Food

[Morlow]

Hey all. I'm new to the game and my first colony died of starvation. I didn't realize how many growing areas I would need to sustain my colony. I have some questions about food.

1.) What is the best setup for food early on for a colony? Having someone cook basic meals? Just leave all the food raw? Build a nutrient dispenser? I ask because on my new colony I just got my fourth citizen and I am already slowly losing cooked meals, as in my single cook can't keep up with only four citizens to feed. Two of the citizens are on high-priority Growing so I have loads of food (lots of growing areas), but my cook can't keep up with the raw food we are producing. It doesn't seem acceptable to have two out of four people full-time cooking to me.

2.) How do I get my cook to cook meat? I killed a boar and put it in my freezer but even though I have a butcher's table set to infinity he won't cook the meat.

[loc978]

I'd recommend basically the way you're doing it (cook stove and freezer) with about 2 meals queued per colonist (make until you have x, where x=colonists*2. This will give you enough surplus food for even the longest solar flares)... try to make the cook's trips to grab food and drop off meals as short as possible. I make 1x1 stockpiles for potatoes, my most common meat, simple meals and fine meals (with the stove 1 tile from the freezer door)... and I generally won't need a second cook and second stove until I get up around 10-12 colonists all eating fine meals.

Fine meals give you the most bang for your buck in food used (5+5), simple meals are almost equal (10 of anything for less nutrition) lavish meals are the least efficient way to go (lots of nutrition but uses 10+10 and tons of time)... but a close second for inefficient is raw food (I think it's 16 for a full stomach), plus the unhappy thought for anything raw aside from berries.

...as for growing zones... again, try to shorten the run from your grow zone to your freezer, take advantage of rich soil if possible (and don't try difficult biomes until you've got a handle on things. Temperate forest and arid shrubland are easy, jungle, desert, and boreal forest are harder, tundra is hardest)... basically try to plan your base for efficiency from the start. Plan before you build.

[muffins]

You can make cooking more efficient by making sure that the raw ingredients and the meal stockpile are close to the stove. Also both butchery and cooking is the same job (cooking), but cooking takes precedence over butchery so if you only have one cook then nothing will get butchered unless you have him take turns cooking/butchering.

Lots of people use nutrient dispensers early on to save labour, then move to cook stoves later on (I myself only use cook stoves).

Pro-tip - save meat for fine or lavish meals. Using meat for plain meals when you have lots of spuds lying around is a waste.

[REMworlder]

I wrote a small guide to how much grown food is needed to keep a colonist going. That might help give you some growth targets. Anyways:

1. A cook shouldn't have much of a problem turning out 4 simple meals a day, but a nutrient paste dispenser can't hurt if you're having trouble keeping in stock. Paste takes cooks out of the equation completely and is the most raw food-efficient meal in the game. It just tastes *really* bad.

Avoid raw food. It's super inefficient, taking around 10 whole plants a day just to keep a single colonist fed (potatoes). Making those potatoes into paste drops the needed number of plants to 3! Hydros drop that to 2!

2. Meat can go into all the meal types, but is specifically required for fine and lavish meals. If you want to force your cook to butcher, you can always manually direct him to butcher by right clicking the butcher's table. You can also put those meals that require meat at the top of the bill queue. Remember your cook has to be skilled enough to make fine and lavish meals.

[Listy]

As its your first game I'll stick to the basics: How many other jobs does the Cook have?
A loose rule of thumb is give a colonist two jobs. A Primary and a secondary, both should ideally be located close to each other. For example at the start cook/Researcher or Cook/Warden (assuming you have a small number of prisoners) is a good combo.

Don't make the cook haul the foods. In the early game its a balancing act and its hard to learn, but once you do get it it'll become second nature.

[ManWithNoName]

My latest game i built a 13x13 growing area and i grew strawberries, i never bother with the disperser i see it as a waste of resources.

Build a room, 4 beds, 4 chairs a table, stove and start growing food and get some power and defenses up, build a butcher table and kill the "odd" animal here and there till i have a refrigeration area thens tart researching, more mining and chopping of tree's. I barricade myself into an area with guns pointing at an entrance was dictating where i want the enemy to approach. My current game the growing area was 13x13 and still is.

Research for me is pneumatic picks, gun turret cooling, hydroponics, geothermal.

If your using a mod like me then pneumatic picks, gun turret cooling, hydroponics, hydroponics 1, hydroponics 2, hydroponics 3, geothermal > your choice

[Morlow]

Thanks for the replies. I did have my cook doing too much. He was having to haul all the food from the growing area, which was taking most of his time. I gave someone else the hauling job and now I'm able to keep up easily. I plan to move into the mountains soon and I will try to relocate my growing areas to be near the entrance so there is less time spent hauling.

