Pikeapple Bush

Pikeapple Bush is a food plant that can, by itself, support a colony’s calorie needs if enough of it is planted and harvested consistently. The available analysis treats it as a sole food source and compares how many bushes are needed per duplicant under different difficulty settings and consumption methods.

On Normal Difficulty, a duplicant consumes 1,000 kcal per cycle. Under that assumption:

• If Pikeapple is eaten directly, each duplicant needs 3.76 Pikeapple Bushes, producing 1,000.16 kcal/cycle.
• If Pikeapple is processed before being eaten, each duplicant needs 2.5 Pikeapple Bushes, producing 1,000 kcal/cycle.
• With the DLC, if Pikeapple is processed before being eaten, each duplicant needs only 1.835 Pikeapple Bushes, producing 1,000.51 kcal/cycle.

On the highest difficulty, duplicants consume 2,000 kcal per cycle, so the required planting scales up accordingly:

• Direct consumption requires 7.52 Pikeapple Bushes per duplicant.
• Processed consumption requires 5 Pikeapple Bushes per duplicant.
• With the DLC, processed consumption requires 3.67 Pikeapple Bushes per duplicant.

These figures make Pikeapple Bush a practical long-term food option when a colony can dedicate enough farm tiles to it. The numbers also show a clear efficiency gain from processing the crop before eating it, especially when the DLC bonus is available.