Rice plant
Rice plant
A short, fast-growing crop that yields small edible grains. Its great nutritional output and ease of cultivation has made it the economic core of many great civilizations. While rice grows quickly, it is sensitive to soil fertility and will not fare well in poor soil.
Base Stats
- Type
- Plant – Domesticated
- Beauty
- 0 (1)
- HP
- 85
- Flammability
- 100%
- Path Cost
- 14
Ingestion
- Nutrition
- 0.175
Plant Stats
- Time to grow
- 3 days (5.54 days)
- Work to Sow
- 170 ticks (2.83 secs)
- Work to Harvest
- 200 ticks (3.33 secs)
- Min Fertility
- 70%
- Fertility Sensitivity
- 100%
- Min light to grow
- 50%
- sowTags
- Ground, Hydroponic
Rice plants yield rice, a fast growing crop. While its speed nets a high overall yield per tile per day, each plant gives the least food per harvest, so rice takes a high amount of labor for a given amount of food. Therefore, it is a good option for newer colonies, but may be gradually phased out as a food reserve is established.
Conditions
- Maximum growth temperature 58 °C (136.4 °F)
- Minimum growth temperature 0 °C (32 °F)
- Some Rice plants may die around -13 °C (8.6 °F)
- Most Rice plants may die around -15 °C – -18 °C (5 °F – -0.4 °F)
- At least 51% light is required to grow.
Growing
Ground Type | Gravel | Soil | Rich Soil | Hydroponics |
---|---|---|---|---|
Fertility (%) | 70 | 100 | 140 | 280 |
Real Grow Time (days)[1] | 7.91 | 5.54 | 3.96 | 1.98 |
Base Yield/day[2] | 0.76 | 1.08 | 1.52 | 3.03 |
- ↑ Actual days to grow, taking into account rest time.
- ↑ Per plant, assuming Crop Yield Multiplier of 1.0.
Note that Difficulty settings change the Crop Yield Multiplier.
Analysis
Rice plants' daily nutrition is fractionally higher than corn and potatoes (102.7% and 105.4% in regular soil, respectively), though rice's greatest strength is its quick and stable growth.
The short maturation time makes it ideal for establishing a colony, as an 'emergency' food crop when food runs low, for biomes with short growing seasons, and as a 'last planting' crop when winter is fast approaching. As rice is harvested so frequently, the damage from blight, cold snaps, and other destructive events has much less of an impact than with other crops. The fast speed also has a use in leveling up the Plants skill.
However, this also means rice requires far more labor to reap and sow for the same nutrition compared to potatoes and especially corn. Rice takes 183% the work than potatoes, and 366% more work than corn. While corn gives slightly less nutrition per tile, most colonies can use the extra time to plant more tiles of corn, assuming they have the space. Rice becomes less viable past the midgame, unless the colony is limited by growing space (or is otherwise in an emergency).
While rice is no more affected by soil fertility than corn, rice will grow even faster with high fertility, magnifying the innate strengths (quick, stable food) and weaknesses (work) of that fact. And unlike corn, rice can grow in hydroponics. While rice provides significantly more nutrition over time than any other hydroponics crop, it requires a harvest and replant every other day to do so.
Version history
- 0.9.722 - Added.
- Beta 19/1.0 - Min fertility 50% -> 100%.