Source
r/SurvivingMars•
adeon

Problems with Food Distribution

Question

So in my current game I've got a population up to about 2,000 and I'm running into a major headache with food distribution. I've got tons of food stockpiled outside of my farm domes but my shuttles doesn't seem to want to distribute it. I've got food depots outside of my domes that have a requested amount set but the shuttles seem to visit them very rarely and my colonists are starving. My first thought was that I needed more shuttles but the shuttle hubs say that the overall system demand is low and half the shuttles seem to be sitting in their hangers. I've tied building a ton of rovers and setting food transport routes but they are so slow it's limited effectiveness.

To be honest it really seems like my shuttles are being lazy in general, I've got a metal depot to feed the machine shops and that seems to spend half it's time empty as well.

Is there anything I can do to make my shuttles actually start working?

EDIT: After watching the food storage area for a while I'm wondering if the problem is that I'm using Storage buildings instead of Depots? I was watching the storage and there were four or five transports all jockeying for position around it but loading VERY slowly. So I'm wondering if there's some sort of game logic where only one shuttle/vehicle can access a storage unit at a given time and so half the shuttles aren't flying because they are seeing the storage unit as being "in use" so they don't want to deliver to it.

EDIT2: Thanks again to those who provided advice. I reloaded an autosave from a few sols before the mass starvation, salvaged my Food Storage buildings and put a bunch of depots next to my food domes. My drones and shuttles sprang into action and got plenty of food delivered to my domes within a couple of sols.

Posted Oct 25, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC · edited

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

4
adeonOP•

Thanks.

1
3punkt1415•

besides what other wrote about the big storge buildings I also always set my food buildings (dinner and grocer) to the highest priority, that means the drones do care more about those buildings then lets sai some other shops or so. And i always enable the 3rd shift because my domes are pretty full most of the time.

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nachochips140807•

What about using a transport route instead

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adeonOP•

I've tried that, I built about 10 transports and set them on a route but they are going really slow, and seem to spend most of their time waiting to load.

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Ericus1•

When you say 'tons of food stockpiled', what is it stockpiled in?

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adeonOP•

I've got two of the large Storage buildings, both are about half full. I'm starting to wonder if that's the problem and I should just move the food into a ton of small depots instead.

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Ericus1•

YES, that is ABSOLUTELY your problem. The large storage buildings can only load AND unload their good at a very low, fixed rate. Your shuttles are literally transferring the food out of the storage as quickly as they can, but it's nowhere near fast enough to keep up with demand.

ALWAYS stick to just using the smaller, unpowered depots. The large, powered storages are - for all intents and purposes - useless, unless you SPECIFICALLY know you are going to have a very large but slow temporary need at some point in the future and want a buffer for it, like building a large wonder. Even then, I would advise just plopping down a couple of the small depots instead.

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adeonOP•

Thank you. I thought that the storage units were just a more space efficient depot but it sounds like they are almost useless.

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3punkt1415•

It good when you realy produce a lot. For example i have a huge colony with 20k food, so having some of those is pretty good, but always keep the small ones aswell.

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