An analysis of Mush Bar and Mush Fry (for max hunger difficulty on forest starts)

[blakemw]

With non-challenge settings you'll never have to touch Mush, but it can be an important food source for challenges. I have done this analysis so I can know exactly how many Microbe Mushers I need to operate instead of just winging it.

Why Mush

There are a few maps where food is difficult to come by, mainly Aridio, Radioactive Forest Moonlet and Frozen Forest Moonlet, and also some mod maps like 100K, also of course Locavore on maps not rich with edible wild plants and critters. Provided there is a water source, and hot water is perfectly fine, Mush Bars are quite viable on these maps, with the major cost being labor rather than dirt or water, of course in the long run dirt would become an issue but if you're playing max difficulty challenges then you aren't a noob without a transition plan, the mush is just a stop-gap until better food production kicks in, so it's really just the early game labor that matters, and on a forest map you're really not going to run out of dirt for a very long time, even on a non-forest map you'll likely have more than enough dirt.

By my measurements making a Mush Bar takes 40 seconds at 0 cuisine and no Lit Workspace and 35 seconds with Lit Workspace, and making a Mush Fry takes 45.5 seconds with +2 Cuisine and no Lit Workspace, and 40 seconds with +2 Cuisine and Lit Workspace (e.g. the base time is 50 seconds).

Cuisine Skill makes a difference to cooking speed, but is not a very strong trait with only a +5% bonus to cooking speed per attribute, a "noob" cook could be assumed to have +3 cuisine, a skilled cook +10 cuisine, however mush bars can also be made by non-cooks with 0 cuisine.

A Mush Bar is created with 1000 food poisoning germs which are a problem on max disease difficulty, these germs can be destroyed by frying into Mush Fry, or by heat, cold or radiation (Spaced Out only), on most maps cold isn't viable unless we're talking like the 100k map, with a 95 C water source heat can be viable, and radiation is extremely viable, a Shine Bug trapped in the same room as the Mush Bars are cooked will more or less instantly destroy any food poisoning germs, radiation is extremely convenient and you only need about 20 rads.

A Cycle has 600 seconds, and I'll assume that on max hunger difficulty the downtime and bedtime required is 125 seconds (max hunger dupes spend quite a while eating), so a Duplicant can cook for 475 seconds per cycle.

A note: the importance of optimized setups

When resorting to mush on max hunger difficulty it can be extremely important to make sure the logistics are streamlined, with the Microbe Musher being right next to water and dirt, and if the Electric Range is used, it should be right next to the Microbe Musher, and ideally locate the musher between the bathroom and mess hall so dupes can grab the mush bar off the floor on the way, saving a delivery to the ration box. This very much minimizes the hauling time required. Hauling time can be devastating for badly optimized setups.

Mush Bars, Purification by Radiation

This is simple enough. Each Mush Bar is 800 kcal, and for each skill level the time to cook, the calories produced, the dupes fed, and the %age of population devoted to food:

• Non-Cook: 35 seconds, 8600 kcal/cycle, 4.3 dupes fed, 23% of population are cooks.
• Noob Cook: 31 seconds, 9750 kcal/cycle, 4.9 dupes fed, 21% of population are cooks.
• Skilled Cook: 24 seconds, 12400 kcal/cycle, 6.2 dupes fed, 16% of population are cooks.

Mush Fry

Each Mush Fry is 1050 kcal, and requires two cooking tasks which takes 2.25x longer than Mush Bar.

• Noob Cook: 69 seconds, 5700 kcal/cycle,  2.8 dupes fed, 35% of population are cooks.
• Skilled Cook: 54 seconds, 7200 kcal/cycle, 3.6 dupes fed, 28% of population are cooks.

 

Accounting for Hamster Wheels

If you are pursuing Super Sustainable or are not blessed with coal, natural gas or hydrogen, then hamster labor also needs to be taken into account. The Electric Grill draws 120 W, and the Microbe Musher draws 240 W. Since the Hamster Wheel produces 400 W, operating the Electric Grill requires an extra 0.3 Duplicants and the Microbe Musher requires 0.6 Duplicants. The Hamster doesn't need any skill, but does need to eat. wrt to lit workspace, you can probably use the Printing Pod or a Shine Bug for free light, but if a dedicated light is required, then an extra 0.025 Duplicant would be needed to power the light. Also if you are pumping water to the Musher, instead of locating the Musher at the water, then running a pump for 7.5 seconds per Mush Bar would add 21% to the hamstering requirements for unskilled dupes (try to avoid pumping water).

 

Mush Bars

1.6 dupes are employed cooking + powering, this doesn't change the amount of food produced or the number of dupes supported, but increases the percentage of the population employed cooking.

• Non-Cook: 8600 kcal/Cycle, 37% of population (40% if pumping water).
• Noob Cook: 9750 kcal/cycle, 33% of population
• Skilled Cook: 12400 kcal/cycle, 26% of population

Even a non-cook produces a reasonable calories profit.

Mush Fry

This is more complicated because the cook is using buildings that require different amounts of power and take different amounts of time but it's basically an average of about 173 W, with about 1.43 dupes being employed cooking + powering.

