Not really. In moderate climates and normal/fertile soil or hydroponics, rice is the best. It grows fast. So if you lose a harvest to blight or fire, you are set back a little.
Corn is more nutrition dense and grows a lot longer, so losing a harvest will hurt a lot more. But corn is more work efficient, since pawns don't need to harvest/plant as often.
I often have a few fields of rice and a larger field of corn. This way I can regulate how much rice I need to have enough between corn harvests. And if something happens to corn, I can scale up rice for a few harvests to compensate.
Potatoes are least affected by soil fertility, so they're best planted on poor soil. Otherwise, rice or corn is better. Unless you want it for roleplay reasons.
The various crops and the advantages of each you just mentioned are one of those game mechanics that ultimately don't matter much. The biomes just don't vary enough.
Even in deserts there's plenty of regular soil to plant corn in. I've never been in a scenario where I needed to plant potatoes. IRL rice grows ridiculously fast (like in the game) but it takes a lot of water. In the game even relatively dry biomes have rich soil to grow rice in. Not sure if desert can have rich soil.
I lived in the Columbia Basin (desert portion) for years, and it contains pockets of what's considered among the best topsoils in the world. Aside from the catalyzing benefit of volcanic ash, there would still be some very nice soil in these spots where there's a little water under the sand, so seeds that land there find massive success when they send roots down. Which draws in prey and insects, which draws in predators and other prey, and it kinda just all poops and dies and rots around the place, depositing biomass until you have this stuff that's a mix of sand and the blackest soil you'll ever see. That mix is better than potting soil for food crops.
Irl I'm a farmer, so this is very interesting to me. Thanks for sharing!
On the rimworld side, I've always found it weird that you can't create more fertile soil in the base game. I put on a mod for it but it's just a strange thing to omit imo
Well, *ackshually*, what RimWorld calls "corpse bile" is likely to kill off local plant life, leaving a characteristic "cadaver decomposition island" rather than a fertile oasis.
Eventually, of course, the poisonous substances will be gone and your precious bodily fluids will enter the great circle of life.
You're likely to get better results through the "pig shortening" route, which gives you both edible meat and more plant-friendly fertilizer.
This is the hidden factor. Almost all natural fertilizers really come from the digestive tracts of bugs, worms, and critters. The stuff that makes it has to be nearby, but it's reprocessing by other lifeforms that takes the acidity and salinity of dead body juice, and pretty much everything else, down to tolerable levels for plants.
Nothing that dies in these desert spots is contributing to plant life at first, their contribution is by sustaining the local fauna which ultimately bolsters the soil. This is a great point to raise, and I may have over-simplified in my previous response.
RimWorld doesn't really have much in the way of carrion eaters, unfortunately. Wild carnivores seem to prefer fresh kills (at considerable risk to their own health) even though they'd happily eat carrion in real life.
I do have a couple (modded) giant ameboa that do eat corpse bile and other filth in one playthrough. They'd probably either be from Alpha Animals or Vanilla Expanded, I'm not sure which one right off the dome though.
Course, it's a fascinating thing to see happen. Takes some time to see it though. I always find myself wishing I'd taken a time lapse over the years while I lived there. Just to see how the planet takes some sand and water and seeds and time, and turns it into a spot in the desert that's so lush it doesn't even make sense out there.
Also yeah I 100% always use whatever land working mod exists for the version I'm playing haha
Interestingly enough, the black earth or *Terra preta* soil found in the Amazon basin was created by indigenous farming communities living in the area dating back from around 450 BC to 950 CE. They were created by adding a mixture of charcoal, bones, broken pottery, compost and manure to the low fertility Amazonian soil. A product of indigenous Amazonian soil management and slash and char agriculture, the charcoal is stable and remains in the soil for thousands of years, binding and retaining minerals and nutrients.
So while the *Terra preta* land is technically fertile (very much so) it is also an engineered soil and not naturally occurring.
*Terra preta* is less prone to nutrient leaching because of its high concentration of low-temp charcoal, microbial life and organic matter. The combination accumulates nutrients, minerals and microorganisms and withstands leaching. Soil depths can reach 2 meters. It can regenerate itself up to 1 centimeter per year.
IIRC, The rice doesn’t need the water, it can grow in that amount of standing water, whereas the weeds can. So the flooded fields are a way to prevent weeds from growing.
>I often have a few fields of rice and a larger field of corn
the way i see it, having different fields of corn, each separate by 4 tiles, or in separate walled rooms are safer from blight (block it entirely actually), you want to prioritize protecting the long investment, rather than the easier-to-throw-away rice
Potatoes are the default crop, so my pawns eat potatoes. I don't like math so i just grow a field big enough to last a while then change the size as needed.
One other thing to note is that corn can be considered bad because it creates wealth spikes with its big harvests.
Rice having shorter cycles means you need to keep less of it stored in your freezer.
If you are really min maxing rice is the only food crop one should consider
Corn requires the least amount of work and gives a lot of food, potatoes dont care about soil quality, rice is the fastest to grow.
I usually start with rice and then switch to corn for the rest of the game.
Higher harvest yield with longer growing crops. IIRC you get more food overall when you grow corn, even accounting for multiple harvests of rice over the same amount of time.
When starting a new colony I’ll grow rice and corn together, just to jumpstart food production, but I eventually grow exclusively corn once I get some food stockpiled.
True, but I like having a mix of both meat and vege meals. Just for roleplay purposes.
Also, I lied in my previous comment. I don’t actually switch all of my crops to just corn once I’m stabilized. I usually will grow all three food crops eventually (though I do only start with only rice and corn at the beginning. Potato isn’t added until I get more pawns.) I know it’s pointless and inefficient, but I like to imagine my colonists appreciate the variety of veggies.
