Is 4 mealwood plants per duplicant a good start?

[Jak]

Is 4 mealwood plant boxes enough for each duplicant? I'm not gaining enough food for my colony...

[SnoopyTiga]

Try it out a couple of cycles. Worst case mush some yummy water intense mush bars and plant 6 mealwood per dupe :p

[Babawze]

a single mealwood plant produce 600 every 3 days (if no withering problem) so an average of 200kcal/day if the growth is constant (no withering at all).
Each duplicants need 1k kcal/day(except if one or more has the Bottomles Stomach negative trait), so you would need at least 5 plants per duplicants. If you're cooking it all into lice loaf (which wastes additonal labor and water) you could be okay with 4 per duplicants in the best case. But that is minimal requirement, i would recommend a bit more than that in case of problem. As soon as you can, you should drop mealice for something else.

[SKull]

It's not static anymore. As your farmer increases in skill; or if you have more than one farmer, the farms will be more productive. At least bristle blossoms and mushrooms will. Not sure how it affects the mealwood. But that also grows faster inside a greenhouse I would assume, and gets harvested faster by the farmer as he gets more experienced, which means it can start growing faster.

But four sounds too little outside of a greenhouse and with unspecialized dupes doing the farming. At least two full sized greenhouses (44 farms vs 4x8 = 32) is really on the edge for me with eight dupes at first, but overproduces for eight once you get someone past farm hand. So 32 farms might be enough for eight dupes with a seasoned farmer, but certainly not before that.
I prefer overproducing slightly with two greenhouses or even a lot with three greenhouses to starvation warnings and assorted hassle for the first 20 cycles. 66 farms is plenty with noobs running them at first and enough food for about 20 dupes once you get people leveled. And since getting to 20 dupes takes time, it fits perfectly. Just get the farmer early.

[SnoopyTiga]

Can someone tell me if mealwood is effected by the greenhouse effect at all? Because they DO NOT show up in the tooltip (and ONLY mealwood is missing in the discription). When you select the farming station to be build. Not afterwards.
I am 100% sure the farmers don't "speed up" the mealwood with the animation, but maybe the plants get a boost to be IN a greenhouse?

[kingjames488]

idk about mealwood, but if you can get some natural bristles in your greenhouse they'll mature in 12 cycles instead of 24 and use no water :P

[SKull]

I am pretty sure they get a boost for being in the greenhouse. The greenhouse description is completely general, so there is no reason why mealwood should be excempt.

[SakuraKoi]

Just to give some info:

-The "Greenhouse" room bonus merely means that plants can get tended to have their growth time halfed/growth speed doubled, otherwise there is no effect (same applies to generator rooms)

-Currently, even 6 unprocessed (no tending or loafing) mealwood per duplicant would not be enough due to a bug which affects kcal gain when the game speed is set to double, triple or more (debug) and the game is made laggy.

While I still had ~100% kcal gain at speed one, it was just ~50% at double speed and ~33% at triple speed later in the game (at the start of the game, I did just lose 500kcal of 1500kcal). Meaning that one might need triple the amount of sources (in this case 15 per dupe+1 at least to deal with the delay in growth

-Bristle Blossoms are one of the easiest plants to grow but beware of the water drain, if possible get to add sleet wheat as well

-domestic plants grow at 4 times the pace of their wild counterpart, 8 times if you factor in the tending

[SnoopyTiga]

Originally posted by SKull:

I am pretty sure they get a boost for being in the greenhouse. The greenhouse description is completely general, so there is no reason why mealwood should be excempt.

Is "pretty sure" 100%?
Becaue the description ISN'T completely general. Mealwood are MISSING. As SakuraKoi said:
-The "Greenhouse" room bonus merely means that plants can get tended to have their growth time halfed

If that is true. Mealwood will get 0 benefit from being in a greenhouse. And as far as I observed, it really make nothing to them, wasted space.

[SKull]

It is completely general in that it says "plants". How much more general can you get?

[SnoopyTiga]

Originally posted by SKull:

It is completely general in that it says "plants". How much more general can you get?

Maybe the text isn't true. Simple. Devs are humans, humans make mistakes. Because if you click on the farming station in the build menu and read the description. Mealwood is MISSING as the only "plant". No farmer will EVER fertilize it.. or "buff" it or whatever. So I think. YES... it does nothing at all to mealwood.
We could discuss 2 pages more, or someone just run a 6-8 cycle test with two rooms xD

[SKull]

Originally posted by SnoopyTiga:

Originally posted by SKull:

It is completely general in that it says "plants". How much more general can you get?

Maybe the text isn't true. Simple. Devs are humans, humans make mistakes. Because if you click on the farming station in the build menu and read the description. Mealwood is MISSING as the only "plant". No farmer will EVER fertilize it.. or "buff" it or whatever. So I think. YES... it does nothing at all to mealwood.
We could discuss 2 pages more, or someone just run a 6-8 cycle test with two rooms xD

Sure, but that's the farm station. The greenhouse overlay tooltip says "plants" and "tended". I haven't timed it and CBA, but pretty sure mealwood grows faster in a greenhouse.

[Empath demon]

Lay down a row of mealwood farm tiles and make a proper bristle farm. Honestly, 20-ish of each (plus lots of wheat and peppers from adventures) feed my 16 dupes with tons to spare.