Anyone has experience setting up specialized Farming domes?

[SievertChaser]

So I want to maximize the utility from the water conservation spire - residence quality bonus from farms be damned - and build a medium dome dedicated solely to food production.

Has anyone tried such a thing and step on any rakes, pun intended?

From what I understand, after you upgrade soil quality, half or more of the Farm workforce becomes redundant (no longer affects the output), so it’s possible to run such a dome with a very small overall crew, while using the botanist needs profile to limit the number of required services (I plan to offload the medical needs to other nearby domes).

Right now I’m thinking of six farms, two quarters, grocery, art store, with three large sections in reserve, filled up with shrubbery. Most optimistically, nine farms, one apartment tower, one large section as garden.

Just by how much can you reduce the work crew once soil quality is 100%? Wiki says

The Farm is an interior building. It is worked by up to six Colonists in a single shift to produce food. The soil quality mechanic increases the building's performance and subsequent yield if the soil quality is above 50%, and decreases the same if soil quality is below 50%. At 100% soil quality the +50 performance is equivalent to an extra 3 free Botanists working the field, and will allow successful crops with at least 1 worker to keep the water flowing. A farm at 0% soil quality will suffer -50 performance and may struggle to grow crops ever again. Farms can be demolished and rebuilt to reset their soil quality to 50% at the cost of some concrete.

[grapplehoeker]

I have tried it out of curiosity a long time ago and dismissed it as unnecessary.
I provide a single farm to every small/medium dome and two to every megadome. This is more than enough to feed all, especially in end game,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1622924759
So, I have two questions, one, why do you need to try this and why would you need to reduce the work crew?
Don't forget that researching Farm Automation will mean an automatic work crew reduction to just 4 is possible.

[Bored Peon]

If you make a farm dome then you should be using the water reclamation as a spire.

Not really any point to having a farm dome unless maybe you are trading food to another colony.

One farm per dome for the comfort bonus is more than enough to provide food.

[mulberryman]

i personally have a farm dome that is just farms, plus a security station grocer and dinner in the area where it connects to the residential dome

with the water reclamation spire

i find that once soil quality gets to 100 each farm easily produces over 100 food every 8 days so a single farm dome will be all you need until much later on

[MaebeKnot]

I still go back and forth between farm domes and having at least one farm per dome. I like farm domes better. Early game the comfort can be nice but plenty of ways to get by without it. With large enough scale a lot of water can be saved with farm domes. Also specialized domes work really great in many cases. Specifically it goes a long way with min/maxing spires.

Farms have a huge foot print and employee very few people when compared to a dome that does manufacturing or research. Especially when you get the tech to reduce the work force by 2. This makes it super easy to give them housing, cover their service needs and have a bunch of farm plots still.

Should also keep in mind, I zerg rush Medium Dome as soon as possible. Yet not neglecting super important tech to get me to a place to use a Medium Domes. I highly recommend this to everyone. It also makes it easier to get that extra 10 passengers research making the founder group ~80% bigger. Making it significantly easier to do things other then just staffing service buildings with the founders. This means I am never making a farm dome on something smaller then medium and have a good head start to making this my first farm dome.

With the water reclaiming spire being the easier one to get early game, and water being tricky at first to collect. I've now have a great head start on stock piling food and getting a manufacturing dome with my next dome. Keep in mind this first dome will also double as a rare metal (and metal) mining dome and polymer dome until I can relocate the polymer factory to my second dome and run out of those initial metals.

Side note I only use Small Domes to reach a otherwise impossible to reach deposit of minerals.

Connect a Farm Dome to other domes and you will have a good time of sharing service buildings if needed when you have the random moments of everyone in one domes wants the same service building(s). Which is not really Farm Dome specific trick. Yet leads into the next tip.

It is important to ensure there is at least one Farm Dome close to the other domes to prevent logistic issues with getting food everyone. Most people fail with Farm Domes because the food is to far away and becomes a nightmare to move it to where it is needed.

I hope you found some helpful tips here and good luck!

[SkiRich]

I like the farm dome approach. As someone already stated you need to make sure to distribute your food if you have a large colony. I find shuttles perfect for that.
Here is my typical setup.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1351901147

[Blake Walsh]

Originally posted by MaebeKnot:

I still go back and forth between farm domes and having at least one farm per dome. I like farm domes better.

I've pretty much gone the other way. Building farms where the population is greatly reduces food logistics headaches and maximizes the value of the +5 comfort bonus per farm: the more colonists that enjoy the +5 comfort the better, thus the farms should be in the domes with the most population. Q.E.D.

So the main reason to have farm domes is to save water, but in the grand scheme of things water is not that expensive. If you're exporting rare metals you can afford to buy vaporators in bulk and they only require metal maintenance unlike the Water Reclamation that munches machinery for maintenance and furthermore requires a non-trivial workforce, it also takes up a valuable Spire slot that could go to a better Spire such as Arcology, Medical Center or Hanging Gardens.

If for some reason you're dead set against running a profitable colony then the farming dome might be of some value due to the water reduction, but honestly, just get a rare metal mine going and buy vaporators.