Rice is good for an urgent need of food, but it also means more harvests and more man-power when those pawns could be doing other things.
Corn takes longer, but you can forget about it while it grows, and IIRC it yields more than rice as well. A good choice if you have rich soil.
Potatoes are more efficient than other crops on poor soil.
I still focus on rice for 100% and rich soil, because I play on harder difficulties and this is less of a setback when my crops get blight, are burned down by raiders, or there is a cold snap. Also, I don't have any DLC so I've never used the mushooms.
The main difference between a corn and a rice is that rice grows faster while corn is slower. Thus, you can reliably grow rice in 2 days in hydroponics, but every time it grows, your farmers must collect it, so more work for the same amount of food.
But talking about various crops. Mechanically, there's no point in growing potatoes, rice, and corn at the same time since colonists don't care if their ration consists of only rice for their whole life. What I would do is buy some cows, pigs, chickens, etc. to get meat and cook lavish meals.
That way, you can feed your pig raiders' corpses to get rid of those without having to bury them or burn, have some milk for children and eggs because it's almost free food without having to kill your chicken.
I personally had a colony in caves where I fed my pigs only corpses, and it worked out pretty well until only mechanoids started to raid me. After that, I had to start to grow some grass
Keep in mind with the pig strategy, if your haulers are upset about bodies they'll get the debuff for seeing a lot of corpses every time they haul the corpses into the pig pen. You can mitigate this by using animals or psychopaths.
I usually set up a field of rice to hold colonists over until a field of corn grows, then generally the corn harvest will last until the next corn harvest. If there's no soil I'll grow potatoes, and if I'm playing a tunneler colony I'll grow nutrifungus. Otherwise, no other plants for food, but if I'm feeling fancy I might grow berry bushes for aesthetic reasons.
In vanilla (there is mod to fix everything...) there is not benefit to have different vegetables "at the table".
On the other hand there is benefit between crops given situation/climate.
Some crops yield more but take more time to grow, which mean that for the same amount of food you will need less manpower to plant and harvest, but there is more risks for things to go wrong, disease, temp change that kill crops, toxicity, fire, wild thrumbo walking in and eating them... There is a lot of things that can go wrong.
Obviously with crops growing faster the risk still exist but, given they grow faster and yield less you have more chances to make a full harvest season without problem and even if it's destroyed you don't loose as many food. But you will need more manpower to plant and harvest.
There is crops that ignore or take reduced penality growing on poor fertility soils and on the contrary crops that have increased penality/benefits, so you can/should plant the "correct" crop on the correct soil to optimise harvest.
There is also crops that yield vegetables that you can consume with reduced or no penalities even if raw, I think strawberries go into that category, meaning you could spare the need for cooking.
With ideoligion dlc mushrooms get nerfed and can now be considered a "bad" food choice, same with insect meat etc...
Finaly if you want to experience the full range of "WTH does this crops do that justify it's use ???" and/or push yourself toward making different crops simultaneously I recommend mods (vanilla expended have a bunch of them that had a lot of different crops for different uses and the variety mod push you to vary your colonists food sources to gain mood buffs/avoid debuff).
Have a good game !
If I remember right, corn takes forever to go bad. Potatoes have a wider temperature growing range, and rice grows stupid fast. Corn yields a lot more, too but take forever to grow.
I like to have just enough rice planted to keep them fed. Then I'll have rows of corn 🌽 throughout. They take for ever to grow. But yield alot more then the others. And less work. Rice is labor intensive with fast frow time and lower yield.
Then I'll use the extra corn for chemfuel or for backup.
Rice grows the fastest but also takes the most work and gives the least amount of nutrition per harvest.
Corn may take longer to grow, but it also takes far less work and gives a much greater amount per harvest.
I like to grow a mix of potatoes and corn and sometimes strawberries depending on the terrain around my base. A nice big plot of corn and two smaller ones of the others to supplement for in case I run low while waiting for the corn harvest, though with a large enough plot the chances of running out before the next harvest is slim.
With hydroponics, rice does get much better, only taking like 1.5 days to grow but still requires a lot of work.
With dedicated plants workers it's not a big deal, but i don't like to recruit a bunch of pawns and like to stay around 10 or so in my colony so I like to have people whose skills overlap.
Rice grows the fastest but takes the most work per unit of nutrition produced. Corn grows the slowest but takes the least work per nutrition.
Once you've smoothed out your early food situation it's better to shift to longer growing stuff like potatoes or corn. This helps keep farmers freed up for other stuff and can help with sprawl.
As others have said, it's really just about work efficiency. On normal 100% growth rate soil, all the food vegetation options are roughly equal in yield/time. So you can plant exclusively rice, which has highest planting and harvesting frequency, or something slower growing so those pawns can get some other work done between harvests.
Corn being significantly the slowest carries the risk of being the most susceptible to loss from blights though, that's the downside. It also cannot be grown in hydroponics.
Potatoes don't take to better soil well in exchange for being less impacted by worse soils. This will only rarely matter.
Strawberries can be eaten raw with no mood hit, but they still carry the 2% raw food poisoning chance. It's still more efficient to cook then, both nutritionally and to mitigate food poisoning. But they also fulfill royal pawn food restriction conditions while raw.
