Trading with Havens:
4 Materials = 6 Food (2:3)
2 Tech = 10 Food (1:5)
Building “FoodProduction” needs
200 Materials => 300 Food
40 Tech => 200 Food
“Food Production” produces 8 Food per day.
========================================================
500 Food investment / 8 food-per-day ==> 62 days until amortization
Lol yeah and no, other parameters:
Let say 1/5 at trade 5 -> 4, and 4/5 at trade 6 -> 4 it’s 290 food to get a refund, 36 days.
In my opinion worth it even with the refund perspective, but yeah the point is more that it allows get a reserve to get more material to round a buy, otherwise it’s a bit insignificant.
I don’t see a return on investment until after a month and a half or so. Meaning spending those resources on anything else is better than building Food Production as long as the game doesn’t go on for 3+ months.
It appears I’m better off saving the materials/tech that it cost to build the facility, and instead just trade those materials/tech for the food needed to feed/recruit my soldiers. I earn more tech/materials in the long run this way (unless the game goes on for 3+ months).
Say I had 25 Food Production facilities.
In other words, there’s zero value in building these facilities unless your game is going on for months and months and months. Even at that production capacity it’s still taking you two days to get enough food to recruit ONE SOLDIER. Whereas raiding one Food facility (easy) is two soldiers, and raiding one Tech facility (harder usually) which is six soldiers worth.
It doesn’t appear to be worth it to build these facilities, even if you want to trade food for materials/tech because you’re spending more materials/tech then you’re gaining out of them for the first 2+ months.
(How many months does it take?)
The tech cost is meaningless and a research from Anu increase production by 25%.
The 36 days calculated by Zzzz become one month. It is not realy worth it but not a total waste. I like to have a small production to be able to buy materials when needed. But I won’t go mass production.
On min/max point of view it can worth it first month, it avoids have negative from soldiers eating, it doesn’t lost any production time just a cost. But as the profit is neglect-able, I agree it can be ignored too. It’s more like a moneybox you’ll use for a little extra or some resources rounding.
You’ll be wishing you had invested in greenhouses when you’ve explored most of the map and no longer get free stuff all the time. Solid 75-ish food surplus makes sure you always will have some resources to make more grenades or something.
If the game starts on January 1st, I’m on March now and have amortized it all.
I don’t know… I’ve always unlocked the final mission around mid-February on average as well as have the entire map explored by then. I find raiding any haven to be at least 6x more lucrative than anything else in the game (in terms of resource allocation). Early on it’s so exploitable you can literally farm a stock of 20,000 (I did 5000 of each before getting bored) of all resources with a mere scarab and 3 naked soldiers with pistols if you REALLY WANTED to (god Synedrion suck). So I really question the value of something that gives you so little but costs so much when there are a variety of other much more valuable avenues to take.
It just seems like I’m gimping myself if I try to use the Food Production facility in any way. Just build a fabricator/research/gear/vehicle with the tech/materials I find, or trade it for the food I need seems like better way to spend it. The fact that tech trades at a ratio of 2 to 10 for Food sometimes makes raiding a Tech facility and trading it for food probably the best way to get Food.
If the goal is to beat the game as fast as possible, do not build Food Production and raid is all I can say.
Oh no, you won’t do that on veteran, you have to let recruits get killed or DDA kills you and the replacements are expensive. Every time someone buys the farm you’re looking at 500-600 materials cost bill, add the need to actually build some useful stuff as well and you’re haemorrhaging materials like there’s no tomorrow. Haven defence gives you 500-ish materials but then you’re looking at Scylla + chiron or 2 + 2-3 Sirens + about a ten :panda:, depending on how angry DDA god is with you, very easy to take casualties and if you don’t, well you know what happens…
Mainly I was hampered by only being able to field one team, it took a rather long time to afford a second one.
What’s DDA? And is Veteran harder than Legend or something (it seems like it based on other player feedback, because recruit costs are enormous)
In Legend anyway, recruits are only 390 food flat (unless you get a Technician or Priest). Replacements are cheap. I get the gear back when a soldier dies, so I just throw it on someone else. It’s pretty easy to get about 8 Fabricator/Research centers (which I find to be more than enough), a base with at least 5 training centers, as well as fielding 3 Manticores with 3 soldiers and a scarab each within the first three weeks of the game. They fully uncover the globe by week 5-6 (which can be done faster with more satellites and stolen vehicles), by which point all of the research needed to complete the game begins to finish back to back (provided I’m keeping up with captures/missions). That’s just playing rather casually, doing everything as it presents itself, and not following any specific build order or play style (other than 5 Odin Grenades -> Scarab -> Scarab -> Manticore -> Scarab + replacing Odin grenades as needed in front of these and manufacturing whatever gear is needed for the team entering the new Manticores). Otherwise I just keep experimenting with a bunch of different ideas, but the flow of the campaign always revolves around my research centers it seems.
I’ve come to find that at the speed in which my campaigns progress, I have no use for Food Production facilities and they are just a waste of resources for the most part because it’s easier to get more done in less time if the resources are spent elsewhere.
I tried building 25 facilities in my last campaign in the first 3 weeks to see how it changes the flow of the game, and all I can say is it took longer to field a 4th team than it normally does. That’s the only difference building Food Production made for me… making the game harder.
1.5 month to finish the game? There’s a big bug to fix here. I hope dev are aware of the problem, you should report it as a bug.