Water reclamation spires can be of more valuable on maps with brutal dust storms because it makes it easier to store and produce enough water for the duration of the dust storm, so I am a bit more inclined to build that spire on such maps - altough fact is that vaporators and water tanks do only require metal maintenance so just spamming them remains a pretty attractive approach.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Blake Walsh:

So the main reason to have farm domes is to save water, but in the grand scheme of things water is not that expensive. If you're exporting rare metals you can afford to buy vaporators in bulk and they only require metal maintenance unlike the Water Reclamation that munches machinery for maintenance and furthermore requires a non-trivial workforce, it also takes up a valuable Spire slot that could go to a better Spire such as Arcology, Medical Center or Hanging Gardens.

If for some reason you're dead set against running a profitable colony then the farming dome might be of some value due to the water reduction, but honestly, just get a rare metal mine going and buy vaporators.

Water reclamation spires can be of more valuable on maps with brutal dust storms because it makes it easier to store and produce enough water for the duration of the dust storm, so I am a bit more inclined to build that spire on such maps - altough fact is that vaporators and water tanks do only require metal maintenance so just spamming them remains a pretty attractive approach.

Dust is an issue to be sure, however, that is also one of the reasons I avoid dust when selecting my map and allow for heavy meteor showers instead, but whatever ;)
As to vaporators, absolutely. I will buy some initially, but ultimately I'll research them and build them myself. Water self sufficiency is always a goal of mine and the sooner I can end the dependence on Martian water sources, the better. Certainly, long before any of them are depleted. For that reason, I rarely if ever build a water spire and of all of the spires, the most commonly used will be the sanatorium.

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by Blake Walsh:

If for some reason you're dead set against running a profitable colony then the farming dome might be of some value due to the water reduction, but honestly, just get a rare metal mine going and buy vaporators.

Water reclamation spires can be of more valuable on maps with brutal dust storms because it makes it easier to store and produce enough water for the duration of the dust storm, so I am a bit more inclined to build that spire on such maps - altough fact is that vaporators and water tanks do only require metal maintenance so just spamming them remains a pretty attractive approach.

LOL, that describes me. 3/4 dust storm rating, no rare metal or non-deep water anywhere near the big flat spot I picked as a colony, and at Russia’s reduced rare metal rate, the price tag of the vaporators does bite. It’s lucky that I’ve got RC Drillers so I can mine at leisure with no colonists on-site, but I’m still cutting it very close with water.

I’ve already got the spire and two of the planned six farms going.

[KDubya]

I also prefer a farm in every dome and two in a mega dome. Its just so much easier for logistics of delivering food to where the people are. If you have a central food dome your shuttles will be swamped trying to deliver all that food to all the other domes.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

Farm domes are the way to go. Pack appartments in there, water reclamation system and farms. Thats all you need. Connect it to a nearby dome with access to services (maybe a service dome, as center of the city). Machine parts as upkeep is negligible as soon as you have your first machine parts factory going which is usually not later than sol 15. By that time you probably only started with your agridome and maybe maintained it once. By using a water reclamation system you can potentially save 2-3 water extractors which also use machine parts. I like to use water vaporizers more but early on they are expensive. And again, with a water reclamation you can minimise the use of your water from those, saving some precious funds along the way.

[zufilico]

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

So I want to maximize the utility from the water conservation spire - residence quality bonus from farms be damned - and build a medium dome dedicated solely to food production.

Has anyone tried such a thing and step on any rakes, pun intended?

From what I understand, after you upgrade soil quality, half or more of the Farm workforce becomes redundant (no longer affects the output), so it’s possible to run such a dome with a very small overall crew, while using the botanist needs profile to limit the number of required services (I plan to offload the medical needs to other nearby domes).

Right now I’m thinking of six farms, two quarters, grocery, art store, with three large sections in reserve, filled up with shrubbery. Most optimistically, nine farms, one apartment tower, one large section as garden.

Just by how much can you reduce the work crew once soil quality is 100%? Wiki says

The Farm is an interior building. It is worked by up to six Colonists in a single shift to produce food. The soil quality mechanic increases the building's performance and subsequent yield if the soil quality is above 50%, and decreases the same if soil quality is below 50%. At 100% soil quality the +50 performance is equivalent to an extra 3 free Botanists working the field, and will allow successful crops with at least 1 worker to keep the water flowing. A farm at 0% soil quality will suffer -50 performance and may struggle to grow crops ever again. Farms can be demolished and rebuilt to reset their soil quality to 50% at the cost of some concrete.

I'm using silva modular apartments, in an triangle can put 48 agaist apartments. In an medium dome spire reciclyng water 6 modulars 3 farms with 100% soil quality doing corn, weath and the other get 10% back of the corn. I f wou playing with US place mega mall and problem solve, some small parks and grocery , don't forget 1 security and 1 medic. Can put small domes linked to school and retired people.
It's just for produce food don't care about happiness on this but solve. FUngal farms I just use if get the breaktrhouth tech . I just need reach something 20% higher than average consume food per sol and be fine, unless an some bugs or dust devils do all stored food go.

Sometimes other tech for the hidroponic, giant rice is very good one to, only if you can produce very big water demands. On this way may can produce 400 food per sol and dome farming.

[zufilico]

Another thing, if you have the dls space race you can trade with other, so produce metals and trade for food or otherr thing the rivals need. But I only have problem with food when for no reason the food vanishing. One time I was having 10k food, after storm 50% colony die starving....