A Comprehensive Guide to Advanced Farming. If you need it grown fancy,
this video is for you. Farming has been in the game
since the beginning, and with every major update or DLC, it becomes
increasingly more and more important to the success or failure of a collony
Yes, even a ranching ideal of obligate carnivores is going to have
to plant some crops for the meat to eat. But it doesn't stop there. no, no, no. Farming puts clothes on your pawns. Backs. It heals their wounds. It makes them work
harder and fight better. It can even catch bullets or In the case
of randy, theres roach weeee :). It will be the catalyst
to the end of your colony becoming an addictive scourge to overcome
before the shadows and cannibals close in. Know that you know why
you should be farming. It's actually quite easy to set up. Make sure you have a pawn, preferably
a skilled one, set to growing and plant cutting in the work panel,
then create a growing zone and an appropriately fertile
patch of soil. Use the fertile overlay in the lower right of your screen and select
which type of plant you want to grow. If you're new to the game,
planting some rice in a fertile field followed
by another plot of corn elsewhere. And then when the food is in the ground
and growing. Follow up with a split plot of cotton and Heal Root
a few steps to long term success. But then what's a plot? Which segways us into the advance portion
of this guide. It all begins with a concept called
granular ization, which was explained to me at length while
I was tied to the chair by a my writer. And now
I want to unsubscribe from my life. But my pain is your benefit. Basically, it's breaking up your big,
sprawling, barely manageable farming zones into neat uniform growing zones or plots
that cover an 11 by 11 cell area. These are admittedly a bit
more complicated to set up at first, but are far easier to manage
in the long run. Now, why is a plot exactly 11 by 11 cells? Because, according to my writer,
That is the optimal safe size for a roofed room
with no supports inside. It's also the maximum reach of a sun lamp,
and not coincidentally, is also the perfect size
for a hot house in cold climates. But more on that later, I promise. There is an exception to using plots. Of course, rich soil
is going to be unevenly distributed and randomly placed while it's 140%
fertility promises, an outsized gain to productivity that can't honestly
be squandered in most circumstances, not even for the sake of ease
or planning efficiency as such when it comes to rich soil
and outdoor farming. Ignore the plot method with a clear
conscience. Moving on. Now, before we go into specific techniques
for farming, we still have some other things to cover in order
to better understand why using plots is so good to do out on the rim, namely
the twin scourges of farmers everywhere. Fire and blight. Fire is pretty straightforward
without exception and Vanilla Rim World. All crops will burn if they're set aflame
and you can lose days, perhaps even entire growing season and nearby buildings
if it gets out of control. Blight, meanwhile, is far more dire
because when it's afflicting a plant, that plant can't give any resources,
regardless of its growth, progress further,
it spreads rapidly to other plants with exceptions
and won't stop without intervention, or until there is sufficient space
between a healthy crop and a blighted one. The same applies, of course, to fire,
except that fire can leapfrog across anything that's flammable. So you may be thinking
the answer is simple Space out the plot so that each one can only be affected
by a calamity at a time. And while that is intuitive
and easy to do, I'm going to argue in this video to not do it,
at least not with the plot system. The reason why is simple space
to totally prevent fire and blight from spreading between plots. There needs to be a gap of force cells
between each plot. This can very quickly spiral out of control in terms of the footprint
that your colony needs to feed itself as it grows,
as each plot further and further away adds
at least four cells of walking distance. Time spent walking isn't time
spent working or saving what can be saved. Instead, we use the magical combination of preparation
