Eating Math - Not Adding Up

[GuyPerfect]

In an effort to calculate exactly how many Mealwoods I'd need to plant to sustain a population of Duplicants, I ran across a bit of a statistics problem. See, I usually like to run about 4 Duplicants while setting up a base, and a nice row of 12 Mealwoods in Farm Tiles produces slightly more food than they consume.

When I looked into the stats, I saw that a Duplicant burns 1,000 kcal/cycle. Over the course of 3 cycles, that's 3,000 kcal burned and a single Mealwood produces 800 kcal of Meal Lice. Scale that up to my situation and my Duplicants collectively burn 12,000 kcal and my Mealwood collectively produce 9,600 kcal. In practice, I'm getting a surplus of food, but on paper, I'm down by 20%.

Then I thought, what happens when Duplicants eat? Eating changes the calorie consumption rate by +30,000/cycle, for a net of +29,000 kcal/cycle while eating. Surely this accounts for the discrepancy, since the time spent eating offsets the total average calorie consumption per cycle, right? So I did the math...

• The base calorie rate per Duplicant is -1,000/cycle
• While eating, the calorie rate is modified by +30,000/cycle
• 1 calorie is depleted in 1 / 1,000 cycle.
• 1 calorie is replenished in 1 / 29,000 cycle.
• 1 calorie is depleted and replenished in 1 / 1,000 + 1 / 29,000 = 3 / 2,900 cycle.
• Average processed calories per cycle is 2,900 / 3 = 966 ⅔

Over the course of 3 cycles, four Duplicants will burn+eat 11,600 kcal, which does reduce the average calorie consumption rate, but the 12 Mealwood still only produce 9,600 kcal in that time.

I can't explain how my 12 Mealwood are producing more food than my 4 Duplicants are consuming. Am I doing something wrong? Are there other factors at play? What's the actual average rate of calorie consumption per cycle for a Duplicant?

[NanoD]

Are they only eating mealwood? 

Like muckroots and wild harvested mealwood and other plants?

 

[GuyPerfect]

Just the Meal Lice, yeah. Most of my digging is in the Chlorine/Hydrogen biomes.

[GuyPerfect]

Oop, found the issue. Looks like I had a Lice Loaf on Continuous, and on closer inspection those produce 1000 kcal using only 500 kcal of Meal Lice.

Just goes to show, sometimes you leave things running and forget about them. (-: