Malnutrition question

[Alias_RM13]

Hi All,

In my current playthrough I seem to be having having issue with malnourished colonist.
My current food stocks are as follows

- 29 Bread
- 52 Candy Bars
- 66 Canned Food
- 47 Jerky
- 967 Fish
- 722 Prime Meat
- 821 Venison
- 428 Cockroaches
- 224 Eggs
- 63 Milk
- 421 Meal worms (got to love killing sandworms)
- 221 Mixed Meals
- 119 Veggie Meals
- 129 Meat Meals

To me that'd alot of options for food yet I'm still having at least 25% of my colonists suffering from malnutrition which doesn't improve no matter what they eat, I have manually checked each colonist and all their food meters are full, I did notice one had a trait of "Picky Eater" but the rest had no negative food related traits.

Not really sure how to fix this one so hopefully someone has an idea

 

[porkmeister26]

I was havinbg the same problem and in my last game I sent a specialist to pick berries every time I got a malnourised colonist alert. It took care of the problem. Once I started growing cabage and built a cook house I dont remember the alert popping up again.

 

[AndrewT]

Hi All,

In my current playthrough I seem to be having having issue with malnourished colonist.
My current food stocks are as follows

- 29 Bread
- 52 Candy Bars
- 66 Canned Food
- 47 Jerky
- 967 Fish
- 722 Prime Meat
- 821 Venison
- 428 Cockroaches
- 224 Eggs
- 63 Milk
- 421 Meal worms (got to love killing sandworms)
- 221 Mixed Meals
- 119 Veggie Meals
- 129 Meat Meals

To me that'd alot of options for food yet I'm still having at least 25% of my colonists suffering from malnutrition which doesn't improve no matter what they eat, I have manually checked each colonist and all their food meters are full, I did notice one had a trait of "Picky Eater" but the rest had no negative food related traits.

Not really sure how to fix this one so hopefully someone has an idea

I see no veges in there, so anyone not eating your vege or mixed meals does not have a balanced diet. What veges are going into those meals but you have no separate stocks of?

 

[Alias_RM13]

I see no veges in there, so anyone not eating your vege or mixed meals does not have a balanced diet. What veges are going into those meals but you have no separate stocks of?

Sorry I missed the veggies off the list!
Around 250-300 Each of Corn, Carrot, Potato and Soybeans, currently got Peanuts and Cabbage on the way.

I continued my playthrough and the malnourished guys never seem to die so they must be getting better slowly, its just really strange how everyone else is in perfect shape with plenty of food and their nourishment meter is full yet I have at all times at least 5 people suffering malnutrition, I've even followed one to the good stores multiple times and he eats mixed meals and Bread but it doesn't seem to make a dent in the meter.

I have stopped worrying too much about it now, while I have the reminder that I have malnutrition issues, no one seems to die from it even though they don't seem to recover from it either.

 

[Joanna_ifs]

Heya!

We are looking into issues with the Malnourishment - or actually more into the issue of how the colonists are eating from each storage. There is definitely a bug in there somewhere but we just need a bit of time investigating it and then of course fixing it!

Malnourishment can cause death I believe but it should cause it very slowly - essentially if the colonist gets another condition and gets treated by a medic, their health should go back to 100 and again, prevent them from dying of this. In any case, we are looking into this!

Thanks for your post, and as always, thanks for playing!

 

[AndrewT]

I certainly get the occasional person starving to death in the middle of plenty.

Going back to malnutrition though, if we're going to do that we should at least know why a given person is suffering from it, what are they missing? Veges or meat?

 

[Ps2nic]

While we are here @Alias_RM13 can you get a screenshot of a Malnutrition Colonist with a full Food bar? Sounds like thats the problem you are reporting.

Also, isnt the AI being overhauled or something @Joanna_ifs ?

 

[Joanna_ifs]

We are working on an AI overhaul yes, but the overhaul wouldn't really touch this part of the system - so will take some more time to investigate and fix. There are a lot of different systems in place in our game that all communicate together after all!

 

[TheChemist30]

I'm still having this issue. Any update on a fix?

 

[Joanna_ifs]

@TheChemist30 Heya! So we have done some fixes on this - released when the game was fully released that should have made this issue at least less frequent. Can you tell me a bit about the issues you are experiencing with Malnutrition? Just to know if there are still some bigger glitches happening that have not been occurring in our testing?

 

[TheChemist30]

@TheChemist30 Heya! So we have done some fixes on this - released when the game was fully released that should have made this issue at least less frequent. Can you tell me a bit about the issues you are experiencing with Malnutrition? Just to know if there are still some bigger glitches happening that have not been occurring in our testing?

Basically what was in the OP. I've got a huge assortment of food that includes plenty of different types of meat and vegetables as well as lots of mixed meals. I still end up with survivors suffering from malnutrition and I even have some of them die occasionally. Any other information I can give you?

 

[AndrewT]

Probably best to attach here the saved game having the problem, so the devs can look into it.

