Calorie surplus

[Roxanne4018]

So I noticed that a lot of people on the forum have calorie surpluses that can go way above 100k calories for relatively small colonies. That had me thinking a little bit because the way I play, I tend to have a surplus to last 2-3 days of emergency. 

With the new occupational upgrade and the food system revamp, food takes a bit more effort to produce and duplicants time is more precious than ever but, so far,discussions were more focussed around farming than cooking. Plus fridge are now automated. A food surplus that big may or may not be an inefficient management of duplicants time and colony ressources (more farmers, cooks  and even gofers than necessairy) 

So here are my questions:

is there a purpose to a huge calorie surplus?  If so what is it ?

Is there an ideal calorie production/reserve that could be establish to sustain the colony and it's growth as well as survive emergencies? (Ex: 150% of the daily colony consumption)

If it takes a cook only X% of a cycle the cook to produce enough "ready to eat food" for the colony, what other tasks could he be doing? How could we set his priorities in order for him to cook first ? How could we automate the kitchen and manage farms in a way that produces a set amount of food while still being able to grow the colony without too much micro-management?

 

 

[Zarquan]

Having a calorie surplus can be a good thing.  If you are a growing colony, a surplus implies you can continue growing without expanding your farms or cooking staff.  It also protects you against binge eaters.  It also gives you a nice buffer when you actually hit a deficit.  I personally don't worry about food surpluses.  It'll all get eaten eventually if your colony keeps growing.

I would say the easiest way to use automation to prevent excessive surpluses would be to have an automation based on the fridge storage of finished food.  If all the fridges register as full, close the kitchen.  Open the kitchen when all but x fridges are not full.  You might want to immerse the kitchen in CO2 or something, as there would be food on the stoves and in the mushers, which will spoil and cause problems.  Such an automation scheme is possible and not too difficult, but it would be a bit time consuming to build.

[Roboson]

Good question. For me, it seems like having that huge surplus is good for emergencies too. When my sleet wheat farm overheated rather suddenly, it was the 100K surplus that kept (most) of my doops from dying. 

It mostly just ends up that I have a dedicated cooking dupe and if they're doing their job right, they're cooking more than my colony is eating. Leave them to do that for a few dozen cycles and you get a decent surplus. 

 

My ideal system is have 1 dupe only cook (and eventually get really good at it), and have a large Chlorine filled larder of unpowered refrigerators. That way they cook, and the food will neither go bad or cost me any power (beyond a chlorine pump) to store. For even greater efficiency, you could use CO2 (possibly off of your natural gas generators) to fill the larder. (Since both Carbon Dioxide and Chlorine have the "Sterile atmosphere" tag, food never spoils in them). That way you have that huge buffer for emergencies and once you get enough extra, you can take your cook off duty for a few cycles. 

[Soulwind]

My cook is also a backup farmer.  The cooking stations are prioritized higher so that he cooks by preference but will help with harvesting when not busy cooking.

I personally use ration boxes in a CO2 zone.  Ration boxes hold less food overall but are made of minerals rather than metal. 

[Arash70]

Some make polluted oxygen -> slime farms with those

1-make lots of food 2-let it rot in an enclosed area 3-put some morbs & pufts inside 4-enjoy free oxygen + slime 

[Roboson]

Refrigerators also use minerals, and store more for the same space area. 200Kg for a 4x4 space with fridges, as opposed to 150kg for a 4x4 space with ration boxes. That said, they do require twice as much sandstone for that extra 50 Kg. 

[Soulwind]

Wow am I unobservant.  I've been certain that fridges used metal so much that I had stopped even considering building them.

I've got to go and rebuild my larder now.

[Roxanne4018]

1 hour ago, Roboson said:

When my sleet wheat farm overheated rather suddenly, it was the 100K surplus that kept (most) of my doops from dying. 

How many cycles approx did it take you to solve the situation ? Did you provide an other food source during your shortage ? (Grilled berries/ shrooms ) also now that you dealt with that situation is there a way that you could prevent it in future colony ?

1 hour ago, Roboson said:

My ideal system is have 1 dupe only cook (and eventually get really good at it), and have a large Chlorine filled larder of unpowered refrigerators. That way they cook, and the food will neither go bad or cost me any power (beyond a chlorine pump) to store. For even greater efficiency, you could use CO2 (possibly off of your natural gas generators) to fill the larder. (Since both Carbon Dioxide and Chlorine have the "Sterile atmosphere" tag, food never spoils in them). That way you have that huge buffer for emergencies and once you get enough extra, you can take your cook off duty for a few cycles. 

