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Are mushrooms the perfect crop?


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Haven't checked the preview for oil update yet, so I'm not certain if some of these properties that make mushrooms so great are going to be nerfed, but in the outbreak update, mushrooms seem to reign sovereign over other crops, to the point of making growing anything else seem like a waste.

For starters, mushrooms accept a wider, easily achievable temperature range, when compared to other crops, including the fairly tame mealwood, and hands down beating the much harder to grow bristle blossoms and sleet wheat, that require almost OCD levels of care for their cold requirements; shrooms can be grown in the lower parts of your base and be happy with being tended to once in a while.

Mushrooms also require zero irrigation, and I have found that building an empty pipe that runs thru hydroponic farm tiles is enough for them to happily grow.

They also eat two waste products: CO2 from dupes and machinery, and slime from swamp biomes, making them an amazing recycling "station"

Their full grown crop, the mushroom cap, can be cooked at the electric grill, for a nice increase in kcal value, and a pretty darn good meal value of +1 considering how ridiculously easy it is to make, requiring just a shroom cap. Yeah the +3 berry seems yummy, but it requires two hard to grow crops, and doesn't seem to justify the costs involved, in a game all about cost/benefit.

 

Hoping next update brings some incentive to grow different crops than mushrooms, for as it is right now, I can support a population of 30 dupes and growing with my initial mealwood farm, and four rows or roughly 15 mushroom tiles each, with zero reason to grow anything different, specially given the abundance of slime.

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Some drawbacks, in no particular order:

  • Slime is technically finite, so you can't grow mushrooms forever. Edit: Pufts can change that, though.
  • Slime you use this way also technically cuts into the possibility of using it in the Algae Distiller, although I still find those to be more trouble than they are worth.
  • Obtaining slime in the first place is also somewhat hazardous. The way I play, my food is already sustainable by the time I breach a slime biome, and doesn't even use the grill or microbe musher.
  • In the Oil Upgrade, it is useful to redirect CO2 to slicksters to get crude oil. Even before that, it is arguably useful to redirect it to Carbon Skimmers, since they produce power in net when combined with Fertilizer Synthesizers and Natural Gas Generators.
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They're not bad, but the only advantage really is that they're better quality food.  This just doesn't have much of an effect on dupes at the moment.  I would say mushrooms are overall not worth it considering the slime requirement, but only because mealwood is so OP right now, growing a little quicker and not requiring fertilisation (or anything really except a fairly normal temperature/atmosphere).

 

Farming is in serious need of a rebalancing, because as you say the other plants are just crazy high maintenance for what they get you.  I'm guessing the devs want to wait until they're sure they won't have to just rebalance it again a few months later though, which is fair enough while we're in early access and the main point is to see them develop new stuff.  Having an easy food source helps us get to all the new goodies that much faster.

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34 minutes ago, Ciderblock said:

Slime is technically finite, so you can't grow mushrooms forever.

one puff can produce 70 kg of slime per day on idle conditions. And combine it with morbes you got more or less infinit source of slime.

35 minutes ago, Ciderblock said:

In the Oil Upgrade, it is useful to redirect CO2 to slicksters to get crude oil. Even before that, it is arguably useful to redirect it to Carbon Skimmers, since they produce power in net when combined with Fertilizer Synthesizers and Natural Gas Generators.

The plants dont consume the CO2 so I dont see any problems using the CO2 for a planter room.

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Just now, NanoD said:

one puff can produce 70 kg of slime per day on idle conditions. And combine it with morbes you got more or less infinit source of slime.

That's fair. I consider Pufts to be impractically fiddly, however.

1 minute ago, NanoD said:

The plants dont consume the CO2 so I dont see any problems using the CO2 for a planter room.

Sure, it's not an ongoing drain or anything, but it is a one-time loss of CO2 that could've gone somewhere else.

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Wow, thanks a bunch for the lots of replies guys! So adressing a few points.

-Probably just my RNG, but I have not had one game, where I am not literally surrounded by swamp biome on all but north ends, making slime impossible to avoid for me

-I have found that shrooms DO consume the CO2, my mushroom farm periodically requires pumping in of new CO2, as pressure starts dropping from the 1,5kg I stop the pumping at, to roughly 900g after a fair amount of cycles. It is completely closed farm, with three locks to access and only one entrance for the first level, then ladder for all others.