 

[TheChemist30]

I went back through my saves and I wasn't able to find any when it was really bad. I've attached 2 saves that I found, one where 1 person suffering from malnutrition and one where it was 2 people. In both instances, I have tons of food and a wide variety of options. Hopefully that will be useful to you.

 

[IKWijma]

Im having the same problem, plenty of food, both plants and meat based. Most of my colonists are fine but there are always a few that refuse to eat healthy and die for no reason.
save game:

 

[Joanna_ifs]

Hey all!

So for the situation where people die of hunger occasionally - usually when this happens, it has been caused by the colonists having low health due to other reasons - they can lose health from combat for example and while they do regain health, it is slow. All conditions that are shown with a red background will also decrease their health - including when they are really hungry. So in some cases, the colonist has low health and then they become hungry but are far away from food - while on their way to get food, they end up losing the small amount of health they still have and thus die of hunger. This is not ideal, we are working on solutions for this - but so it is not really a case of them refusing to eat but a case of them dying before they can eat.

As for malnutrition - this condition is counted from several previous meals they have eaten (meal here means any sort of food, not just the actual meals in the game, couldn't think of a smarter word). So it does take a while for them to recover from it - they have to eat at least a few times before they will be healed and this should be the "correct" food - so making sure you have both kinds of food available is essential!

I'll have someone check the saves attached here to ensure there are no glitches happening with this, so thank you for attaching them!

Hope this information helps, thanks all for the comments and of course, thank you for playing!

 

[Gundehiiil the Dvar]

Does bread have somthing to do with it? I was having this issue last week. About a third of my pops were malnourished.
I built a few more Cookhouses which didn't seem to help enough. Then I destroyed some bakeries and it seemed to fix itself. Will colonists only eat bread if able?

 

[Sichr007]

Can you explain somewhre how food operates? I dont see link betwqeen food production, food consumption and Population, Consumption sometimes being 2times highr, but not exactly...
I also dont understand how cooking houses work...I am producing whole lot of everything possible and most of the time those buildings are idle waiting for resources or something...I have Storage full of wheat and people are dying from hunger. This has quickly deteriorated after magnetic storm event, previoulsy I had no problem with keeping my people fed, even if some were malnutrished. After the event, food consumption went though the roof and suddently I hit the ground...and I dont understand why, I havent changed my play style or balance I wass trying to maintain for thze whole 100days. Strange. I would add my save just I dont know where to find it

 

[porkmeister26]

I think wheat has to be processed into bread to be consumed.

 

[Joanna_ifs]

Does bread have somthing to do with it? I was having this issue last week. About a third of my pops were malnourished.
I built a few more Cookhouses which didn't seem to help enough. Then I destroyed some bakeries and it seemed to fix itself. Will colonists only eat bread if able?

Bread is technically a Meal, so they can prefer eating it however it should not cause malnutrition - I'll have someone check out the values in Bread just to be safe!

Can you explain somewhre how food operates? I dont see link betwqeen food production, food consumption and Population, Consumption sometimes being 2times highr, but not exactly...
I also dont understand how cooking houses work...I am producing whole lot of everything possible and most of the time those buildings are idle waiting for resources or something...I have Storage full of wheat and people are dying from hunger. This has quickly deteriorated after magnetic storm event, previoulsy I had no problem with keeping my people fed, even if some were malnutrished. After the event, food consumption went though the roof and suddently I hit the ground...and I dont understand why, I havent changed my play style or balance I wass trying to maintain for thze whole 100days. Strange. I would add my save just I dont know where to find it

Heya! So explaining the entirety of Food and how it works would take a bit of time, but I'll try and give you the basics:
In the game we have Raw Food, Meals, Old world foods and Food resources that cannot be eaten just like that.

Raw food means Venison, Potatoes, Insects etc.
Meals means Veg, Meat, Mixed, Insect Meals and the Food items produced in the Bakery.
Old World Foods are the Jerky, Canned Fruits etc that can be found in the World Map and traded but not produced in the colony.
Food resources that cannot be eaten are mainly Wheat and Flour.

Raw food fills the colonists up a lot less than meals - where one meal should always fill up the colonist fully, they might have to eat up to 3 units of raw food to be full. Raw food can also contain pollution, causing your colonists to become irradiated more often. The colonists also need to eat a steady balance of both Vegs and Meat to avoid malnourishment - they should be able to eat what is needed on their own however you as the player must ensure they have access to both (only having Trappers around your colony will for example eventually lead to this as they have no vegetables available). Meals are created in the Cookhouses and the Mess Halls - the colonists working there need to pick up Firewood and the foods to use to create the meals.

Wheat indeed cannot be eaten directly by the colonists - you need to first process it into Flour in the Mill and then into Bread or other foods produced by the Bakery - which works in the same way as the Cookhouse does, it simply uses different recipes.

This should be the basics - except one more thing to note - Children eat less than adults, so that can cause the variation as well in your food consumption!

Hope this information helps, let me know if you have any other questions!