Guide (Farming)

Info

Choose Farming Plot

As of version 0.2.2865.14293 (The Food For Thought Update), 4 farming plot items are available in normal gameplay, Portable Hydroponics, Planter, Hydroponic Tray and Hydroponic Station. Automated Hydroponics is labeled obsolete thus only accessible via creative mode.

• Portable Hydroponics, early game item
  • pros
    • Early game item, normally provided in starter crate.
    • No piping needed. Insert starter water canister can last a long time.
  • cons
    • Can not be automated.
    • Portable item, clutters base floor.
    • Requires external lighting (sun/ Grow Light)
• Planter, early game item
  • pros
    • Early game item, do not need alloy to build.
    • No piping needed. Accepts water canister, water bottle, or dedicated water pipe.
    • Can be automated.
  • cons
    • When not using liquid pipe, watering the plant can be labor-intensive.
    • Has only one water port so it can not be chained, making the green house layout less compact.
    • Requires external lighting (sun/ Grow Light)
• Hydroponic Tray, mid/end game item
  • pros
    • Do not need alloy to build.
    • Can be automated.
    • Extremely space-efficient, one plot per small grid.
  • cons
    • Requires piping network to feed water.
    • Requires external lighting (sun/ Grow Light)
• Hydroponic Station, mid/end game item
  • pros
    • Built-in light source.
  • cons
    • Requires steel to build.
    • Can not be automated.
    • bulky, 4 plot for 3x4 small grid, not space-efficient.

Setup

Farming plants can be done with Portable Hydroponics, Planter, Hydroponic Tray or Hydroponic Station. All of them use an open-top design so a controlled atmosphere (greenhouse) is required to operate this equipment.

• Using Portable Hydroponics, Planter, Hydroponic Tray or Hydroponic Station

1. Build an airtight room with an airlock. Use simple airlock if the environment outside is a vacuum, or advanced airlock if the outside world has pressure.
   • If you plan to rely on Grow Light or Hydroponic Station, direct sunlight is not required so you can build the greenhouse anywhere using any material.
   • If you want to use sunlight as well, the greenhouse should be planned with maximum sun exposure in mind, and all walls/ceilings facing the sun trajectory are made of glass.
2. Build an entire set of pressure/temperature/gasMixture control for the greenhouse, either manual system or automated (via logic chips or programable IC chip). Make sure the following conditions are met, or the plant will wither through a declining health bar:
   • 7.7KPa < Pressure < 190KPa. Glass panel collapses near 200KPa pressure difference.
   • 15^oC < Air Temperature < 50^oC.
   • Atmosphere and pipes being mostly free of pollutants and volatiles, maximum of 3mols for volatiles.
   • 40 kPa atmosphere of minimum 1% carbon dioxide.
   • 5^oC < Water Temperature < 60^oC.
3. Provide grow beds with water, or the plant will wither through a declining health bar. Insert a canister of water into the slot of Portable Hydroponics. Apply water bottle or water canister directly on Planter. Connect Hydroponic Tray, Planter or Hydroponic Station to a liquid pipe network containing water.
4. Seed the farming plot. Can be done with either seeds or raw fruits.
5. Provide illumination to the plants. Activate the UV light on Hydroponic Station, turn on your dedicated Grow Light, or wait till the sun comes up. The plant won't die for lack of light exposure, merely stops growing. Low sunlight strength on Europa will produce a misleading warning saying 'no sunlight', but really it is just growing at a reduced rate.
6. Fertilizer (obtained through Portable Composter or Advanced Composter) can be used to speed up growth or boost yield depending on how it is made. More detail to be added.
7. There is a seed mature stage right before the fruit mature stage, so seed harvesting is time-sensitive. Point cursor at the plant at the right growth stage there will be a hint saying how many seeds are available for harvesting. If one waited too long there won't be any seed left, only fruits. You can however replant fruit as if it's a seed. Harvesting seeds does not affect fruit yield.
8. Wait till the fruit matures(cursor hints current yield), and harvest. The current patch note says the decay timer begins when the fruit matures, even when it is still left on the tree.
9. A healthy plant consumes water and carbon dioxide, then produces oxygen and radiates heat into the surrounding atmosphere. Constant manual intervention or another feedback loop into the environment control will be necessary to keep the greenhouse running in the long term.

