Too much noms! The 2.2 Devouring Swarm

[Dargaron]

Hello Stellarites (is that the correct term?)

So, now that 2.2 has had some time to settle, I was wondering about Devouring Swarms: previously, excess food was turned into faster growth, scaling with the amount of excess food being produced. Now that food is *just* an upkeep resource, I'm wondering what, exactly, a Devouring Swarm is supposed to do with all those tasty, tasty pops?

Since Hives don't have access to the "Encourage Growth" edict, all I've found that takes food is the various Campaigns (Drone, Leader and Warrior), but those each cost less than 1k food apiece and last for years, while taking even 1-2 planets from a neighboring empire will get me food incomes in the +300-400 range at least. As far as I can tell, there's nothing I have that can possibly absorb that much food! Since I don't have access to the Galactic Market (Devouring Swarm, natch), all I have is the Local Market, where food is currently at 0.16 Energy Credits apiece after just a couple bulk transactions.

How do i leverage this food into something more useful than 2/10ths of an energy credit?

 

[tobias.mb]

Replace your farms and get all (or at least most) of your food from purging. This way you can indirectly turn the food into alloys (and thus ships). Ofc this means you have to keep expanding or you'll collapse, but that's kind of how a devouring swarm rolls.

 

[Talanic]

Are there any policies to set? There's one for regular empires that lets you increase food upkeep in exchange for happiness and growth speed, but I don't know if a swarm has anything similar.

 

[ArmChairAttila]

Keep the growth buff on planets running 100% of the time. In my last DS game I would also sell a f**k ton of food for alloys. Worked out well.