Yes I know about the sterile properties of C02 and chlorine. I usually prefer C02 as chlorine tends to escape a little with C02 being heavier although I want to figure out a way to use chlorine since it also kills off germs. My goal is to avoid micromanagement like putting my cook on and off duty. It's also to maximize my duplicants time by reducing work and travel time related to producing, cooking and eating food. And finally to figure out how big of a buffer do you really need/Dupe.

 

1 hour ago, Zarquan said:

You might want to immerse the kitchen in CO2 or something, as there would be food on the stoves and in the mushers, which will spoil and cause problems.

I had a kitchen design where only the bottom time would be c02 and the rest would be oxygen. It worked great for mushers and stoves but not so much with the fridge as they seem to need to be fully submerged in c02.

 

51 minutes ago, Soulwind said:

My cook is also a backup farmer.  The cooking stations are prioritized higher so that he cooks by preference but will help with harvesting when not busy cooking.

I had this set up before and it worked just fine  but I want to try something new as real farmers a rough to get good given the different skills required to make everything work (farming, supply and thinkering)

 

Ration box vs fridge:

Ration box are easier to submerge in c02 or chlorine but stores less food per tile.

Fridge use metal when powered and a bit more sandstone.

48 minutes ago, Arash70 said:

Some make polluted oxygen -> slime farms with those

1-make lots of food 2-let it rot in an enclosed area 3-put some morbs & pufts inside 4-enjoy free oxygen + slime 

Is rotten food really necessary? I think morbs are enough to kick in the slime production ?

[TehPlayer14]

I basically have 2 fridges powered on all the time and other huge rooms of fridges in co2 filled with goodies and also about 1mln+ of kcal it dropped from 1.5mln because I changed from mealwood to other

[avc15]

I don't think there's any point to surplus. I'll make some extra plants until I have enough extra food for a few days, and then gradually lower priorities  / disable autoharvest on a few of them until my food stores stabilize.

To me it's all wasted water, which is also additional cooling demand, and a waste of duplicant labor as well.

[TehPlayer14]

2 minutes ago, avc15 said:

I don't think there's any point to surplus. I'll make some extra plants until I have enough extra food for a few days, and then gradually lower priorities  / disable autoharvest on a few of them until my food stores stabilize.

To me it's all wasted water, which is also additional cooling demand, and a waste of duplicant labor as well.

Well not really if you gonna change food type you will have a gap in food production so you can survive till the farms are finished

Especially if your dupes are low level or you haven't played pre-occupational update

[avc15]

Just now, TehPlayer14 said:

Well not really if you gonna change food type you will have a gap in food production so you can survive till the farms are finished

so when I'm switching food types I go back and elevate some priorities / turn on autoharvesting, carry myself back through whatever change is coming.

 

In the end I think it allows faster progression to have an efficient build.

[Keyimin]

Personally, I like having a decent surplus "in the bank" as it were for the same reason others have mentioned: emergencies or changing main food type. 

That said, I find it efficient enough to just stop having harvesting and cooking on a higher priority once the surplus is in place. Basically keep it as one of those "when you've nothing better to do, go ahead and deal with the crops." And I'm likely to switch my farmer and cook's assigned job to something else for a few cycles (or more). By the time they get back to farming/cooking, it's usually enough to restock the surplus I had when they went off to do other things. In the interim, the sweeping folks will just store the "raw" food that falls off from lack of harvest so it doesn't spoil.

In a perfect world, we'd have a food system that allowed us to efficiently produce and cook just enough for daily intake and a few cycles, but because of plant growth cycles, harvesting, and cooking time, that isn't really feasible imho unless you're prepared to deal with potential emergencies without sufficient backup stores. To be fair, that's kinda like real life.

[Roxanne4018]

So I keep thinking about it. Obsessively lol. And so far I am thinking about a having the power shut off on cooking stations and auto sweepers in the farms once fridges are full.  The downside is thats it's inefficient metal wise for farms that are further away. I could store food "in the floors" by having the kitchen floor bein a bunch of doors - metal again lol. The "floor storage" would have to be filled with c02 because it's easier to deal with and. If stored in ration boxes it's still space efficient but i just rememvered that box rations canot ne automates -.- . Eventually the "ready to eat food could be stored in mess hall floors and restrict the kitchen access to my farmer. 

