Food

[Bitharne]

Early comment on Boreal Forests...I found my last game in one (first time there) to be MUCH easier than temperate forests. Just give everyone a parka and profit. Less resources spent on your freezer and only need a few heaters to boost the temps up to 40-50 where it's comfortable in perma-parkas.

Of course A9 will hurt this a lot with slowing work jobs while wearing the parka...so might add the challenge back to Boreal. So we'll see ^_^

As for food, Like others have said: I don't use Nutrient Paste, cooking seems so much better/simpler/easier oddly enough. Partly due to the silly size of the Paste dispenser and now hoppers it's just cumbersome and the negative thoughts turn me off of it.

So early on I set up a cook stove, usually my first powered building really. I always like to start with a 1 or 2 fire cook when I "embark" so he can learn fast and crank stuff out. I use a setup that someone else suggest on here to balance my cook's time making food and what his other job.

Set a "Make X simple meals" job as first priority that uses veggies and meat some low value. 2-5 or so is a good value to start. I play with this value at times, this is to make sure you have food made and on hand at all times with any raw materials.

The next job is a "Make X fine meals" using, obviously, meat and veggies. Where X is either 2 times colonists or some other value later on...I end up with 100 once I have a dozen or so colonists cuz I like to have spare meals that never rot in my freezer (another reason I like Boreal cuz rarely will food spoil fast if you have flares or other disasters). This helps moral and works as your main meal source as long as you can keep the meat rolling in.

After that you set "Make X simple meals" using ONLY veggies. So once you make your "I need it now!" simple meals that use up any possible food (in case you run out of veggies), and make your "good" meals (or not if your cooking isn't up to par yet) you'll make your backup meals to have on hand in case your good food is out or not htere. This should be set at 2 or 3 times your colonists usually. Maybe set Fine to 2x and this to 3x to be safe.

I end up with my first order being cook to 12-15 (for some reason it's usually 14) and my other two orders set to 100 (I love meals...just saying). This is to ensure I always have food on hand and no starving happens...plus for whatever reason I love seeing a giant freezer full of food ^_^

I'm running 2-3 cooks by this point (nearing two dozen colonists usually).

Also, I usually like to set up a massive freezer off from my dinning room. Connected to the freezer is the kitchen in a small room, usually with 3 stoves. Off the freezer I stick my hydroponics as well.

I like to stick my butcher in the center of the freezer and have a stockpile for animal corpses nearby (centered it wont teleport meat through walls and have it rot if it doesn't get hauled). I mass hunt all herds and you can suspend the butcher jobs to save space and rack up 2-3 dozen animals at times. Works well for as much meat as you'll ever want/need.

This leeds to a Make 25 lavish meal after the emergency food down the line. Dpeends on stocks

Have fun, make the fude!

[Morlow]

Thanks!

Are colonies always the same size? I don't see any way to make them larger but I may be missing it.

[REMworlder]

On the screen where you're deciding where you want to locate your colony, there's a map size option (if that's what you're asking about).

I use 325x325 pretty regularly, but that might be too big for some people who like tighter colonies with less hauling.

[BoogieMan]

Here is an efficient way to design your hydroponic farms, I think it's the most you can light with a single light and not have any unused plots.

I think each set up like this can handle roughly 8 people, provided they get prompt attention and very little time is wasted on empty plots or mature plants not being harvested.

Also be sure to edit the bill for making meals and disable the use of meat on simple meals only allow them for lavish if you have someone with the skill (10) and perhaps Fine meals (6) otherwise, it's wasted unless it's your only source of food which it shouldn't be because it's not sustainable.

Once you have a steady supply of food and are secure (and in a freezer) I like to forbid at least 20 Lavish meals and save for critical mood situations like psychic drones and such. The bonus from eating them can make a real difference.

Lastly, nutrient paste dispenses can be put with 3 of the 4 sides inside a freeze so you can have food on the adjacent hoppers without fear of them spoiling. The front tile that people interact with can be the only exposed side outside of the freezer room, it will still count as blocking in the cold air so it won't leak out.

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[Morlow]

On the screen where you're deciding where you want to locate your colony, there's a map size option (if that's what you're asking about).

I use 325x325 pretty regularly, but that might be too big for some people who like tighter colonies with less hauling.

Ah, I thought that was just the size of the world, not each colony in the world.

[milon]

You choose world size when generating the world, and colony map size when generating the colony map.  You can have your cake and eat it too!

