf is easy, cheap, crap quality and very temporary. Once I don't need it I rip out the little farm I made and repurpose the space. In the above build it became my kitchen. In that kitchen you will notice no musher, because I have a better use for the random berry that shows up.

[Xilo The Odd]

for me, usually whatever 15 bristle berry plants can feed is my early to mid game. once i got some over production of air and food i start taking on more dupes.

hint: use the light of the printer pod, you can plant 15 bristle berry around it and eventually change them to hydroponics so they auto grow. place food storage and kitchen adjacent.

then once you've got a more long term solution setup for a food supply this can be uprooted or turned into some other kind of farm that benefits from having light. its decor bonus is also decent so it makes for a nice gathering spot location or great hall.

[test]

Thank you all for your replies.

I will look into alternatives to liceloaf, like mushrooms or berries.
I also noticed in my game that my dupes were eating raw mealwood so that kinda reduced my liceloaf production. I have since forbidden mealwood from being eaten.

[IdealPoint]

There's nothing wrong with feeding them raw meallice. I don't ever make lice loaf. Just 5 meal lice plants per dupe early usually until hatches, or sometimes mushrooms.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Elidrin:

Early game I'd rather have my dupes digging holes and building new stuff than running on the wheel.

Instead you have them running around supplying slime to mushrooms every now and then. The 8 plant setup requires 18 seconds of wheel time per cycle or 14.4 kg of coal.

Really it just feels strange to use power consumption as the sticking point for bristle blossoms. It's an incredibly minor amount of power used for a plant that requires no dupe labor maintenance beyond harvesting. A better argument against it would be the water consumption (obviously, but the reason I brought it up in this thread in the first place is because it's more water-efficient than liceloaf).