Food is now obsolete and should be removed from game

[strangebloke]

But from a perspective of making the game feel alive, and not like a boring bunch of game mechanics stuck together, I think it is useful.

And that second thing is important, and something Stellaris could probably do with improving on.

QFT

amenities, minerals, consumer goods, exotic gases.... all that stuff is very ephemeral and hard to pin down. Food makes sense. Robots don't need it, slaves still do.

If it doesn't make sense, then perhaps you just need to mod the game to call food.... I don't know, biological supplies or something.

 

[Maethendias]

QFT

amenities, minerals, consumer goods, exotic gases.... all that stuff is very ephemeral and hard to pin down. Food makes sense. Robots don't need it, slaves still do.

If it doesn't make sense, then perhaps you just need to mod the game to call food.... I don't know, biological supplies or something.

the thing is right now how machine empires work, robot empires are the ones that need food the most... which is ironic

 

[strangebloke]

the thing is right now how machine empires work, robot empires are the ones that need food the most... which is ironic

...No they don't.

They're more strapped for resources in the early game in general, but they tend to trade away their food for energy, as compared with bio races which (on occasion) might trade their energy for food.

 

[Maethendias]

...No they don't.

They're more strapped for resources in the early game in general, but they tend to trade away their food for energy, as compared with bio races which (on occasion) might trade their energy for food.

no they dont... they literally rather do farm jobs and convert them via biogenerator into energy than... work energy districts,,, (which completly sucks btw)

thats ltierally how you efficiently play me rn, you work a few planets to death with farmer bots, and LITERALLY settle every settlable place in your neighbourhood to fill as many bioreactors into your empire as possible, because else you arent able to sustain your buildings, leaders, ships and pops

 

[Jzuken]

But Food and Consumer Goods do *not* fill the same role. Food keeps people alive and lets populations grow. Consumer Goods keep people happy.

Food also keeps people happy, gene clinics lets population grow, so food is doing the same job as other things are already doing.

If you consider "food" to be an abstraction of a larger "survival essentials" market, it makes sense that it's a fairly large market. People don't only need potatoes but water, sanitation, processing and medicine. An individual farm may only require a tiny fraction of the populace, but when you're including sewage plants and snackeries and penicillin it takes a lot more people than you think. A shortage of these "organic" resources will absolutely degrade the health and well being of your population and cause severe problems.

Don't throw a hissy fit because the icon is an apple.

QFT

amenities, minerals, consumer goods, exotic gases.... all that stuff is very ephemeral and hard to pin down. Food makes sense. Robots don't need it, slaves still do.

If it doesn't make sense, then perhaps you just need to mod the game to call food.... I don't know, biological supplies or something.

Damn guys, I'm talking about 2.2, NOT the versions that were before 2.2. We have amenities now, just read the description from the wiki: "Amenities represent planetary infrastructure and jobs dedicated towards fulfilling the day-to-day needs of the population." They are EXACTLY the survival essentials, which must include food, water, sanitation, waste processing and medicine, that's also the reason medical workers in gene clinics produce amenities and not food, and you can't really have your waste processing, water, sanitation and clinics outsourced to another system that is a year and a half away from your planet.

We already have consumer goods, amenities, stability, crime, housing and unemployment that we have to manage just to keep population happy and productive, that's a hell lot for a 4X strategy. I mean add a couple more resources like medicine and waste processing that only affect pops and you will end up with a Sim City simulator. Food used to represent all of those things before 2.2, but now it is obsolete!

Food should be removed, amenities should be expanded - you could have forge and industrial worlds require more amenities, since pops on those worlds would require better healthcare and better sanitation, you could have small amount of excess amenities going to other worlds, amenities affecting growth rate. Devouring swarm and exterminators could get production bonuses from devoured pops.

 

[laptor]

obviously we need a logistics district to reflect the many hard-working picker and trucker

 

[Bearjuden]

@Jzuken Sure, by the definition of the wiki, you are right.

But here's the thing...the wiki is dumb.

Amenities are not needs. Amenities are wants, like consumer goods but for things you can't own. Go to a bar? That's an amenity. Day off at an amusement park? Amenity. Spa day? Movie theater? Public water, gas, and electric lines? All amenities. The definition of amenity in an actual dictionary is more like wants and luxuries, and that's how amenities, wiki definition aside, are treated in game. Clerks are service workers, and service workers work all the things I just listed save the infrastructure stuff, which is covered by luxury housing.

