How do you manage crops gathering in multiplayer?

[heptagon_ru 23]

How do you manage crops gathering in multiplayer?

 

(I have nearly no multiplayer experience and stumbled to this question trying a FFA server, still can't find a good answer.)

 

I play on evenings at weekdays and more on weekends. A real-time 24 hours == 3 TFC seasons as I understand.

So planting seeds one evening (e.g. late spring) I wont get any harvest next evening (late winter)  - too late, died, frozen, alone, abandoned, betrayed.

 

I could use weekends for crop planting, but the whole idea to come to game at a predefined time (unless it's for player interaction) feels awful, like too much dependency from a game.

 

So the only way I see is to cooperate with another player, better players, and make planting a pure community service. It's a pleasant way, but for now I would like to start my MP experience more independently, like prove myself, build a nice starting environment, and then start learning and interacting, not just starting in a team. But maybe it's my single-player mind's limitation ...

 

Any advices or ideas, anyone?

[The0newithnogame 9]

you can move south, that way you don't have to worry bout the frost getting your crops.

[iced 3]

If you wanna play alone plant near the equator so your crops don't don't pop out. The food on the crops wont die so you can harvest it when you need it. If you get a group to play with just make sure they check when log in if its a 24/7 server 

[nobeardpete 0]

I've only played in SSP, so I don't have a good answer to this.  But I feel like this is the key question for the game.  The devs have repeatedly stated that the game is intended for multi-player, and it's clearly balanced for multi-player in terms of finding resources and amortization of the high start-up costs of higher level metal industries.  However, the crops and seasons mean you are pretty much restricted to only playing multi-player settlements in frost-free areas, which means there's a ton of possibilities being foregone.  How to square these two facts?  As I see it, the best and cleanest way would be to allow some mechanism to protect crops against at least mild freezing temperatures.  This is the strongest argument for greenhouses, in my opinion.  It strengthens the game from a multi-player perspective, allowing settlements beyond the tropics.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

The current most popular method that servers use to solve this issue is to just increase the yearLength in the config. With the default year length it takes 32 real-life hours to go through an entire year without sleeping in a bed, which comes out to be about 8 real-life hours for each season.

 

Just cranking that value up to the closer to real-life value of 360 means that it takes 5 real-life days to go through the entire year without sleeping in a bed, which comes out to be about 30 real-life hours for each season. Obviously if all the players are sleeping through every single night, those values are cut in half, but it is still a significantly larger amount of time.

 

So if at 5PM on Monday night it is the very beginning of spring and crops are being planted, players don't have to worry about their crops dieing from the frost until 11AM on Friday. *Even if everyone on the server was hopping into beds at sunset and skipping every single night, they still wouldn't have to worry about frost until 2PM on Wednesday.

[aliceingame 114]

As a player, I guess that the best option would be to go further south. My base is next to a jungle and I have no crop issue. Of course, a trip to the north to get berries can be a good idea, but once you have what you need, you can harvest and replant the seed when you want without fear to lose anything as it will never be too cold for your crop.

 

Some people might see it as cheating, but I see it as exploiting the mechanics of the game to your advantage.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Considering that the warmer temperatures of the south which you use to your advantage for crop growth also results in much faster decay of food, I hardly see it as an exploit.

[aliceingame 114]

Considering that the warmer temperatures of the south which you use to your advantage for crop growth also results in much faster decay of food, I hardly see it as an exploit.

 

Ahah! that's a really good point.

[GopherAtl 22]

now, having your farm near the equator and cold storage at the north pole and using the rather common teleport functions in bukkit-based smp servers, that's quite clearly an exploit... XD

[heptagon_ru 23]

Thank you, gals and guys, great answers!