Berrymaker

Berrymaker are a caste of Dryads, a type of animal added by the Ideology DLC, that produces berries.

Summary

All dryads, including the berrymaker, are produced by a gauranlen tree. They have no need to eat, are immune to disease events, and have 100% Toxic Resistance, rendering them immune to Toxic fallout and Toxic buildup. Dryads cannot die from blood loss, so in practice will survive virtually any damage that doesn't immediately kill them. Dryads can retreat to a healing pod in order to regenerate wounds; this takes 3 days and heals all permanent injuries and bad conditions.

This caste generates 40 berries every two days. This is enough for 2 simple meals per day, or 8 simple meals per 4 dryads. One tree of dryads can thus feed 4.5 people consistently. Eating the raw berries is enough to feed 2.5 people consistently. Tree pruning takes between 8.2 and 3.6 hours per day, depending on Plants skill and tree connection.

Analysis

Berrymakers are incredibly resilient. They do not require light, soil, are immune to blight, and are much more resistant to temperature. This makes them useful in biomes where winters are harsh, or there isn't much growing space. However, gauranlen trees are extremely work-intensive to prune.

A single pawn can maintain about 2 trees with plants 10+, meaning each pawn can support itself and seven others, year-round.

Comparison to rice in soil

In terms of work, rice plants are virtually always better than berrymakers.

Without the Tree Connection meme, rice gives more Food / Work for any amount of Plants skill past 1.
With the Tree Connection meme, rice gives more Food / Work at any reasonably competent planter (Plants 8+ or so).
The better the Plants skill, the worse gauranlen trees get. This is because Pruning Speed only increases by +1% / level, while Plants Work Speed increases by +11.5% / level.

Keep in mind that rice is the least efficient crop for work. Potatoes and corn are even more efficient.

Other than their hardiness, dryads are more efficient for space. Assuming gauranlen trees take up only 9 tiles of space, 4 dryads have a 0.444 nutrition/day/tile. Rice has .054 nutrition/day/tile, and other crops are slightly worse.

Pruning dryad trees only cares about Plants skill and Global Work Speed, so disabled pawns may prune better than they sow.

Comparison to hydroponics

Hydroponics basins do not impact Food / Work. They only impact grow time and space efficiency. Dryads are still more space efficient. Hydropoinics has a max 0.136 nutrition/day /tile. Hydroponics requires major resource investment, consuming power and taking steel and components. It also requires Electricity researched.

Hydroponics are generally grown indoors with sun lamps. Sun lamp set ups are reasonably stable against temperature. Hydroponics are still prone to blight, power outages, solar flares, but hydroponics are stable enough to obsolete berrymakers.

Conclusion

Gauranlen trees are incredibly work-intensive, but are prone to much fewer issues that would impede crops. Their one weakness is toxic fallout, where hydroponics or a large storage is required to avoid build up. Berrymakers may be good in tribal scenarios, where you do not have access to hydroponics, in situations where growing space is limited.

Pruning is not directly affected by plant work speed, so a lazy or joywire-induced pawn can work through a tree faster. However, virtually any means of increasing plant work speed makes any crop a less work-intensive alternative.

Space calculations assume that gauranlen trees only take 9 tiles. Gauranlen trees cannot be placed in a 4-tile radius from each other. However, you can place regular growing zones within the 2-4 tile radius from a tree. In a desert, these trees can be placed on sand, which cannot grow regular crops anyway.

Version history

Ideology DLC Release - Added.
1.3.3076 - Produces 40 berries every 2 days instead of 32 berries every 2 days. Fix: Dryads are affected by disease incidents.

Animals