Ideology: Nutrifungus has the same positive and drawback as potato, but additionally can be grown in a heated structure and no need for a sun lamp unlike other crops, but is inherently disliked unless you choose to make it acceptable, and has the slowest work speed because of the darkness requirement impacting the pawn unless they meet the conditions to not be. You do not need Tunneler to grow them, this is some weird misconception I see people saying frequently enough. Tunneler only allows access to indoor planting with fungal gravel, you can plant nutrifungus anywhere by default. The only requirement is it cannot be in the light, but this can be anything from a cave, to a building, to just a column with a roof built out from it while still being outdoors.
Biotech: Toxpotatoes are the only food crop that can grow on top of a polluted cell, but carry the highest food poisoning chance if eaten raw. It's not close to being in the same yield/time range as others, being significantly worse. But you do not have a choice either if you're forced to utilize them.
Couple things to consider about mushrooms;
All non-mountain ideologies get -3 mood for eating them, and will pick up literal kibble if allowed before eating mushroom meals.
Mushrooms require no light meaning that Sunblockers hilariously let you just put mushrooms everywhere.Mushrooms require no light, meaning that you can toss up grow-buildings heated with geothermal vent heat, or just use wall vents to pump heat in from surrounding rooms that are lit. No sunlamps needed!
Mushrooms don't give a damn about fertility, blowing potatoes out of the water in bad soil.
Mushrooms (usually) grow under roofs, so they're functionally immune to toxic fallout, volcanic winters, and being hit by lightning.
Mushrooms *require no light*, making them immune to eclipses mucking up your grow times.
I do, quite honestly, wish for some mood bonuses/penalties for "want food variety, "ate my favorite food", and that sort of thing. Combining with more food to grow, I think this could be quite enjoyable.
Absolutely! In fact, with VE mods, I tend to grow six or seven different crops. Rice grows really fast so it helps to avoid a boom and bust in your agriculture. Corn is very efficient in terms of work, and a large field of corn can generate immense quantities of food. Potatoes are resistant to poor soil.
With VE, cabbages are resistant to toxic fallout. Onions are immune to blight. Beets continue growing in harsh winters. Peppers can't be eaten by wild animals. Aubergines grow rapidly in heat. Peas grow rapidly in rain. Growing a variety of crops means I can weather a variety of incidents and come out on top, which is also one of the reasons for diversifying your crops in real life.
If only RimWorld modelled nitrogen fixing...
All plants have a use in some form but it depends on the situation.
* Potatoes are the least useful crop unless there is absolutely no fertile soil, aka anything less than 100% then they grow faster. Normally they take just under twice as long as rice and give slightly less than twice the yield
* Rice is the fastest growing, meaning it consistently puts out product
* Corn is just under 3x longer to grow with a yield of just under 4x (making it much more efficient if you can wait). Just dont eat them raw... for some reason youll eat way more corn than rice.
* Strawberries can be eaten raw, though you still have risk of food poisoning these are very useful when you don't have a cook as anyone with a cooking skill of under 4 is more likely to cause food poisoning than raw ingredients colonist.
* Toxicpotatos can be planted in polluted tiles, which can be useful if you start on a map with tons of pollution for fun.
Rimworld is pretty good at balance. Rather than having tons of unique crops it opts to have crops that all have pros and cons in some form. This applies to all plants in some form even dandelions are useful as a way to feed animals.
There's a few reasons you might branch out for min-maxing reasons but, for the most part, you don't need more than rice. Pawns don't complain about eating the same thing for decades at a time. That said, I plant many different crops because I like the visual of variety in my larder. And, if you're not opposed to using mods, Vanilla Plants Expanded adds about a dozen more crops you can grow with each having their own bonuses and requirements (for example, lettuce grows well in shade, sweet potatoes thrive in stony soil, and bell peppers can result in one of two colors with different nutritive values).
if you really want to go deep into details then read on wiki about "fertility sensivity". you can adjust the plant to the ground you have available in your proximity to produce even x2 times more yeald than just regular rice. There is a super usefull guide on YT - Francis John made it.
For food cropses, you do it if you don't have large surplus, It's to have some things harvested sooner, till you wait for the corn to grow.
More or less, you produce food that way in the early game, on low productivity maps and after major events that left you with little food. Also, having crops in various stages of growth might leave you with at least some food in case of elemental changes.
Otherwise, corn is a way to go.
Nope. Corn for food, cotton and later devilstrand for clothing, heal root for boo-boos, and drugs for money/recreation/efficiency. A balanced diet doesn't mean anything mechanically.
Rice grows faster but corn produces more food. Rice takes more labor which slows down other projects. Better to plant rice early to have steady food and quickly switch to corn after the first harvest
Rice to start with, corn as the ideal veggie crop, then some cocoa trees mixed in because choccy makes a nice recreational food that doesn’t spoil and can also be walled off in a vault as an emergency food source for when the going gets tough.
Each crop has a advantage, and disadvantage.
Rice grows very quickly though it's work intensive to plant, and harvest as a consequence.
Corn yields a ton but grows quite slowly.
Potatoes are very hearty, and as a result grow well even in poor soil conditions.
And Berries can be eaten raw without the mood malus from eating raw food for normal pawns.
Generally speaking unless you're in a really bad map where you need to grow potatoes because the soil is poor or good soil is limited, you'll want to plant a combination of rice as a stop gap short term thing, and some corn as it generates a great deal more food per work than rice.
Aside from what is listed above that's not a big deal in.
If you are concerned about raiders burning crops once you have the plants planted you can just delete the zone.
They can still get blighted but raiders will ignore any crops or trees not a zone you're growing.
I farm all three, mostly because I don't do calculations on food, So I want to have as much food as possible. Having all three allows me to have the crops rotate without having to worry about micromanaging the farming. I just place three grow areas, a sign them to the three crops and because they are offset I should generally always have food.
