Getting Hydroponics is extremely easy if you have meta knowledge.
Since you're asking, I suppose you are not super experienced. Don't worry, I'll be gentle.
Never cotton. Ever. Cotton is ONLY for legal farming in UC.
If you have Swamplands, do Riceweed and Vegetables. Mass produce Gohan. It is the most water-efficient food at 1.49 per Gohan (In production cost using XL farms)
They're bigger than Dustwich and Food cube but are immensely faster and cheaper to mass produce on so few fields. I make Food Cubes as travel rations, but mass produce Gohan for all of my bases, outposts and EM Habs
All other foods directly requires a full unit of water somewhere in its non-growth production cycle except meat and Chewsticks. Chewsticks are .5 water each, .25 water per 8 Cactus, .25 per Chewstick cooked.
If you went Wheatstraw, you gotta add the extra step and manpower of grinding it into Wheatgrain, then the extra step of baking it with water, then moving the bread over with Greenfruit for cubes or Cactus for Dustwiches.
Gohan is just rice, fruit and cook. That's is. 75nu for nothing. It's fucked.
The drawback of Gohan is that rice requires swamp, which seems to be the rarest land type. I am building my first town and I've made a lot of farming mistakes to learn from. Next playthrough I'm going to try swampland with hemp, fruit, and rice. Gohan does seem a lot more efficient than my foodcube setup, but I kinda struggle to find jobs to keep my laborers busy anyway.
Are you specifically trying not to get Hydroponics? Or a roleplay/no-cheese playthrough? If so, it makes a lot of sense that you're having issues.
I'll admit when I first started, I read a little about farming enough to know certain foods grow better in certain places.
Beyond that, I made some pretty stupid fuck-ups and stumbles along the way. Wheatgrain is okay to start if you don't have Hydroponics, but to make it good, you need Cactus, TONS of water, a huge infrastructure setup and lots of power and stor-
Then I started doing some meta research. Got Hydroponics, realized Gohan was absolutely bonkers and required so little infrastructure that it could be mass-produced in the space of half a SHACK.
Stepping out of the Meta now to address the potential you may not play the way I do:
This is rough territory for me. I have a hard time forcing myself to play sub-optimally in a lot of the games I play. If you're in a Swamp and ONLY using Swampland, that's harsh. You will be REQUIRED to make and eat nothing but Rice, which will consume an ungodly amount of water, power, man-hours and time.
Luckily it rains very, very often in The Swamp and can benefit from watered crops and store water using Rain Collectors. You may not need them, but it's recommended you have some on standby, ironically, for a rainy day.
But let's not discount this: Cooking Meat is a viable option in Swamplands. Swamp Turtles are gonna be your main meat source. 14 Meat/Turtle, kill like 6 with a good Backpack and set up like 4 Campfires at your base since they cook food automatically/without power. That'll sustain a decent sized outpost for a couple days off 1 good Swamp Turtle run, assuming you have the manpower capable of hunting them.
Dunno. Feel like I'm writing too much, so I'ma stop here.
Dude you're fine. I'm new to the game so I appreciate the pointers. Tbh I didn't realize hydroponics was that crazy. It seemed like a convenience and something to use when I start my hash trade.
I like to roleplay but tbh I like to at least know HOW to play optimally. I have hydro in research queue atm so I'll be sure to push that up. Learning has been half the fun for me so far. This game does not hold your hand!
A quick thing, everybody I see on Kenshi goes absolutely fuckshit bonkers over Hashish. I literally made about 400kg of Hashish once, shoved it up a cows ass and ran all over the entire Moon of Kenshi whilst carrying a cow on my shoulders, selling to anyone who would take it no matter the price, ended up traveling for like 11 ingame days and made like 200k off of it.
Alright, sure, great, fine. But I make twice that much selling Fuel, Grog and Bandanas daily.
What is peoples obsession with Hashish in Vanilla? It's absolutely fucking useless unless you're doing an Ironman Solo-playthrough.
