RESOLVED: Did Food Growing Just (Dec. 19) Get Tweaked?

[Faerador]

As the title says. Just yesterday, my 38 plots were growing a surplus for my crew. But since firing up this game today, all of the sudden my production is behind a full unit of food for each type. I haven't changed my setup; I haven't recruited more characters. What happened?

EDIT: Something definitely got broken. I went back to an earlier save (about 400 days earlier, so I'm not about to want to play from there...), where I still had the same number of crew and the same grow setup, and I verified that it's completely different food production. I was definitely making surplus from this exact setup before. Something has become broken.

Whatever happened, it has basically wiped out this playthrough, as I have no more space to set up more grow rooms, nor do I have the desire to continue like this. I'm more than a little salty, to be honest.

RESOLUTION: After checking my grow room timers, I'm now almost positive that I missed a meteor strike or fire during combat with Pirates, which must have destroyed a full harvest of crops and set the grow room back a significant period. I tend to stagger my grows in each individual plot so that I'm not harvesting everything all at once, but I noticed my growth percentages (all 38 of them) were all within about 25% of each other. Hence, I'm positive I lost at least one harvest period.

That's what I get for having played until 3am the night before to try finishing off some Pirate ships before calling it a night (that "just one more turn" feeling). I probably didn't notice the red text referencing my harvest during the fight, as there are always a lot of red popups during ship-to-ship combat.

[HangarPilot]

Do you have the food plots set to grow constantly or only if < a certain number?

I have mine to set 30. I'll get everything humming along producing about 0.5 to 1.0 surplus each. Eventually they hit 30 and stop planting. From here on, the display is kind of useless. It will show maybe a 2.0 shortage of fruit because they stopped planting them and all the fruit plots are empty. As soon as I hit 29 they plant every fruit plot again and the cycle repeats.

Another thing to consider is food storage. Did you do anything with your storage? Be 100% certain you have food consumption turned off. Instead of a "meal" from the kitchen, hungry crew can eat an entire crate of any food if you allow it. This goes through more than twice the food over using the kitchen.

Final idea, did you move any kitchens around. Not that, let's say, I've done this ... but moved a kitchen and forgot to change the settings to your preferred recipe? Okay, fine, I just did that. All of a sudden I find my perfectly balanced system out of root vegetables because when I moved the kitchen I forgot to modify the recipe again.

There haven't been any changes I've seen. I'm playing the Experimental branch at the moment and everything there seems the same food-wise.

Edit: One more thought... Did you change the schedule/duties around? When a low-level botanist starts working the plots it can tank your production.

[Faerador]

I have my gardens set to produce constantly. I'm not relying on the food indicators entirely because they are not very exact. I'm literally watching my food inventory drop manually in my current save, and my food production (which was keeping up before) is no longer keeping up. I have all storage crates turned off for "eat from this crate." The crew can only eat meals from the kitchen. I haven't moved the kitchen; I haven't tweaked the meal ratios. I haven't changed who works the gardens; it's the same, best gardeners I have, all at least 8s.

That's what's so puzzling to me. I have literally done nothing other than continue to explore the universe further in these 400 days (from 1100 or so days to 1500+ days). I've had absolutely no incentive to expand my ship, recruit more crew, etc. I'm in end-game. I had BEEN in end-game for the last 600 or so days, basically, as by year 3 my ship and crew were set. I was playing this exact save last night, and my food supplies weren't dropping for the last 100 or so turns (and the readouts, as inaccurate as they may be, displayed growths around -0.4 to +0.1). But then turning it on today, all of the sudden my productivity numbers are reading beyond -1.0. (EDIT: And I've been manually watching my food inventory shrink as production can't keep up, so I'm not just relying on the readout to say "Oh, my food production can't keep up.")

Guess my file just got corrupted? I have literally no clue. I have checked everything else I can think of.

[Faerador]

Double checked everything again, including gas levels. Plenty of CO2 in the grow room, no energy issues, no bad botanist in the mix, storage set to "do not eat." Kitchen ratios set to 13%, 14%, 7%, and 8% respectively for the fruit, veg, meat, and nuts, as they always have been since I started my playthrough (as I like having a meal give my crew 100% of all necessary nutrients in one go).

Both food calculations (for my 1100-day file and my 1500-day file) show a tally being generated by the same number of crew members. I have no prisoners or refugees (as I'm not fond of having either types of "guests" on my ship). I'm not even in a hot star zone (although I don't think that has anything to do with food growth, but who knows?). I literally have no clue.

[HangarPilot]

Very curious indeed. Sorry, I'm out of thoughts. You might send them a copy of your save file using F10 ... maybe they can look in the data and tell you what's wrong?

[Faerador]

The only other thing I can think of is that I missed some sort of plague (maybe a fire or a meteor strike) to my grow room, which shut off everything for a period, skewing both my readout numbers and my actual inventory? I am currently trying to push the days ahead another 20 days or so to see if the predicted values and actual inventory levels reach surplus again. It's my last thought....

[aksel_bugbyte]

Shouldn't be any changes. We are only tweaking the unstable branch and even there have not touched the food production values.

It would be some indirect thing then but if you are not playing on the unstable branch then there has not been any code changes to the game version you are playing at least.