Lowest Reasonable & Accurate Ratios


Food consumption for busy colonists, always lower.
Meal Maker productivity, higher for advanced recipes, but at a risk of sudden famine.
See food section for more detail.

To make your own calculation:


If you manage to multiply these numbers to match up for linking components, you'll know what your own ratios should be.


For example: Starch processors = 1, Bot workshop = 0.25.

1 divided by 0.25 is 4. 1 Starch processor can serve 4 Bot Workshops.


Like Chinese food better than Italian Spaghetti?

1 Rice Pad (food = 0.5) and 1 Meat synthesizer (food = 0.5) have a combined food value of 1. The mealmaker can handle a production of 5. So 5 Rice pads and 5 Meat synthesizers for every Meal Maker.

Have 100 colonists? 100 x 0.22 = 22 food demand. Meal Maker can supply 5 = 5 mealmakers necessary for 22 food demand. If feeding with Chinese, 22 / (0.5 Rice Pad + 0.5 Rice Pad) = 22 of both Rice and Meat.

Trade is one of the most stresfull things your base can do. It requires a massive physical shift in resources, through bottlenecks such as your airlocks, while tying up man(or bot)power that is subsequently exposed to the risk of outside dangers such as sandstorms, solar flares and terrorists. Also, trade itself can be a micro-management bother if you play for long enough to create a really big base. Trying to figure out your surpluses from a long list of items can get old.

Therefore it is wise to make it as efficient and rare as possible. Trading a single packet of food, almost isn't worth it as it needs to be dragged around for a measly 5 credits, while conductors, medicinal supplies and weapons are a far better proposition.

The problem is, that trade is frequently indespensible. Even if you don't need the money, its the only way to get rid of an uggly surplus, and most of that surplus are just those supplies that are a bother to trade. If we could compact all our surplus stuff into just the three top commodities, we'd have a more efficient base. It also makes sure you already know what you're going to trade, making it less of a hassle. Just selling all your guns is more efficient than selecting both ores, starch, plastics and metals.

This guide seeks to accomplish just that... or at least make good headway.

So what are the best trades? Well, those that give us high value, that have a lot of smaller, less valueable components put into it. If a trade good has gotten more valueable then the components that were put in, than this is value added by our colonists through their craftsmanship and this is exactly what we want. In fact, the more components the better. Weapons are made out of 2 ore and 2 starch, yet it's easier to carry a single weapon than the 4 components it's made out of.


Item: Price / Added Value / Amount of components

Starch: 5 / 0 Added value / 0 Components
Ore: 10 / 0 Added value / 0 Components
Herbs: 10 / 0 Added value / 0 Components
Meat: 5 / 0 Added value / 0 Components
Vegetables: 5 / 0 Added value / 0 Components

Plastic: 10 / 5 Added value / 1 Component
Metal: 15 / 5 Added value / 1 Component

Meds: 25 / 5 Added value / 2 Components
Spares: (2x) 15 / 5 Added Value / 2 Components (divided by 2 spares)
Conductors: 40 / 15 Added Value / 2 Components
Weapons: 80 / 15 Added Value / 3 Components


As you can see, Weapons, Conductors and Medical supplies - in that order - offer the best value and get rid of the most components.

In the example of guns, we'd need to know exactly how many mines, starchy plants, processors and workshops we need to end up without any surplus basic components.


I actually took out a stopwatch, and tried doing this as scientifically as I could within reason, with three seperate measurement series, each counting some 15 tries. I do round up to make the data "fit" my expectations, but it doesn't take a lot of effort and only rounding up ensures there's never any surplus, only small deficits. Do keep in mind that this does make the ratios a bit rough and an estimate, rather than fact. When I say 3 mines to 5 ore processors, 3 mines to 4.8 ore processors might actually be more accurate. We can't place down 0.2 ore processor however and I'm 100% sure the error rounding down never ends up with a completely unused component (the error is never more than 1) and the ratio given is as close to reality as possible.

Anyway, the thing I looked for was: How long does it take for each of these things to go up by one precent, if they're in excellent condition or being serviced by a well rested worker/engineer. This is what I found on average:

For the bio-dome:



Fast growers are of course: Rice, Peas, Lettuce, Tomato, GM plants
Medium growers are: Wheat, Potato, Onion, Raddice, Herbs
Slow growers are: Maize, Mushrooms

Of course, with the exception of meat and herbs, plants produce three things per 100%, so they should be tripled in their output. GM plants produce 4, and should be quadrupled.
On top of that, a third of the Starch plant production is starch instead of food.



