food surplus and pop growth questions....

[Jodet]

Is food production binary? In other words you're either above zero or below zero?

Or does more food make your pop grow faster? In other words if you had 8+ food would your pop grow faster than if you had 4+?

I'm guessing there are penalties for going below +0 food?

[Arioch]

Excess food does not increase population growth. Excess food is sold for additional coin.

Insufficient food with cause starvation and population loss.

[akkamaddi]

This is not an answer to your question, but is only tangentially related: If you do the ongoing action "City Planning", which increases population growth (and increases happiness of refugees, making them assimilate faster), the planet's food consumption doubles as long as City Planning is in effect. Because of that, you have to be careful using City Planing on several planets if you are close to your food limit.

Also, planets can share food, if you have shuttles. Shuttles in the shuttle pool will move food from planets with to planets without, automatically. (I don't think distance or travel time matters here.) Food takes priority over trade, so that will cut back on money they earn, but starvation can cause riots. This is one of the reasons it's good to get a large fleet of shuttles in the trade pool (sooner the better). You can reserve planets for a specific function and they won't starve, or you can have a supergrain-fueled breadbasket planet feeding surrounding systems.

The total food excess shown in the top bar of the galaxy display shows you how close you are to starvation events, if you have enough shuttles to distribute food.

[Jodet]

This is not an answer to your question, but is only tangentially related: If you do the ongoing action "City Planning", which increases population growth (and increases happiness of refugees, making them assimilate faster), the planet's food consumption doubles as long as City Planning is in effect. Because of that, you have to be careful using City Planing on several planets if you are close to your food limit.

Also, planets can share food, if you have shuttles. Shuttles in the shuttle pool will move food from planets with to planets without, automatically. (I don't think distance or travel time matters here.) Food takes priority over trade, so that will cut back on money they earn, but starvation can cause riots. This is one of the reasons it's good to get a large fleet of shuttles in the trade pool (sooner the better). You can reserve planets for a specific function and they won't starve, or you can have a supergrain-fueled breadbasket planet feeding surrounding systems.

The total food excess shown in the top bar of the galaxy display shows you how close you are to starvation events, if you have enough shuttles to distribute food.

Thanks, that's very helpful. I use 'City Planning' quite a bit, those new planets with 1 pop are pretty useless and when it takes forever to build a factory I'd rather increase population first. I'm finding I like one transport per planet so no starvation so far.

[nathanebht]

You can transport population between planets. That can help with new colonies. Also makes sense to pay for your first factory on a new planet.