The wiki can say whatever it wants, but the way amenities are actually used in game is not reflective of them encompassing food.

 

[Greenslade]

If "Food" = "Biomass" that could probably make a few things more interesting, especially if CG would need some food/biomass inputs as well as mineral inputs.

Also, devoting a lot of planetary surface to food growth makes more sense if you see them as also having to support a large population of spacefaring people on ships and stations where you can't grow food.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

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  Respectfully Disagree x 58
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  Agree x 5
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  Helpful x 1

WOW people REALLY like arbitrary non usefull ressources who knew

Insulting everyone who disagrees with you and assuming they dont know what they enjoy is very persuasive.

 

[Secret Master]

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  Respectfully Disagree x 58
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  Agree x 5
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  Helpful x 1

WOW people REALLY like arbitrary non usefull ressources who knew

Meanwhile, in the past month, there have been discussions on the relative value of nutritional plenitude versus the encourage planetary growth decision and the merits and consequences of letting the hive mind starve. Then there's the decision to use food edicts for hive minds. Is that POP growth boost worth it? The leadership XP gain? When is it useful?

Hell, I had to learn the hard way that the Spawning Pool job for hive minds is a complicated choice to make in the early game given the amount of food used to boost POP growth. That job uses up a lot of food in the early game. Then there's the whole "nutritional plenitude increases the support cost of livestock even if those livestock are not growing" issue to wrestle with.

You might argue that the resource is arbitrary (since it's weird that these societies put so much effort into it), but it's certainly useful. If you bother to pay attention to the mechanics of it all, food presents players with meaningful decisions.

Hydroponic farms are extremely inefficient in their current state. A single unupgraded civilian industries can provide 12~30 pops with consumer goods and four times as much when fully upgraded. A hydroponic farm just gives a flat +2 farmers and about 16 food without a lot of bonuses and can't be upgraded.

Then use trade if you don't like using hydroponic farms. Or you could put hydroponic farms on agri-worlds to boost their food output where it matters. Lush agri-worlds with food processing facilities can be make hydroponic farms something to consider.

I mean, it's obvious that the hydroponic farm is more or less a way to trade building slots for additional agriculture districts for most empires.

It is harder to manage but it is not rewarding to do so, as you only have to manage it to prevent penalties, but don't get much in return.

Just prevent penalties? I don't think so.

Go fire up a hive mind. Look at the food edicts. Then look at their version of nutritional plenitude. Now look at the food cost per month of a spawning pool.

People have sometimes said hive minds are all about POP growth. Whether they can beat organics who use robots or DAs is a question I won't answer right now, but if you really want all the growth a hive mind can offer, you must have excess food. But that entails making tough choices in terms of opportunity cost.

You could starve your hive as well, which is a whole other set of choices.

I also find it stupid that a tall empire that can extract matter from black holes and build ringworlds could be held back by food deficit, and amenities represent food more directly than food itself in the game.

If you are a tall empire that has access to the matter decompressor and an ecumenpolis, why are you even wasting time growing food?

If you are a technologically advanced civilization with a POP count of less than 500, just sell mineral, alloys, or consumer goods and import the food you need.

 

[Shirasik]

If you are a tall empire that has access to the matter decompressor and an ecumenpolis, why are you even wasting time growing food?

If you are a technologically advanced civilization with a POP count of less than 500, just sell mineral, alloys, or consumer goods and import the food you need.

Hmm... so that's why MEs has to specialize on food ATM. MEs farming all the time and instead of bio processing food to energy, directly sells food for EC..

 

[Harle]

So, I'm right?

Their agriculture and medical technology is behind ours. Hell, there are plenty of planets in Stellaris that don't even have medical personnel... since those jobs generally only come with the gene clinic.

Is it behind ours?

I mean obviously this is abstracted in the game because it doesn't distinguish between homeworld and alien worlds, but they are tackling agriculture and medicine on alien worlds, not just the capital. Feeding an earth-sized population on Mars and keeping them healthy would not be as simple as transplanting our existing medical and agricultural technologies to Mars. Nevermind a living alien world which may pose its own complications and hazards, in the form of diseases and existing fauna/flora.

So I don't think it's actually that strange that supporting large populations in colonies on alien worlds is not a trivial task.