Combine this for the times of all other industrial components (who all produce just one, with the exception of the spare workshop) for the complete picture:




Notice that I keep up the 100th of things, as in, counting percentages instead of an entire product. It doesn't matter though, as long as the calculations line up. When a mine progresses 1%, the progress of all responsible ore processors should add up to 1% in comparison and in the same timespan as well.

So... what does this all mean?

Let's put the above observation to the test. One good tried and tested trick, is to put down 1 tomato pad and 2 wheat pads down to create pasta.

The calculations show that wheat (a medium growth starchie plant) and tomatoes (fast growing vedgie) have a value of 0.75 vedge and 0.375 vedge respectively. This is a 1:2 ratio of tomato to wheat and the calculations line up to the frequently used trick exactly.

Based on this, this is a list of things you need to create specific wares with minimum surplus:





As for my favorite?



The industrial heart of my biggest bases are:

64 Wheat Pads, 12 Starch Processors, 6 Mines, 10 Ore Melters, 16 Herb pads, 5 Lab Benches
10 Conductor workshops, 8 Bot Workshops, 3 Weapon Workshops and 3 Spare Workshops.

This supports The Bot Workshop, Weapons Workshop and Lab Workshops 24/7. If I need the building materials or spare parts, I switch off the Weapons Workshop.

There's is only a very tiny deficit in this line up, but that's better than a large surplus.


This lay-out is especially good if you can manage to get your 6 mines all in the same spot, with your spaceports relatively nearby for quick trade. Easy input, easy output. It allows you to create a single center where all of these things are fielded, allowing all your engineers and workers to stay in roughly one spot.

Double points if the only food surplus originates from the storage facilities in this industrial heart, but in general it's better to make sure that all your vedgetable surplus is turned into alcohol before that happens.

The rest of your base can simply be be living quarters and biodomes, with a massive population of biologists and of course some 200 guards, for your eventual bid to invade ear... I mean, deal with those nasty terrorists... who are probably coming from earth. Hey, don't mock my Moonraker base!


No matter how big the base gets, these components combined have enough industrial muscle to supply my needs in good enough time.

(I owe thanks to nxterminator579 for motivating me build and help me correct this section.)

Yes, wouldn't it be lovely if we could apply these calculations to know exactly how much food the colonists eat?

Well, this is where it gets more tricky.

For one; colonists, don't always eat the same amount of food! There is a cut-off point at about 60% where they get interested in food, but depending on what they're doing, they might not immidiatly react. A colonist on the job, is willing to go hungry a little longer just to finish what they're doing (be that tinkering on a bot 10 seconds longer or carrying a package for 2 minutes), while an idle colonist will grab a meal immidiatly since they've got nothing better to do anyway.

Regardless of wether an idle colonist grabs a meal when the bar is at 60%, or a very industrious colonist finishes up and only grabs a meal at 40%, doesn't matter. Both can fill their bar back to 100% with just one meal, even thought the busy colonist takes longer. Because idle colonists are quickest to grab a meal, it is for them that I have been able to come up with a number. Since this also makes them the biggest eaters, this number doubles as the worst case scenario, or the maximum amount of food that needs to be produced. No more than this is needed to be safe.

Idle colonists, just standing around and reacting to the very first feeling of pekishness, eat a meal about once every seven and a half minute. This is 450 seconds, for 100% "hunger progress", or 0.22% every second.

If you have a productive base with very few idle colonists, this consumption is lower. How much I cannot say and I cannot give you a minimum amount of food neccesary, since it depends on your base's lay-out and productivity, for which I cannot make a calculation.



The mealmaker is an even tricksier situation.

The mealmaker creates a product every 20 seconds. What that product is however, depends on the ingredients. For basic meals, it will spend that 20 second turning a single ingredient into ONE meal. For Pasta/Burgers it will spend that 20 seconds turning two ingredients into TWO meals. Salads, THREE meals.

As you can already see, the mealmaker gets more productive the better the ingredients are offered to it. It still turns the same amount of ingredients into an equal amount of meals, but at advanced recipes, it just does so quicker and more efficiently.