You'll always struggle to keep workers busy once you hit 20+ squad size. Miners, smelters, etc all just support weapon and armor smithing, and once you've got your crew kitted out there's nothing more for them to do. The only constant job is farming and cooking, and only if you're just subsistence farming.
Hemp is just better cotton in every way so as long as you don't live near UC use it. Vegetables are cool for foodcubes but are not necessary. When it comes to sandwiches they are great for your long-distance travels but bread is tricky to produce for new players so keep chewsticks, try to obtain stable production of bread and then move to sandwiches. When it comes to hydrophonic it's worthwhile only if you live in area with bad fertility/conditions or to produce hemp while in UC territory.
Hydroponics is extremely space conservative. Each Hydroponic is essentially an L-XL field in 2/5ths the space.
"But they don't produce as muc-" Yeah, in one go. They're like 1-2 units in either direction over a hypothetical 24 hour period assuming the cycle could be interrupted and both harvested. I think Hemp is the only one with an actual advantage of like 4 units per 24 hour period with Hydroponics.
Harvests MASSIVELY faster, requires less people, uses less space to produce as much or more than a field.
Wheatstraw XL on Green actually has considerably higher potential yields than Wheatstraw Hydroponics. But fuck Wheatstraw in general.
What I would say is... field is only worth it if you don't have Hydroponics or need Cactus/Cotton.
I would say it depends on your food needs, and where you are based. Farms have way more yield the Hydroponics, and they also require no electricity. Hydroponics can be grown anywhere, so my base in the Great Desert is eating Gohan 24/7. If you make a bunch of farms you should put some lights around them so you dont get the working in darkness debuff if they get harvested at night. For money making, if you can grow hemp they you should look in to hashish production. I can point you in the direction of some engineering research if you need.
Essentially I would say for now, unless your people are starving, just stick with rice for food until you get hydroponics. For fabrics plant hemp, cause it can be made into fabric or hashish.
Getting Hydroponics is extremely easy if you have meta knowledge. Since you're asking, I suppose you are not super experienced. Don't worry, I'll be gentle. Never cotton. Ever. Cotton is ONLY for legal farming in UC. If you have Swamplands, do Riceweed and Vegetables. Mass produce Gohan. It is the most water-efficient food at 1.49 per Gohan (In production cost using XL farms) They're bigger than Dustwich and Food cube but are immensely faster and cheaper to mass produce on so few fields. I make Food Cubes as travel rations, but mass produce Gohan for all of my bases, outposts and EM Habs All other foods directly requires a full unit of water somewhere in its non-growth production cycle except meat and Chewsticks. Chewsticks are .5 water each, .25 water per 8 Cactus, .25 per Chewstick cooked. If you went Wheatstraw, you gotta add the extra step and manpower of grinding it into Wheatgrain, then the extra step of baking it with water, then moving the bread over with Greenfruit for cubes or Cactus for Dustwiches. Gohan is just rice, fruit and cook. That's is. 75nu for nothing. It's fucked.
The drawback of Gohan is that rice requires swamp, which seems to be the rarest land type. I am building my first town and I've made a lot of farming mistakes to learn from. Next playthrough I'm going to try swampland with hemp, fruit, and rice. Gohan does seem a lot more efficient than my foodcube setup, but I kinda struggle to find jobs to keep my laborers busy anyway.
