Mealwood looks useless

[Zakery]

Hi all

For early stage of game we often use mealwood but it looks unefficient - we need 20dirt for cycle for 6 cycles to get 600kkal = 120 dirt for 600kkal

using mush bars we have 1000 for 75 dirt  and can upgrade it for some additional kkal with grill.. Only reason is water economy? or maybe something wrong in math?

[BlueLance]

I thought Mush bars and grilled mush bars gave the same calories but one removed the diarrhoea chance.

Meal Lice and Mush bars are there for for the beggining of the game, there is enough dirt on its own to last you between 100-300 cycles depending on the colony size. 

[Zarquan]

2 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

I thought Mush bars and grilled mush bars gave the same calories but one removed the diarrhoea chance.

Meal Lice and Mush bars are there for for the beggining of the game, there is enough dirt on its own to last you between 100-300 cycles depending on the colony size. 

They changed the meta for cooking.  It now always either increases the kcals or keeps them the same.  1200 kcal meal lice -> 1700 kcal liceloaf and 800 kcal mushbar -> 1050 kcal fried mush.

55 minutes ago, Zakery said:

Hi all

For early stage of game we often use mealwood but it looks unefficient - we need 20dirt for cycle for 6 cycles to get 600kkal = 120 dirt for 600kkal

using mush bars we have 1000 for 75 dirt  and can upgrade it for some additional kkal with grill.. Only reason is water economy? or maybe something wrong in math?

Your numbers aren't quite accurate. 

You need 3 cycles to grow mealwood, which only takes 10 kg dirt per cycle, so it takes 30 kg dirt to get 600 kcal.  Then you can use a microbe musher to make it in to liceloaf, which takes 2 meal lice and makes 1700 kcal liceloaf, which ends up costing 60 kg dirt and 50 kg water.  Mush fry takes 75 kg dirt and 75 kg water for 1050 kcal.

For comparison, liceloaf costs ~35 kg dirt and ~29 kg water per dupe, mush fry takes ~71 kg dirt and ~71 kg water per dupe. 

Liceloaf also takes less dupe time, as I believe harvesting and mushing takes more time than mushing then cooking.  Also, cooking takes a chef and cooking stations add a lot more heat. 

When possible, I don't make any mush bars in my base.  Instead, I rush planter boxes and plant mealwood (hopefully before the initial food is finished), then go straight for all techs needed for hydroponic tiles and grow berries because I don't want to run out of dirt.

[krop]

55 minutes ago, Zakery said:

using mush bars we have 1000 for 75 dirt  and can upgrade it for some additional kkal with grill.. Only reason is water economy? or maybe something wrong in math?

Yes. You need a duplicant to produce mush bars and another one to cook them.

[BlueLance]

I also use planters ASAP, i stopped using Mush bars when i realised how quickly the water went away

[MorsDux]

liceloaf is a very good early stage food source, and there is plenty of dirt, more than enough to last until i get to cooled geyser water bristle farming.

[Nativel]

8 hours ago, Zakery said:

using mush bars we have 1000 for 75 dirt  and can upgrade it for some additional kkal with grill.. Only reason is water economy? or maybe something wrong in math?

On start my Chief working as a scientist and he can't use grill, so he just making liceloafs, and eating forcemeat of worms instead of fried dirt. Btw, the worms asking for new friends when they inside, so colonists eating liceloafs with great pleasure.

[Tasolth]

Nice picture. *shudders*

[Zakery]

Yes i mistake with numbers - in my game i see 30 dirt per cycle - its bug that fixed after reload.

But for early farming we have limitation - seeds.

In my current game i find only 5 seed of mealwood and 2 of blossom, so i doomed to use mushbars until i farm additional seed. I even start blossom farm at 7 cycle only to have some more seed in midgame. I know that in regular game we have more seeds - but in my case "random say - no mealwood/blossom in erly game guys". So to solve this problem i use mushrooms - i find big pocket of CD and use it for big mushroom farm.  

[Lifegrow]

1 hour ago, Zakery said:

Yes i mistake with numbers - in my game i see 30 dirt per cycle - its bug that fixed after reload.

But for early farming we have limitation - seeds.

In my current game i find only 5 seed of mealwood and 2 of blossom, so i doomed to use mushbars until i farm additional seed. I even start blossom farm at 7 cycle only to have some more seed in midgame. I know that in regular game we have more seeds - but in my case "random say - no mealwood/blossom in erly game guys". So to solve this problem i use mushrooms - i find big pocket of CD and use it for big mushroom farm.  

Make sure you use an actual "farmer" job assignment for the extra bonus - you should be swimming in seeds in no time.

You should also notice there are a lot more muckroot nowadays than there used to be - so get digging hose cracked tiles for a nice buffer of food.

I think I lasted to cycle 300ish on my current playthrough with meal lice alone, and I wasn't cooking them for the majority of that time... I think that's a reasonable enough buffer to give you time to transition to other foods.

[strawberrygirl]

19 hours ago, Nativel said:

On start my Chief working as a scientist and he can't use grill, so he just making liceloafs, and eating forcemeat of worms instead of fried dirt. Btw, the worms asking for new friends when they inside, so colonists eating liceloafs with great pleasure.

I was looking for the gross button. People actually eat these somewhere in the world. 

[greggbert]

If I'm worrying about how much dirt I'll have at endgame I'm not gonna be having any fun.  Just sayin.  There's obsessive and there's OBSESSIVE.

[PhailRaptor]

47 minutes ago, greggbert said:

If I'm worrying about how much dirt I'll have at endgame I'm not gonna be having any fun.  Just sayin.  There's obsessive and there's OBSESSIVE.

There's enough dirt in just the starter biome that, even using Dirt for Mealwood scaling to 8 Dupes, I still have over 100t of it at cycle 100.  Gather Wheezeworts to put together a water cooler and switch to Berries.

[TheScaryOne]

My starting zone was light on dirt. I quit using mealwood and mush bars at like cycle 15 or so, and I only have something like 40t left at cycle 50.