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[Goatmaan]

You want food?
When the liason asks what you want...
Go to meat, hold shift key and press right arrow 4 times.
Goto eggs, as above.
Cheese, same
Plants,same.
Ask for nothing else.

Have *a lot* of wooden spiked balls and/or serrated iron/steel discs to trade.
(Spiked balls train a carpenter for masterwork bed happy thoughts/ discs train weaponsmith, you're choice)
Make barrels/rock pots like crazy.
Have a *large* food stockpile ready.
Lots of haulers idling.
TRADE.
No need to worry about food

  Goatmaan

[CapnUrist]

I've always had good yield with quarry bushes. They make big stacks of leaves, which turns into big stacks of prepared meals, which either feed dwarves for a long time or a huge trading item (a couple of decent meals I've traded has values over 6k each). That being said, food isn't hard to stockpile. Whether you farm, hunt or trade, one should be able to stockpile enough food for years at a time.

[Sanctume]

Quantity-wise, there is no difference between Simple Meals and Lavish Meals. 

Simple meals need 2 items, example [5] plump helmet + [5] quarry bush lead = [10] "prepared meal" (biscuit)
Lavish meals need 4 items, example [5] plump helmet + [5] quarry bush lead + [5] chicken egg + [5] chicken meat = [20] "prepared meal" (biscuit)

So as for quantity, the number of prepared meals are just addition of the stack of ingredients. 

Quality-wise in terms of value, they are multiplicative. 

So it is better to make lavish meals because the value of the ingredients are multiplied together and multiplied again by the end product quality (finely to masterful).

--

Also observe that plump helmets are farmed every season where as quarry bush leaves are only farmed 3 season per year, so quarry bush quantity will be less than plump helmets.

It seems like OP wants plants that edible right away.  Quarry bush requires processing to bag, and then requires cooking before it can be a meal. 

--

Herbalist picking plants and having a gathering zone for fruit trees yields plenty of food also to kick start brewing for the obtaining seeds for all season above ground farming.  Herbalist seems overpowered in the v.40 due to the fast spawn growth of trees, as well as less sieges. 

I bet that Herbalist will be limited now with more invaders.  I've had my stepladders stolen because they are left outside.

[Linkxsc]

Herbalist picking plants and having a gathering zone for fruit trees yields plenty of food also to kick start brewing for the obtaining seeds for all season above ground farming.  Herbalist seems overpowered in the v.40 due to the fast spawn growth of trees, as well as less sieges. 

I bet that Herbalist will be limited now with more invaders.  I've had my stepladders stolen because they are left outside.

As of last patch, i started either walling in a group of fruit bearing trees, or channeling orchard space and roofing it over, then preening all the non bearing trees, because a handful of fruit trees can feed hundreds, after they are secured ofcourse. Then just gotta make sure not to chop them down accidentally.

[dennislp3]

I kinda wish DF used a basic nutrition system to force food variety in conjunction with a calorie system so that 1 food item doesn't equal 1 meal but instead represents so many calories that go towards your dwarfs needs. One good farmer being able to supply hundreds of dwarves kinda ruins the challenge and simulation aspect of the food industry

[Deboche]

I kinda wish DF used a basic nutrition system to force food variety in conjunction with a calorie system so that 1 food item doesn't equal 1 meal but instead represents so many calories that go towards your dwarfs needs. One good farmer being able to supply hundreds of dwarves kinda ruins the challenge and simulation aspect of the food industry

You do know DF is not a finished product, right?

[miauw62]

If you just want efficient food, just assign a couple 10x10 plots to make plump helmets all season erry season. have a kitchen to make meals and a still to make booze and make sure seed cooking is off.

[greycat]

Advice for 0.40.24 and earlier:

I would never make farm plots that big.  10x10?  That's enough for 7 fortresses.

I make 2x2 or 3x3 farm plots, depending on my mood and the terrain I'm working with.  Never bigger.  If I want to double the number of plump helmets or whatever, I just make another plot.

Four 2x2 plots are MORE than enough for your starting population's food and booze and clothing, assuming you embarked with a Planter, and you manage to avoid workflow snafus.  Without fertilizer.  (I never fertilize.  Waste of trees and labor.)

I haven't played 0.42 yet.  Maybe Toady changed something.

[miauw62]

yeah but there's no reason not to have more plump helmets than you can ever use. 10x10 doesnt even take up that much space.

