Choose a faction, a good and how many units a day you want. The calculator walks the chain back to the fields and the log pile and tells you how many of each building to place, how many farm tiles to plant, and the workers and power the processing buildings need. Under the tables it draws the chain as a diagram with the daily rate on every arrow.
How a building's output is calculated
Each recipe on the wiki gives inputs, outputs and a time in hours. Output per day = outputs / hours x working hours. A Bakery turns 1 wheat flour and 0.1 logs into 5 bread in 1 hour, so at 16 hours a day it bakes 80 bread. A Gristmill grinds 1 wheat into 1 flour in 0.5 hours, which is 32 flour a day. One Gristmill can therefore keep about two Bakeries busy on bread. Buildings needed = units per day / output per building, rounded up in the Build column. The exact column shows how close you are to the next building, which helps when you are deciding whether a second Gristmill is worth it.
Worked examples (16-hour shift)
- Bread for 50 Folktails (134 a day): 2 Bakeries, 1 Gristmill, about 89 wheat tiles and 2.7 logs a day for the ovens.
- Corn rations for 50 Iron Teeth: 1 Food Factory (160 rations a day), about 134 corn tiles and 2.7 logs a day.
- Eggplant rations for 50 Iron Teeth: 1 Food Factory plus 2 Oil Presses for the canola oil, about 89 eggplant tiles and 67 canola tiles.
- 10 gears a day (Folktails): 2 Gear Workshops (each makes about 5.3 a day) and 1 Lumber Mill feeding them, using 10 logs a day.
What the numbers leave out
Building counts assume every worker slot is filled, inputs are always in stock and powered buildings have power for the whole shift. A Gristmill, Food Factory, Fermenter, Oil Press, Lumber Mill or Gear Workshop sitting idle because the water wheel stopped will fall behind. Farm tiles are a floor based on days to mature and yield per tile; farmers also need time to walk, plant and harvest, and dry fields stop growing. Farmhouse workers are not included in the worker total. The "beavers to feed" button sets the daily rate to 2.67 food per beaver on Normal.
Common chains at a glance
These are the chains most colonies build, drawn at one building's full output on a 16-hour shift. Use the calculator above to scale any of them to your own target.
Production chain questions
How many Gristmills per Bakery?
One Gristmill (32 wheat flour a day) supplies two Bakeries on bread (16 flour each). On cattail the mill grinds 64 flour a day and each Bakery uses 32, so the ratio is still one to two.
How many Oil Presses does a Food Factory need?
On eggplant rations a Food Factory uses 32 canola oil a day and an Oil Press makes about 12.3, so almost three. Corn rations need no oil.
How many Lumber Mills per Gear Workshop?
A Gear Workshop uses 5.3 planks a day. One Folktails Lumber Mill (12.3 a day) covers two workshops; one Iron Teeth Industrial Lumber Mill (25.4 a day) covers four.
Why does the calculator show items "per day (fuel / input)"?
Those goods have no recipe or crop in the chain: logs for ovens and furnaces, or tree and garden goods such as chestnuts, maple syrup, pine resin, mushrooms and algae. Supply them from lumberjacks, tappers, gatherers or Hydroponic Gardens.