Agriculture: Reap or Reap(lant)

[TomatoThief 53]

Similar to vanilla pumpkin mechanics, most or all vegetable seeds should come directly from the fruit (in the crafting grid), and in greater quantities. Harvest one tomato, get one tomato. Eat one tomato, or harvest 2-4 seeds from tomato. This presents a more meaningful game dynamic of harvest vs reinvesting for future yield. Ag skill could influence the yield.

 

How many seeds come from a tomato in real life? Maybe 10-80 depending on the breed. We gotta suspend disbelief somewhere in the name of balance. But not squirrels - they care nothing for balance. They will take one bite from each of your tomatoes and let them rot on the ground. I've seen a squirrel carry German Johnsons straight up a 50-foot pine tree and just line them up on a branch. They're vindictive little rats. I recommend the Ruger Air Hawk, which will FedEx a lead pellet at 1,000 feet per second to the bushy-tailed rat of your choosing. You can use the scope, if you're a coward. Personally, I have a hit rate of 0%. But at least I'm no coward.

 

Regards,

TT

[buzzy613 8]

damn squirrel, get out of my garden!

but seriously, this is important. i'm having trouble increasing my farms because my one greenbean plant only ever drops one seed.  if i could sacrifice the bean for seeds, this would be much less of a problem.

[Euphoric 48]

The problem would be in coding. It is much easier to code the seeds drop the way it is right now than it is to get from food with weight in crafting grid. Especially if you want to account player skill. Let me stress one thing : crafting implementation in minecraft is extremely rigid and inextensible. Many of the crafting features you see in TFC are ugly hacks and it is wonder they actually work. 

[theubie 19]

Then create a block that converts X oz of vegetable into x number of seeds.  You could even make it dependent on farming skill and have it possible to return 0 seeds at an early level.

[landryx 36]

simple. I like that.

[chepelink 14]

I really like the idea, but the problems lies not in the code (I think this could be "easy", it can be done as a shapeless recipe if ) but more about of obtaining the first seeds. As things are right now we find a wild plant and harvest it no matter its developing state to get its seed. Unless you add a mechanic where the growth and/or the weight of the harvest are dependent on the origin of the seed rather than fixed value (new mechanics like weather if implemented are apart)

[AllenWL 186]

But not squirrels - they care nothing for balance. They will take one bite from each of your tomatoes and let them rot on the ground. I've seen a squirrel carry German Johnsons straight up a 50-foot pine tree and just line them up on a branch. They're vindictive little rats. I recommend the Ruger Air Hawk, which will FedEx a lead pellet at 1,000 feet per second to the bushy-tailed rat of your choosing. You can use the scope, if you're a coward. Personally, I have a hit rate of 0%. But at least I'm no coward.

Is that the reason for your account name and photo/avatar?

 

Anyways, what if crops gave 1 seed for every 20 ox of crop?

So if you put a crop in the crafting grid, it'll give you 1 seed, and subtract 20 oz from the crop, sorta like cutting it with a knife. I think that would work

[TomatoThief 53]

Is that the reason for your account name and photo/avatar?

Yep.

 

I try to tailor my suggestions to what I believe would be easiest to code. I know little to nothing about the coding of Minecraft or TFC, so I have to assume what "seems" to be simple is; otherwise all my suggestions would be completely ridiculous, instead of just somewhat ridiculous. The seeds / oz of crop sounds good, but since each harvest usually yields a 16 oz item, I would want it to be more like 1 seed per 10 or 5 oz for a net gain.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Before the new food system was implemented, this was indeed how you got seeds (food in the crafting table gives 2 seeds, grain gives 1). However, as Euphoric stated, because of the way that the new weight system is handled.. getting seeds from food via crafting would be extremely complicated to code.

[AllenWL 186]

How about an item like a spindle or something, simple to craft, and you craft that with crops to get seeds? or is that still the same?

[Kittychanley 1,002]

That's still the exact same problem. The issue that makes it complicated is converting the weight of the food into a number of seeds.

[AllenWL 186]

Oh, I see, I don't know anything about programming, so...

I suppose we can just make 1 crop item=1 seed, and leave the players to cut the crops before they turn it into seeds or something.

Or.... What if we can harvest a plant when it ripens, or wait a bit longer, and the longer we wait, the less crops and more seeds we get, until we get 5ish seeds with no crops?

[transcengopher 349]

That's still the exact same problem. The issue that makes it complicated is converting the weight of the food into a number of seeds.

 

I saw Bioxx talking about making seed bags have weight. Those were mostly jokes, but this is a solution to the problem still.

[theubie 19]

As a developer I can tell you that it is slightly more complicated to code because of the weight, but using the mechanics already in place for the meal crafting it's not that difficult to have a block with a UI with two slots and a button.  On the left you pop in something that could make seeds.  If it has more than (picking an arbitrary number here, would need to be tested for balance) 10oz the button lights up and is enabled to click on.  If you click on the button, it removes 10oz from the item in the left box and spits out one seed in the right box (or optionally it checks your farming skill and spits out 0-3 seeds...again just picking arbitrary numbers).  Reuse the code you already have in place to decrease the weight from the meal crafting grid and all you are left to code is the block itself and it's UI.

[NegaNote 0]

Can't you just mae it so the amount of seeds that are returned is directly proportional to the weight? Maybe one seed bag per 16 ounces. I'm familiar with Java, and I don't thin that would be too hard, considering you already have special crafting handlers for your foods.

[cevkiv 156]

How about having seeds simply be a byproduct of the meal creation system?  If you put in, say, venison, potato, carrot, and bread, you'd get back potato and carrot seeds in addition to the meal?

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Can't you just mae it so the amount of seeds that are returned is directly proportional to the weight? Maybe one seed bag per 16 ounces. I'm familiar with Java, and I don't thin that would be too hard, considering you already have special crafting handlers for your foods.

 

Yes, but not every crop drops at least a 16oz piece on harvest, so it would be messy to balance and a bit annoying from the player's POV that they have to combine a bunch of their food together in order to get seeds.

[NegaNote 0]

I know. I'm just kind of putting it out there - you could always use a higher or lower number than 16 oz. 4 ounces, for example.