[Morlow]

I have a few more random questions so I will use this thread instead of making a bunch of new threads in the forum.

1) When you are mining out rooms in a mountain, is there a maximum room size I shouldn’t go over? 10x10 just like regular rooms?

2) If I want to make a room larger than 10x10 what do I use to support the middle of the room? A single piece of wall?

3) What is a good way to make silver early on, besides killing raiders and selling their stuff? I haven’t found any silver in the hills around me yet.

4) I found some gold in some cryo caskets, and was wondering what is the best use for it? Should I just use it as currency to buy stuff or use it in crafting?

[muffins]

I have a few more random questions so I will use this thread instead of making a bunch of new threads in the forum.

1) When you are mining out rooms in a mountain, is there a maximum room size I shouldn�t go over? 10x10 just like regular rooms?

2) If I want to make a room larger than 10x10 what do I use to support the middle of the room? A single piece of wall?

3) What is a good way to make silver early on, besides killing raiders and selling their stuff? I haven�t found any silver in the hills around me yet.

4) I found some gold in some cryo caskets, and was wondering what is the best use for it? Should I just use it as currency to buy stuff or use it in crafting?

1 & 2 - A roof needs to be supported by a wall, mountain, pillar etc within 10 tiles. If you want a room that is larger you'll need support (pillars, walls, buttresses etc. A single piece of wall will do it.

3 - Craft stuff like melee weapons or clothes to sell to traders. Very early in the game clubs are probably best since they take little material or time to make, and can be made of wood and stone.

The material the items are made of, how much material it took to make it and the quality of the item (depends on crafting skill) all effect the market value. With clothes from low to high value it goes cloth > leather > devilstrand > hyperweave. I usually sell leather goods when I can (leather is usually in short supply), but rely on cotton cloth clothes as the bulk of my sales. Clothes made of Devilstrand I keep for my colonists. With melee weapons gold, silver and plasteel are very valuable but in my opinion it's better to mass produce weapons with more renewable resources (wood maces, stone clubs for example). Once your crafters become very skilled masterwork or superior items made from mere wood/stone fetch some nice money. Plasteel weapons go for a lot, but you might want to save your plasteel for a skilled crafter.

4 - Gold I save up then craft something with it to sell (art, weapons etc) for lots of money.

[Morlow]

Also, here is a big one: is there any way to select multiple trees/bushes at the same time? It drives me crazy clicking each one haha.

[muffins]

Orders > chop wood > click and drag a box over some trees > profit!

[Morlow]

Ahhh how did I not know about that? I was wondering why I couldn’t double click trees. It makes sense that the easiest way would be the same way as mining…

A couple more:

1) A prisoner escaped earlier. As he was escaping I figured I would be able to tell one of my people to go re-capture him, but I wasn’t able to give any orders when I clicked on the prisoner. Is the prisoner just gone once the event begins?

2) Is there any way to target specific enemies when they are attacking? I noticed I can’t right click on enemies and tell my people to attack them, similar to how I couldn’t re-capture my (casually) escaping prisoner.

[REMworlder]

1. Drafting a colonist should enable you to capture that escaping prisoner by right clicking on that prisoner.

2. As long as a colonist is drafted, you should be able to right click on targets to attack.

[Morlow]

Doh! I guess I didn’t try drafting to capture the prisoner. And I think my problem with not being able to target things in battle was that I had multiple colonists selected at the same time, which just made them move to the right-clicked spot instead of attacking. Well, I figured I would be making a ton of mistakes on my first few colonies. I’m learning a lot though!

[Listy]

3 - Craft stuff like melee weapons or clothes to sell to traders.

Personal taste is mass production of Cowboy hats.

Ahhh how did I not know about that? I was wondering why I couldn�t double click trees. It makes sense that the easiest way would be the same way as mining�

A couple more:

1) A prisoner escaped earlier. As he was escaping I figured I would be able to tell one of my people to go re-capture him, but I wasn�t able to give any orders when I clicked on the prisoner. Is the prisoner just gone once the event begins?

2) Is there any way to target specific enemies when they are attacking? I noticed I can�t right click on enemies and tell my people to attack them, similar to how I couldn�t re-capture my (casually) escaping prisoner.

1: If he escaped, I assume he battered his way out of the door? That means you probably didn't have an enclosed prisoner cell capable of holding him.

2: Pause the game, click on the colonists weapon Icon down the bottom of the screen next to the Draft button, and then click on the target. This is useful if you want to target an inanimate object.