[Morlow]

Aha. That is good. I thought it was kind of weird that they would ask for the map size twice. It's all coming together.

[Morlow]

What is the best way to deal with sieges? My latest colony finally succumbed to a massive siege that I couldn't deal with. I know I didn't have any big firepower to shoot back at them with but how do you obtain big guns (mortars and so forth)? I haven't seen any available from any traders. One thing I wish the game had was a crafting master list for all the different tables, showing what all you could make, even if you need to research things first.

[loc978]

Mortars are a research topic, and once researched are built the same way turrets are, out of metal. There are a number of ways to effectively deal with sieges, sometimes doing more than one at once can be a good way to go.

If you can dig into a mountain and manage to put a majority of your power generation and production under "overhead mountain" area (you have to be pretty lucky with steam vents for this to work... or mod in other ways to produce power... such as fusion reactors, or just drilling more steam vents), then the mortars can't touch you (a mortar shell that lands in a space with "overhead mountain" does no damage), and you can just wait for them to attack.

if you build your own mortars off away from your other buildings (and give them walls in case they explode), they rarely get targeted, and you can shell the raiders as they shell you.

*edit* here's one of my mortar setups, designed for firefighting/repair access and explosion containment:

Those are granite walls, if I remember correctly. Might be slate. Any stone will do.

Another option is to give a few of your people M-24s and take shots at them from extreme range. Remember to target their snipers first.

[Morlow]

What is the difference between an Ore Extractor and a Mine? And how do I make a fissure for the Ore Extractor?

[loc978]

I've never used either of those features before, but it looks like they're very similar things from two different mods.

[Mod] ( Alpha 8 ) Industrialisation v0.95 beta

<Note v0.95 beta>
Mine:
- can only be built on a mining hole.
- requires one "mining drill" to build, you can buy "mining drill" from deep space mining ship.
- use "drill head" for mining, you can buy them from deep space mining ship or make them yourself from lathe.
- mining steel, bronze, uranium, silver, gold and stones
- power consumption: 2400W

and

[MOD] ( Alpha 8 ) Mechanical Defence 2

Features:
>>Ore extractor - Machine that digs precious metals from the earth. Has a small chance to find rubies which can sell for a good amount 
>>Fissure generator - Machine capable of creating fissure in the earth for the ore extractor to reach the metals buried deep within.

...So there should be a fissure generator somewhere in MD2's research tree. I've only ever used that one for the mechanical walls and droids.

Are you using the Epyk modpack? It looks like there's a bit of functional overlap in some of the included mods.

[Sorenzo]

As for food, I got used to refrigerating my kitchen area to prevent butchered meat and finished meals from rotting. Now I've taken to placing the entire kitchen - A butcher table and two cook stoves to start, placed with room for more - inside the freezer. Saves my cook from walking back and forth, and I can tell him to drop meals on the ground. Tables and chairs for eating are just outside the room, and the whole thing is near the rooms or dormatories so my colonists can get breakfast quickly. I only cook fine meals, unless I'm running out (after a battle, for example) and I need unskilled workers to cook too. I also have people cooking simple meals until they reach 6 cooking skill. Cooking quickly becomes a full-time job, and eventually you want more than one (though not until you get well over 10 colonists). For that reason, I suggest picking a cook with more than 6 skill and an "apprentice" with less than 6 skill at the start of the game. The cook will make fine meals (or train up with simple ones until he can) while the "apprentice", who also has full priority on cooking, will do the butchering, which requires no skill but does raise the butcher's cooking skill. It does reduce efficiency, though.

I wish part of the "growing" work behaviour was that when a character currently growing decides to rest, they'll instead haul nearby foodstuffs before doing so. As it is, you have to manually order your growers to haul food, and nightfall is a good time to do so since they're going back home anyway.

I suggest saving up gold until you have a high-skilled artist, then make art. It gives really high returns. My main source of silver, honestly, is selling human meat to bulk goods traders... It's kind of overpowered, I think. You butcher a fridge full of people and you're looking at thousands of silver. Why are you looking at me like that? I'm not actually eating them. Just sound business advice, really. Gravedigging has a high labour cost. And it's such a waste to throw away all that delicious, delicious m... uh...

Selling clothes is a great choice too, but your first priority should be mining silver directly. If you start out with a high skilled artist, you might make a great return if you make a silver statue, but I haven't tried.

Edit: By the way, drafting or undrafting colonists is almost always the solution if you don't know why you can't order your colonist to do something. The rest of the time, you're trying to order them to do something another colonist is planning on doing.