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Short answer: The more often you log in the more that you should use raw meat. If your life/job/family require you to log in less often then you want to lean more heavily on cooked meat. Longer answer: It depends on how active you are while the babies are growing up and how many you like to raise at one time. The main reason people use cooked meat is that it allows them to be logged off for a longer period of time between feedings. But this logic only works if they leave enough food to keep all of the babies alive while they're logged off. Raw meat - 50 food, 40 stack size, 40 min spoil time * 2000 food per stack (at first, with less per stack as the stacks start to spoil) * Trough with 60 slots = 120,000 food max possible, in reality much less than this because of spoilage * No matter how many stacks you put in the trough, the trough will finish spoiling after 26.67 hours Cooked meat - 20 food, 50 stack size, 80 min spoil time * 1000 food per stack (at first, with less per stack as the stacks start to spoil) * Trough with 60 slots = 60,000 food max possible, in reality much less than this because of spoilage * No matter how many stacks you put in the trough, the trough will finish spoiling after 66.67 hours Unless you want to spend time doing the calculations, just make sure you have enough troughs to keep your babies alive for the amount of time you usually need to stay logged off and then make sure you top the troughs off when you do log in. Note #1: In the past I've seen an equation that calculates how much max food value a trough provides when you consider that stack each stack in the trough provides less food as the meat in the stack starts to spoil, but I couldn't find that equation in my old notes or spreadsheets. My "gut estimate" would be that you should assume a full trough provides about 50% of the ideal maximum. In other words a full trough of raw meat realistically provides about 60,000 food and a full trough of cooked meat realistically provides about 30,000 food. Again, that's a gut estimate because I can't find or remember the actual calculation. Note #2: These times are the base times. If you are in the habit of using preserving salt in your troughs then you can make the food last longer. I would venture that, for most players, it's well worth keeping salt in your troughs. Note #3: If you really care about this question you should do a couple of small experiments that would help you decide what's right for you. First, hatch a single baby, fill a trough, then check on the trough every couple of hours so you can figure out how much of the food value the baby actually gets to eat until the whole trough spoils. By doing this you don't need to spend time doing abstract math, you can simply observer the results of your test baby to decide what you need. For example: If a full trough gets eaten by a single baby in 12 hours, well then you need 2 troughs per baby every day. Conversely, if the trough is only half-eaten by the time you get to 24 hours then you only need half-a-trough per baby per day. You get the idea. Note #4: It's also important to remember that food, eating and spoiling are only calculated when things are rezzed in. If you log off for 1 hour, then log back in and rez every thing in, the game will start by doing two calculations: 1) How much meat has spoiled from each stack during that time and 2) How much food does the baby need. The game then spoils that much meat per stack, from every stack, all at the same time, and it drops the food value in the baby by that amount all at once. If the baby does not instantly starve, the game then has the baby consume food from the trough. What this means is that you lose more meat to spoilage if you log in less often than you would loose if you log in more often. If you stayed logged in the whole time, with your characters sitting in a chair, then the babies eat meat regularly, consistently, and you don't lose any extra meat to spoilage. But if you log off and log on, every time you log on and rez in your base, the game does the calculations and you lose a little extra meat to spoilage before the baby eats. And if you take a long time between logins you increase the chances of babies starving to death before they get to eat. This is why many tribes make sure they keep someone logged in, sitting in a chair in the baby nursery, at all times, because this is the best way to reduce the amount of spoilage and to prevent babies from starving.

That game is so awesome.

Yep. I play exclusively on splitscreen, because my brother's too annoying to leave me be and play ark at max quality in peace. It's painful. Very, very painful. Every single time I step into a cave, I'm forced to wait until I've aged another 20 years before my game comes back to normal. Xbox one ark is pain. I really hope WC does something do optimize the game for older-gen consoles, since I hate the lag (another unrelated thing-they could take cues from Mojang, where the game on console is essentially a different version (although I do hate the fact that some features are java only and some are bedrock only)).

This is day 342 of troubleshooting... no end in sight. Not sure how much more I can take... tell my wife and kids I love them. Tell them Studio WildCard are responsible for my demise. I tried to get them to help me.. I really did. I wanted to justify buying Ark 2, truly. But now none of it matters. Signing off, forever.

I play on official. I want colored dinos on official. Not unofficial. Not private server. Not single player. Official. Anyone who argued against me on this was a forum troll. Any body who hates colored dinos is a troll.

You do realise it’s been set to 2x permanently like 3 times in the past right…? The current rates are ludicrously high compared to what they used to be on official