ideas regarding agriculture (nutrient/fetilizer/compost)

[Mileaos2 15]

"changelog" of the suggestion

-added nutrient part

-added composter special part

-added "spoilers" for better overview

agriculture suggestions

i left the seasons out, but there are evry important for the crops of corse.

planting them at the right time and the right place and you get the best harvest.

temperature is very importent too

early food source could be roots, collectable with hoes (via rightclicking dirt [quite rare]) or with shovels (via digging dirt [not rare])

spots are below trees (in forests) or below tall grass or special plants

okay, lets start with agriculture

lets say we have more plantable/eatable stuff than wheat.

for example: potatoes/tomatos/salat

my examples here will be wheat and potatos because they have much diffirent planting/harvesting types.

first:

we need fertilizer, because when you plant your food again and again at the same spots, you get lesser and lesser harvest.

each dirt block should have diffirent amount of nutrient points, normal dirt has the lowest amount around 5 and peat/compost has the most (around 50?) when you planting your crops they use this nutrient points, when there arent any left, the crops dont grow.

manure of diffirent animals have diffirent amount of nutrient points to offer. dig a hole, fill it with water, throw manure and calcium in it and you get sulpur over time (fertilizer or to create gunpowder)

in order to fertilize the ground just throw manure (or something else) at the loosen dirt and the points start to raise. DONT use to much fertilizer, because the crops will die in to much nutrient environment.

to loose up the dirt just collect it and place it again. it is still possible to just rightclock with a hoe and plant your crops, but with loosen dirt the crops will grow faster and your harvest will be better. (better acess to nutrient)

it is possible to loose the dirt faster, when you have a wooden/stone or metal plow, you can harness a horse to loose the dirt fast or harvest potatoes fast.

crops need water! when it isnt raining much, you have to soak your crops in order to prevent the wither of your crops!

(easyest way is to have waterblocks next to your field, but the crops should use the water up.

some crops can survive better with less water suplly then other. some crops die with to much water.

in order to get the best dirt, you have to compost your unused plants. you get "plant parts" (an item with no use exept compost) while harvesting any crops/plants and leaves.

the composter should be quite easy to build with some sticks/planks at a crafting table.

compostable items:

all fruits/crops/wheat/manure/sticks/sarplings/liane/grass/plant parts/leaves/roots

while no crops are growing on your land weed will start to grow. just rightclick with an hoe to get rid of them. (you get plant parts for that)

weed use up your nutrient points.

it is possible to just place crops at the ground and let them grow until you can harvest them, but they arent fruitful that way.

example wheat:

loose up the dirt and fertilize it

they need 25 nutrient point to grow

use a hoe to make farmland and plant your wheat.

when your wheat is big and golden harvest it with your scythe. you get plant parts and wheat.

you have to seperate the grain and straw after harvesting the wheat.

grain can be grindet to flour. (flour + water + eggs = bread dough can be baken or used with a stick over a fire)

straw can be used for a earth oven (right click on water with it in order to get wet straw [read my post ideas regarding cooking])

second use for straw is building material. (very light material for ceiling and can be craftet to strwabricks with mud)

strawfiber can be weaved to strings (strings weaved to cloth)

or straw can be used to build a first bed. (wool from sheeps should be used to weave strings too)

grain can be stored over years at dark, cold, dry places. (dig a hole, build a storehouse out of stone and done)

example potatoes:

potatoes can survive light frost, when the plants arent grown much, but hard frost or big plants while frost can kill them

loose up the dirt and fertilize it

they need around 50 nutrient points to grow up

plant single potatoes direkt into the dirt and rightclick with your shovel in order to create potatoe piles.

at the first time weed will grow on your piles, just collect them with an hoe.

after the first potatoe plants are growing, weed has no chance. (potatoe plants grow rampant)

when your potatoe plants are dead you have to collect the plant parts first via rightclick with your hand sometimes you get 1 potatoe while collecting the plant parts. (you just tear them out)

then leftklicking with your hoe on the piles until the pile dissapear (you get 1-2 potatoes for that).

now you have to dig out the whole dirt block in order to get all potatoes. (again around 1-2).

when you have an plow, just go over your dead potatoe plants with it and you get all potatoes and plant parts without digging.

potatoes can be stored around a half year at dark, dry and cold places (like the wheat)

mrs. €dit says: i have changed the nutrient points, so it isnt that complicatet anymore

dont forget: you plant/harvest only one time per year each crop!

and wheat should be plant/harvestable like normal, but it isnt that fruitfull and you have to replace the dirtblocks after some seasons...

and dont forget, with seasons, the crops grow much longer (around spring => fall) and you have a time, where you cant grow crops (winter).

you have to search the best and fruitful place for your crops, where you can start your farms and build your home.