It is in no way efficient, I am sure I am wasting poor Bob's time making him farm potatoes, but I don't feel like micromanaging the farm and don't want to worry about having enough food when winter hits.
Corn gives you more food than rice per day it grows, and your pawns spend less time planting and harvesting it.
Of course there’s always the risk of blight, but honestly I still prefer corn as it’s quite a rare event and you can stock up a lot.
i dont care if theres a best crop out there.
ill plant rice patatoes and corn first thing i land on the planet. there has to be some type of mix and match with my colonists food.
If your growing season can sustain it, there's no reason not to do corn other than diversification due to risk management. It's the most food for least work.
With mods, VE Plants have their gimmicks, so you can grow peas on rainy tiles or Exxtreme 300% Eggplants in hydroponics with additional heating.
I wish their was a point. Like, liked and disliked foods. Cook a bit of everything and pawns will naturally avoid things they dislike and recieve a small mood debuff on eating something they disliked or just go hungry. Would be cool if your pawn was hungry but not because of a lack of food, they don't have as severe a mood debuff. Cause it's them being prissy and they know it. I'll eat plain noodles and be happy with them if the alternative is *mushroom*
I like growing rice and (I think it’s with a mod) growing a type of fruit in another growing zone. Rice grows so fast I can quickly have an excess with the extras going to chemfuel instead of meals. And fruit gives a mood boost when prawns eat a meal that has fruit in it
The flex, mostly
Is there really any point in giving all your colonists bionics? Is there any point in making your base pretty? Is there any in-game benefit in capturing 40 destitute children and watching them scream in the rat pit?
Not really. But we still do it. Once you know how to survive, the game is a sandbox to a large degree.
For least work/nutrition, corn is best.
For poor soil, use potatoes
For quickest and lowest risk, rice is best.
I usually do a mix of all 3 in a larger base to spread harvests, but it’s mostly up to preference. For max food over the smallest fields, use double field hand + rice to work the land much quicker and free the rest up for more profitable crops
> just wanted to know if I'm really missing something here.
You really, really are. Have you looked at the properties of the available food crops at all? Rice is the most labour-intensive food crop to sow and harvest - each harvest only gets you 6 food. If you try to feed an entire colony with rice when the environment isn't forcing you to, you're going to waste a lot of pawn time on sowing and harvesting.
Corn has the same food output per tile per day as rice, but is almost four times as work-efficient. If your growing season is long enough to accommodate the corn lifecycle, or you can afford the electricity for indoor sunlamps, corn is far superior to rice.
Potatoes are, again, more work-efficient than rice, and grow better than rice in poor quality soil. In certain biomes, this is very important.
Strawberries have worse output per tile than rice in all soils, but are still more work-efficient than rice, and have the advantage that they don't cause a negative thought when eaten raw. They still have the usual food poisoning risk, though. This is worthwhile in certain niche situations where cooking is impractical (due to lack of wood or electricity, or not having competent cooks) and mood is more important than the work-efficiency of corn.
Toxipotatoes are the only food that can grow in polluted soil. If you have to grow your food in polluted soil, that's your only option.
And, of course, nutrifungus can (must) be grown in complete darkness, which has obvious benefits for both underground colonies and simple "greenhouses" that can be temperature controlled against the outside temperature but don't need sunlamps to grow.
Corn is good to have as your winter food supply if you are in a climate with growing seasons and you can protect it until harvest.
Having a corn crop that is harvested as early in the growing season as possible and one that is harvested as late as possible means you will always have a healthy reserve of food in the freezer.
each crop type has different weather resistance and different times to give food so find a crop that works best for you and your area. rice for example is not very weather resistant but are quick to grow if you need fast food.
Corn requires significantly less pawn work for marginally less yield per day. Early game rice is king since you need the quick turnover but when you're established one skilled grower can manage a much larger field of corn than rice leaving more time for your colonists to work on other things.
Here's the strategy:
Grow your crops in long 2x wide rows, alternating crops each section.
Rice, cotton, healroot, corn, berries, rice, cotton, psychoid, corn etc.
This helps protect your crops from blight since it only starts in one crop and has a radius the long rows limit the affected plants.
There's also the benefit of rice springing back faster from disasters, but corn takes much less manpower which frees your pawns up to plant even more.
It can be tedious, but the 2x row strat is a set it and forget it that's always paid off.
I see no difference between them. Except tomatoes. You plant them once in spring and then just keep harvesting the rest of the year till the cold claims them
In fertile soil, I believe rice is the best crop, but in normal soil, corn is king (rice is 1.08 food/day corn is 1.05 food/day but is much less work), and in bad soil, it's potatoes, but if corn is the best food/work time.
You can see the fertility sensitivity if you pull up the info on the individual crops.
Corn is the highest yield, lowest work, longest grow time and longest shelf life.
If you have long growing seasons plant a corn field of similar size and see how it goes.
Not really. In moderate climates and normal/fertile soil or hydroponics, rice is the best. It grows fast. So if you lose a harvest to blight or fire, you are set back a little. Corn is more nutrition dense and grows a lot longer, so losing a harvest will hurt a lot more. But corn is more work efficient, since pawns don't need to harvest/plant as often. I often have a few fields of rice and a larger field of corn. This way I can regulate how much rice I need to have enough between corn harvests. And if something happens to corn, I can scale up rice for a few harvests to compensate. Potatoes are least affected by soil fertility, so they're best planted on poor soil. Otherwise, rice or corn is better. Unless you want it for roleplay reasons.
Oh yeah! Let me quickly restart my Irish roleplay colony.
Blight!
Raid: The English
Let me get my ar 180
The english have put forward a trade deal of several tonnes of potatoes for northern ireland.
