No real question, more observations.

So, I just got the game. Been sticking to the sandbox mode to get a real feel for the gameplay.

First few attempts fell apart quickly for one reason or another.

Finally got a round that was rolling along quite smoothly... Until it wasn't. Suddenly there was no food. No matter how many colonists died off, there was still never enough food. It was sudden. I had just built three new greenhouses. Then, someone's hungry. Then I'm no longer producing nanites. So, I can't build, or upgrade. All I can do is watch that death toll rise...

We survived toxic fumes, spores, creeps and worms only to be undone by... A lack of broccoli... o.o

Not sure what exactly happened. It almost seems like the farmers died out first, so there was no one, or not enough, to continue growing crops for the survivors.

Did you have a hospital and nanomeds?

The last round, durring a campaign, no.

I was trying to follow the campaign as close as possible, adding in where needed, and suddenly. No food.
Farms were maxed. Everything was good. Mission for a new habitat. Just needed more storage and power, suddenly. No Food. Everything collapsed after that.

No nans to build. No power. No farms. Everyone died of starvation.

The campaign is a tutorial. Its stops telling you to do certain things the as it progresses. I do like how this is handled.

Campaigns were only mildly annoying at the start, but yes, I'm kind of enjoying them.

My longest running game is now the Sandy Gulch Campaign. Still going, just slightly stalled while I increase my Sludge production to cover the lack of ore for nans.

The two biggest bottlenecks in Aven Colony are population and nanites. Ironically, this might have been a situation you had too many jobs and not enough people to work them. The first reaction would be to build greenhouses, but you might have instead needed to tear down other buildings that require people to work them if the issue was you stretched yourself too thin (can't confirm, but it doesn't sound like nanites were your bottleneck). Sure there's the chance that you lacked power for the new greenhouses, or water, or didn't provide adequate transportation, but assuming you have the basics of the game down, it's probably the easiest one to overlook.

I recommend always trying to maximize both your population and nanite growth, as with sufficient amounts of both, you have the means to fix anything that arises from the population growth.

Also, were all your preexisting food structures upgraded? Upgrading is generally more efficient than building a new structure because it makes each existing pop' produce more, and is cheaper on nanites.

I recently discovered how it happens that colonies can suddenly commit mass suicide.

Building efficiency is linked to morale. So the more unhappy people get, the less resources are available which in turn causes the morale to go down even quicker, and so begins the vicious downwards cycle.

I call it an 'unrecoverable morale cascade failure'.

It is horrendously unrealistic since real human colonists would never in a million years be that stupid.