• Using Automated Hydroponics

1. This item is obsolete. It's only accessible in creative mode. Check its own article for detail.

Fertilizer

The following data was collected on tomatoes in version 0.2.3456

Fertilizer	Number of uses	Tomato growth speed, planting to mature	Tomato yield (seeds and produce)
none	n/a	582 seconds1	2
3 biomass	7	395 seconds1	4
3 food	3	300 seconds1	5
3 decayed food	3	268 seconds1	4
1 biomass + 1 food + 1 decayed	3	300 seconds1	4
2 biomass + 1 food	4	350 seconds1	4
2 biomass + 1 decayed	4	335 seconds1	4
2 food + 1 biomass	3	340 seconds1	5
2 decayed + 1 biomass	3	314 seconds1	4
3 food + 3 biomass	4	333 seconds1	5

• 1: Repeated experiments shows that the grow time is variable. It's possible that access to sunlight is behind this, and that grow lights are less efficient than sunlight.

Fastest way to create decayed food:

• Gas: X
• Pressure: <0.2 kPa
• Temperature: >200°C
• A Fridge (small) is perfect for this
• Cooked food decays faster than raw
• Gas at very low pressures can't be heated by a Pipe Heater, heat the gas before reducing the pressure.

Plant consumption and production of gases and water

version 0.2.3456

Plant	Temperature (air)	H2O (mol/tick)	CarbonDioxide (mol/tick)	Oxygen (mol/tick)	Volatiles (mol/tick)	Nitrogen (mol/tick)	NitrousOxide (mol/tick)	Pollutant (mol/tick)
Food crops + fern + flowers	15-52°C	-0.00000596	-0.00240	+0.00120
Tropical Lily	17-56°C	-0.00000596	-0.00400	+0.00200
Peace Lily	13-52°C	-0.00000596	-0.00400	+0.00200
Darga fern	15-52°C	-0.00000596	-0.01700	+0.00850
Mushrooms1	15-52°C	-0.00000596	+0.00120	-0.00240
Winterspawn, alpha	best at ~18°C	-0.00020000		+0.0001812	+0.0003622	-0.0060
Winterspawn, beta	best at ~20°C	-0.00040000		+0.0002812	+0.0005622	-0.0100
Hades, alpha	?	-0.00000596		-?3	-?3			+0.0040
Hades, beta	?	-0.00000596		-?3	-?3			+0.0025
Alien mushroom	?	-0.00000600		+0.00080		+0.00120	-0.00480

• 1: only grows in darkness
• 2: depends on temperature, alpha is max at ~18°C and beta at 20°C, the plant must be mature
• 3: depends on the O2 and H2 concentration
• Comment: Plants have been observed to consume much less CO2 when the air has a low concentration of it, with O2 still being produced at full capacity. The reverse is also true for mushrooms. Water doesn't behave like this, below a certain amount a tray will no longer count as hydrated and the plant will start dying.

Efficiency of raw food and meals

The following table compares the sustainability of everything eatable in meals:
(1 meal satisfies 100% of hunger. In this way, 1 muffin for example satisfies 200% of hunger, which sufficient for 2 full meals.)

• per unit (e.g. 1 cereal bar, 1 tomato or 1ml of milk.)
• per stack (e.g. 20 mushrooms or 5 raw corn grains.)
• per plant / grow cycle (e.g. some soybeans or pumpkins, which grow to several (more than 1) on their plants.)