just plant a large number of crops (and diffirent, potatoes [example] have to been consumed faster then wheat, because it spoil faster, but you get a large amount of potatoes)

and then you have time for everything you want, later you have to harvest your crops in order to store them and survive to the next harvesting season.

nutrient

each dirt type has its own "standart" nutrient points, when you start growing crops on it or the "top" dirt blocks with grass on it loose those points.

in order to save the points, you have to collect the weed (or grass) to prevent the loose of points and you can throw the gained plant parts into the composter.

or just put a stone block ontop the dirt block to prevent weed growing.

first some single weeds are growing, when you dont do anything, they will spread and create grass. over time the grass become tall grass.

you can take your cattle to your farmland after harvesting (and some grow time for the weed), the cattle starts to graze there and fertilize the dirt with there manure.

example points (no fix numbers jet)

darker dirt => more points

sand: 2

dirt: 20

dark dirt: 125

compost: 300

each plant growing ontop the dirt use some points, until the dirt block is depletet.

each growphase will use up some points, until the plant is fully grown

composter

a composter is a simple box, where you throw your plant residues in, in order to get compost earth.

this dirt type has the most nutrient points without fertilizing and can be optain quite easy and with not much hassle.

just place fences in a square (any sice you want)

then rightclick with plantparts on the ground and the plants as a layer appears (like wood logs) rightclick the layer and a GUI opens (like the wood log)

now place any plant parts/fruits/sticks/sarplings ect inside it and one bucket of water. (the water get consumed instandly and you can remove the bucket)

when you filled the whole space inside the fence square, just put some dirt blocks (any type work) ontop and whait.

after some time you just have to dig out your composter, each compost block below the dirt blocks contain compost earth and remaining plant stuff. (you get 1 earth for every 300 nutrient points in items you throw in there)

you get around 75% of the leftower material back, to compost it again.

Edited 9 Jul 2012 by Mileaos2

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

Insanely overcomplicated.

I'd just become a carnivore

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

Yeah, let's go hunting a yak, more food and less complicated ._.

I think this would be quite hard, if not impossible, to implement... and if it's in fact implemented, it would be hard enought to make every single TFcraft player a hunter. It would not even be possible to raise your own animals, since getting the food for them would be insanely complicated.

[Mileaos2 15]

like i pointet out, you can plant wheat like in vanilla, but it isnt that fruitfull like the complicatet way and some crops need the complicatet way.

when you depletet your dirt of all nutrient points just throw it away and place some new one... done

but:

you dont just plant your stuff somewhere, throw some bonemeal over it, harvest it and go on, or just planting, waiting, harvesting.

we will have seasons, so we have to plant alot wheat/ potatoes (like in my examples) and hope for a good harvest, because over winter we cant plant/harvest anything, so we have to life with our harvest until we can harvest new food.

and the animals need food over winter too.

only hunting isnt a option, then soon or later all animals are dead

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

only hunting isnt a option, then soon or later all animals are dead

That's the reason why you wouldn't settle down ever; as the animals die, you travel to another place where there still are some animals. Just like it was before the man learned about agriculture.

[Mileaos2 15]

hm allright, i guess you two are right, i changed the nutrient points to just 1, so it is lesser complicatet

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

Hmmm... well... i'm still not sure about it, but at least it isn't as complicated as it was before.

I'll think about it later, right now i'm a little too busy.

[bsb23 303]

You are kind of right though with the whole nutrients thing though this is basically what IC2 does although irl with crop rotations there are four "sets" of plants sometimes only three these sets are used to make sure that nitrogen levels are high when necessary and low when not rotation of crop also prevents disease. The groups are legumes (green beans), fruits(which oddly contains potatoes), roots(onions/carrots), leafy veggies(lettuce). It can get slightly more complicated than that as animals and soil structure become involved, up to as many as eight rotations.

[fred da kiko 28]

Food is something that is so fundamental to playing the game, that the player would spend most of their time tending to it instead of doing things like finding metal, building, or smithing. A better solution would be to have extra steps to make crops have more yield, such as fertilizing or prepping crop land, that way vanilla planting would stay unchanged, but smp servers could have better farms.

[Mileaos2 15]

uhm, well...

first i wrote, you can plant crops like vanilla and harvest them quite fast (wheat + scythe / potatoes + shovel / salate + knife)

but you dont get that much harvest from it.

and dont forget, with seasons, the crops grow much longer (around spring => fall) and you have a time, where you cant grow crops (winter).

you have to search the best and fruitful place for your crops, where you can start your farms and build your home.

just plant a large number of crops (and diffirent, potatoes have to been consumed faster then wheat, because it spoil faster, but you get a large amount of potatoes)

and then you have time for everything you want, later you have to harvest your crops in order to store them and survive to the next harvesting season.

[Sasqaucth 45]

Maybe you need this down to maybe 3 mechanics: Nutrients: 1 Point that regens after use. Growing seasons. And finally more wield with fertilizer.