 

[Jzuken]

@Jzuken Sure, by the definition of the wiki, you are right.

But here's the thing...the wiki is dumb.

Amenities are not needs. Amenities are wants, like consumer goods but for things you can't own. Go to a bar? That's an amenity. Day off at an amusement park? Amenity. Spa day? Movie theater? Public water, gas, and electric lines? All amenities. The definition of amenity in an actual dictionary is more like wants and luxuries, and that's how amenities, wiki definition aside, are treated in game. Clerks are service workers, and service workers work all the things I just listed save the infrastructure stuff, which is covered by luxury housing.

The wiki can say whatever it wants, but the way amenities are actually used in game is not reflective of them encompassing food.

The way amenities work now is that they give a dynamic penalty to happiness that can go below 50%. Which makes sense, but food only gives -25% flat penalty. It is hard to imagine someone starving to death but still being happy because you can go to the movie theater. Nothing stops devs from applying growth penalty when there is lack of amenities.
It is also hard to imagine all of the pops including rulers and specialists on a capital world getting -25% happiness penalty because some fringe world doesn't have enough food.

nutritional plenitude versus the encourage planetary growth

Go fire up a hive mind.

Hive mind is a completely different thing, and their food edicts are only limited to them, but it just means some more work to rework them. As for other empires if food was just removed it wouldn't hurt the gameplay. Nutritional plentitude can be replaced with an edict that increases amenities usage. Encourage growth can also be replaced with a different decision. It is not like those decisions are core game mechanic.

If you are a tall empire that has access to the matter decompressor and an ecumenpolis, why are you even wasting time growing food?

If you are a technologically advanced civilization with a POP count of less than 500, just sell mineral, alloys, or consumer goods and import the food you need.

Because food costs 1.8-3 energy on galactic market. You would need to sell a whole Dyson sphere monthly energy output just to get food for two ecumenopolis.

Is it behind ours?

I mean obviously this is abstracted in the game because it doesn't distinguish between homeworld and alien worlds, but they are tackling agriculture and medicine on alien worlds, not just the capital. Feeding an earth-sized population on Mars and keeping them healthy would not be as simple as transplanting our existing medical and agricultural technologies to Mars. Nevermind a living alien world which may pose its own complications and hazards, in the form of diseases and existing fauna/flora.

So I don't think it's actually that strange that supporting large populations in colonies on alien worlds is not a trivial task.

But habitability penalties already increase consumer good consumption and amenities consumption - representing the challenge of providing medicine and growing food on alien worlds.

I mean if amenities were named something like "planetary sustainability" much more people would agree and see the point I'm trying to make.

 

[Secret Master]

Because food costs 1.8-3 energy on galactic market. You would need to sell a whole Dyson sphere monthly energy output just to get food for two ecumenopolis.

I don't generally see food getting that high, although I suppose it's possible if you are buying tons of it.

But if you are running 2 ecumenpolis, I suspect your POP count is inching towards 1000. I wouldn't think of that as tall, myself.

 

[Tisifoni12]

The way it is stockpiled and traded iskind of bonkers. I would think an empire would seek to ensure its planets were self sufficient.

It is easy to build up huge surpluses. Would there really be a market for large quantities of surplus food.

Yes there would be a market, but surely for limited volumes of luxury foods.

Though if you're trading with the prawns (District 9) there'd be quite a demand for cat food . . .

 

[Jzuken]

I don't generally see food getting that high, although I suppose it's possible if you are buying tons of it.

But if you are running 2 ecumenpolis, I suspect your POP count is inching towards 1000. I wouldn't think of that as tall, myself.

That's depends if you count if the empire is tall or wide by pop count or by number of systems and planets. And in my current playthrough I have more than 500 organic pops, even though I only have 12 planets and three of them are recently colonized and I have to build farming districts on a ringworld. And it is already pain in the ass to micromanage those planets, but at least consumer goods, alloys and rare resources are rewarding to micromanage.

In my playthrough before 2.2.2 I could easily manage hundreds of planets, but now even 10 planets require extreme attention and planning, it just turns a game into planet management pause simulator especially if you want to play long games.

Otherwise you can just pick devouring swarm and steamroll AI with T2 corvettes before the midgame.

 

[Harle]

But habitability penalties already increase consumer good consumption and amenities consumption - representing the challenge of providing medicine and growing food on alien worlds.

