Trees should drop seeds instead of saplings

[kotoroshinoto 97]

We should have to set up a nursery area of tilled soil or something to grow the tree from seed to sapling before transplanting it. It'd be kind of like how wheat grows but not drop seeds when you harvest it, and only get the 1 sapling.

I mean, if you go whacking the fuck out of trees, you get acorns and the floater seeds and pinecones and spiny ball things, but you dont get smacked in the head by miniature baby trees falling out of the branches.

Hell maybe you could have the trees flower ( or produce cones in the case of pines) at appropriate times of year have a small chance to drop seeds seasonally.

[GCountach 39]

I'm not fond of this idea, namely the flowering part... My worry is how long it'll take for a tree, once planted, to grow. While more realistic, it would halt basically everything else. Without trees, you don't have logs and sticks. Without logs, you don't have charcoal or support beams or a functional firepit which would result in a game that would stalemate quickly. Your only option at that point is just to cut down entire forests for your wood.

While that is realistic, what isn't realistic is related to chunk loading. In real life, you could cut down a 2-3 mile radius forest and replant. Come back in 3-4 years and do it again. In minecraft, if you can't see the trees, they can't grow. That means you are artifically limited by the amount of trees you can replant by where you are working. Since you only have so many logs for what I mentioned above, you eithr

1.) Mine only in that area

or

2.) Cut everything, leave nothing

Option 1 seems unlikely as it requires the area to be rich in ores and option 2 would deforest SMP servers in a hurry.

That said, having a nursery for growing saplings isn't a bad idea if it's just adding slightly more time/steps to your wood cutting operation. My concern would be that you're extending the time it takes between harvest and regrowth, which is what the flowering part has me concerned about. Maybe I'm just overreacting, but that's my concern.

[kotoroshinoto 97]

there are probably ways to get around the chunk loading issue, when the chunk loads it can check the timestamp of the plant date and remodel it accordingly, possibly growing several trees instantly when the chunk loads.

and the seaonal flowering -> seeds idea isnt to limit what drops from cutting them down, just a way to get seedlings without decimating the tree, and adding some color to the seasons.

[DarkLadyPhoenix 62]

I prefer saplings as they are easier to Id at a glance rather than squinting at seeds trying to figure out what color they are.

[Lumireaver 101]

I have an idea for you that I feel has promise, but could use some work.

What if saplings (as we know them in-game, not to be confused with real-life saplings, possibly renamed to avoid confusion) had to be planted (grafted, like branches) onto a stump block of the same type in order to grow. The growth process would still take about the same amount of time as it does now. This would be the primary method of farming lumber trees. I'll jump back to this in a second.

(So we're clear, tree grafting is ancient.)

The tilled-soil/seed method would be primarily used with fruit bearing trees, but also to grow new lumber trees (as in, in another location), as the above method would effectively limit you to collecting lumber from the same tree farm until you can plant your own trees. Just plant the seed on tilled soil and it'll eventually grow a tree seedling, which could then be replanted wherever you'd like. Possibly kept in a pot as a decoration, Bioxx willing. :U

(I'd like the planting of new trees to be a bit harder, with greater need for maintenance or something, but I'm lost as to how to accomplish that.)

_{edit: o wait, maybe planting new trees could be done seasonally}

[Johnny_Madhouse 28]

Some trees, like willows, are fully capable of sprouting from a single branch stuck in the mud. Others, typically gymnosperms like the Douglas Fir, require fire to open their cones and catalyze growth. If we wanted to get truly technical with forestry, things could get absurd pretty fast!

I think the current abstract system works best, gameplay wise. The player is required to think about what trees are best for various purposes, but the trees all work in the same intuitive way. The purpose of the mod is to be believable, not insanely realistic!

[Crysyn 179]

Some trees, like willows, are fully capable of sprouting from a single branch stuck in the mud. Others, typically gymnosperms like the Douglas Fir, require fire to open their cones and catalyze growth. If we wanted to get truly technical with forestry, things could get absurd pretty fast!

I think the current abstract system works best, gameplay wise. The player is required to think about what trees are best for various purposes, but the trees all work in the same intuitive way. The purpose of the mod is to be believable, not insanely realistic!

While seeds are possible for growing trees (I mean an apple -is- what you would plant to try and grow an apple tree). It is actually much more common to do cuttings of a plant and then get them to root and grow into saplings as pointed out here. Could seeds be considered? Sure I am not against something else to do with the fruits. But we would then need to make all the seeds for all the other non-fruit bearing trees. We would need a way to collect them (though berry picking I think is semi-done so maybe that part is tackled?) and then I think the growth rate of seeds into seedlings is very low so some sort of failure rate (Which is why trees drop hundreds to thousands of seeds every year ) would need to be done.

I do not think one system should replace the other in any case. So I vote against the 'Instead' part of this

[kotoroshinoto 97]

I have an idea for you that I feel has promise, but could use some work.

What if saplings (as we know them in-game, not to be confused with real-life saplings, possibly renamed to avoid confusion) had to be planted (grafted, like branches) onto a stump block of the same type in order to grow. The growth process would still take about the same amount of time as it does now. This would be the primary method of farming lumber trees. I'll jump back to this in a second.

(So we're clear, tree grafting is ancient.)

The tilled-soil/seed method would be primarily used with fruit bearing trees, but also to grow new lumber trees (as in, in another location), as the above method would effectively limit you to collecting lumber from the same tree farm until you can plant your own trees. Just plant the seed on tilled soil and it'll eventually grow a tree seedling, which could then be replanted wherever you'd like. Possibly kept in a pot as a decoration, Bioxx willing. :U

(I'd like the planting of new trees to be a bit harder, with greater need for maintenance or something, but I'm lost as to how to accomplish that.)

_{edit: o wait, maybe planting new trees could be done seasonally}

I like the sound of this.