Food question

[MisterPlow]

This isn't too important, but it's been baffling me for a few weeks. How come food consumption doesn't line up exactly with population, even factoring in the species that eat half or no food? According to the game, population will remain stable when a planet has half a unit of food per population point, so is it just that when planets start getting big, the game automatically reduces their consumption, or do some races eat a bit less than one food unit per pop point?

[Bolo Mark 33]

Some races do eat less food than others, but that's limited only to Silicoid (0 food/75 mineral), Meklar (50/50), and Cynoid (50/50) for the major races. Some magnates require differing food levels as well--specifically the Bhyre Ets (20/0), the Ajadar (80/0), and the Audrieh (50/0).

But I think the reason you're seeing differing food consumption levels is due to industry. Several techs add on a bio component to your industry DEAs, allowing them to use food as well as minerals. However, this would usually bring your consumption up, when it sounds to me like you're seeing lower-than-expected consumption.

Does anyone have another answer?

[MisterPlow]

Well, the magnate thing might cover it... I wouldn't've thought of that. But, IIRC, this happens even when I don't get any magnates. I even see it around turn 50, before I get any of those techs... my food consumption is about 5-10% below where I'd expect.

[Happy Chemical]

It might have something to do with rounding. 1 population point is 1,000 "people", but if you have for example 1,800 people on a planet it can still show up as having 2 pop points.

Second, are you sure that 1 pop point is supposed to exactly .5 food? There is plenty of conflicting information floating around between the obsolete manual, in game documentation, patch updates, developer posts, and actual player testing.

And It is certainly possible that MOO3 is smart enough to feed your people less when your food supply approaches a shortage. :bulb:

[MisterPlow]

True, it might be rounding, but then you'd still expect it to be on target for the whole empire, unless ALL fractions are dropped. I don't know how the victory screen population is calculated; is it a summation of all population or just of all whole numbers? That might very well be the answer. I will look into it tomorrow.

As far as the 1/2 food per population point, I'm not sure, I'm just going by what the docs say... I know they're full of misleads, so I take all that with a grain of salt.

[MisterPlow]

OK, it appears the discrepancy is just due to rounding down applied to food consumption for individual planets but not to population totals. Thanks, Happy Chemical, for the idea.