Mrs. Bronzecotter looked up from sweeping the kitchen floors. She smiled. That was the sound of crates of cabbages being loaded off in the storage area outside. She turned to her assistant. "Quick, Sidney, heat the ovens, we're making stew." With a brisk step, she walked outside and stopped in her tracks. "Heathens!", she exclaimed. "Pigs!" Guilty faces turned around at her, and Corporal Hatwright mumbled an apologetic "Sorry, ma'am" around a mouthful of raw cabbage. It was all ruined. Mrs. Bronzecotter sat on the kitchen steps and cried. Another day without stew. So, I have the following: 1 kitchen, 3 ovens, overseer and two personnel dedicated to this and nothing else 2 fields of cabbages, 2 fields of wheat, 4 workcrews of at least 3 people assigned to farm only occasional auroch and fishperson steaks coming in from hunting and raiding occasional forage of mushrooms about 50 colonists in all My problem is that I cannot seem to get any amount of cooked food prepared. I have set the kitchen to standing orders for stew, bread and cooked steaks, and they do make them, but only rarely, because the colonists keep gulping down food raw. It's frustrating, really. I assume that my colonists are simply too hungry to wait for the food to be cooked. I haven't had anyone starve (I even managed to free everyone who got stuck in furniture before they died), but I seem to have no reserves whatsoever, so people keep eating wheat flour and raw cabbages, mushrooms and steaks. How many people do I need to farm? how much space do I have to allocate? I'd appreciate any help you can give. Or is this just a matter of balancing in flow?
Have you observed the actions of the kitchen workcrew? Have you checked to see what their permissions are? Is the entire work crew assigned to a single person task that fire one reason or another isn't being accomplished, like player ordered butchery on a corpse that is inaccessible or doesn't exist anymore?
I have a suspicion that CE currently has a farming paradox. Namely, the more resources you dedicate to farming, the less food you will have. I'm not sure exactly why this could be, as the eat food jobs should lock the target food item when they commence, so no other colonist can pinch it before the hungry one can reach it. But... I'm seeing significant surpluses when running two pumpkin and three wheat fields, with standing orders for steaks/fish steaks and pumpkin stew prioritised higher than bread (and a three-vat brewery as well). Admittedly I got a lot of migrant overseers during this run, but the thing was: only the kitchen work crew was job filtered (to Workshop and Hauling only), nobody had died, and I took three-person migration and released convicts every time they came up. After a couple of starving-forage runs thanks to fish folk wiping out crops, eventually surplus began rolling in. Also, you can have more ovens than kitchen staff, with the ratio being dependent on how far they have to walk to pick up ingredients; one cook can load a couple of ovens before the first one is done cooking. Thing is, with the current food model, the only difference I'm aware of between cooked and raw is the happiness level of the memory that eating each type generates. So in theory you could grow nothing but wheat, ignore the kitchen, and just have a brewery or two churn out booze to help them forget their bad diet.
I've been watching my colonists pretty closely and I'd say that the major obstacle to a regular bread supply is the fact that colonists eat the raw food before it can be processed (which I understand has been fixed for the next patch). The only time I had a huge surplus of raw food with nobody eating it, My entire work crew was hung up on one small task which, when I cleared it, They all started working. Bearing in mind I set the kitchen crew to be dedicated to workshop jobs.
Hmm. I've only had this problem a few times, most of my recent playthroughs have had very smooth food systems. For my own part, I staff the kitchen fully as soon as I fully staff my farms, and provide enough ovens that everyone can cook at once, plus two workbenches. I've also started putting the food stockpile in the center of a ying yang of farms and kitchen. This seems to ensure that it gets in before people can eat the raw stuff. As I grow I have rarely seen a need to expand the kitchen beyond one full work crew, but that amount is definitely needed. Consider tasking naturalist and other wanderers as hunters (if you have the guns) and constantly try to send out a party as foragers for supplementing.
Thats nowhere near enough to maintain 50 colonists with the current balance. As a guess I'd say 6-9 fields, 2 x 5 person farming crews and 2 or 3 kitchens with 4 person crews and 5 to 6 ovens. Basically, if you want a supply of cooked food, you can't do much else! Edit: see below - might just be possible to keep your head above water with those work crews, if you set it up right.
Has anyone seen the following thing once you get up to 80 or more colonists and 20 + work crews that no matter how many free or dedicated work crews crops will spoil because they aren't tended to on time? I had 8 + fields on that run and nearly 30 - 40 % of the crops were spoiled even though I had more then enough free work crews to deal with it. During that play through at 50 colonists I could have a good supply of raw food, cooked food on the other hand was rare - once I got over 60 workers crop spoilage became a problem and the colony eventually starved.
Current run through was intended to be very optimised for cooked food production. Actually managing to supply 60+ colonists on 6 fields (2 dedicated crews) and 2 kitchens and still produce a big excess of cooked food. Keys were getting the kitchens near the fields, keeping the fishmen out of the fields and focussing the production i.e. 3 fields producing only cabbage feeding a kitchen only producing cabbage soup. I imagine this will get even more efficient with the stockpile changes in the next release. The third farm in the screenshot is an attempt to build up a booze supply as well - much more difficult! Those dudes like beer a lot.
I did something similar in my current game, only cabbage fields and stew for the beginning, now added pumpkins, still making stew. I can feed about 40 colonists on 4 fields, although the one kitchen is overtasked by now and I'm building a second one. I'll try to combine wheat and a brewery for beer next.
It might be helpful for someone to time the growth rates for various crops, and see how long they take to grow to maturity under ideal conditions. Since we know that colonists try to eat once a day, we'd be able to see the approximate number of plants required to keep a given population fed, barring disruptions to farming.
I haven't played the game yet...but yeah after watching all the youtube videos I can find, the food situation is at the very least difficult to understand. the best I've ever seen requires no fewer than half of your colonists only producing crops. I'm not sure if it takes too long, or you don't produce enough food or what, but I don't think it's menat to be so difficult.
R38... Each harvested square provides two units of whatever-it-is, with a number of stages from sowing to harvest. Stages are defined with a "stageTimeSeconds" property, but I'm thinking this may not actually be seconds, rather some kind of game-time unit (unless the last stage of wheat really does take ten minutes?). Opium: 600/600/600 Green Bamboo: 250/800/800/800 Cabbage, Maize, Pumpkin, Wheat: 500/740/600 Flax: 600/600/600/600 Sugarcane: 400/450/600/600 Chilli: 500/370/370/600 Malfeasant Clawbulbs, Lingonberries and Saskatoonberries have identical stage definitions to Cabbage/Wheat/Pumpkin/Maize, if you can get them to grow...