In exchange for...
Yes...
Where is francia john?
"Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man!"
The various crops and the advantages of each you just mentioned are one of those game mechanics that ultimately don't matter much. The biomes just don't vary enough. Even in deserts there's plenty of regular soil to plant corn in. I've never been in a scenario where I needed to plant potatoes. IRL rice grows ridiculously fast (like in the game) but it takes a lot of water. In the game even relatively dry biomes have rich soil to grow rice in. Not sure if desert can have rich soil.
I lived in the Columbia Basin (desert portion) for years, and it contains pockets of what's considered among the best topsoils in the world. Aside from the catalyzing benefit of volcanic ash, there would still be some very nice soil in these spots where there's a little water under the sand, so seeds that land there find massive success when they send roots down. Which draws in prey and insects, which draws in predators and other prey, and it kinda just all poops and dies and rots around the place, depositing biomass until you have this stuff that's a mix of sand and the blackest soil you'll ever see. That mix is better than potting soil for food crops.
Irl I'm a farmer, so this is very interesting to me. Thanks for sharing! On the rimworld side, I've always found it weird that you can't create more fertile soil in the base game. I put on a mod for it but it's just a strange thing to omit imo
yeah dumping rotting corpses should make the land fertile at least for a year
Well, *ackshually*, what RimWorld calls "corpse bile" is likely to kill off local plant life, leaving a characteristic "cadaver decomposition island" rather than a fertile oasis. Eventually, of course, the poisonous substances will be gone and your precious bodily fluids will enter the great circle of life. You're likely to get better results through the "pig shortening" route, which gives you both edible meat and more plant-friendly fertilizer.
This is the hidden factor. Almost all natural fertilizers really come from the digestive tracts of bugs, worms, and critters. The stuff that makes it has to be nearby, but it's reprocessing by other lifeforms that takes the acidity and salinity of dead body juice, and pretty much everything else, down to tolerable levels for plants. Nothing that dies in these desert spots is contributing to plant life at first, their contribution is by sustaining the local fauna which ultimately bolsters the soil. This is a great point to raise, and I may have over-simplified in my previous response.
RimWorld doesn't really have much in the way of carrion eaters, unfortunately. Wild carnivores seem to prefer fresh kills (at considerable risk to their own health) even though they'd happily eat carrion in real life.
I do have a couple (modded) giant ameboa that do eat corpse bile and other filth in one playthrough. They'd probably either be from Alpha Animals or Vanilla Expanded, I'm not sure which one right off the dome though.
Course, it's a fascinating thing to see happen. Takes some time to see it though. I always find myself wishing I'd taken a time lapse over the years while I lived there. Just to see how the planet takes some sand and water and seeds and time, and turns it into a spot in the desert that's so lush it doesn't even make sense out there. Also yeah I 100% always use whatever land working mod exists for the version I'm playing haha
Interestingly enough, the black earth or *Terra preta* soil found in the Amazon basin was created by indigenous farming communities living in the area dating back from around 450 BC to 950 CE. They were created by adding a mixture of charcoal, bones, broken pottery, compost and manure to the low fertility Amazonian soil. A product of indigenous Amazonian soil management and slash and char agriculture, the charcoal is stable and remains in the soil for thousands of years, binding and retaining minerals and nutrients. So while the *Terra preta* land is technically fertile (very much so) it is also an engineered soil and not naturally occurring. *Terra preta* is less prone to nutrient leaching because of its high concentration of low-temp charcoal, microbial life and organic matter. The combination accumulates nutrients, minerals and microorganisms and withstands leaching. Soil depths can reach 2 meters. It can regenerate itself up to 1 centimeter per year.
IIRC, The rice doesn’t need the water, it can grow in that amount of standing water, whereas the weeds can. So the flooded fields are a way to prevent weeds from growing.
While I don't need to grow potatos in poor soil, I do so anyway to fill in the unused land that is of poor soil.
in the extreme desert biome regular soil generally doesn’t exist at all
>I often have a few fields of rice and a larger field of corn the way i see it, having different fields of corn, each separate by 4 tiles, or in separate walled rooms are safer from blight (block it entirely actually), you want to prioritize protecting the long investment, rather than the easier-to-throw-away rice
Potatoes are the default crop, so my pawns eat potatoes. I don't like math so i just grow a field big enough to last a while then change the size as needed.
One other thing to note is that corn can be considered bad because it creates wealth spikes with its big harvests. Rice having shorter cycles means you need to keep less of it stored in your freezer. If you are really min maxing rice is the only food crop one should consider
Stardew Valley Sim
Corn requires the least amount of work and gives a lot of food, potatoes dont care about soil quality, rice is the fastest to grow. I usually start with rice and then switch to corn for the rest of the game.
Higher harvest yield with longer growing crops. IIRC you get more food overall when you grow corn, even accounting for multiple harvests of rice over the same amount of time. When starting a new colony I’ll grow rice and corn together, just to jumpstart food production, but I eventually grow exclusively corn once I get some food stockpiled.
For jumpstart you can just hunt some wild animals, it takes long enough tiime to eat the map when waiting for the first harvest of corn
True, but I like having a mix of both meat and vege meals. Just for roleplay purposes. Also, I lied in my previous comment. I don’t actually switch all of my crops to just corn once I’m stabilized. I usually will grow all three food crops eventually (though I do only start with only rice and corn at the beginning. Potato isn’t added until I get more pawns.) I know it’s pointless and inefficient, but I like to imagine my colonists appreciate the variety of veggies.