I mean if amenities were named something like "planetary sustainability" much more people would agree and see the point I'm trying to make.

I'm afraid I don't follow how amenities and consumer good consumption directly affect food production.

Amenities and consumer goods are about living space and quality of life. You can have these things with zero food production on a planet, and you can have nothing but farm districts, and it won't impact these things at all. And food production doesn't use or generate consumer goods or amenities. So you're making a leap here. Maybe you can better explain the connection, but I'm not seeing it.

As for medicine, you may have a bit of a point there, as doctors definitely contribute to amenities and habitability does impact consumption. Ie, low habitability worlds have more need of doctors. But it's still a modifier for a base, and I would argue that even a 100% habitability planet would still introduce a plethora of new challenges for medical science. So I don't think it's a stretch to say that the habitability modifier is being added to an already challenging situation. 100% just means it's the least challenging in terms of colonies, not necessarily 'identical problems and challenges as the homeworld.'

 

[Jzuken]

I'm afraid I don't follow how amenities and consumer good consumption directly affect food production.

Amenities and consumer goods are about living space and quality of life. You can have these things with zero food production on a planet, and you can have nothing but farm districts, and it won't impact these things at all. And food production doesn't use or generate consumer goods or amenities. So you're making a leap here. Maybe you can better explain the connection, but I'm not seeing it.

Food production should be even less of a concern in future, so it could be tied in to the infrastructure. Even right now we have the technology to produce food right inside the cities without dedicating huge patches of land to it: https://www.businessinsider.com/swedens-world-food-building-farm-offices-plantscraper-2017-11 and producing something like nutrient-rich carbohydrate paste would be even easier so it would be just a part of the infrastructure in future, and could be categorized as amenities.

As for medicine, you may have a bit of a point there, as doctors definitely contribute to amenities and habitability does impact consumption. Ie, low habitability worlds have more need of doctors. But it's still a modifier for a base, and I would argue that even a 100% habitability planet would still introduce a plethora of new challenges for medical science. So I don't think it's a stretch to say that the habitability modifier is being added to an already challenging situation. 100% just means it's the least challenging in terms of colonies, not necessarily 'identical problems and challenges as the homeworld.'

Do you people even play this game? Colonizable worlds that are of the same subtype as your main planet already have 20% habitability penalties and you have to research new technologies to get 5% habitability bonuses.


It is also funny that a few years ago it was agreed that food should have been removed https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/remove-food-nutrition-in-stellaris.956393/ but now when we got even more consumer resources people somehow want to keep the resource that became obsolete, redundant, inadequate and has a terrible gameplay mechanic.

 

[powerofvoid]

Note that keeping food does not preclude reducing the extent to which it is featured and the number of pops employed in agriculture.

For example, making each farm district provide just one pop worth of jobs which produces a base of 12 food, and moving food display to a secondary resource drop down.

On the other end, you could add even more depth to food by creating a "dish designer" and "diet manager" in which you can choose what pops in your civ eat, how much, and in what format (home, restaurant, cafeteria, street vendor, etc) for minor modifiers to various stuff.

 

[Bearjuden]

The way amenities work now is that they give a dynamic penalty to happiness that can go below 50%. Which makes sense, but food only gives -25% flat penalty. It is hard to imagine someone starving to death but still being happy because you can go to the movie theater. Nothing stops devs from applying growth penalty when there is lack of amenities.
It is also hard to imagine all of the pops including rulers and specialists on a capital world getting -25% happiness penalty because some fringe world doesn't have enough food.

If you want to reconfigure the equations and penalties, I'm all for it, since a lot of those equations need some work. But just as there is nothing stopping the devs from applying a growth penalty from lack of amenities, so too does nothing stop them from applying a growth penalty from lack of food, and neither are in place. So it seems to me that what you're arguing for there isn't making food into a part of amenities, but rather to fix the penalties from lack of food. If there were more sensible penalties to lack of food and a scaling penalty where being 1% short of your food needs is less penalizing than being 5% short, would that pretty much not solve your issues? As you acknowledge, the way happiness and amenities relate otherwise makes sense, and it doesn't break the otherwise fairly consistent treatment of how amenities are granted and used.

Another issue with eliminating food as an independent resource, btw, is that you can't store amenities. Your food stockpile would disappear, despite every nation in history maintaining food stocks for times of need.