Food

Survive the Storm ties food production more tightly to life support. Two changes: during a Cold Wave colonists eat 0.3 Food per meal, up from 0.2; and the Ranch's four animals each draw double the Water and Oxygen while they grow. Farm and Hydroponic Farm crops are left at vanilla values (Water and Oxygen unchanged). This page is the design and the verified base-game numbers it starts from; it does not change growth times, herd sizes or Food output. Status: Tested v2.9 (Ranch) - in StS as Code/StS_FoodRebalance.lua; the eat-more change is Code/StS_ColonistHunger.lua, untested.

Colonists eat more in a Cold Wave - 0.2 to 0.3 per meal

This one is a Cold Wave effect, not a permanent change: it is the colonist counterpart to the rover slow (see Rovers in a Cold Wave). For the duration of every Cold Wave, colonists eat 0.3 Food per meal instead of 0.2; when the wave ends, eating returns to vanilla. Outside a Cold Wave, nothing changes.

Every colonist eats eat_food_per_visit Food each time they reach a food source (a Dome food service, a Farm, or a Food stockpile). Vanilla base is 200 internal = 0.2 on screen; during a wave the base is raised to 300 = 0.3, a flat +0.1 per meal for the whole colony. This is one const, read live everywhere a colonist is fed, so it lands in every path at once: the colonist's own meal (Colonist:GetEatPerVisit / :Eat, Lua/Units/Colonist.lua:3152-3177), the Dome food forecast (Lua/Buildings/Dome.lua:1531) and the Farm feeding path (Lua/Buildings/Farm.lua:583).

The two vanilla multipliers still apply on top of the raised base: a Glutton eats double, and a colonist who has not eaten for more than a day eats double - so either raises the meal to 0.6 during a wave (Colonist:GetEatPerVisit, same file). The value is set with a keyed g_Consts:SetModifier("eat_food_per_visit", "StS_Hunger", 100, 0) (flat +100) on ColdWave and cleared to 0 on ColdWaveEnded, re-applied on load if a wave is still active - the same mechanism the base game's techs and the Long Winter StoryBits use on this const, idempotent by id so it never compounds. In Code/StS_ColonistHunger.lua.

On-screen resource numbers are the internal template value divided by const.ResourceScale (1000), the same convention the Power Accumulator and MOXIE rebalances use. The tables below show the on-screen number; the internal value the mod edits is 1000× it. Doubling the internal value doubles the on-screen number, so the two are the same change.

Ranch animals - double Water and Oxygen

The Ranch grows four animals: Chicken, Rabbit, Goose and Turkey. Each animal preset carries its own Water and Oxygen consumption - the amount the Ranch consumes while it is growing that animal - shown on the Ranch infopanel per animal. The mod doubles both for all four. Growth time, herd size and the resulting Food (Optimal harvest) are left at vanilla.

Animal	Growth	Optimal harvest	Water now	Water ×2	Oxygen now	Oxygen ×2
Chicken	1 Sol	5	0.3	0.6	0.3	0.6
Rabbit	2 Sols	15	0.6	1.2	0.6	1.2
Goose	4 Sols	45	1.2	2.4	0.6	1.2
Turkey	5 Sols	60	0.9	1.8	0.9	1.8

Internal values (what the mod writes, on-screen ×1000): Chicken water_consumption/air_consumption 300 → 600 each; Rabbit (internal id RabbitPasture) 600 → 1200 each; Goose water 1200 → 2400 and air 600 → 1200; Turkey 900 → 1800 each.

Scope. These four are the animals of the Ranch building (pasture class InsidePasture), which is the set the community table covers. The separate Outside Ranch building grows Cow, Goat, Ostrich and Pig (pasture class OpenPasture); those are not part of this change.

Farm and Hydroponic Farm crops - vanilla

The mod does not change any crop. Every Farm (FarmConventional) and Hydroponic Farm (FarmHydroponic) crop keeps its vanilla Water Demand and its vanilla OxygenProduction (the "Reduces Oxygen consumption" bonus each crop gives its dome). The Farm's unlock tech (Soil Adaptation) is also left with its vanilla description.

Sources

Base game and DLC, decompiled (method: docs/reading-surviving-mars-code.md). Ranch animals are a Project Laika (shepard) feature. The animal table was checked against the source and matches.