Introduction
[postad]In Planetbase food is essential. Without it your colonists will not only die, they will also refuse to work! Simply serving up the same vegetables a day will cause disease so you better make sure you understand the food recipes.
Bio dome
All food gets produced in Bio domes. This tutorial assumes you have read and understood the guide regarding Bio domes.
Food recipes and Meal makers
Your canteen should contain a few meal makers. These machines will convert vegetables and meat into meals.
However it get’s a bit more complicated then that. The trick here is that some combination of ingredients will result in proper meals like Pasta. The alternatives are called basic meals. When your colonists eat a lot of basic meals (currently 15+) they will get ill due to lack of food variation. This will require treatment in the sickbay.
There are currently 3 types of advanced meals: Pasta, Salads and Burgers. These advanced meals will be automatically created based on the ingredients in your meal maker. For example Lettuce + Tomatoes + Peas will form a Salad. Basically there are a few dozen recipes that create an advanced meal. Therefore you should limit yourself to a few plant types! If you keep too many combinations the chance that a proper combination can be created is very low.
Best Food recipes in Planetbase
The easiest recipes to create is the combination between tomato’s (fast producing food) and wheat (regular food, also creates starch needed for bio plastics). GameplayInside recommends you stick to these two plants.
Pasta for the win
Let’s take a more detailed look into why Pasta is so great. You Meal Maker can only fit 6 ingredients. It will create an advanced meal when a combination can be made. Because pasta only requires 2 ingredients it will be easy for at least one combination to be correct. However there are additional advantages. Tomato’s produce 100% faster but require more maintenance. This means you should try to build 8 wheat plants for every 4 tomato plants. That way your outputs are balanced perfectly and you will have the highest possible chance of generating a Pasta meal. Because you use a lot of “regular” plants you won’t need as many biologists as you might expect.
The great thing about this combination is that it is very flexible. If you have a lot of biologists then you can switch to 50% wheat and 50% tomatoes. This will increase your food output significantly. Although the number of basic meals will go up there should be no problems because it takes at least 15 basic meals in a row for colonists to get sick.
Salad alternative
There is an alternative that exclusively uses fast producing foods: tomato + lettuce + peas = Salad. The advantage of this combination is that these are all fast producing plants. Meaning you need less bio domes to support your population. However there are two downsides. Firstly the maintenance requirements of each plant are much higher. So you will need a lot more biologists to avoid malfunctioning plants. Remember that a malfunctioning plant stops producing! If that happens then it wasn’t worth the trouble. The second downside is that a meal maker only has 6 slots for foods. With 3 different ingredients your chances for a good combination between tomato, lettuce and peas is significantly lower. If you get 4x tomato and 2x peas everything will be a basic meal (!).
Planetbase food recipe ingredient counts
The higher the number, the more often an ingredient can be used to create an advanced meal.
| Type | Number of recipes |
| Beef | 27 |
| Chicken | 27 |
| Pork | 27 |
| Lettuce | 14 |
| Radishes | 14 |
| Tomatoes | 14 |
| Maize | 7 |
| Onions | 7 |
| Wheat | 5 |
| Potatoes | 5 |
| Peas | 4 |
| Rice | 4 |
| Mushrooms | 2 |
Planetbase food recipe list for Salads
| Ingredient 1 | Ingredient 2 | Ingredient 3 |
| Lettuce | Tomatoes | Peas |
| Lettuce | Tomatoes | Maize |
| Lettuce | Tomatoes | Onions |
| Lettuce | Tomatoes | Radishes |
| Lettuce | Radishes | Potatoes |
| Tomatoes | Onions | Peas |
| Tomatoes | Onions | Radishes |
| Tomatoes | Onions | Potatoes |
| Tomatoes | Onions | Maize |
| Tomatoes | Radishes | Peas |
| Tomatoes | Radishes | Potatoes |
| Tomatoes | Radishes | Maize |
| Radishes | Onions | Maize |
| Radishes | Potatoes | Peas |
| Lettuce | Tomatoes | ANY MEAT |
| Lettuce | Radishes | ANY MEAT |
| Lettuce | Onions | ANY MEAT |
| Tomatoes | Potatoes | ANY MEAT |
| Tomatoes | Onions | ANY MEAT |
| Tomatoes | Radishes | ANY MEAT |
Planetbase food recipe list for Pasta
| Ingredient 1 | Ingredient 2 | Ingredient 3 |
| Wheat | Mushrooms | |
| Wheat | Tomatoes | |
| Rice | ANY MEAT | |
| Rice | Mushrooms | Tomatoes |
Planetbase food recipe list for Burgers
| Ingredient 1 | Ingredient 2 |
| Wheat | ANY MEAT |
| Maize | ANY MEAT |
Bonus Video
There is a great tutorial created by Jalindo that will provide some helpfull tips!
Summary
Recipes do not have to be hard. Just stick to Wheat+Tomato’s and you are good to go. If you want you could use this list to create other interesting recipes. But remember, too many different ingredients will not make it likely that a proper meal can be generated.
Source: Jalindo on the Steam Community