Vegetarian TFC

[mayaknife 82]

I find that food is too easily acquired in TFC. All I have to do is kill a cow and fry up the steaks and I'm good for a couple of weeks. The net result is that there's never been a compelling reason for me to grow crops or create meals.

To make the food situation a bit dicier I decided to try playing a new seed without ever eating meat. I would still need to kill animals for hide, wool, feathers and ink, but the meat would be tossed.

Halfway through my first day I had collected half a dozen edible vegetables and over a dozen eggs. Clearly the eggs were going to make things too easy, so I decided to do without them as well. That made it a lot more interesting.

Over the first week or so I didn't find a lot of seeds, but I did find enough to get a small farm going: three wheat, three maize, four barley, one oat, two garlic, etc. My biggest crop was ten red and yellow bell pepper plants, which was handy since they mature relatively quickly. I also made an awesome find of five mature yellow bell pepper plants growing wild about 100 meters from my spawn point. I'd never found more than three wild fruiting plants together before.They and two mature red bell pepper plants closer to my spawn point were the gift that kept on giving while I waited for my crops to grow.

One interesting aspect of the game was deciding whether to keep foraged grains and vegetables to eat or convert them to seed for planting. I generally opted for a 50/50 split, but that did lead to a couple of emergency foraging expeditions when food stocks got dangerously low.

While some crops, such as peppers, can be harvested while leaving the plant intact, most cannot. That meant that in order to keep my food supply up I had to continually increase the range of my foraging. I decided to experiment with meals and quickly found one which, when heated, gave me about three times the food value of its constituent parts. That helped to reduce my foraging needs significantly.

Since I was finding a fair bit of ripe grain during my foraging, I also, for the first time, built a quern, ground up the grain and made bread. That further reduced my foraging needs.

By late summer the farm was producing enough that I no longer needed to forage at all. I'm now in the process of setting up a four-field crop rotation system (red, dark orange, pale orange, fallow) to ensure that nutrients don't get depleted. My initial experiments seem to indicate that hoed ground which is left fallow does not recover any of its nutrients, but I haven't yet given it enough time to be sure. If that turns out to be the case then I'll switch to a three-field rotation.

So far I've only found one fruit tree, which failed to drop any saplings after I lopped off all of its branches. My orchard will have to wait.

With my food supply now secure, it's back to regular TFC of course, but it greatly expanded the amount of good game play I got out of the mod before hitting the gold/garnierite wall, so I think this is an approach I'll adopt for future seeds.

[Temujen 31]

By late summer the farm was producing enough that I no longer needed to forage at all. I'm now in the process of setting up a four-field crop rotation system (red, dark orange, pale orange, fallow) to ensure that nutrients don't get depleted. My initial experiments seem to indicate that hoed ground which is left fallow does not recover any of its nutrients, but I haven't yet given it enough time to be sure. If that turns out to be the case then I'll switch to a three-field rotation.

I'd definitely recommend a 3-crop rotation. My experience is much the same regarding fallow farmland. If there's nothing planted, nutrients seem to decay over time and at a much faster rate than they recover. I've experimented a bit and seen full nutrient farmland (all 3 bars maxed) drop to zero within a few days sitting entirely empty.

If there's a crop you have an abundance of, plant that instead. Even if you don't need the crop, it allows the other two nutrient types to recover nicely. I've had farmland that was effectively out of Red nutrients, but I planted Wheat anyway and left it for a month. At the end of that month, Wheat growth was minimal, Red was still empty, but both other nutrients had recovered nicely. I tore out the wheat, recovering my seeds and planted a better crop.

And 100% agree on food being far too abundant, specifically meat. It's been discussed before, but a great solution would be stored food decaying over time. That would prevent the typical solution of killing a herd of sheep and living off mutton for a year. I even looked into creating a mod with that goal, but couldnt find a way to implement it without touching the TFC files. I may have to look again tho, it was several months back.

[mayaknife 82]

Cows are big so it makes sense that if you kill one you'll be sitting pretty until the meat starts to rot. What doesn't make sense is that the cows just let you walk up and kill them. They should move away as soon as they see you or catch your scent. And if you do manage to get that first javelin into them they should head for the hills like a bat out of hell. None of this running around in circles for five seconds.

If we had to actually hunt animals to kill them, not only would that make growing crops a more attractive proposition, it would also make for a cool game mechanic in its own right.

[Bihlbo 29]

Yup. Dunk has already said his goal is to fix those concerns you have. If you want beef, hunt wild arochs. If you want to raise cows, try to tame them and lead the cows back to a pen with your hard-earned crops.

[Road_Kill 4]

Goddamnit, we need berry bushes. And the ability to make more appealing recipes than soups.

[gatts205 39]

The thing that bothers me the most about meat in minecraft is based off of the energy flow diagram seen in most ecology classes. Plants have the highest energy to weight ratio, primary consumers (herbivores)have the second highest, and each tropic level after that has a dwindling energy supply. In minecraft raising cattle for meat is as simple as throwing two together, feeding them once, and forgetting. Now I have not tried to raise cattle in terrafirmacraft yet, but even with longer pregnancy and maturation rates I think a few adjustments should be made. Raising cattle should require daily and constant maintenance. They would need to be protected from predators, given feed daily, and a fresh water supply. Failure to do this would yield only dead animals and no gain. In other words take the passive nature out of cattle raising. The closest to passive food in terrafirmacraft should be plants and agriculture (at least that is what makes sense to me).

[Krski 36]

Well the water idk if it is considered but the food is just the grass they eat of the dirt , protection for cattle and domesticated animals from wild ones will be necesary with the ongoing wild predators if i hear it right for the Dunk . The domestication of animals will alow you too breed them only when they are domesticated , they will reproduce but only when they want to and you could have no control over them except mating seasons , also they would attack the player to protect they're self and their chilldren if not tamed , the taiming will be a long proces , if i am not mistaking i thinks that they already said that somwhere on some posts .

Sorry for writing erors and non logical sentances im really tired xD

[mayaknife 82]

Plants have the highest energy to weight ratio, primary consumers (herbivores)have the second highest, and each tropic level after that has a dwindling energy supply.

I assume that you're talking about the ratio of total input energy to weight. The ratio of output energy - i.e. what you get out of eating it - goes the other way around, with plants being the worst performers.

[gatts205 39]

However input energy directly corresponds to output energy. Animals need to eat a lot for a long amount of time to produce significant amounts of high energy meat. Whereas a annual or perennial plant requires little input over a comparatively short amount of time to produce. Yes, I did make a mistake, but it doesn't change the essence of my argument that much. Namely an increase in the difficulty of raising cattle (i.e. more input) for higher output produce (at the expense of killing off the creature you spent 2+ minecraft years feeding and raising).

[mayaknife 82]

Animals need to eat a lot for a long amount of time to produce significant amounts of high energy meat. Whereas a annual or perennial plant requires little input over a comparatively short amount of time to produce. [...] but it doesn't change the essence of my argument that much.

Right, but keep in mind that that only applies to animals which are kept in pens, in which case the farmer is responsible for providing all of their feed. If animals are allowed to graze freely they feed themselves, which dramatically changes the equation.