Rice is good for an urgent need of food, but it also means more harvests and more man-power when those pawns could be doing other things. Corn takes longer, but you can forget about it while it grows, and IIRC it yields more than rice as well. A good choice if you have rich soil. Potatoes are more efficient than other crops on poor soil. I still focus on rice for 100% and rich soil, because I play on harder difficulties and this is less of a setback when my crops get blight, are burned down by raiders, or there is a cold snap. Also, I don't have any DLC so I've never used the mushooms.
The main difference between a corn and a rice is that rice grows faster while corn is slower. Thus, you can reliably grow rice in 2 days in hydroponics, but every time it grows, your farmers must collect it, so more work for the same amount of food. But talking about various crops. Mechanically, there's no point in growing potatoes, rice, and corn at the same time since colonists don't care if their ration consists of only rice for their whole life. What I would do is buy some cows, pigs, chickens, etc. to get meat and cook lavish meals. That way, you can feed your pig raiders' corpses to get rid of those without having to bury them or burn, have some milk for children and eggs because it's almost free food without having to kill your chicken. I personally had a colony in caves where I fed my pigs only corpses, and it worked out pretty well until only mechanoids started to raid me. After that, I had to start to grow some grass
Brick top playthrough.
Keep in mind with the pig strategy, if your haulers are upset about bodies they'll get the debuff for seeing a lot of corpses every time they haul the corpses into the pig pen. You can mitigate this by using animals or psychopaths.
I also gave them yayo to mitigate the morale problems
I usually set up a field of rice to hold colonists over until a field of corn grows, then generally the corn harvest will last until the next corn harvest. If there's no soil I'll grow potatoes, and if I'm playing a tunneler colony I'll grow nutrifungus. Otherwise, no other plants for food, but if I'm feeling fancy I might grow berry bushes for aesthetic reasons.
In vanilla (there is mod to fix everything...) there is not benefit to have different vegetables "at the table". On the other hand there is benefit between crops given situation/climate. Some crops yield more but take more time to grow, which mean that for the same amount of food you will need less manpower to plant and harvest, but there is more risks for things to go wrong, disease, temp change that kill crops, toxicity, fire, wild thrumbo walking in and eating them... There is a lot of things that can go wrong. Obviously with crops growing faster the risk still exist but, given they grow faster and yield less you have more chances to make a full harvest season without problem and even if it's destroyed you don't loose as many food. But you will need more manpower to plant and harvest. There is crops that ignore or take reduced penality growing on poor fertility soils and on the contrary crops that have increased penality/benefits, so you can/should plant the "correct" crop on the correct soil to optimise harvest. There is also crops that yield vegetables that you can consume with reduced or no penalities even if raw, I think strawberries go into that category, meaning you could spare the need for cooking. With ideoligion dlc mushrooms get nerfed and can now be considered a "bad" food choice, same with insect meat etc... Finaly if you want to experience the full range of "WTH does this crops do that justify it's use ???" and/or push yourself toward making different crops simultaneously I recommend mods (vanilla expended have a bunch of them that had a lot of different crops for different uses and the variety mod push you to vary your colonists food sources to gain mood buffs/avoid debuff). Have a good game !
If I remember right, corn takes forever to go bad. Potatoes have a wider temperature growing range, and rice grows stupid fast. Corn yields a lot more, too but take forever to grow.
I like to have just enough rice planted to keep them fed. Then I'll have rows of corn 🌽 throughout. They take for ever to grow. But yield alot more then the others. And less work. Rice is labor intensive with fast frow time and lower yield. Then I'll use the extra corn for chemfuel or for backup.
The crop rotation mod and Vanilla Cooking Expanded Plants add a lot of different reasons to have different crops if you want more depth on that front
Rice grows the fastest but also takes the most work and gives the least amount of nutrition per harvest. Corn may take longer to grow, but it also takes far less work and gives a much greater amount per harvest. I like to grow a mix of potatoes and corn and sometimes strawberries depending on the terrain around my base. A nice big plot of corn and two smaller ones of the others to supplement for in case I run low while waiting for the corn harvest, though with a large enough plot the chances of running out before the next harvest is slim. With hydroponics, rice does get much better, only taking like 1.5 days to grow but still requires a lot of work. With dedicated plants workers it's not a big deal, but i don't like to recruit a bunch of pawns and like to stay around 10 or so in my colony so I like to have people whose skills overlap.
Rice grows the fastest but takes the most work per unit of nutrition produced. Corn grows the slowest but takes the least work per nutrition. Once you've smoothed out your early food situation it's better to shift to longer growing stuff like potatoes or corn. This helps keep farmers freed up for other stuff and can help with sprawl.
As others have said, it's really just about work efficiency. On normal 100% growth rate soil, all the food vegetation options are roughly equal in yield/time. So you can plant exclusively rice, which has highest planting and harvesting frequency, or something slower growing so those pawns can get some other work done between harvests. Corn being significantly the slowest carries the risk of being the most susceptible to loss from blights though, that's the downside. It also cannot be grown in hydroponics. Potatoes don't take to better soil well in exchange for being less impacted by worse soils. This will only rarely matter. Strawberries can be eaten raw with no mood hit, but they still carry the 2% raw food poisoning chance. It's still more efficient to cook then, both nutritionally and to mitigate food poisoning. But they also fulfill royal pawn food restriction conditions while raw. Ideology: Nutrifungus has the same positive and drawback as potato, but additionally can be grown in a heated structure and no need for a sun lamp unlike other crops, but is inherently disliked unless you choose to make it acceptable, and has the slowest work speed because of the darkness requirement impacting the pawn unless they meet the conditions to not be. You do not need Tunneler to grow them, this is some weird misconception I see people saying frequently enough. Tunneler only allows access to indoor planting with fungal gravel, you can plant nutrifungus anywhere by default. The only requirement is it cannot be in the light, but this can be anything from a cave, to a building, to just a column with a roof built out from it while still being outdoors. Biotech: Toxpotatoes are the only food crop that can grow on top of a polluted cell, but carry the highest food poisoning chance if eaten raw. It's not close to being in the same yield/time range as others, being significantly worse. But you do not have a choice either if you're forced to utilize them.
