[A13] Food Stats

[milon]

Food stats for Alpha 13 - Plants Edition

I didn't see this done yet, so I went ahead and did some number crunching.  This includes all edible plants, including wild plants & haygrass.  All raw data was taken from the A13 Defs files (the wiki is quite outdated).  This is all theoretical and hasn't been tested for accuracy (but should be correct).  Calculations were not rounded off at any point.  Since I don't know how the game handles numbers internally, expect to see some slight differences when compared to actual playing.  See the attached .xls file if you're a nerd like me and want to dig deeper.  And please let me know if I've made any mistakes!

The results could be classified as Holy Agave, Batman!! and has me questioning the value of Haygrass.

I've highlighted the wild plants & haygrass to make reading/planning easier:



Breakdown:

• Nutrition per day is what you want to max out for feeding your colony
• Market value per day is what you want to max out for selling
• growDays per plant is what you want to minimize if you need a harvest now (Ice Sheet, I'm looking at you)

Notes:

• Raspberry is a wild plant (unplantable), and is found in AridShrubland, BorealForest, Tundra, TemperateForest, & TropicalRainforest
• Agave is also wild, and is found in AridShrubland, Desert, & ExtremeDesert
• Strawberry & Wild Raspberry both harvest "berries", which are the same thing but grow differently
• Agave, when available, is generally the best thing going
• Raspberries are 2nd best
• If you're not exploiting wild plants, go with Rice @ HydroponicsBasin
• If you're skipping hydroponics, go with Corn or Rice @ RichSoil depending on your needs
• Haygrass always sucks, especially since animals that eat it can also eat other plants & meals (I think)
• Rice, strawberries, and potatoes are the only foods that can be grown in hydroponics
• The AteRaw debuff is given by Rice, Potato, & Agave.  Which means it is not given by Strawberry, Corn, & Raspberry.
• MarshyTerrain is not Marsh (which does not have a GrowSoil tag and cannot be planted on).  I'm not totally certain what MarshyTerrain is, or even if it's used, but it has the same fertility as Gravel, so meh.
• I make the assumption that harvestYield is the max crop yield for a plant. There is no more "minimum" amount harvested. Harvesting is based on the colonist's skill level, and there's a chance for total harvest failure.
• All calculations assume perfect lighting, temperature, and harvesting
• Plants don't grow at night, so I think Rice growing in a hydroponics basin actually needs more than 1 day
• I'm not totally certain about the function of fertilityFactorGrowthRate. I'm think it's a measure of plant dependency of soil fertility, with 1.0 meaning the plant is totally dependent on soil fertility and 0.0 meaning the plant completely ignores soil fertility.  I treated this as a linear interpolation between the two.
• I assume Tynan will nerf the wild plants and perhaps boost haygrass after he sees this

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[PotatoeTater]

Thank you for doing the hard work to get this 

[milon]

LOL, I think I was right about the nutrition of plant vs harvested item.  Why do plants have nutrition?  Because animals eat them, silly milon!

I'm working on a corrected version and should have it online shortly.  Watch for the edit!  It will also include Market Value per day!

EDIT - And update done!

EDIT 2 - Can anyone confirm / deny / provide info on Notes #11, 12, 14, & 15?

[cultist]

Nice list. Nothing terribly surprising on it, but nice to have the information.

The point about wild plants being "best" is sort of moot I think. Because you can't dictate where and when they grow, you can't harvest them reliably or depend on them for food. Any other growing option wastes much less pawn time overall walking and hauling.

[Gaiboru]

Thanks a lot for the list, it really helps me out 

[milon]

^ You're welcome, and I'm glad to help. I learned a lot from it. My biggest takeaway was this:
Hydroponics = rice
Rich soil = corn
Soil = rice/corn

I've exploited wild plants before. You just keep everything else cut, and occasionally harvest the wild plants. I've also seen maps (not mine) in prior alphas that were virtually all wild plants.  It takes a lot to get set up, but then I'd very profitable, immune to blight, and requires no planting time.

And I'm at least hopeful that haygrass will get some kind of boost.

[StorymasterQ]

• Nutrition per day is what you want to max out for feeding your colony
• Market value per day is what you want to max out for selling
• growDays per plant is what you want to max out if you need a harvest now (Ice Sheet, I'm looking at you)

Surely you mean 'minimize' for growDays? The smaller the better, right?

[Damien Hart]

11. I may be totally wrong, but IIRC the MarshyTerrain is a leftover from older versions of the jungle. I think it was the jungle equivalent of MossySoil. So if anyone happens to have an old alpha version handy...

14. Pretty sure that's the total duration of time spent actually growing, so not including any time it spends idle, eg. when the light/temp isn't sufficient for growing, or factored against its growth rate for sub-standard light/temp levels. It's not an literal count of game days.

[milon]

Yes to all of those; that's what I was thinking. I'll go fix my typo now.

[Chibiabos]

Particularly when your colony is small, you may need colonists to do more than one thing, in which case less labor for the same output is better -- that is, less labor going into nutritional output is better.  Corn is king for this -- your farmer doesn't have to sew nor reap as often, meaning they're more frequently freed up to do other tasks.  I often do need to sew a small farm of rice while waiting for corn, but once the corn starts rolling in, that's all I sew for food ... except haygrass, which I'm re-considering given the chart there.  The one advantage haygrass has is storage efficiency -- haygrass can be stored in stacks of up to 200.  I won't say its not a factor, but its not enough for me to stay loyal to it.

[b0rsuk]

Raw DPS (nutrition per day or whatever) is not always the best. Work time has been mentioned. Sometimes you need food as fast as possible. Corn won't work too well in presence of a poison ship. Haygrass might not be stellar, but storage space benefit is awesome. If your growing period is 10 days, corn isn't a great idea.

On the other hand, if you have a colonist(s) with Green Thumb, you may want to trade their time to keep them happy. So go with rice.

Potatoes are slightly disappointing according to these stats, but they are very sturdy and take ages to spoil.

[milon]

That's a good point about work to plant & harvest, and also about storage space. I usually run smaller colonies and neither has really been an issue for me. I'll see if I can build that in though.

[Damien Hart]

But wouldn't the cost of labour be more apparent in a smaller colony than a larger one?

[milon]

Probably, but I just kind of set-and-forget, so I haven't compared to anything else.  And I usually plant corn anyway, so it's not that often that I need to plant/harvest.  (And another reason why I did this - I was curious about the results.)

And while I'm looking at adding more stuff in, I may add in the rot time too.  Anyone know how the rot mechanic works?  There's daysToRotStart, but how long does something take to fully rot?

[Damien Hart]

Fair enough, I probably wouldn't notice it either if I didn't mostly play the boreal forest.

Anyone know how the rot mechanic works?  There's daysToRotStart, but how long does something take to fully rot?

All food seems to rot instantly out of existence, so daysToRotStart would probably be the only thing to compare. Not unless you wanted to test the effects of heat and weather, though theoretically they'd all be affected the same.

What I would be interested in seeing is a comparison of butchered vs unbutchered corpse nutrition values. I'd like to know whether to chop up raiders before I feed them to my dogs/wargs.