Farm Guide - Best setups to minmax food production

This guide lists the best ways to generate food - per sol, per water used, and with oxygen production, for each combination of techs.
Info on DLC food production not yet done.

TL;DR/Conclusions

• Farms should be your main food production. They have both the best yield per worker, and better yield per in-dome space than hydroponics.
  
  If you don't want to look the best up: Combine Soybeans with Potatoes. With later techs, replace Soy with Fruit Trees, and (Giant) Potatoes with (Giant) Corn.
  
  
  
• Hydroponic's Microgreens have decent yield per water, though farms get better at that later on. And Algae is the best for oxygen - just need one worker to produce 1 oxygen in a 3-hex building.
  
  
  
• Fungal Farms actually cost oxygen, and have low yield. However, they have the best yield per water (until you get techs and spires to reduce a dome's water usage).
  
  They also serve as a decent failsafe: They don't require in-dome space, only need 1 metal as maintenance, and their food-production is instant - just have them sit idle outside of your domes, and if you find yourself too low on food you can get some (inefficient) food-production right away, to keep you alive until the farms do.

DLC - Ranches

• Normal Ranches are a viable alternative for main food production. Their yield per sol is slightly worse than a farm's without additional crop-types, but ranches do not require botanists, don't need to worry about soil quality, and have better yield per water. In fact, they beat even fungal farms in water-efficiency (except when using geese).
  
  However, with Gene Adaption and/or Giant Crops farms offer significantly greater yield per sol, making ranches worse for late game. Though they still have an advantage for yield per water.
  
  
  
• Outside Ranches are another alternative for main food production. They have better yield per worker than ranches and farms without Gene Adaption/Giant Crops. However, they have worse yield per water than ranches and some farm crops, and worse yield per oxygen than ranches.

Maths

I did the maths here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EbnziHMz9baojTDnFQD2J5DInztB00iq0dV-R2qtgP8/edit#gid=0
Info on hydroponic and fungal farms in the other tabs. Now includes stats for ranches and open farms. Includes more stats than what I posted here.

This assumes yield scales linearly with performance (which is highly likely, but I've never actually seen it confirmed anywhere).

Soil quality affects work performance linearly - no change at 50% quality, -50 at 0, +50 at 100. With other words, if your workers have 150 performance, you can get up to 200 total with maxed soil quality.

Crop failures not taken into account for the maths, not quite sure how they work (and you really didn't minmax things if that happens).

Yield per Sol

Per Sol and worker: Farms are the way to go. Hydroponic and fungal are equal at first, but hydroponic beats fungal once you get better crops. Fungal farms can keep a slight advantage if you get the Superfungus breakthrough.

Hydroponic: Utility crops do not help here.

Tech(s)	Crop(s)	Compared to Farm	Compared to Fungal
None	Leaf Crops	Worse	Equal
Gene Adaption	Rice	Worse	Better (Worse than Superfungus)
Giant Crops	Giant Leaf Crops	Worse	Better (Worse than Superfungus)
Giant Crops + Gene Adaption	Giant Rice	Worse	Better

Farm: Cover Crops + 4x [Crop Type] would require micromanagement. Best micromanagement-free alternative is given as well.

Tech(s)	Crop(s)
None, or Utility Crops	Soybeans + Potatoes
Gene Adaption, or Gene Adaption + Utility Crops	Fruit Trees + Corn
Giant Crops	Soybeans + Giant Potatoes
Utility Crops + Giant Crops	Cover Crops + 4x Giant Potatoes Or Soybeans + Giant Potatoes
Gene Adaption + Giant Crops	Fruit Trees + Giant Corn
Utility Crops + Gene Adaption + Giant Crops	Cover Crops + 4x Giant Corn Or Cover Crops + 2x Giant Corn

If in-dome space is the limiting factor, farms still beat hydroponics. But fungal farms don't require in-dome space at all.

Yield Per Water

Fungal farms are surprisingly good here. No crop-type and crop-rotation beats the fungal farm's yield per water, up until you get the "Water Conservation System" tech, or place a "Water Reclamation System" spire.

The hydroponic farm is kinda boring, when it comes to water: Microgreens have the best yield per water, and don't require any techs.

Farms: Utlity Crops does not help with water-efficiency.

Tech(s)	Crop(s)	Compared to Hydroponic	Compared to Fungal
None	Wheat	Slightly worse	Worse
Gene Adaption	Quinoa	Better	Slightly worse
Giant Crops, or giant + gene	Giant Wheat	Better	Slightly worse

Oxygen

You need just one worker in a (hydroponic) farm to produce oxygen. Workplace performance does not seem to matter at all for this. (Note that there's currently a bug that sometimes causes Hydroponics to produce oxygen, even after being disabled or destroyed)

Farms only have one crop that produces above-average amounts of oxygen: Fruit Trees.

Hydroponics are better if you don't care about yield: Algae produces the same amount of oxygen as Fruit Trees, Kelp half that. Both with 30% the hexes required, and less water needed. The yield per Sol is significantly worse, however, but hydroponic farms are still an option if you need a dome to run without oxygen for a while.

Fungal farms actually consume oxygen. Definitely not a good idea if you're running low on air.

[TheSilentBang]

Great guide! Definitely even helped a player with 500+ hours in the game, can never argue with math done right.

One thing i'd like to add:

Fungal farms, ranches, and hydroponics lose out their early game advantage when you consider the fact that you can get ridiculous amounts of food (100+) when trading with AI colonies. Just offer them 50 metal or concrete and watch your food storage overflow. AI colonies enabled and a decent metal/concrete supply (Which shouldn't be hard early game) are prerequisites to this working.

[zORg_alex]

And ban Vegans! We don't deal with those elves here. It's Mars.

[zORg_alex]

OMG What nerds! I guess you need this to play on 1000% difficulty level. Usually I just start with a ranches inside/outside and forget about food until a great starvation, the I dial food production to 11 cuase I get access to outside farms somwhere there. All guides I needed.

[Hate Bear]

Longtime Mars Survivor here, I definitely agree with the guide.
@Vega, that isn't going to be that useful, since you always get different values out of colonists and it depends on how good they are, how many are assigned, and how hard you're working them.

[Vega]

Needs some numbers in the guide, not just as an attachment. Greatly useful, still. Thanks

[BottomScorer]

Who down-votes this? Why?

[Galatian]

My bad...I was! Was looking at the nominal yield!

[FourGreenFields]

Fruit trees + Giant Corn is 22.16923077 according to the linked spreadsheet. You sure you're not looking at the yield/sol of fruit trees, or the nominal (i.e. 50% soil quality) yield?

[Galatian]

My calculation is per hex. A Farm is 10 Hex, Hydroponics is 3 Hex, so you can fit 3 Hydroponics in the same space and even have one 1 Hex leftover. So best is 15 Food/Sol per one big slice using Giant Rice. With Ganymede Rice it's even 18 Food/Sol. Unless your spreadsheat is wrong Fruit Trees + Giant Corn is just a little bit over 15 Food/Sol combined on one big Hex. Hence my point area for area it's actually a wash. I'm not propagating the use of Hydroponics; but there might be some cases where the smaller size benefits your playstyle.

[FourGreenFields]

Unless things changed since I made the spreadsheet, 5 food per sol is with absolute maximum for hydroponics, requiring gene adaption and giant crops.

Normal farms with gene adaption and giant crops reach a bit over 22 food per sol (fruit trees + giant corn), with micromanagement neither needed nor usefull.