Anyone else fighting for food in the beginning?

[Maetag]

Until I research Small Farms and get a few up and running, it quickly becomes a battle for food at the beginning of the game. Right after building the gate we get a small swarm of newcomers which increases the mouths to feed but it quickly becomes difficult to feed them without having 2+ Specialists working berry-duty.

Is this intentional?

[TGLeviathan]

I just build two fishing shacks and a trapper and that will keep my people happy until about 20 citizens.

[Maetag]

Originally posted by TGLeviathan:

I just build two fishing shacks and a trapper and that will keep my people happy until about 20 citizens.

I would if water was nearby -- which is another thing. :)

[Mycptpugwash]

Finding they cant find food, got plenty just they cant find it to eat it guess my colony is full of stupid people

[archer]

The food balance is a lie. I have a positive production, according to the indicator on top. Something like 18 production, 15 consumption. Yet, my food totals drops steadily.

This is based on the fact that "raw food" now counts as half normal food (the colonist pick two rations instead of 1). This makes prediction useless, and means that, until you can cook food, you will suffer massive shortage. If you get early winter, your colony will be ♥♥♥♥♥♥, no matter what.

[jbradhicks]

I'm actually having the opposite problem: one fishing pier and one large farm growing corn are keeping 40-50 people fed effortlessly with just 4 workers. I do have two cooking shacks open with one cook each, and they're not keeping up with demand, but nobody's complaining -- I had to pull the 2nd (let alone the 3rd) worker off of my fishing pier because they were over-filling my food storage.

I haven't tried trappers or ranches with this build, yet -- mostly because I haven't had to. Fishing is that over-tuned.

[redbird27_98]

Something up with the food issue again. While it's not in the negative. I had over 400 items of food and around 40 colonists. They suddenly went thru this food in a matter of moments. Those totals don't add up.

[Glassman65]

thank Odin I thought it was just me. started 2 new easy level games and my colonist are starving with 2 trappers and 2 piers.... on the easiest level

[iceflake_joanna]

Heya!

We are looking into the balance with food - it seems like it is an either/or -situation - either you have too much or way too little. So any and all feedback on this is appreciated!

If you are starving, even with the trappers and such built, could you confirm if you have colonists working in there normally or are there only one worker in each building?

Thanks already for any information you can provide, and of course, thanks for playing!

[kmbullet67]

Originally posted by iceflake_joanna:

Heya!

We are looking into the balance with food - it seems like it is an either/or -situation - either you have too much or way too little. So any and all feedback on this is appreciated!

If you are starving, even with the trappers and such built, could you confirm if you have colonists working in there normally or are there only one worker in each building?

Thanks already for any information you can provide, and of course, thanks for playing!

Based on what I've seen in my games since the update fish still seems to be fine, I can't say anything about Trappers as I tend to not use them. I will say that the veggie side of the house is totally out of sync, in my most recent game I had berries, corn, cabbage and potatoes along with plenty of fish and had over half my population suffering from malnutrition. Malnutrition has been the main problem with almost every game I've attempted since the update, with the other games the tools and clothing situation being the game breaker.

I just opened my save game to give you exact numbers, 32 total population with 14 currently malnourished. fish-178, cockroaches-162, potatoes-109, corn-62, cabbages-21. I don't see how even if they are eating 2 raw food each time that the amount of food I have shouldn't be enough. Hope these numbers help.

[redbird27_98]

Also noticed that the tool shed and clothing shed aren't working as well.

[iceflake_joanna]

@kmbullet67 - Thanks for the numbers - these at least give us an idea of the situation at hand and help us add in possible solutions to the issues.

@redbird27_98 - Heya! What is happening with them? Do you have colonists working there?

[archer]

Originally posted by iceflake_joanna:

Heya!

We are looking into the balance with food - it seems like it is an either/or -situation - either you have too much or way too little. So any and all feedback on this is appreciated!

A lot of the imbalance is linked to colony efficiency problems rather than the building themselves.

Fishing huts/Trappers, for instance have worker/carriers. The workers harvest the fish/venison, they drop the crate in front of the building... and then they immediately seem to pick the crate and carry it to storage, instead of working back. If you place the buildings too far from storage and miss making roads between them, they spend an excessive amount of time doing "useless" work, which cuts their productivity. Drastically so.

By comparison, fields are working "properly". The workers harvest the field, dropping crates next to it, until harvest's over. By then, most of the crates will have been picked by kids or carriers and brought to storage, and the farmhand can help. Try to imagine how it would work if every single crate of vegetables harvested, the farmhand would leave the field to carry it back to storage before coming back to harvest the next. That's what I see with fishermen and trappers.

Structuring your colony should be a boon to productivity, but as of this tuning, the tolerances are tight enough that it's a necessity rather than an advantage. Fail to organize your colony "correctly" (and you don't have enough pointers to do so) and the productivity falls down, without you understanding why.

[kmbullet67]

I agree with Archer that the tolerances are tight and efficiency goes a long way to solving a lot of problems, as I stated in another post on this subject. But when the food or raw materials are in storage and you still have problems it's seems to me that it's a deeper issue, maybe pathing? I do know one thing that is annoying and makes for difficult layouts is that ALL colonist will ALWAYS go to the first built. At least with the outhouse they do for sure because I did some testing. If you want to check for yourself build four of them one in each corner of your colony and watch them like ants go to the first then second etc. The only way I've found to solve the problem is to build all service buildings in centralized clumps, not the most efficient since you can't put an outhouse close to work places on the edges but the most efficient based on the ai pathing.

[kmbullet67]

I've been doing some testing to try and narrow down the malnutrition issue. Here's what I've found so far.

1 It's not related to storage, I thought maybe it was since I do away with the food storage building and use a storage container for food, but I made the switch without malnutrition.

2 it's not the amount of food available since I had only half the berries in storage compared to colonists for some time and they still were fine. I hadn't built any fields yet and didn't have any other veggies in storage.

3 When I made the switch to growing veggies everything went to hell quick. I'm not sure if it started as soon as I built the fields or after the first harvest, sorry maybe will try again later to see.

So as far as I can tell it's something to do with the growing of veggies that's throwing a monkey wrench into the system, because the same amount of berries in storage no longer works once I add other veggies. It could be that it's the veggies themselves, ie the colonists prefer certain veggies first and those veggies aren't giving enough nutrition for some reason so even though they are getting enough veggies the system doesn't calculate it properly so they become malnourished? Well hopefully this helps because this is collapsing my colony again, 40 colonist with 18 malnourished.

Edit/update; I just did a test colony where I researched fields immediately and started growing corn and potatoes and stopped picking berries altogether. I had no malnutrition, although my radiation sickness was off the charts. I've given up trying to figure this out. Hopefully the devs can find something soon.

[metalsingh]

At the beginning I let my specialists kill the animals near the berrie bushes. Than place the working zone from the food storage tent to it. Voila, always enough food at the starting game! Next than the trapper of course.
Since the last hotfix the colonists harvesting the venison and the berries too (before, only my specalists were able to do it)