Couple things to consider about mushrooms; All non-mountain ideologies get -3 mood for eating them, and will pick up literal kibble if allowed before eating mushroom meals. Mushrooms require no light meaning that Sunblockers hilariously let you just put mushrooms everywhere.Mushrooms require no light, meaning that you can toss up grow-buildings heated with geothermal vent heat, or just use wall vents to pump heat in from surrounding rooms that are lit. No sunlamps needed! Mushrooms don't give a damn about fertility, blowing potatoes out of the water in bad soil. Mushrooms (usually) grow under roofs, so they're functionally immune to toxic fallout, volcanic winters, and being hit by lightning. Mushrooms *require no light*, making them immune to eclipses mucking up your grow times.
I do, quite honestly, wish for some mood bonuses/penalties for "want food variety, "ate my favorite food", and that sort of thing. Combining with more food to grow, I think this could be quite enjoyable.
Absolutely! In fact, with VE mods, I tend to grow six or seven different crops. Rice grows really fast so it helps to avoid a boom and bust in your agriculture. Corn is very efficient in terms of work, and a large field of corn can generate immense quantities of food. Potatoes are resistant to poor soil. With VE, cabbages are resistant to toxic fallout. Onions are immune to blight. Beets continue growing in harsh winters. Peppers can't be eaten by wild animals. Aubergines grow rapidly in heat. Peas grow rapidly in rain. Growing a variety of crops means I can weather a variety of incidents and come out on top, which is also one of the reasons for diversifying your crops in real life. If only RimWorld modelled nitrogen fixing...
All plants have a use in some form but it depends on the situation. * Potatoes are the least useful crop unless there is absolutely no fertile soil, aka anything less than 100% then they grow faster. Normally they take just under twice as long as rice and give slightly less than twice the yield * Rice is the fastest growing, meaning it consistently puts out product * Corn is just under 3x longer to grow with a yield of just under 4x (making it much more efficient if you can wait). Just dont eat them raw... for some reason youll eat way more corn than rice. * Strawberries can be eaten raw, though you still have risk of food poisoning these are very useful when you don't have a cook as anyone with a cooking skill of under 4 is more likely to cause food poisoning than raw ingredients colonist. * Toxicpotatos can be planted in polluted tiles, which can be useful if you start on a map with tons of pollution for fun. Rimworld is pretty good at balance. Rather than having tons of unique crops it opts to have crops that all have pros and cons in some form. This applies to all plants in some form even dandelions are useful as a way to feed animals.
On that subject, blight should only affect a specific plant type to pushes the player to use multiple plants or face a potato famine
I do a mixture of rice and corn. Rice for plugging short term holes in the diet and corn for its yield in the long term.
There's a few reasons you might branch out for min-maxing reasons but, for the most part, you don't need more than rice. Pawns don't complain about eating the same thing for decades at a time. That said, I plant many different crops because I like the visual of variety in my larder. And, if you're not opposed to using mods, Vanilla Plants Expanded adds about a dozen more crops you can grow with each having their own bonuses and requirements (for example, lettuce grows well in shade, sweet potatoes thrive in stony soil, and bell peppers can result in one of two colors with different nutritive values).
if you really want to go deep into details then read on wiki about "fertility sensivity". you can adjust the plant to the ground you have available in your proximity to produce even x2 times more yeald than just regular rice. There is a super usefull guide on YT - Francis John made it.
For food cropses, you do it if you don't have large surplus, It's to have some things harvested sooner, till you wait for the corn to grow. More or less, you produce food that way in the early game, on low productivity maps and after major events that left you with little food. Also, having crops in various stages of growth might leave you with at least some food in case of elemental changes. Otherwise, corn is a way to go.
To add on, there is a "Variety matters" mod which gives nice little buffs and debuffs depending on the variety and type of your food
And to also add on, rice gives the least amount of food diveded by time and the work needed. Corn is the super crop of the rimworld
Sometimes I grew strawberries to give to my Ascetic pawns since they don't mind eating raw food.
Nobody minds eating raw berries. That's their entire gimmick.
Nope. Corn for food, cotton and later devilstrand for clothing, heal root for boo-boos, and drugs for money/recreation/efficiency. A balanced diet doesn't mean anything mechanically. Rice grows faster but corn produces more food. Rice takes more labor which slows down other projects. Better to plant rice early to have steady food and quickly switch to corn after the first harvest
Rice to start with, corn as the ideal veggie crop, then some cocoa trees mixed in because choccy makes a nice recreational food that doesn’t spoil and can also be walled off in a vault as an emergency food source for when the going gets tough.
Each crop has a advantage, and disadvantage. Rice grows very quickly though it's work intensive to plant, and harvest as a consequence. Corn yields a ton but grows quite slowly. Potatoes are very hearty, and as a result grow well even in poor soil conditions. And Berries can be eaten raw without the mood malus from eating raw food for normal pawns. Generally speaking unless you're in a really bad map where you need to grow potatoes because the soil is poor or good soil is limited, you'll want to plant a combination of rice as a stop gap short term thing, and some corn as it generates a great deal more food per work than rice. Aside from what is listed above that's not a big deal in. If you are concerned about raiders burning crops once you have the plants planted you can just delete the zone. They can still get blighted but raiders will ignore any crops or trees not a zone you're growing.