I'll draw it when I have access to my computer and in the meantime will keep thinking about what would be a good amount of emergency food per dupe and find a way to have the conveyer deliver through doors

[Roboson]

The issue was, I built my sleet wheat farm in the same ice biome as my industry area. The thought was to use it as a transitional food source as I moved from mealwood to bristle blossoms. Anyhow, after about 6 harvests my farm pretty much overheats all at once (like over the course of a few cycles, I'm not sure exactly because I obviously wasnt paying enough attention to it XD) and my bristle blossom farm still is too hot for food production!

So I have no food coming in at all, and I have my miners dig their way to a new ice biome for a new sleet wheat farm and have a planterbox farm up in around 3 cycles after I notice my plants aren't growing. The real kicker is that sleet wheat takes FOREVER to grow. So in this case, that big larder kept my 8 dupes going long enough for another round of sleet wheat to be grown, so around 20 cycles. I had to break out the mushbars near the end there though. 

 

Point is, if you have a big cushion of extra food laying around, you can mess up horribly and still recover from it for the most part. 

As far as buffer goes, I would recommend just making a big one (whatever size is comfortable to you) and then give your cooking dupe some extra duties. That way you're food storage will dwindle (slowly because they still cook occasionally) and they're doing other jobs too. My rule of thumb is always "How long can I leave this be without it killing my colony?" and in this case, a few thousand calories of food laying around is enough to say, "I can take my cook off cooking for a dozen cycles or so and it not kill my colony."

[Arash70]

11 hours ago, Roxanne4018 said:

Is rotten food really necessary? I think morbs are enough to kick in the slime production ?

Rotten food makes polluted oxygen which you can filter out with a deodorizer  and make more oxygen.

[FutureJohny]

Rotten food was pre OU way of making polO2. Since now growing mealwood takes dirt, it is no longer viable strategy for most bases.

Now only cheap way are morbs, they consume nothing and make polO2 at steady pace. Only issue is spawning them (uncleaned toilet, dead dupes).

[TheScaryOne]

Dead dupes no longer spawn morbs. I think Klei wanted to discourage us from killing our playthings.

[FutureJohny]

At least we still can turn them into vomit/pee poluted water well.

[SeAn1211]

What else can you do in the late game when everything is done? 100K food only? That is just unreasonable.

I am currently having 3m calories around 500 cycles and the figure keeps climbing with 16 dupes. I can do better if I wanted, but I think 3m is OK.

[FutureJohny]

25 minutes ago, SeAn1211 said:

What else can you do in the late game when everything is done? 100K food only? That is just unreasonable.

I am currently having 3m calories around 500 cycles and the figure keeps climbing with 16 dupes. I can do better if I wanted, but I think 3m is OK.

In the late game, it is decent use for your surplus food. I never intensionally uproot plants, thus my main save has surplus of all plant types I do not use. I was at one point feeding my entire colony of 12 dupes just with frost buns from wild grown sleet wheet. 

However to produce it intensionally is waste of resources, as morbs are almost free.

[SeAn1211]

7 minutes ago, FutureJohny said:

However to produce it intensionally is waste of resources, as morbs are almost free.

The thing is, in the late game, I dont think there is a such thing as waste of resources. Basicly, what you can do has been done already.

I am not intentionally produce excessive amout of food. With my current build, the calory amout just keep climbing. emmm, I guess I need take more dupes in. I need more polluted water. HAHA

[Roxanne4018]

Isn't there a finite amount of resources ? I never went that long but ive read that even geysers die off eventually.  

It's all about each other's playstyles anyways. To me it adds another challenge and fun not to go to 3M calories when you don't even need 350k to survive 10 cycles to me that's what's  unreasonable. That's more than 80% waist. The idea is that we spend a lot of effort to maximize the efficiency of all other types of production but somehow don't care about food ? 

[Zarquan]

Geysers and oil wells are permanent.  I have never seen them run out.  Then again, I generally don't play to cycle 50000, so I don't know for certain.

If your colony keeps growing, you will eventually eat all the food.  None of it will be wasted unless it rots.  If you don't like the excess, you can disable your farms for a while and let the food.  Farms can easily be disabled by turning off the water and using doors to ban entry.

[avc15]

I mean, sure, you're going to eat it, even if you eat it 100 cycles later (as long as you keep it from rotting). But you still introduced the heat from your geyser 100 cycles sooner than necessary, putting lots of extra demand on duplicant labor to handle all the extra power and cooling needs. And the farming itself took extra duplicant labor as well.

Basically it slows down your build in a lot of other ways. But, I can see that it's all a matter of preference. Me, I aim for efficiency.