Should Mealwood use fertilizer instead of dirt?

[Technoincubus]

With new changes and mealwood requiring dirt farming them became much less appealing.

Maybe we should use fertilizer instead of dirt? Fertilizer used only for extremely hard to farm sleet wheat or to melt it into dirt, which is also extremely hard to organize.

And fertilizer available from the start from compost and mid-game from fert,.synth. 

At least them people will make fertilizer synth. not ONLY for power

[Risu]

Their goal for mealwood has always been that it is the first crop you grow and that it is a limited source of food.
You are suppose to be moving on to better crops as the game progresses.
 

[BlueLance]

Adding to what Risu said, the new systems make it that your dupes want better food, so sticking to meal wood may cause your dupes to stress more and eventually reach 100% stress. There is enough dirt to survive for a long enough time, but how the new system handles them eating food they do not like I do not know. Most of my dupes are still on low tiers.

So for me, it using dirt is perfectly fine. It will also force me to learn to create newer better farms and utilise cooking.

[Technoincubus]

Now I just see no reason to upgrade dupe tiers because they will demand great food quality and my colony will suffer from huge stress.

[Kasuha]

You can turn fertilizer to dirt if you warm it up just right.

[Grimgaw]

I think the point is that fertilizer is underused considering we have 2 ways of creating it and the fact that it's minable from day 1.

5 hours ago, Risu said:

Their goal for mealwood has always been that it is the first crop you grow and that it is a limited source of food.
You are suppose to be moving on to better crops as the game progresses.

You say always, but that wasn't the case for at least past 2 updates.

[Risu]

20 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

You say always, but that wasn't the case for at least past 2 updates.

Recall that those updates were when they reverted their previous attempt to make the food how they envisioned it because everyone hated it.
 

[Kasuha]

21 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

I think the point is that fertilizer is underused considering we have 2 ways of creating it and the fact that it's minable from day 1.

You say always, but that wasn't the case for at least past 2 updates.

The game is under development and this mechanic has developed significantly and is still not finished. In early alpha, plants required Fertilizer, including mealwood. That's why it's there all around the starting biome and comes from the compost and fertilizer maker. And that wasn't changed since then even though plants have changed three times already.

[BlueLance]

Also if you do not upgrade your dupes you are probably limiting the ability of your colony by a fair amount. Plus, dirt is limited unless you convert fertilizer into it.

[Grimgaw]

58 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

The game is under development and this mechanic has developed significantly and is still not finished. In early alpha, plants required Fertilizer, including mealwood. That's why it's there all around the starting biome and comes from the compost and fertilizer maker. And that wasn't changed since then even though plants have changed three times already?

Still missing the point of OP.

Now that we have incentives to upgrade to other plants due to job requirements, why not replace dirt requirement with fertilizer, this giving it some early use.

[Kasuha]

9 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

Now that we have incentives to upgrade to other plants due to job requirements, why not replace dirt requirement with fertilizer, this giving it some early use.

The problem being solved here is not finding early use for fertilizer but preventing overuse of mealwood. Fertilizer is the obvious choice, so if devs chose dirt, it was clearly on purpose.

[Ichikai]

In my 450 cycle colony pre update i have about 152 tons of dirt stored and only ever used on farm tiles and research.

150 tons can sustain 30 mealwood for 500 cycles, if not too tired for simple math, not sure how many dupes that would sustain; but is about the size of 1 of the new greenhouse rooms?

Seems like plenty of time to get other ways of food going?

A proper use for fertilizer would be nice though, is this why pacu aren't ingame yet?

[Zarquan]

I believe that berry sludge is the future.  If you are already using fertilizer makers for the natural gas, then you only need 55 kg/cycle of water per dupe.  Without using morbs and only using water from steam geysers, you can support a colony of 41 dupes.  If you use morbs for your oxygen, then it is about 91 dupes. 

Also, @Ichikai 30 mealwood provides enough food for 6 dupes because they reduced the calorie count from 800 to 600.  You can support 8.5 dupes if you make liceloaf.  However, that takes 50 kg of water as well as the dirt. That makes it barely cheaper waterwise than berry sludge (still assuming you are already making the fertilizer as part of your powerplant), so I would transition as soon as possible.

[Guest]

You could boil fertilizer into dirt; in all honesty it's neither that difficult because the temperature needed is 125 degree, so there are synergies possible with aqua tuners inside oil tanks.

 

I'm going to give it a shot once the job system functions properly again.