I've tried several times to make a caravan, but they always require insane amounts of food. I just tried to make one with only 2 colonists (no animals) with 400 some pemmican...and it was only enough for around 8 days of food. That seems...a little off.
If this is the way its supposed to be, are there any mods that make it that caravans require less food? I can't see how 2 people would go through more than 400 pemmican in 8 days.
Each colonists eats twice a day. At 12 pemmican per meal (I think? Or is it 15?), that's 24 pemmican / day / colonist, so 48 / day. Total days is 400 / 48 = just 8.3 days of food.
Yeah, Pemmican is made in batches of 15, it's really easy to accumulate huge amounts.
I see. I didn't realize that they ate more than 1 pemmican in a sitting. That makes sense now.
As far as I know it is roughly the same amount they would consume in your colony. Pemmican only has 0.05 food, so you need 20 for a full food bar. That's 40 for two colonists, so during these 8 days they would consume 10 full food bars, which sounds reasonable.
Just give them something else with more nutrition. Technically it is the same, but it looks much better in the caravan screen. ;)
Remember normal meals take 3 days to spoil. By adding 8 normal meals to the caravan your suggesting (2 people) that's an extra 2 days travel. I also like to take Berries as well, your travellers will eat the food that will spoil first before eating the long life pemmican/survival meals.
Also you can generally buy food from other settlements along the way. Taking along 400 smokeleaf joints to trade for food is not the worst idea.
Once you research drop pods, you can effectively halve caravan food costs by launching colonists to their destination instead of walking there like chumps. Science!