-Didn't know cooking actually lost them nutrition value, must have read or interpreted the recipe wrong, thought the green kcal meant gaining. Still sitting at 500,000kcal reserves in a 30 dupes colony with a few bottomless stomachs gobbling down as much as they will.

-I do agree mealwood is kinda OP at the moment, but had a few problems with those, as colony eventually gets warm enough that they start withering, until I can dig up enough wheezeworts, which seem to have been reduced as well, with some ice biomes not containing a single one, and the largest containing two or three. That said, I did not know that fridges actually seem to destroy heat, as they eventually get cold and chill your colony, been using a liberal amount of those as both heatsinks and storage.

Slimelung exposure IS a very valid concern, I had to disable all digging activities on my colony for a while, after a couple dupes getting up to 54% slimelung consumption, however with new exosuits, it seems the slimelung will be severely nerfed as a threat

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5 minutes ago, Daikataro said:

with three locks to access and only one entrance for the first level, then ladder for all others.

Actually it is the air locks that destroys gas.

 

1 minute ago, manu_x32 said:

Can we capture pufts with the new traps?

I havent try it but usually I use pneumatic doors to capture them.

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5 minutes ago, Daikataro said:

 

-I have found that shrooms DO consume the CO2, my mushroom farm periodically requires pumping in of new CO2, as pressure starts dropping from the 1,5kg I stop the pumping at, to roughly 900g after a fair amount of cycles. It is completely closed farm, with three locks to access and only one entrance for the first level, then ladder for all others.

If you use coal generators, you can also just put those on top of your shroom farm and you'll never be missing C02. ;)

 

 

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1 minute ago, NanoD said:

Actually it is the air locks that destroys gas.

 

I havent try it but usually I use pneumatic doors to capture them.

I use pneumatic doors for hatches. ;) 

They fall through horizontal doors, but they get trapped in vertical ones if the doors don't have a roof. They jump on it, fall in it and get trapped. But I guess I won't need that anymore.

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Just now, manu_x32 said:

They fall through horizontal doors, but they get trapped in vertical ones if the doors don't have a roof. They jump on it, fall in it and get trapped. But I guess I won't need that anymore.

you need 500 plastic for one trapp so it takes long time to make one, and it is only 1 use only. So probably you will have trapped the hatches already when you get enuf plastic :p

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2 minutes ago, manu_x32 said:

If you use coal generators, you can also just put those on top of your shroom farm and you'll never be missing C02. ;)

 

 

I actually have a fair amount of CO2, but my main power plant is sitting inside a chilly ice biome, so what I do is:

-Have an algae deoxidizer at top level, so oxygen will fill the room

-Have empty space below, with a solitary pump sitting there

-The piping goes from the pump, to the top level of the base, just above the mealwood plantation

When CO2 reaches a fair concentration, I activate the pump, which sends the -30°C CO2 over the crops, cooling those and the base as it makes its way down to the bottom of the base, where it is filtered and sent to the mushroom farm at a temperature they like. Used to do that with coal generators, and now with the natural gas generator. Just downloaded the oil update, so I will tell ya'll about my findings, and see if mushrooms still are king this patch.

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2 hours ago, Sabranan said:

Farming is in serious need of a rebalancing, because as you say the other plants are just crazy high maintenance for what they get you.  I'm guessing the devs want to wait until they're sure they won't have to just rebalance it again a few months later though, which is fair enough while we're in early access and the main point is to see them develop new stuff.  Having an easy food source helps us get to all the new goodies that much faster.

Yeah, I was wondering about that.  I mean, think about it: A geyser produces on average about 4kg/s of water.  Sleet Wheat requires 25kg of water per cycle.  That's roughly 42g/s.  With their 20 cycle growth and producing 25 grains, making frost buns turns out to need about 3 plants per dupe, using 125g/s of water.  So, for a base of 10 dupes, you'd be using 1kg/s for a maxed out electrolyzer and 1.25kg/s for the sleet wheat -- more than half the output of the geyser for only 10 dupes.