and layout to mitigate our problems. Like always, Fire and blight don't pass
through walls and they can't open doors. So instead of laying out highways
between your plots, you can put up walls joining the plots through doors. Granted, it is an added labor cost for your builders and crafters,
and it increases colony wealth. But the benefits can more than make up
for any drawbacks, including making your farm
as part of your base defenses. Yes. Yes. Bet you didn't expect to see a farming video
having anything related to combat in it. But it's true. Raiders who fall in via Drop
Pod will often find themselves isolated
and having to break their way through. To get at your colonists
If you include some arterial roads between your walled in plots
and put up some mono directional firing positions against the walls,
you'll have a ready made series of fallback points
for when your kill boxes overrun. Not every colony you make is going to be
in an equatorial temperate forest where the growing season never ends
and the dirt is rich or even real dirt and in toxic fallout and events
Or if a very unlucky combination of a cold snap and volcanic winter,
you need to know how to farm indoors. Good thing you've planned ahead
and put up all those walls now. As an aside, plants need sunlight. But that's not entirely true
since the ideology DLC came out as inside
of these unlit plots of arable dirt. You can now plant nutria fungus, crop
that requires very little fertility 30% to grow well, grows without light, and only requires temperatures
above freezing to keep growing. You just have to keep it in darkness
or it will die, which isn't much of a barrier
to cultivation if it is one at all. Since even a tribal start can begin
mass cultivation of this fun loving fungus
for any other light loving crop. However, you are going to have to research
electricity and put up a sun lamp, which not coincidentally
are going to efficiently light up. Those 11 by 11 plots,
turn greenhouses. Now. We're going to take a quick break
from the wonders of 11 by 11 rooms, to talk about fungal gravel
introduced in the ideology DLC. It's available to tunnlers. And I can't emphasize enough that you
don't really want to use it as intended. Well, the thing about fungal gravel is that it
can only be placed underneath mountain. And what happens when you create big, dark, dirty areas that must be kept above
freezing beneath the mountain? That's right. You get ants, big carnivorous territorial insectoids
that can tear your ponds apart. So if you do intend to use fungal gravel,
my advice is to use it only when you have to, and only for things that can both grow
and minimal fertility and light. So really just fiber, corn or tinictoria which are hardly vital enough
to be considered staple crops. Thankfully. Speaking of non staple crops, let's move
on to trees and how to farm them indoors. Fortunately, since we've got the walls and roofing up already,
this next tip is easy. Poke holes in the roof. No, really,
the easiest way is to just designate the entire chamber
as an arboreal growing zone and then poke holes
where the trees should go, since that will automatically designate
where trees can grow. Now, since a sunlamp doesn't
reach every cell in the room and every tree is in a grow zone
and prevents anything else from growing in a three
by three exclusion zone, we need to get a bit creative
in how we lay out our tree farm, in which case poke the roof,
creating three rows of six space cells from the wall to wall in the center,
while at the sides punch through five more holes at each side
and you're done. So in a heater or two you'll have
an indoor aroboreal or arborealtorium? or whatever it said to enjoy
and explore it in even the coldest biome. And now the holy grail
of advanced farming. That at least says my writer. But they are numbers
nerd with good advice. So who am I to complain? With the biofuel refinery building,
you can turn food into chem fuel. So not only are plants
providing food, clothes, medicine, combat stims and mid-game armor, but they're also
providing unlimited power. Now anyone can just grow a bunch of corn,
chuck it into a refinery and call it a day.