Ordered List of plantables and cookables

Name	Efficiency															Ingredients	grows / prepare in
	(short range)							(medium range)				(long range)
	Portion	of	Unit	do	Hunger	⇒	Meals	by	Stacks	⇒	Meals	by	Yield	⇒	Meals
Fern			1						100				2				Hydroponics
Flower			1						100				2				Hydroponics
Milk	100%	→	1ml	→	100%	→	1,0	→	100	→	100,0	→	1	→	100,0	100ml Soy Oil, 50g Fenoxitone Powder	Chemistry Station
Soy Oil	100%	→	1ml	→	20%	→	0,2	→	100	→	20,0	→	1	→	20,0	1 Soybean	Reagent Processor
Soybean	100%	→	1	→	10%	→	0,1	→	100	→	10,0	→	2	→	20,0		Hydroponics
Wheat	100%	→	1	→	10%	→	0,1	→	100	→	10,0	→	2	→	20,0		Hydroponics
Tomato	100%	→	1	→	30%	→	0,3	→	20	→	6,0	→	3	→	18,0		Hydroponics
Pumpkin Pie	17%	→	1	→	100%	→	5,9	→	1	→	5,9	→	1	→	5,9	100g Flour, 1 Egg, 10ml Milk, 1 Pumpkin	Microwave
Mushroom	100%	→	1	→	20%	→	0,2	→	20	→	4,0	→	2	→	8,0		Hydroponics
Potato	100%	→	1	→	20%	→	0,2	→	20	→	4,0	→	3	→	12,0		Hydroponics
Muffin	50%	→	1	→	100%	→	2,0	→	1	→	2,0	→	1	→	2,0	50g Flour, 1 Egg, 10ml Milk	Microwave
Fries	63%	→	1	→	100%	→	1,6	→	1	→	1,6	→	1	→	1,6	0.5ml Soy Oil, 1 Potato	Microwave
Pumpkin	100%	→	1	→	100%	→	1,0	→	1	→	1,0	→	2	→	2,0		Hydroponics
Rice	100%	→	1	→	2%	→	0,0	→	50	→	1,0	→	2	→	2,0		Hydroponics
Baked potato	100%	→	1	→	80%	→	0,8	→	1	→	0,8	→	1	→	0,8	1 Potato	Microwave
Tomato Soup	100%	→	1	→	70%	→	0,7	→	1	→	0,7	→	1	→	0,7	1 Tomato	Microwave
Cereal Bar	100%	→	1	→	60%	→	0,6	→	1	→	0,6	→	1	→	0,6	50g Flour	Microwave
Corn	100%	→	1	→	2%	→	0,0	→	5	→	0,1	→	2	→	0,2		Hydroponics

Food storage

Food decays at a rate determined by the environment it is stored in. The main factors are gas composition of surrounding atmosphere, temperature of the surrounding atmosphere, pressure of the atmosphere, and whether or not the item is in a fridge. Decay rate multipliers for a given gas are listed below:

Gas	Decay Rate Multiplier
Nitrogen (N2)	0.6
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	0.8
Vacuum	1
Volatiles (H2)	1
Oxygen (O2)	1.5
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	1.5
Water (H2O)	2
Pollutants (X)	3

Also not all foods decay here is the list of foods unaffected by decay.

• Cereal Bars
• Corn Soup
• Pumpkin Soup
• Tomato Soup

The Soups being canned goods, and the cereal bar being a processed food hence why they do not decay.

The decay rate also contains a factor determined by temperature, the pressure of the environment, as the food that needs to be preserved now has to be above 101 Kpa as preservation gets debuffed if its below 1 earth atmosphere. And the temperature decay factor is a complicated calculation summarized in the graph below (/u/LordRavenX, 04/2021):

Storage of food within a powered fridge also multiplies by a factor of 0.3, reducing decay by 70%.

To minimize decay, food should be kept in a powered fridge in a nitrogen atmosphere of over 101kpa at a temperature of at least 110K (-163°C) as the calculation has been tweaked to not penalize preservation for being to cold.