Yea, I kind of liked the challenge. Although I only had time to play with it with the Vaulters. For a while I thought it was just because of Black Thumbs II.

I had some decent success by switching sources of food for my outposts turn by turn. Usually between the top 2 food producing systems in my empire. This is micromanagement intensive and gets complicated when you have more than one active outpost, but it made things work better than just dedicating one system to be sucked dry of food. It would be interesting to be able to spread food supply for your outpost across multiple systems, but this might make it to easy to handle/an obsolete mechanic. Just a thought.

Why not use the full surplus of the planet by default and then double this rate for the'influence action'? Thus, starving a support system is always a deliberate player choice.

jhell wrote:

 it's very much intended that it should be a drain on your empire's economy. You also get the option to choose a provider it if proves to be too much for a single system.

I can understand the logic here as population is transpormed into food which is sent to the outpost where it is transformed into population.

So in the end you don't lose population.

But the ammount of food taken is hard to accept when you look at it.

It makes using the influence boost option for outpost something you never even consider using (maybe it should be changed to something else? Maybe is could decrease the amount of food delivered?)

I don't mind that there is some starvation. I do get additional population on the new planet for the food that is taken.

But it can cause populations to be lost in this transformation (Lumeris die out on source planet and Sophons emerge on the outpost as an example).

So maybe cap it at 300 and then send designated populations to the outpost?

Hi guys,

We are indeed working on food, but these changes were pushed a bit too early as they need to be accompanied by some code changes that weren't there yet.

However as of yet we haven't planned to change the way outposts take food on systems ; it's very much intended that it should be a drain on your empire's economy. You also get the option to choose a provider it if proves to be too much for a single system.

Thanks for your feedback!

I agree.
The problem was not the new food growth system. It was great as food improvements finally mattetred and using them I had no problems reaching high population numbers.

Outpost starvation is a day 1 issue that needs to be addressed.

redrum68 wrote:

Yeah, the issue seems to be around how how outposts are supplied. The amount that is sent should either be configurable or should be based on surplus not total food to prevent starvation.

This!

I liked the new calculations, because they caused food to actually matter. The outpost problem is there yes. But instead of reverting the changes, why not tackle the real issue with food deliveries to outosts.

Glad to see they're finally messing with Food a little, but yeah, as happens all too often in this game, one positive improvement to the game is foiled by other existing flaws. In this case yay Food actually matters, but boo Outposts still use an illogical calculation and other Food mechanics don't make much sense. And we can't pick None as a benefactor planet for Outposts still.

Yeah, the issue seems to be around how how outposts are supplied. The amount that is sent should either be configurable or should be based on surplus not total food to prevent starvation.

I think what happened was that building outposts began to starve systems, and fixing it proved too hard, so they simply changed it back 

So did some of the udpates cause people to eat more. Used to have a customization of the RiftBorne with a starting Minor Civ on an Arid. Now the Minor Civ unit dies right away to lack of food. 

Ah well, it was interesting while it lasted. I wonder why they switched it back.

I noticed in the patch notes today that consumption is back to previous settings. Is this true. 

I didn't mind the new setting in the mid - late game, the start of the game is where it was really tough. 

Get a pop from a curiosity on turn 1, they are dead, or worse yet your starting minor pop is dead. 

Hope that their is a compromise, where the first few people eating don't cause starvation. 

And sending food to Outposts, the colony needs to learn to say no we aren't going to starve all our people in order to send the outpost too much food. =)

In my current run with Horatio I have for the first time to plan with food - at least on some systems where planets dont deliver enough. Like @samsonazs said: food improvements now have a meaning in the game. That's good. Very good.

Outposts have a different problem. The food delivery, that is sent to an outpost is calculatet in a strange and very opaque way. I had a selected a system with an 1.1k food surplus to support a new outpost. I though, this might even be neough to double the rate (outpost action with insfluence). This resulted in a -700 food shortage on siad system. I wish there was a more detailed system to determine the food deliveries to outposts.

Apart from outpost starvation which was always a problem I like the new consumption.

I finally need to consider building food improvements.

Still need to check out how that works for Vodyani but on the other hand they can increase population bypassing food.

Ouch. Played some more on different races, this is harsh especially not to be in the release notes. Hope they update it to be a little less in the upcoming release.

Outposts now are killing me in many cases. Unfallen are much slower to procreate.

On another note, the Amoeba vs the Niris I believe - Amoeba are 5 points and have a straight +5 food. The other is 10 points +2 food and +3 on fertile or something like that. 

Shouldn't these be reversed. Not sure why the better of the 2 that always give 5 food are the least expensive. A little weird.

Thanks. That explains my guy starving on turn 1. He's trying to eat an extra 2 food.

Guess it's time to go delete that customization and restart.

Looking in the files in the latest patch Food Consumption has changed from:

1.25 * (((No. of Pop’s Using Food * 300) ^1.25) /300) 

to

1.10 * (((No. of Pop’s Using Food * 300) ^1.32) /300)