Corn plant

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Corn plant

A tall grain plant which produces ears of soft, edible seeds. While corn takes a long time to grow, it yields lots of food compared to other crops. Harvested corn takes a long time to spoil.

Base Stats

Type
PlantDomesticated
Beauty
0 (1)
HP
150
Flammability
100%
Path Cost
14 (48%)

Building

Blocks Wind
False

Ingestion

Nutrition
0.4

Plant Stats

Time to grow
11.3 days (20.86 days)
Work to Sow
170 ticks (2.83 secs)
Work to Harvest
200 ticks (3.33 secs)
Base Harvest Yield
22 Corn
Min Fertility
70%
Fertility Sensitivity
100%
Min light to grow
50%
Technical
sowTags
Ground


The corn plant has a long growing cycle and a very high yield of 22 pieces of corn. It cannot be sown in hydroponics. Corn plants have a base growing time of 11.3 days, need a minimum soil fertility of 70%, and have a fertility sensitivity rating of 100%. Corn has the second-highest base yield per day (approx. 2.7% less than rice), but requires the least farming labor to maintain due to its long growing cycle.

Like most domesticated plants, they are subject to blight.

Growing

The following table details how long it takes for corn plants to grow in each growable ground type, factoring in the plant resting time and being in ideal growing conditions:

  • Ground Type Gravel Soil Rich Soil Hydroponics
    Fertility (%) 70 100 140 280
    Real Grow Time (days)[1] 29.8 20.86 14.9 N/A
    Base Yield/day[2] 0.74 1.05 1.48 N/A
    1. Actual days to grow, taking into account rest time.
    2. Per plant, assuming Crop Yield Multiplier of 1.0.
      Note that Difficulty settings change the Crop Yield Multiplier.
  • Analysis

    In regular soil, corn plants provide slightly less nutrition per day than rice plants (97%) and slightly more than potato plants (102%). Their primary advantage is their incredible labor efficiency: corn provides 200% the nutrition per work of potatoes, and 367% that of rice.

    However, these long harvest cycles also mean that losing a single harvest to blight, fire, cold snaps, or other misfortune is far more consequential than losing a crop of faster-growing plants. And depending on the climate, corn might not reach maturity before winter hits. If your harvest comes in mid-fall, you may want to either forbid sowing to save labour or temporarily switch to rice in order to get a little more food. It's also recommended to either keep an emergency food stockpile or other alternative food source on hand in case of crop loss. When possible, planting in rich soil will help mitigate the weaknesses associated with its long grow time, while planting in low-fertility soil will exacerbate them.

    Corn is arguably the most work efficient means of generating wealth. It takes 370 ticks to grow and harvest, and yields 24.2 wealth for the effort. A colonist with a pair of field hands, a circadian half cycler, and a nuclear stomach can plant/harvest ~25 plants per hour, for 20 hours a day with good optimization. In practice this can yield 10,000 wealth worth of corn per day. Hauling, processing, and selling that much corn is another matter, though.

    Corn's exceptional shelf life means that the colony does not need to invest in freezer space for corn, as even the slightest winter will keep corn fresh until next year's harvest. Thus a corn harvest only needs to be placed in a simple shed.

    Version history

    • 0.9.722 - added.
    • Beta 19/1.0 - Min fertility 50% -> 100%.
    • 1.3.3066 - Nutrition increased from 0.3 -> 0.4