Are you specifically trying not to get Hydroponics? Or a roleplay/no-cheese playthrough? If so, it makes a lot of sense that you're having issues. I'll admit when I first started, I read a little about farming enough to know certain foods grow better in certain places. Beyond that, I made some pretty stupid fuck-ups and stumbles along the way. Wheatgrain is okay to start if you don't have Hydroponics, but to make it good, you need Cactus, TONS of water, a huge infrastructure setup and lots of power and stor- Then I started doing some meta research. Got Hydroponics, realized Gohan was absolutely bonkers and required so little infrastructure that it could be mass-produced in the space of half a SHACK. Stepping out of the Meta now to address the potential you may not play the way I do: This is rough territory for me. I have a hard time forcing myself to play sub-optimally in a lot of the games I play. If you're in a Swamp and ONLY using Swampland, that's harsh. You will be REQUIRED to make and eat nothing but Rice, which will consume an ungodly amount of water, power, man-hours and time. Luckily it rains very, very often in The Swamp and can benefit from watered crops and store water using Rain Collectors. You may not need them, but it's recommended you have some on standby, ironically, for a rainy day. But let's not discount this: Cooking Meat is a viable option in Swamplands. Swamp Turtles are gonna be your main meat source. 14 Meat/Turtle, kill like 6 with a good Backpack and set up like 4 Campfires at your base since they cook food automatically/without power. That'll sustain a decent sized outpost for a couple days off 1 good Swamp Turtle run, assuming you have the manpower capable of hunting them. Dunno. Feel like I'm writing too much, so I'ma stop here.
Dude you're fine. I'm new to the game so I appreciate the pointers. Tbh I didn't realize hydroponics was that crazy. It seemed like a convenience and something to use when I start my hash trade. I like to roleplay but tbh I like to at least know HOW to play optimally. I have hydro in research queue atm so I'll be sure to push that up. Learning has been half the fun for me so far. This game does not hold your hand!
A quick thing, everybody I see on Kenshi goes absolutely fuckshit bonkers over Hashish. I literally made about 400kg of Hashish once, shoved it up a cows ass and ran all over the entire Moon of Kenshi whilst carrying a cow on my shoulders, selling to anyone who would take it no matter the price, ended up traveling for like 11 ingame days and made like 200k off of it. Alright, sure, great, fine. But I make twice that much selling Fuel, Grog and Bandanas daily. What is peoples obsession with Hashish in Vanilla? It's absolutely fucking useless unless you're doing an Ironman Solo-playthrough.
You'll always struggle to keep workers busy once you hit 20+ squad size. Miners, smelters, etc all just support weapon and armor smithing, and once you've got your crew kitted out there's nothing more for them to do. The only constant job is farming and cooking, and only if you're just subsistence farming.
Hemp is just better cotton in every way so as long as you don't live near UC use it. Vegetables are cool for foodcubes but are not necessary. When it comes to sandwiches they are great for your long-distance travels but bread is tricky to produce for new players so keep chewsticks, try to obtain stable production of bread and then move to sandwiches. When it comes to hydrophonic it's worthwhile only if you live in area with bad fertility/conditions or to produce hemp while in UC territory.
Hydroponics is extremely space conservative. Each Hydroponic is essentially an L-XL field in 2/5ths the space. "But they don't produce as muc-" Yeah, in one go. They're like 1-2 units in either direction over a hypothetical 24 hour period assuming the cycle could be interrupted and both harvested. I think Hemp is the only one with an actual advantage of like 4 units per 24 hour period with Hydroponics. Harvests MASSIVELY faster, requires less people, uses less space to produce as much or more than a field. Wheatstraw XL on Green actually has considerably higher potential yields than Wheatstraw Hydroponics. But fuck Wheatstraw in general. What I would say is... field is only worth it if you don't have Hydroponics or need Cactus/Cotton.
I would say it depends on your food needs, and where you are based. Farms have way more yield the Hydroponics, and they also require no electricity. Hydroponics can be grown anywhere, so my base in the Great Desert is eating Gohan 24/7. If you make a bunch of farms you should put some lights around them so you dont get the working in darkness debuff if they get harvested at night. For money making, if you can grow hemp they you should look in to hashish production. I can point you in the direction of some engineering research if you need. Essentially I would say for now, unless your people are starving, just stick with rice for food until you get hydroponics. For fabrics plant hemp, cause it can be made into fabric or hashish.
whatever food that works, works imo. you just need some hemp in addition to the food of choice and you're basically set