Every food in the game has three values that matter: its nutrition, a contribution to mood and a decay rate. Know them, and you eat not only enough but also in a good mood and without spoiled supplies. All numbers come from Stationeers 0.2.6428.
Setting up the kitchen
The kitchen appliances do not stand on their own; they sit in the appliance slots of a bench such as the Powered Bench. A bench has two slots, a power and a data port, and needs 10 W.
| Appliance | Job |
|---|---|
| Microwave | cooks 19 dishes |
| Reagent Processor | grinds wheat to flour, sugarcane to sugar, soy to oil |
| Basic Packaging Machine | makes 9 canned foods |
| Chemistry Station | milk and pills |
A bench with microwave and grinder is enough to start. Later the Automated Oven and the Advanced Packaging Machine take over the manual work: same recipes, but with chute ports and IC10 logic.
Raw, cooked or canned
Raw vegetables are edible but weak – and some kinds drag your mood down. The comparison per vegetable:
| Vegetable | raw | mood raw | cooked | canned, per piece |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tomato | 15 | 0 | 25 | 25 (5 pieces → soup 125) |
| potato | 10 | −0.5 | 40 | 120 (1 piece → canned french fries) |
| corn | 10 | −0.25 | 30 | 30 (5 pieces → soup 150) |
| pumpkin | 50 | −0.25 | 80 | 80 (2 pieces → soup 160) |
| mushroom | 10 | −0.25 | 40 | 24 (5 pieces → can 120) |
| rice | 3 | −0.25 | 10 | 20 (5 pieces → pudding 100) |
| soybean | 5 | 0 | 10 | 6.7 (15 pieces → edamame 100) |
Three rules follow from this:
- Cooking always pays off. Nutrition rises and the mood penalty disappears – every cooked version has a mood of 0.
- Canning pays off for potatoes and rice. A potato gives 120 in a can instead of 40, rice 20 instead of 10 per piece.
- Canning loses for mushrooms and soy. Five cooked mushrooms have 200, the mushroom can only 120.
Each can also costs 1 steel, most of them 1 oil as well. Their big advantage is shelf life – more on that below.
Dishes with several ingredients
For the most nourishing dishes you need intermediate products: Flour and Sugar in grams, Soy Oil and milk in millilitres.
| Dish | Ingredients | Nutrition | Mood |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burger | 50 g flour, 1 egg, 1 oil, 2 tomato, 1 cheese | 400 | +1 |
| Bread Loaf | 200 g flour, 5 ml oil | 340 | 0 |
| cake | 50 g flour, 5 ml milk, 1 egg, 50 g sugar | 300 | +0.5 |
| chocolate cake | like cake, plus 2 g cocoa | 300 | +1 |
| pumpkin pie | 100 g flour, 10 ml milk, 1 egg, 10 pumpkin | 300 | +0.5 |
| muffin | 50 g flour, 10 ml milk, 1 egg | 215 | 0 |
| chocolate bar | 10 g sugar, 2 g cocoa | 30 | +1 |
A worked example shows why mood counts. Ten cooked pumpkins give 10 · 80 = 800 nutrition. The same pumpkins in a pumpkin pie give only 300 – but +0.5 mood. According to the game data the character warns at a mood of 0.5, and 0 is critical. A chocolate bar from 10 g of sugar and 2 g of cocoa is the cheapest way up.
How long food keeps
Almost everything cooked decays. The game data give every food a base rate:
| Food | Rate |
|---|---|
| milk | 0.0003 |
| bread, burger, cooked tomato, cooked corn | 0.00025 |
| cooked rice | 0.00019 |
| raw vegetables, wheat | 0.00018 |
| canned food, flour, sugar, soy oil, cereal bar, chocolate bar | do not decay |
According to the game code this builds up decay damage: per second base rate · 0.25 · 60, times three environment factors. At 200 points the food has spoiled. With all factors at 1, bread therefore keeps 200 / (0.00025 · 0.25 · 60) ≈ 53,000 s, just under 15 hours.
| Factor | Effect |
|---|---|
| temperature | rises from 0.2 at 0 K to 1.8 at 500 K and above – so cold slows decay considerably |
| pressure | 5 in vacuum, falling to 1 at 101 kPa and above – in vacuum food decays five times as fast |
| gases | each share counts with its factor: nitrogen 0.6, carbon dioxide 0.8, oxygen and nitrous oxide 1.5, steam 2, pollutant 3, all others 1 |
Difficulty is added on top: Easy halves decay, Creative switches it off. That gives you the supply plan: cook for the short term, can for the long term. Grind large harvests of wheat and sugarcane straight away, because flour and sugar keep. For bread and cooked dishes, cold nitrogen at normal pressure is ideal – which is exactly why the Fridge Small has a gas space of its own that you fill through a pipe. It does not cool by itself; the cold has to come from the pipe.
How much you eat
According to the game code the character's stomach holds 50 nutrition points. On Normal it uses 50 of them per hour, half that on Easy, 1.5 times on Stationeer; asleep the use is halved, and with mood below 0.25 it rises by 10 %. The display warns below 15 points, critical is below 5, and at zero you take starvation damage. The nutrition values in the tables above count in the same points: a Bread Loaf with 340 is good for almost seven full stomachs.
How much you eat at once depends on the kind of dish:
- Whole dishes such as bread, burgers, cakes, soups and canned food are eaten until the stomach is full. For bread on an empty stomach that is 50 / 340 ≈ 15 % of the loaf; the rest stays for later. A cereal bar with 45, on the other hand, fits in whole.
- Portions such as cooked rice, corn, mushrooms, pumpkin, soy and tomatoes are always eaten whole, piece by piece – even when there is only a little room left. Whatever does not fit is lost; only with a completely full stomach does the character refuse. These portions stack up to 10; the baked potato does not.
Mood only counts proportionally, too: a burger with +1 raises it by 50 / 400 · 1 = 0.125 per stomach-full. A chocolate bar with 30 points fits in whole and gives the full +1. Eating also needs an open helmet, except on Easy and Creative.
Next
- Water and thirst: melting ice, filling bottles, purifying water – the other half of your supply
- Medicine and injuries: avoiding damage, using healing – pills from the chemistry station
- Plants and their conditions: Plants
- Plan a greenhouse: Greenhouse planner
- All food: Food