Growing food in Vault 88

[Stargazer09]

I'm curious as to how you guys do it. I was thinking of setting up a farm in one of the caves but somehow that seems wrong to me, there is no sunlight. I've seen a vid where the player uses garden plots within the vault. I suppose one can imagine that the lighting there replicates the wavelengths of sunlight that plants use for photosynthesis. Then again, if I can imagine that then I can also build lamp posts and imagine that those emit the same wavelengths too. :tongue:

 

So what are your solutions?

 

[Moraelin]

Scientifically speaking, there is nothing special about the wavelengths needed, which is why people can grow pot in the basement. Plants basically need red and blue light at the same time for it to work, and pretty much ignore the middle of the spectrum, which is green. So they look green basically because they absorb everything but green.

 

They also don't need a whole lot of light. On a bright summer day they actually can't or won't use most of the light, because basically they don't have nearly enough chloroplasts or raw materials to deal with all the photons, and even the chloroplasts they have maxx out early there.

 

Just some white lamps will do the trick just fine, is all I'm saying.

 

Personally I tend to use mods to make all lamps' brighter and longer range, because, well, I don't like my vault looking like a frikken tomb. Which also makes it look like the plants would have plenty of light, coincidentally.

 

As for WHERE, well, you can use the caves obviously, but personally I thought that didn't look vault-like, so I just placed some ground plots in a big Vault-Tec room and a "Hydroponics" sign above the door.

 

You don't need a whole lot of space either, since you can plant like 4 Mutfruit trees per plot, so something like 6 plots will feed 24 people. Unless you've got one of those mods that let you have 100 settlers, it should be plenty.

 

Or you can plant 5 carrots/tatos/whatever per plot, so 12 plots will feed 30 people.

 

Alternately, you can just connect a supply route and bring the food over from Graygarden or such. Then the food number is green, your settlers are happy, and... they'll still complain about being hungry, just because Beth messed that up. But they're actually not.

[TheGadget1945]

I just toured all the vaults and looked at the Hydroponics rooms then copied them in Vault 88 only slightly bigger. It's best to use Carrot planters because they give 2 food each. I did a further refinement by attaching sprinklers from Snap n build Greenhouse to water them.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/images/46006/?

[cossayos]

The entrance cave is big enough to build a spacious vault and grow food on the outside. I also use food planters, so fertile ground conditions aren't any of my concern. All modded, of course.

[Moraelin]

I had about tree dozen people AND the crops in a single vault segment in the cave where you find the Overseer. I just built it tall. You know the two-level atrium set, with the overseer as the third level? I built that on top of a ground floor, so basically I had a three level atrium with the overseer's office as the fourth. I had enough space for all stores, cafeteria and hydroponics on the ground floor around the atrium, with the sleeping rooms and toilets on floors 1 and 2 above it.

 

No mods needed, except for the number of settlers. I just used the ground plots from some previous DLC. I suppose I could have used the mod planters, to make it look more like hydroponics, though, but it's not NEEDED.