[dennislp3]

I kinda wish DF used a basic nutrition system to force food variety in conjunction with a calorie system so that 1 food item doesn't equal 1 meal but instead represents so many calories that go towards your dwarfs needs. One good farmer being able to supply hundreds of dwarves kinda ruins the challenge and simulation aspect of the food industry

You do know DF is not a finished product, right?

I am completely aware and I am more than sure it will change one day...I just wish some of the currently working systems could be tweaked or worked on a bit in between these year long releases or something.

I get its not finished but in theory it will never be finished...I don't see why some parts can't be made more in line with the final view of how they are supposed to work instead of constantly introducing new (albeit cool and nice) features along with large amounts of new bugs that don't get sorted out for years. And yes I understand the whole concept of needing to put all the gears in place (features) before they can be truly tweaked and likely re-written to fit into the final product as planned.

That's just my opinion (not a complaint)...Toady should just keep doing what he does...that's fine because he is not doing anything "wrong"...I suppose I am not him and I just can't empathize with his reasoning and how he does things so it simply doesn't make sense to me.

[Linkxsc]

yeah but there's no reason not to have more plump helmets than you can ever use. 10x10 doesnt even take up that much space.

Perhaps, but itll eat up a bit of labor for a single 10x10. Doing things that big, quite often leads to a bit of rot. Instead try 5, 1x10s, separated by 1 row each, and have the rows between filled with plump helmet stockpiling. So harvesters only have 1 tile to move to drop off. Production will skyrocket. And you can expand that with other rooms doing it. though you'll need 2x the area to do it in, but the time savings of hauling will really add up.
Or personally starting off a fort gets 2 6x12 rooms, each has 3 1x10 rows of 1 plant. Next to it is the output for just that plant. And the 2 tiles on the end are stockpiles for that seed. Cause plump helmets are great, but pigtails for all them early bags.


And what good dwarven fortress isn't literally swimming in plump helmet, like srsly.
People talk about forts starving, and running out of booze. Make enough tiles of PHs, and your stills LITERALLY can't brew it fast enough, and don't bother cooking them.

[cochramd]

And what good dwarven fortress isn't literally swimming in plump helmet, like srsly.

I embark in plant-rich areas because I'm too lazy to farm and my obsession with domesticating animals ensures that I only need plants for food.

[freeze]

Little point in letting all that perfectly good kitten tallow go to waste. Quarry bush leaves with dwarven syrup is for export in my book.

[stealthsilent]

ok I figured it out, forget quarry bushes, that is a huuuge waste of time. They are useless. Also milking animals is useless. What I did was
get 60 turkey hens and they got me food without doing any work.
My famer is going to stay a farmer and not going to do any other jobs, so might as well make him full time overload to get massive amounts of food. turkeys lay maybe once every 1-2 seasons. Every turkey gives me on average 12.5 eggs, so i start with 60 turkey hens and get ~750 eggs every season or two, which is easily 2k food by year 2. You don't need any farmers or anything to keep the chickens giving eggs, it is NOTHING like quarry bushes, it is sooo much better. By year 5 i had 10k food. So my farmer could focus all production on plump helmets, so i got maybe 2k drink by year 2 also, i don' know.

2 miners
1 carpenter (for beds and crap)
1 mason/stonecrafter (used for rock pots)
1 farmer (booze)
1 brewer (booze)
1 cook (food from eggs)

copper picks 2
dwarven ale 31
dwarven wine 31
plump helmet spawn 93 (planting)
copper short sword 1 (in case I need to kill something)
yak's milk 71 (cheapest food)
plump helmets 21 (to get started, so i don't run out of boozy)

60 turkey hens (eggs food)
2 turkey gobbler (eggs food)
6 dog girls (for killing wild animals outside for butcher meat)
2 dog boys (for killing wild animals outside for butcher meat)
3 cat boys (for pests)
2 sheep boys (for wool: 7 wool per sheep)
2 sheep girls (for wool: 7 wool per sheep)

[FortunaDraken]

> Quarry Bushes huge waste of time
> Looks at the barrel of quarry bush (insert whatever lavish meals are called here) that's worth 60k dorfbucks on its own
> Looks at all the dwarves that are super happy about fantastic meal qualities

Uh-huh...I think you're just too impatient to be trying them. I have quarry bushes turned on one of my 3x3 plots for one season a year and they do fantastic things to my meals and trading. Also milking animals means cheese which means more money/quality meals.

You're really just going for mass food that you don't need. I have maybe 200 units of food and booze for the first 3+ years. I don't go over 500 max since I just don't need it.

On the previous version with DFhack managing my food loads, it restarted making meals maybe ONCE a year at max 300-500 (depending on population). Dwarves just don't eat that much.