Packaged survival meal

Packaged survival meals, sometimes abbreviated as 'PSM', are a high-tech long-lasting food option. They are the colonists' primary food source at the very start of each game (except for a tribal start). They can also be found in cargo pods or cooked (after research) by colonists with a minimum cooking skill of 8. Packaged survival meals restore 0.9 nutrition and do not spoil, meaning they do not require cold storage. Note that they can still deteriorate. They require 0.3 nutrition of vegetarian and 0.3 nutrition of meat or animal product to produce.

Producing a packaged survival meal takes 0.6 units of nutrition in ingredients and yields 0.9 units of nutrition as a result -- a nutrition efficiency of 150%. This is not as efficient compared to other meals such as fine meals, so it's best not to prepare these for regular colony use. Unlike most other meals, packaged survival meals can be sold to traders and friendly settlements.

Acquisition

After researching Packaged Survival Meals, they can be crafted at a fueled stove or electric stove with 0.3 nutrition of vegetarian ingredients and 0.3 nutrition of meat. For example, 6 rice and 6 meat can create a meal.

Outlander and Orbital traders, particularly Bulk Goods traders, can carry Packaged Survival Meals.

The Crashlanded scenario gives 50 Packaged Survival Meals. The Rich Explorer scenario and the Mechanitor scenario each give 40 Packaged Survival Meals. The Sanguophage scenario gives 30 Packaged Survival Meals. With Ideology DLC PSMs have three colors, red if there's meat ingredients (except milk) in it and green if not, yellow will be color of meals that are purchased and PSMs that player started with, the player can't create yellow PSMs by any mean and it has to be bought.

Analysis

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

When packaged survival meals are compared to pemmican:

Packaged survival meals have slightly worse nutrition per ingredient (50% vs. 60%)
Packaged survival meals do not have the nutritional flexibility that pemmican has, only offering a single chunk of .9 nutrition vs. the precise .05 bites of pemmican. See the Pemmican page for details.
Packaged survival meals are slightly more efficient in terms of carry weight (3 nutrition/kg vs. 2.78 nutrition/kg, or ~8% more/kg carried).
Packaged survival meals are significantly more efficient in storage space (9 nutrition/stack vs. 3.75 nutrition/stack).
Packaged survival meals require 43% less work to make.
Packaged survival meals never expire, while pemmican expires after 70 days if not refrigerated or frozen.
Packaged survival meals are slightly less valuable in terms of wealth (0.038 nutrition/$ vs. 0.036 nutrition/$).
Packaged survival meals 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

Package Survival Meals are amazing source for money making, they never rot (compared to the ingredients necessary to make them) are easier to store (both in storage condition and $/title, are easy to mass produce and give a high work/profit ratio. Each PSM requies 6 units of meat (worth 2$) and 6 unit of vegetable (worth 1.1$) for a total of 18.6$ of market value, ending in a total of 5.4$ profit for 4.5 seconds of work, by mass producing PSMs a huge profit can be accumulated over a fairly short amount of time, given how the price of PSMs is independent of thier ingredients, this can be further enhanced by using chicken/duck eggs instead of meat (8.4$ profit), using human meat instead of normal meat (12.6$ profit) or using insect meat (14.4$ profit). Using turkey egg is also technically profitable (4.4$ profit) but since there's no unfertilized ver. of egg, letting the egg hatch and using the meat of hatched turkey is usually better (unless the egg is spoiled for some reason)

Given the profitable nature of PSMs, care must be taken to leave enough food for your colonists & not sale all the food colomy has. In most colonies, having some extra growing zone of food is advisable in case of disaster, if nothing happens, the extra vegetable can be combined with some meat (whether gathered by hunting, renching, manhunter packs, butchering human or infestations) to be turned into some easy money. 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 verify: how big the growing zone has to be? this can turn into a pretty self-sustainable way to gain money with PSMs over time.