But you're not here for general advice. No, no, no. You want the good stuff? You want that sweet, sweet. Break even point for a sun lamp. Because if you know that you can plan
ahead, manage your colony wealth, and exert
more control over raids. Useful stuff. Let's begin. So first we need to quantify
or put a number to a few things. How much food for your unit of chem fuel? The answer is in the refinery bill window. It's two units of food
per unit of can fuel. Now, how much power does a unit of chem
fuel produce per day? That answer is relatively simple. A chem fuel generator produces 1000 watts
of power per day or 1000 watts a day. To produce that much power in a day
requires consuming 4.5 chem fuel over the course of a day. So to get where we need to be,
we divide 1000 by 4.5 and we get a total rounded to the nearest hundredth of 222.22
watt days of power per unit of chem fuel. Now, that number is important
because if we think about it as a big pile of stuff
needed to grow our crops, we can arrive at the break even point across
any number of chem fuel generators. And why is that? Because rimworld is a game
in which the laws of thermodynamics can have its pants pulled down,
allowing us to laugh at its underwear. When grown in a hydroponics tray,
rice takes about two days of growing time. Now, giving the off time for nights,
a sun lamp will consume 3225 watt days of power before harvest. Each rice plant yields six
rice when harvested at 100%. Yield or three chem fuel for 666.66
watt days of energy. 3225 divided by 366.66 equals about five hydroponic
rice plants needed to be harvested to pay for themselves
in terms of power costs. But as we know on the rim,
a sunlamp can grow up to 100 plants at a time in full light and there is
no waste to take care of or clear away. So now you see how silly this can get. Hydroponic Rice can yield over 19 times
as much fuel as is needed to grow it with a single sunlamp and rimworld
You can create energy from nothing. And I'm all here for it. Now. Okay, calm down. Okay? So it takes only five rice plants
and a hydroponics tray to pay for itself. And that's about as power efficient
as you're going to get. But of course, growing and harvesting rice
every two days to power an entire colony is hardly going to be feasible
unless you have dedicated slaves. Or better yet,
small fleet of agirhand mechanoids. under your mechanitors control,
since a mech that's doing nothing is just a waste of their energy
supplies. At half the fertility of a hydroponics
tray, rice and rich soil takes twice as long practically to grow, requiring
ten plants to break even with a sunlamp. And when grown in regular soil,
needs 15 plants to pay for themselves. But what about corn? Well, corn is perfectly viable
compared to rice, because corn is the least work
intensive crop. You can comfortably run a chem
fuel operation with. You're starting three pawns
and just one dedicated farmer. If you're growing corn for fuel,
it just takes a little more space and you cant grow it in
hydroponics and soil. You need nine corn plants
and in regular soil you need only 14 plants under a sunlamp, which,
if you remember, is marginally better than rice and regular soil
with a drastically reduced work demand. Now let's talk about strawberries. Strawberries are kind of the odd crop
out here in rimworld, being in an unhappy medium of fertility
sensitivity and yield, plus the utility of eating them raw without a mood penalty
is hardly worth the food poisoning risk. But what if I told you that unhappy medium was almost perfect
for a standard colony? Powers needs. Strawberries grow perfectly
fine in hydroponic trays, yield four chem fuel per harvest and take only four days
to get there, meaning that they can break even at eight plants
or just two hydroponic trays. Your farmers can still get other things
done and it's very space efficient in rich soil. Strawberries get interesting in that
they're more efficient than rice in rich soil, requiring
just ten strawberry plants to break even. Yet that falls off in regular soil,
requiring 17 plants to pay for their energy investment. Finally, we move on to potatoes
and out of the four vanilla crops in rimworld,
they are the weirdest in terms of their. Hold on. Let me see if I'm getting this right
from the writer fertility curve. well, isn't that fun to say? Yes. Unlike the other crops, potatoes
have a fertility sensitivity of 40%, which quickly
speaking means that while potatoes are still going to grow faster
in a hydroponic tray, it might not be worth it to grow them
in such expensive conditions for fuel. As the break even point won't be shifted
as much as other crops would. In trays it's pretty bad at ten plants. In fact, it's less than corn. In rich soil in rich soil. Potatoes are still worse than corn
with a greater work demand at 14 plants. the minimized sensitivity
means that regular soil isn't much worse with a break
even point of 15 plants. However, potatoes are special
in that out of the four crops theyre minimum fertility requirement
as just 70%, and that 40% sensitivity means
that it still grows at near the normal rate
in minimally suitable soil, which means that the potatoes in poor soil only need 17 plants to break even. Which is exactly the same as strawberries
in regular soil. Very useful as not even minimal. Growing conditions can hold you back from
the heated rooms and automated defenses. All praise to the humble spud. Now, I hasten to tell you,
all those numbers I threw at you, they're wrong and intentionally so,
for the sake of usability over precision. After all, some slop in the systems
needs to account for botched harvest changes and difficulty settings
running the biofuel refinery and the fact that both pawns and bots
need time to travel to get anywhere. As such, all of the break
even points are actually overestimated, which means that each break even point actually produces
a bit of excess food or chem fuel. What you do with that excess is up to you. But I have a fondness
for high explosives myself.