Basic meals: 5% per second (1 mealmaker feeds 23 people)
Pasta/Burger: 10% per second (1 mealmaker feeds 46 people)
Salad: 15% per second. (1 mealmaker feeds 69 people)


So if we intent to feed our colonists with only salads, 1 mealmaker per 70 people would do, right?

Well, no. Obviously because we're not always sure that your bots and colonists will stuff the right things in, especially for something like a salad wich would require 3 different vegetables to be present, while your bots could only offer it tomatoes and nothing else several times in a row. When that happens, you suddenly won't have enough mealmakers to supply your base.

And things get even more complicated. Let's say you produce enough food, have enough mealmakers for your salad or pasta only colony and your colonists/bots DO consistently stuff in the right things. Another factor is that if any of your canteens get more visited than the others and are in fact, SO well visited that there's more local demand than the local mealmakers can handle - even if you have enough globally - then they'll switch to creating basics just to be able to supply your colonists with at least SOMETHING. They're not going to wait for tomatoes to make pasta, when they already have two wheat and there's two colonists banging on the device to come up with something. Creating Basics instead of an advanced Pasta like it will, suddenly means that the mealmaker becomes less effecient too, downgrading output all the same and soon your colonists will move to other mealmakers where the same will happen. Very soon, despite having more than enough food and mealmakers for advanced meals everywhere, you're only producing basics and output is lower than what you had hoped for when banking on pastas/burgers/salads.

As you can tell, assuming that your mealmakers are always creating better than basic meals, is a mistake. Therefore, this guide gives readers the only thing it's certain off: Basic meal productivity and the maximum amount of mealmakers neccesary to feed an entirely lazy base: 1 mealmaker per 23 colonists. In other words, the worst case scenario. If you follow the ratios given, you'll always have enough mealmakers to create the time consuming basic meals and keep everyone fed, but malnourished.

However, since advanced meals are faster produced and actually require fewer mealmakers, chances are good that if you have enough mealmakers for the less efficient basic meals, that you'll have more than enough for advanced meals . It also means you'll have a food surplus, especially if your base is productive, but this is a factor you'll need to tweak yourself, as the underlying mechanics are too base personal to calculate. There are however, certain tricks to compensate. Check Crafty Geek's guide for a method of creating two adjacent canteens: one filled with tables, the other with mealmakers. This many mealmakers does its best to ensure no local shortage exists.

And always make sure your population and mealmakers are spread out evenly.

User Slickdrac has been kind enough to delve into the game files for me. He came up with a series of data that is more accurate than my method, even though I wasn't off by much.

For anyone interested:


Food & Plant growth


Crop output multiplied according to yield


Mealmaker + Consumption


Mines


Industry

Even with these calculations, things can go wrong. For one, my own observations with a stopwatch, might have some degree of error in them and I did round my numbers up. Again: I'm 100% sure that following these ratios never ends you up with unused components and this is as close I can get to reality.

If one of your robots breaks down, or your colonists get sleepy/hungry/thirsty while working the processors/workshops/food pads, there will be a minor delay, especially if you're just starting out and one of the five colonists you have takes a break. The calculations simply don't work when this occurs.
However, the more colonists you have, the better these ratios work and someone is there to pick up the slack as soon as possible. We also can't calculate for when these delays happen and where, so let's just assume that the innefficiency is equal along the entire production line. If an engineer steps out from the robotics workshop and there's a chance that the metal and ore will pile up, then I assume there's an equal amount of chance that the driller bot mining for metal, or the worker at the ore processor are out to take a break also.

Same goes for transportation. Especially in large bases, an ant-farm routine is established. It may take ore to travel from the mine to the processor some 20 seconds in some bases and 2 minutes in others, but the moment that supply route is indeed established, it will always on average take 20 seconds or 2 minutes consistently, negating travel times. Wether or not the ore is still in transit doesn't matter, as long as it is traveling within the chain at regular intervals and feeding the machinery at a solid drip. In the case of an unusual delay (bot breaks down, sandstorm between the mine-airlock, meteor strike), the fact that I rounded up and that there's always a tiny bit more capacity to consume than to produce, will eventually compensate and get rid of a surplus.

However, to make up for these slight unknowns, you could always create one or two more bot workshops and ore processors than what the ratios strictly advice. There's a chance they'll never get used for lack of resources, but at least you'll never have a surplus you're force to trade. The ratios at least, should give everyone a fairly accurate framework to assume from.