Overview
A nice little summary of numbers relating to power and food consumption
Main
tl;dr
* A 12500 KW power storage will last 12 hours on a complete poweroutage if the base consumes no more than 34 KW.
* 5 Wheat Pods and 2 Tomato Pods is the ultimate pasta-balance
* The 5/2-diet needs just above 2,5 biologists to maintain (so 3!). Two 5/2 setups will need just above 5 biologists (5 should be enough, but I’d stick with 3 for each setup to play safe)
* No less than 20% biologists, at least 25% is recommended
First off I want to say I honestly didn’t think about checking the guides-section before I started on these numbers, I only tried googling for pages related to food/power consumption and ratios and didn’t come up with anything except for the mindless tips like “3 wheat and 2 tomatoes is nice, 2 or 3 biologists should keep that up”.
Those tips are all very nice, but I want more numbers!
So when I got to the third planet where (finally!) power was more or less predictable, I started thinking about how much is actually needed. When this was done I thought why not delve into food as well? I always wondered… (again, here in the guides-section there’s at least 1 guide coming up with pretty much similiar numbers I did and that I didn’t find at first through google)
Here we go:
-Power-
1 in-game hour = 30 seconds.
A 12 hour cycle is 6 minutes (math!) which translates to 360 seconds (referred to as ‘ticks’ for some).
For every KW your base is using, 1KW is subtracted from your wind/solar/storage. A storage of 12500 KW will manage a base using 34,72 KW. This of course also means that to fill this storage you have to have a surplus of at least 34,72 KW (a 80 KW solar panel providing a base that uses 34 KW will have 46 KW of surplus, enough to start filling another storage).
12500 / 360 = 34,72.
So that’s power, that was the easy part to figure out. Now we get to food, where some assumptions come into place and I invite anyone to correct and/or verify any numbers from here on.
-Assumptions about food and stuff-
* Using tips from others, wheat and tomatoes/meat is the way to go (pasta/burger). In my calculations we don’t do any meat, because it shouldn’t be needed. Only wheat and tomatoes.
* We assume 1 biologist will be 100% occuped with 3 wheat pods.
-Numbers-
* Pods will produce at full speed while at excellent or good health, after dropping to 75% they become decent and produces at half speed.
* Wheat pods takes 667 seconds to produce 2 wheat, and will take 179 seconds to degrade down to decent. That is every 6 hours they need to be maintained by a biologist.
* Tomato pods takes 400 seconds to produce 3 tomatoes, and will take 136 seconds to degrade down to decent. That is every 4,5 hours they need to be maintained by a biologist.
* Tomato has a 33% higher maintenance-rate than wheat.
– 1 biologist = 3 wheat (100%), therefore 100 / 3 = 33. Adding the 33% higher maintenance tells us that one tomato pod will make a biologist “44% busy”. Remember this, we’ll get back to that.
* The best wheat/tomato pod ratio is 5 wheat and 2 tomato.
– 5 wheat pods will produce 10 wheat every 667 seconds (1 wheat/66,7 seconds)
– 2 tomato pods will produce 6 tomatoes every 400 seconds (1 tomato/66,7 seconds)
– If 1 wheat pod = 33% busy biologist, 5 wheat pods = 165% busy biologist
– If 1 tomato pod = 44% busy biologist, 2 tomato pods = 88% busy biologist
– 2,53 biologists is needed to maintain the perfect ratio. Make it 3 biologists and you have some room for bad baseplanning or meds!
* When GM tomato is introduced, the ratio changes to 10 wheat and 3 GM tomato pods (increases productivity to 1 item every 33,33 seconds for both).
-Food consumption-
* Every 4 minutes (8 hours in-game) a citizens hunger will have dropped 25%
* Each meal recovers at least 50% hunger
* Every citizen will want to eat every 8 minutes (16 hours in-game)
-Food production-
* 5 wheat + 2 tomato will produce 1 meal every 33,33 seconds
– That is 1,8 meals/minute
– That will feed aproximately 14 citizens
* 10 wheat + 3 GM tomato will produce 1 meal every 16,67 seconds (double time!)
– That is ~3,6 meals/minute
– That will feed aproximately 28 citizens
* Using these numbers every biologist (including himself) will be able to feed at least 4 citizens. With the GM-setup they will be able to feed over 6 citizens.
* No less than 20% biologists is advisable, at least 25% is recommended (1 biologist in a group of 4, that’s 25%. Math!)