DDA is the dark and hungry god at the heart of PP demanding regular blood sacrifice. If it is not satisfied, you will be swamped in seas of super 
until you repent.
Wait, how is it a bug exactly?
My priorities:
I’m always getting through most of the Allies’ research as filler research (Walls of Jericho, Armor Piercing, Satellite Uplink, etc…) in week 2-4 as I try to acquire a live Siren for that one step (encountered another bug where if you get live Sirens/Goo Chirons before unlocking the research that requires them, it won’t allow you to do the research, didn’t even notice until week 4 - so much for being prepared). Currently I’m researching “Yuggothian Entity” in week 5 and trying to capture a Scylla (waiting for a Haven defense to show up with one in it, should be soon). What’s neat is because of the pace of research of New Jericho, (as I sped things up to see how things go - need that Scylla though), by week 6 NJ was at war (-100% both ways) with ANU and SYN and had basically crushed them on the Geoscape, but ANU and SYN were still hovering around 0% relations with one another. It’s become a 2v2 to save and reshape the planet. 
But yeah I ran out of research at week 6 (lost 2 research facilities because I didn’t feel like defending the base, so only had 6) and it’s been slower in this campaign than my previous ones because I wanted to try mass-food production and see how it changed the game (if at all) and as suspected, it just made things slower… as my posts in this thread have been trying to emphasize.
As one last quick example: At this point in my last campaign, I had about 30+ soldiers and 10+ fab/research, etc. at this point — In my current campaign, I have less than 20 soldiers and max 8/8 res/fab because of all the pointless food production.
Need Scylla to continue and can’t remember what comes after that. Parts probably could’ve been done faster if that’s what I was going for, but the Scylla attack always seems to show up sometime in early Feb (I think I recall once in late January) so that’s a gate at least. I don’t remember there being any other gates, it’s been a few weeks since I’d been past this point.
If the game’s meant to go at a slower pace than this, I’m not seeing it in the design.
You seem to abuse training center and attack your fellow human brother at will. If you try to protect the heaven instead of rushing the main mission without caring, you will have less ressource and need more time.
Well it’s not abusing the training center if it’s using them as they’re designed.Maybe it was an oversight, but honestly if the training centers didn’t stack they’d be pretty worthless and you’d be even more better off raiding other humans (just for the XP at that point).
Like I said, I’m not seeing it in the design. There’s no reason to protect all the havens/factions. There’s no grand reward. There’s nothing for that. But there are plenty of reasons to attack them, primarily to give you an edge against the Pandorans. From my perspective, you’re severely gimping yourself for no reason by not raiding/attacking them. If the developers wanted that to be a legit mode of playing the game, they really should’ve thought of more ways to benefit from not attacking other Factions. Doesn’t seem to be designed that way though.
Having at least one enemy pays in spades. Being friends with everyone does literally nothing, not even giving you a special ending. Like it or hate, ignore it or do it, it’s just the way it is. Enact hard mode by being friends with everyone , maybe that was intentional?
Mmm I thought you did a typo and wrote February instead of March.
In my opinion there’s something missing to explain the 1.5 month. The teams of 3 soldiers and scarab is rather huge, and certainly speed up the whole, but I don’t see it solving research, rest/repair. In fact scarab will require more time to repair and back to some base.
What are the builds of those 3 soldiers? Some examples?
I’d be also very curious to see Lairs beat with 3 soldiers and a scarab.
No way Training centers is the 1.5 month explanation, I build 4 relatively fast, and 5 when it fits, and in only one base, or later a second to cover the world which is probably pointless.
Mmm so that point was missing in your list, choose one faction exploit the two other and enter in war with them won’t matter. Could be the more efficient way and faster. But I don’t see the teams of 3 soldiers and a scarab. I mean I used it a lot in first parts of some campaigns, but that’s it and it won’t work with Lairs at least, and if you haven’t some tricks around it. And nope enter in scarab exit shoot enter again is no way a good usage not even apply well often. Or use Scarab as scout has limit and will end with Scarab destroyed as game progress.
Well this is completely off topic now.
It does, I’ve made it work several times <3 It’s not necessarily the most efficient, effective or recommended way… really a struggle sometimes but it works, and it’s become my default for everything other than the last few missions of the game (which is a Thunderbird with a Scarab or Armadillo and 4 soldiers!). I know I’m shortchanging myself unnecessarily, but since it’s doable I see no reason to spend the extra time to get the extra manpower to the location.
I’ll give some examples of how I made what I consider to be excellent use of a Scarab + 3/4 soldiers:
These were some of the instances where I went in thinking “Okay… we’ll see how this goes. Doubtful this is going to work” and coming out going “Huh. That was fun… and now I need a break.”
Thanks for the details, could work at Legend, never at Easy or your way to play screwed up the auto scaling up to make the game a lot more trivial for enemy spawning. I’ll try for my next lair, that said a scarab plus 4 soldiers is two planes, it’s a burden.
And again Vehicle are time lost because of repair only at base. It’s not just a pure time win.
You didn’t gave the full list yet, I think you are doing other elements that are important but you don’t realize it.
EDIT: And you skipped answer on the 3 teams composition, it’s tiny so choices are limited. So again what are 3 soldiers team build?
I never build a single Food Production and always end up having thousands of surplus food at the end of a campaign.