Something I thought about in my recent playthrough, is with the new update the food mechanic became flawed and obsolete.
First of all it is now very hard to manage, as you don't have any direct control over it's consumption and you only have a few limited options of increasing it's production.
With the tile system it was quite easy to establish food surplus or at least a slight deficit that wouldn't hurt the overall production on any planet, as you could easily calculate the amount of pops you would need to feed and the amount of farms you would need for that, and the population would just cap at the planet size and consume food at a flat rate. You can mange mineral consumption by disabling some jobs, you can manage energy credits consumption in the same way, but you can't really reduce food consumption other than by purging pops.
It is also hard to control food production, as pre-2.2 you could slap a hydroponic farm on any planet, habitat and ringworld and queue other buildings. Now you already have to do enough planetary micromanagement without food, and with food it just becomes harder, as you have to create agri-worlds, you have to balance food and housing needs if you don't build agri-worlds and farm districts aren't always available, so it becomes much harder that "two hydroponic farms will cover this planet" like it was before. You can have one maxed out civilian fabrication complex to cover all consumer goods consumption, but you would need 5-6 hydroponic farms to cover food needs of one planet.
With base resources like minerals or energy it is possible to cover their consumption by stations and then you can macro them with dyson spheres and matter extractors. With food the only option to macro it is a ringworld(!!!) segment. It's a joke that you would need a wonder of engineering just to turn it into Rusty Joe's farm.
Second, food mechanic is now obsolete.
Why? Because we have amenities now, that are better in every way. (and consumer goods by the way)
They increase or decrease happiness, the same as food. They are planet-specific and can't be stored, which is a much more sensible mechanic for something like actual food. They can be generated by different buildings and it is possible to cover amenities consumption on any planet without a lot of micromanagement.
It is also better from RP perspective. "It's 200 years into the future, and you need districts just to farm food? You just colonized a planet and made it into in agri-world??? YOU JUST CONSTRUCTED A RINGWORLD SEGMENT TO GET 50 FARMING DISTRICTS, YOU ABSOLUTE MADMAN!!!"
We can already use existing hydroponic farming to produce huge amounts of food in restricted space, I'd guess in 200 years food would be the least of our concerns, and it certainly shouldn't take a ringworld segment to feed an empire and a lot of time to micromanage it - you don't see countries trying to micromanage their food production and it doesn't take 1/3 of their economy. You also don't see food being stockpiled for years or any but the poorest countries having food shortage - and the ones that have food shortage also lack amenities. It is just a flat resource that will get you a huge penalty if you let it run into negative values and has one decision and one policy that uses it, and three other policies for hive minds.
Food mechanic doesn't contribute to gameplay now. It is hard to manage and doesn't scale well, it is already made obsolete by amenities and consumer goods that work much better and it doesn't fit with the game now, so I think it would be for the better if it just gets removed now.
First of all it is now very hard to manage, as you don't have any direct control over it's consumption and you only have a few limited options of increasing it's production.
With the tile system it was quite easy to establish food surplus or at least a slight deficit that wouldn't hurt the overall production on any planet, as you could easily calculate the amount of pops you would need to feed and the amount of farms you would need for that, and the population would just cap at the planet size and consume food at a flat rate. You can mange mineral consumption by disabling some jobs, you can manage energy credits consumption in the same way, but you can't really reduce food consumption other than by purging pops.
It is also hard to control food production, as pre-2.2 you could slap a hydroponic farm on any planet, habitat and ringworld and queue other buildings. Now you already have to do enough planetary micromanagement without food, and with food it just becomes harder, as you have to create agri-worlds, you have to balance food and housing needs if you don't build agri-worlds and farm districts aren't always available, so it becomes much harder that "two hydroponic farms will cover this planet" like it was before. You can have one maxed out civilian fabrication complex to cover all consumer goods consumption, but you would need 5-6 hydroponic farms to cover food needs of one planet.
With base resources like minerals or energy it is possible to cover their consumption by stations and then you can macro them with dyson spheres and matter extractors. With food the only option to macro it is a ringworld(!!!) segment. It's a joke that you would need a wonder of engineering just to turn it into Rusty Joe's farm.
Second, food mechanic is now obsolete.
Why? Because we have amenities now, that are better in every way. (and consumer goods by the way)
They increase or decrease happiness, the same as food. They are planet-specific and can't be stored, which is a much more sensible mechanic for something like actual food. They can be generated by different buildings and it is possible to cover amenities consumption on any planet without a lot of micromanagement.
It is also better from RP perspective. "It's 200 years into the future, and you need districts just to farm food? You just colonized a planet and made it into in agri-world??? YOU JUST CONSTRUCTED A RINGWORLD SEGMENT TO GET 50 FARMING DISTRICTS, YOU ABSOLUTE MADMAN!!!"
We can already use existing hydroponic farming to produce huge amounts of food in restricted space, I'd guess in 200 years food would be the least of our concerns, and it certainly shouldn't take a ringworld segment to feed an empire and a lot of time to micromanage it - you don't see countries trying to micromanage their food production and it doesn't take 1/3 of their economy. You also don't see food being stockpiled for years or any but the poorest countries having food shortage - and the ones that have food shortage also lack amenities. It is just a flat resource that will get you a huge penalty if you let it run into negative values and has one decision and one policy that uses it, and three other policies for hive minds.
Food mechanic doesn't contribute to gameplay now. It is hard to manage and doesn't scale well, it is already made obsolete by amenities and consumer goods that work much better and it doesn't fit with the game now, so I think it would be for the better if it just gets removed now.
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