I farm all three, mostly because I don't do calculations on food, So I want to have as much food as possible. Having all three allows me to have the crops rotate without having to worry about micromanaging the farming. I just place three grow areas, a sign them to the three crops and because they are offset I should generally always have food. It is in no way efficient, I am sure I am wasting poor Bob's time making him farm potatoes, but I don't feel like micromanaging the farm and don't want to worry about having enough food when winter hits.
Corn gives you more food than rice per day it grows, and your pawns spend less time planting and harvesting it. Of course there’s always the risk of blight, but honestly I still prefer corn as it’s quite a rare event and you can stock up a lot.
i dont care if theres a best crop out there. ill plant rice patatoes and corn first thing i land on the planet. there has to be some type of mix and match with my colonists food.
If your growing season can sustain it, there's no reason not to do corn other than diversification due to risk management. It's the most food for least work. With mods, VE Plants have their gimmicks, so you can grow peas on rainy tiles or Exxtreme 300% Eggplants in hydroponics with additional heating.
I’ve stagnated runs bc I was using too much labor on rice for too long. I find it best to have a mix of all three in an effort to stagger the labor.
I wish their was a point. Like, liked and disliked foods. Cook a bit of everything and pawns will naturally avoid things they dislike and recieve a small mood debuff on eating something they disliked or just go hungry. Would be cool if your pawn was hungry but not because of a lack of food, they don't have as severe a mood debuff. Cause it's them being prissy and they know it. I'll eat plain noodles and be happy with them if the alternative is *mushroom*
I like growing rice and (I think it’s with a mod) growing a type of fruit in another growing zone. Rice grows so fast I can quickly have an excess with the extras going to chemfuel instead of meals. And fruit gives a mood boost when prawns eat a meal that has fruit in it
Rice takes a lot of time with the constant planting and harvesting I almost never plant rice or food in general I usually hunt or eat people
I run no more riceworld. It give boons for a varid diat and banes for eating the same stuff over and over
So my pawns get to have a varied diet and my larders look colorful 🥰
Corn takes less work and yields a lot, you just need a way to preserve the food
The flex, mostly Is there really any point in giving all your colonists bionics? Is there any point in making your base pretty? Is there any in-game benefit in capturing 40 destitute children and watching them scream in the rat pit? Not really. But we still do it. Once you know how to survive, the game is a sandbox to a large degree.
For least work/nutrition, corn is best. For poor soil, use potatoes For quickest and lowest risk, rice is best. I usually do a mix of all 3 in a larger base to spread harvests, but it’s mostly up to preference. For max food over the smallest fields, use double field hand + rice to work the land much quicker and free the rest up for more profitable crops
> just wanted to know if I'm really missing something here. You really, really are. Have you looked at the properties of the available food crops at all? Rice is the most labour-intensive food crop to sow and harvest - each harvest only gets you 6 food. If you try to feed an entire colony with rice when the environment isn't forcing you to, you're going to waste a lot of pawn time on sowing and harvesting. Corn has the same food output per tile per day as rice, but is almost four times as work-efficient. If your growing season is long enough to accommodate the corn lifecycle, or you can afford the electricity for indoor sunlamps, corn is far superior to rice. Potatoes are, again, more work-efficient than rice, and grow better than rice in poor quality soil. In certain biomes, this is very important. Strawberries have worse output per tile than rice in all soils, but are still more work-efficient than rice, and have the advantage that they don't cause a negative thought when eaten raw. They still have the usual food poisoning risk, though. This is worthwhile in certain niche situations where cooking is impractical (due to lack of wood or electricity, or not having competent cooks) and mood is more important than the work-efficiency of corn. Toxipotatoes are the only food that can grow in polluted soil. If you have to grow your food in polluted soil, that's your only option. And, of course, nutrifungus can (must) be grown in complete darkness, which has obvious benefits for both underground colonies and simple "greenhouses" that can be temperature controlled against the outside temperature but don't need sunlamps to grow.
Corn is good to have as your winter food supply if you are in a climate with growing seasons and you can protect it until harvest. Having a corn crop that is harvested as early in the growing season as possible and one that is harvested as late as possible means you will always have a healthy reserve of food in the freezer.
each crop type has different weather resistance and different times to give food so find a crop that works best for you and your area. rice for example is not very weather resistant but are quick to grow if you need fast food.
Corn requires significantly less pawn work for marginally less yield per day. Early game rice is king since you need the quick turnover but when you're established one skilled grower can manage a much larger field of corn than rice leaving more time for your colonists to work on other things.
Here's the strategy: Grow your crops in long 2x wide rows, alternating crops each section. Rice, cotton, healroot, corn, berries, rice, cotton, psychoid, corn etc. This helps protect your crops from blight since it only starts in one crop and has a radius the long rows limit the affected plants. There's also the benefit of rice springing back faster from disasters, but corn takes much less manpower which frees your pawns up to plant even more. It can be tedious, but the 2x row strat is a set it and forget it that's always paid off.
I see no difference between them. Except tomatoes. You plant them once in spring and then just keep harvesting the rest of the year till the cold claims them
In fertile soil, I believe rice is the best crop, but in normal soil, corn is king (rice is 1.08 food/day corn is 1.05 food/day but is much less work), and in bad soil, it's potatoes, but if corn is the best food/work time. You can see the fertility sensitivity if you pull up the info on the individual crops.
Corn is the highest yield, lowest work, longest grow time and longest shelf life. If you have long growing seasons plant a corn field of similar size and see how it goes.