Oxygen Not Included (ONI) Food Calculator

In Oxygen Not Included, keeping your duplicants fed is one of the primary hurdles of early-game colony management. By default, a standard duplicant consumes 1,000 kcal per cycle. This demand can change depending on your chosen game settings or specific duplicant traits:

• Easy Settings: Duplicants consume only 500 kcal per cycle.
• Hungry Settings: Duplicants consume 1,500 kcal per cycle.
• Ravenous Settings: Duplicants consume 2,000 kcal per cycle.
• Bottomless Stomach: Any duplicant born with this trait consumes an extra +500 kcal/cycle on top of their difficulty modifier.

If a duplicant reaches 0 kcal, they will begin starving. If they spend three consecutive cycles without food, they will die from starvation. Setting up an automated or stable farm cycle early prevents catastrophic colony collapses.

Farming crops and ranching critters both have unique trade-offs. Choosing the right food system depends heavily on what geysers, templates, and raw resources are available in your asteroid:

Farming (Mealwood, Blossoms, Wheat)

Farming is easy to set up and requires very little initial labor. Duplicants plant seeds in farm plots, and harvest crops once grown. However, crops have strict temperature ranges (e.g. Sleet Wheat requires freezing environments, Pincha Peppers require intense heat). Furthermore, advanced foods require massive amounts of clean Water, which can quickly drain your reserves before you secure renewable water geysers.

Ranching (Hatches, Pacu, Dreckos)

Ranching requires skilled Rancher duplicants, grooming stations, and room sizing (stables require up to 96 tiles). Despite the higher labor costs, ranching produces Meat, which cooking converts to Barbeque (+3 Quality, +8 Morale). Hatches eat raw rocks (like Igneous and Sedimentary), which are practically infinite, providing a sustainable food loop while converting waste into coal for power.

To make food planning straightforward, here is a quick reference indicating how many active plants or critters you need to sustain a single standard duplicant (1,000 kcal/cycle) at default settings:

Food Choice Plants/Critters per Dup Main Resource Consumed Morale Quality

Meal Lice (Raw) 5.0 Plants 50 kg Dirt / cycle Terrible (-1)

Liceloaf (Mushed) 3.5 Plants 35.3 kg Dirt, 29.4 kg Water / cycle Neutral (0)

Gristle Berry (Cooked) 3.0 Plants 60 kg Water / cycle Good (+1)

Fried Mushroom 2.7 Plants 10.7 kg Slime / cycle Good (+1)

Berry Sludge (Space Food) 2.75 Plants (mixed) 55 kg Water, 6.3 kg Dirt / cycle Great (+3)

Hatch Barbeque 1.45 Hatches 203 kg Rock / cycle Great (+3)

• Transition Away from Mealwood: Mealwood consumes massive amounts of Dirt. Dirt is vital for research and sleet wheat farming in late-game, so swap to Dusk Caps (using Slime) or Hatch ranching as soon as your colony stabilizes.

• Prioritize Barbeque: Cooking raw meat into Barbeque increases quality to Great (+3) which provides a +8 morale boost. This is the easiest way to satisfy high skill requirements for late-game Duplicants.

• Make Berry Sludge for Rockets: Berry Sludge requires Bristle Blossom and Sleet Wheat. Although resource-heavy, it is the only high-tier food in the game that never spoils, making it mandatory for rocket storage and long space journeys.

• Automate your Stables: Use auto-sweepers to sweep Hatch eggs out of stables into drowning chambers. If eggs are left inside the stable, Hatches will get the "Cramped" status effect, which drops their reproduction rate to zero.