• Noob Cook: 5700 kcal/cycle, 49.5% of population.
• Skilled Cook: 7750 kcal/cycle, 39.5% of population.

Producing Mush Fry is much more punishing, for a noob cook fully half of the calories produced go to the labor. It's better for the skilled cook but you still get more food from unskilled dupes making plain mush bars.

A note on Swampy

On Swampy starts you might Sludge Press Mud to get Water and Dirt. It requires 1.5 Mud Pressings to get enough dirt to make 1 Mush Bar, each Pressing requires 20 seconds (0 Machinery, without Lit Workspace), so 30 seconds of unskilled labor needs to be added. For Mush Bar this increases process time from 40 to 70 seconds, and for Mush Fry from 90 to 120 seconds. If we were to use the "Noob Cook" scenario, mush bars go up to 58% of the population, and mush fry goes up to 66% of the population. Mush Bar is still better in terms of labor, but the gap does narrow. Both scenarios are bad, so try to hunt down more dirt in preference to Sludge Pressing.

Summary

Mush Bars are much more labor-efficient than Mush Fry. If using totally unskilled labor and hamster wheels, 37% of the population would be devoted to Mushing for Mush Bars, but for Mush Fry it's close to 50% of the population for low skilled cooks and even +10 cuisine cooks making Mush Fry don't match totally unskilled dupes making Mush Bars.

If you have free power like from Natural Gas, then for unskilled Mush Bars only 23% of the population would be devoted to mushing, and for low-skilled Mush Fry it would be 35% of the population. This is not actually all that bad.

One justification for Mush Fry is eliminating the food poisoning germs, but consider using Radiation instead, or even making Curative Tablets: it's definitely less additional labor to cure food poisoning than making Mush Fry, particularly as dupes are not guaranteed to get food poisoning, and are then immune for a while.

Vs Mealwood

In testing a single unskilled Dupe can produce about 2.5x as much calories by farming mealwood than they can making mush bars. A single unskilled dupe can farm up to about 75 mealwood plants. However that is for a perfectly optimized setup where the farmer can do literally nothing else and no other dupe can steal the errands from across the map, I feel it's easier to make a perfectly optimized Mush bar setup than a perfectly optimized Mealwood setup, which does count for something.

But Mealwood, to the extent it is an option, is definitely better for producing food, particularly if you can optimize the commute times.

 

[QuQuasar]

I am conflicted. My love of seeing complex supply problems broken down into math with empirical evidence and testing is in violent disagreement with my irrational hatred of mush bars.

I'm not saying that eating mush bars is not preferable to starvation, I'm just saying that there might be other options. Like cannibalism.

[sirloxley]

2 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

I'm not saying that eating mush bars is not preferable to starvation, I'm just saying that there might be other options. Like cannibalism.

Turning (printable) dupes into a harvestable resource is a grim take, but kind of fits the theme as well. Now I am morally conflicted

[Joe Dee]

4 hours ago, sirloxley said:

Turning (printable) dupes into a harvestable resource is a grim take, but kind of fits the theme as well. Now I am morally conflicted

I have wondered why that wasn't an option... however given that 100-200 kg of a critter only yields 3200 kcal of meat, a 30 kg victimdupe might only be good for about 1000 kcal, not even enough to sustain a single dupe between printing cycles.

[SackMaggie]

As you pointed out mush fry is not worth early game, Since you have a lot of water in some form anyway. In term of dupes ratio for mush bar just do 2 cook(8 dupes), 3 cook(12+ dupes)
With 3 dupe and better food later on can support a lots of dupes unless you try playing something like 50 dupes.

For mealwood... it's simply the best early game food that I've too plant after finishing locavore and then shifted to meat later on.

For meat I think pips > hatches

[tuxii]

2 hours ago, SackMaggie said:

For meat I think pips > hatches

For meat, certainly Cuddle Pips > Hatches

A 96 tile Cuddle Pip ranch with 9 wild Arbor trees can hold 20 Cuddle Pips and 4 eggs without being cramped or overcrowded.  By my calculations one such ranch can support 7 or more dupes with BBQ for free aside from grooming/hugging time.

But if a player wants coal or to have less critters for the sake of frame rate, Hatches would be a better choice.

[blakemw]

On some Spaced Out planetoids there are no Shine Bugs for radiating Mush Bars. A laser beam of space radiation can work superbly, and through the use of mesh tiles can also irradiate other things like I'm also killing food poisoning germs in the Liquid Reservoir.

[Ntr1cate]

3 hours ago, blakemw said:

 laser beam

 

I approve

[ALCRD]

On 10/27/2022 at 7:16 AM, QuQuasar said:

I am conflicted. My love of seeing complex supply problems broken down into math with empirical evidence and testing is in violent disagreement with my irrational hatred of mush bars.

I'm not saying that eating mush bars is not preferable to starvation, I'm just saying that there might be other options. Like cannibalism.

Man i would love an option to butcher Dupe corpses and store their "parts" for later meal prep like you can in "Going Medieval" huge mood penalty for cannibalism included xD