Packaged survival meal

Packaged survival meals, sometimes abbreviated as 'PSM', are a high-tech never expiring food option. Note that they can still deteriorate.

Acquisition[edit]

Packaged Survival Meals can be cooked at a fueled stove or electric stove once the Packaged survival meal research project has been completed. It requires a Cooking skill of 8 to be made.

One packaged survival meal requires 0.30 nutrition from meat and 0.30 nutrition from vegetables and 450 ticks (7.5 secs) ticks. Alternatively, it can be made in batches of 4 at the cost of 1.2 nutrition of each type and 1,440 ticks (24 secs) of work.

It can also be purchased from traders, or occasionally recovered from non-tribal raiders.

Additionally, some scenarios give some Packaged survival meals on startup. The ingredients used on each depend on the starting ideoligion's precepts, with cannibalism: preferred and above containing human meat ^{[Needs testing]}.

The Crashlanded scenario gives 50 .
The Rich Explorer scenario and the Mechanitor scenario each give 40 .
The Sanguophage scenario gives 30 .

Summary[edit]

As most cooked meals, each unit of Packaged Survival Meal is worth 0.90 nutrition. As each one requires 0.6 units of raw food, Packaged Survival Meals have has a nutrition efficiency of 150%.

Packaged Survival Meals do not rot, but can still deteriorate.

With the Ideology DLC Packaged Survival Meals have three colors, red if containing meat, green if containing solely vegetables and yellow is default and can be created if the meal solely uses animal products.

Analysis[edit]

As packaged survival meals have a lower nutrition efficiency than most other cooked meals in exchange for not requiring refrigeration, its regular colony use is not recommended. Instead, its use lies as emergency rations, long-range caravans unable to forage, and as a trading good.

Packaged survival meals will always be accepted by trade caravans and orbital traders in trade. Their market value is not affected by their ingredients; insect meat and human meat can be converted into packaged survival meals to sell at full value.

Comparison to pemmican[edit]

When packaged survival meals are compared to pemmican :

have slightly worse nutrition per ingredient (50% vs. 60%)
lack the nutritional flexibility that pemmican has, only offering a single chunk of 0.9 nutrition vs. the precise 0.05 bites of pemmican. See the Pemmican page for details.
are slightly more efficient in terms of carry weight (3 nutrition/kg vs. 2.78 nutrition/kg, or ~8% more/kg carried).
are significantly more efficient in storage space (9 nutrition/stack vs. 3.75 nutrition/stack).
require 43% less work to make.
never expire, while pemmican expires after 70 days if not refrigerated or frozen.
are slightly less valuable in terms of wealth (0.038 nutrition/$ vs. 0.036 nutrition/$).
are accepted by all traders; pemmican may not be.

This makes researching and producing packaged survival meals a good choice for long-term travel or emergency rations, once a colony has both the required stove and cook.

Money making[edit]

Package Survival Meals are amazing source for money making:

It doesn't rot.
It's easy to store (specially compared to raw food).
Has high work/profit ratio, at the cost of high material cost.
Can be sold to any trader.

Each PSM requires 6 units of meat and 6 units of vegetable for a market value of 24 . Assuming the raw materials are "locally sourced", this grants a net profit of 3.2 /second if cooked individually or 4 /second if cooked in bulk. This means that hunting some animals and collecting some berries to later convert into PSM is a fast way to generate some money. If ingredients need to be brought... you should not be doing this.

It is worth mentioning that using human meat, insect meat, raw fungus, or twisted meat is perfectly viable as it does not affect the value of the end result. This is specially valuable for colonies that do not approve the use of said ingredients.

Given that PSM require raw food in large quantities, care must be taken to not accidentally starve your colonists. In most colonies, it is recommended to have some extra growing zone of food in case of disaster; best case scenario the extra vegetables can be combined with some meat to create more PSM to sell later. It can be worthy to have a dedicated rice growing zone that is normally set to not growing so in case of any event that gives lots of meat, you can grow the vegetable to even the food used to gain money ^{[Detail needed]} this can turn into a pretty self-sustainable way to gain money with PSMs over time.