What triggers "Colony requires a food source"?

[dirk6824]

My colony produces more barbeque than it consumes, yet I have the "Colony requires a food source" notification active in the upper left. Could I be doing something wrong with food production, or is this a bug? How does the engine recognize whether I have a food source or not (especially when producing meat through hatches)?

What happened was that my food source was Meal Lice in planters, then one day I played for about 20 cycles during which I created a grill, started grilling the meat that came from my stables, and removed all of my planters. After tracking that barbeque production kept up with consumption, I saved and closed the game. The next day after loading the game, the "Colony requires a food source" notification came up, and it has stayed on after another 30 cycles even though I keep increasing in stored barbeque, and I also have a backup of Muckroot to last the colony 6 cycles in an emergency.

At the same time as the notification, a "Crops 0/0" diagnostic also came up on the right in yellow. Does the engine somehow see crops as mandatory for any colony? I could turn off the crop alerts under Diagnostics, but then I risk forgetting to turn them back on in the future, if I start producing any sort of crops in my colony.

[Sasza22]

Seems like the game doesn`t recognize critters as a food source. Most of the time the notification goes away after you plant something. But i`m pretty sure the microbe musher counts as a food source as well. You can tuck one in the corner of the base and the notification should go away.

[dirk6824]

Thanks Sasza, I ended up just building one planter, no crops, and it fixed it. I was saving this as a last resort before I posted here, I was hoping for a solution instead of a workaround, but it'll do. I'll still count my blessings for this pain free workaround.

Edit: Correction, it fixed the notification on the left, but I've still got the diagnostic on the right "Crops 0/1". If at some point I want to get rid of it, I suppose I'll end up planting a meal worm.

[Sasza22]

19 hours ago, dirk6824 said:

Edit: Correction, it fixed the notification on the left, but I've still got the diagnostic on the right "Crops 0/1". If at some point I want to get rid of it, I suppose I'll end up planting a meal worm.

Every farm plot that doesn`t grow shows up on the right but you can turn off the the notifications on the right. You can also plant something that isn`t a food item like like thimble reed or saltvine.