Mealwood on the other hand tastes terrible, but requires nothing else.  Just plant it in farm tiles or planter boxes and forget it.  Running low on food, build more boxes.  Build too many boxes? Some decays and gets sent to the compost pile.  Sure you'll soon have seeds coming out your ears, but with a resource cost of zip, you can produce oxygen for 40 dupes off that single geyser.

I do like mushrooms mid-game, though.  They don't use a lot of slime and their upkeep is almost as easy as mealwood.  I just stick them in my rooms with the output from my NGGs (I haven't encountered the oil biome yet).  

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1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Yeah, I was wondering about that.  I mean, think about it: A geyser produces on average about 4kg/s of water.  Sleet Wheat requires 25kg of water per cycle.  That's roughly 42g/s.  With their 20 cycle growth and producing 25 grains, making frost buns turns out to need about 3 plants per dupe, using 125g/s of water.  So, for a base of 10 dupes, you'd be using 1kg/s for a maxed out electrolyzer and 1.25kg/s for the sleet wheat -- more than half the output of the geyser for only 10 dupes.

Mealwood on the other hand tastes terrible, but requires nothing else.  Just plant it in farm tiles or planter boxes and forget it.  Running low on food, build more boxes.  Build too many boxes? Some decays and gets sent to the compost pile.  Sure you'll soon have seeds coming out your ears, but with a resource cost of zip, you can produce oxygen for 40 dupes off that single geyser.

I do like mushrooms mid-game, though.  They don't use a lot of slime and their upkeep is almost as easy as mealwood.  I just stick them in my rooms with the output from my NGGs (I haven't encountered the oil biome yet).  

wheat and berries cost too much water compared to other foods

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3 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Yeah, I was wondering about that.  I mean, think about it: A geyser produces on average about 4kg/s of water.  Sleet Wheat requires 25kg of water per cycle.  That's roughly 42g/s.  With their 20 cycle growth and producing 25 grains, making frost buns turns out to need about 3 plants per dupe, using 125g/s of water.  So, for a base of 10 dupes, you'd be using 1kg/s for a maxed out electrolyzer and 1.25kg/s for the sleet wheat -- more than half the output of the geyser for only 10 dupes.

Mealwood on the other hand tastes terrible, but requires nothing else.  Just plant it in farm tiles or planter boxes and forget it.  Running low on food, build more boxes.  Build too many boxes? Some decays and gets sent to the compost pile.  Sure you'll soon have seeds coming out your ears, but with a resource cost of zip, you can produce oxygen for 40 dupes off that single geyser.

I do like mushrooms mid-game, though.  They don't use a lot of slime and their upkeep is almost as easy as mealwood.  I just stick them in my rooms with the output from my NGGs (I haven't encountered the oil biome yet).  

Plus, you can forego the lousy meal penalty 

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4 hours ago, NanoD said:

you need 500 plastic for one trapp so it takes long time to make one, and it is only 1 use only. So probably you will have trapped the hatches already when you get enuf plastic :p

Ouch, I thought they would make those traps easily available to solve the annoying and time consuming ways of trying to trap them right now, where there is no fun at all. 

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4 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

Traps only capture hatches from my testing in debug - couldn't even trap a morb...

crap, I was really excited about easily building slime farms with pufts.

 

7 hours ago, NanoD said:

I havent try it but usually I use pneumatic doors to capture them.

in this case, can you share your trick NanoD? ;)

 

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14 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

Traps only capture hatches from my testing in debug - couldn't even trap a morb...

Yeah only hatches are currently trappable. Think of it as a trial run to get it functional before moving on to the rest.

Edit: Technically the slickster can be trapped too but their bagged state isn't discovered for the delivery point.
 

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4 minutes ago, Risu said:

Yeah only hatches are currently trappable. Think of it as a trial run to get it functional before moving on to the rest.
 

I love the idea of a net on a stick to catch pufts - could have some fun with the "tongue sticking out of the mouth in fixed concentration" as dupes happily skip around catching pufts :D 

*Edit* I couldn't even trap one @Risu - however there was oil present, so maybe he was floating above? Meh. Either way, they're poop for now ;) 

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