Insect meat

Acquisition

Insect meat is produced when a cook butchers any insectoid at a butcher table or butcher spot. The amount obtained depends on the Meat Amount of the butchered insectoid, as well as the Butchery Efficiency of the butcher and a number of other factors.

The base yield for each insectoid is as follows:

Animal	Meat Yield
Spelopede cocoon
Megascarab cocoon
Megaspider cocoon
Megascarab	31
Spelopede	112
Megaspider	168

Summary

Excluding its mood effects, insect meat acts as any other meat. It can be used alone to produce simple or nutrient paste meals, or combined with other ingredients to produce fine, lavish meals, pemmican and kibble. By default, cooks will not cook with insect meat, but you can make them do so by allowing insect meat in cooking bills.

Colonists consider insect meat disgusting, and will suffer the −6 Ate insect meat moodlet when eaten raw, and the −3 Ate cooked insect meat moodlet for eating meals with it. Pawns will also gain the mood effect of the preparation itself - for example, eating it as a nutrient paste meal gives an additional −4 mood penalty, for −7 mood total.

The mood penalties from insect meat are negated and replaced with a +6 if the eating pawn has an ideoligion with the "Insect Meat: Loved" precept. This mood buff also stacks with any meal preparation methods.

Its market value is only 0.5, or 25% of regular meat.

Analysis

Infestations can result in massive amounts of insect meat. While initially unattractive, insect meat can be of significant value.

Colonist food: Eating cooked insect meat is only a −3 moodlet. If desired, you can cook it into a fine meal or carnivore fine meal, resulting in a net gain of +2 mood. It can also be cooked into lavish meals for even higher mood. "Wasted" food from lavish meals doesn't matter if you would've thrown out the insect meat in the first place. This makes insect meat useful if meat, or food in general, is in low supply.

If the "Insect Meat: Loved" precept is used, then insect meat becomes a no-brainer. With the right set up, colonies can be fed exclusively on insect meat and be ecstatic about it, making it a very powerful tool to control colony mood. There is no functional downside for the Insect Meat: Loved precept and no upside for the Insect Meat: Despised precept.

Animal food: Omnivorous and carnivorous animals can eat insect meat or insect corpses without penalty.

Chemfuel: When processed in a biofuel refinery, insect meat is treated like any other organic food. Chemfuel can be sold for a profit, used in a chemfuel generator, or consumed in any other way without penalty. At a profit of 45.5 per 1 game-hour, refining insect meat is an efficient way for unskilled pawns to generate income.

Decreasing mood: The mood penalty from insect meat can be combined with the penalty from nutrient paste when trying to lower a pawn's mood, such as when trying to trigger a tortured artist, create an anti-raider psychic beacon , or convert a pawn via Crisis of belief. Human meat offers a stronger penalty, but butchering a human offers a mood penalty to the average colonist.