Grass, Hay and Straw

[Rowist 14]

A while back I made a somewhat unpopular suggestion in this thread about making it harder to get Thatch early on in order to make the stone age last longer. The idea was to make it so that tall grass no longer drops straw and it can only be gotten from grain. The intent was to slow down pottery and therefore smelting so that stone tools would be the only option for a while. Also it would increase the players dependency on grain farming to keep a supply of straw. Most people hated it because it would be eliminating the thatch block survival houses that we all knew and loved. As we have seen in b79 those thatch houses no longer exist the way they once did, so I wanted to revisit my suggestion with some slight modifications...

 

In real life straw and hay are different things. Straw is the shaft from grains (like I suggested) and hay is dried grass. Straw is yellow in appearance and hay has a light green color. Straw is what thatch is made from and hay is used as animal feed. I propose the following:

 

-Chopping tall grass drops Cut Grass (not Straw)

-Straw can only be gotten from grains (Wheat, Barley, Rye, etc.)

-Cut Grass will not work in a pit kiln because it is wet

-Cut Grass can be placed in 1/8 slab form and left to sit outside for X amount of days to dry into Hay

-Hay can be used in a pit kiln because it is dry

-Hay can also made into blocks which behave like Thatch

 

It will take a little longer to get pottery going, which is what I am going for.

 

To tie it into animal husbandry:

-Animals don't eat Straw because it has no nutritional value, just like in real life

-Animals will eat Hay or Cut Grass

-Hay blocks left in animal pens will get eaten

 

Maybe even make it so Tall Grass drops Grass Seeds so that players can plant grass for pastures or to gather Hay for the winter.

[Thrainn 2]

I do like this idea, especially the hay drying and feeding to animals.

That could also be used in relatively small animal pens: leave full hay blocks in the pens, and the sheep will eat that hay to regrow wool for instance.

The hay blocks would need to be non-solid blocks like thatch of course.

[Trenix 14]

I'd like the idea of cutting tall grass to obtain grass and then having to dry it so it would become hay. Instead of putting grass on a slab to dry or in kiln pit, we should just simply shift click it on the ground and form a pile. Once the pile is filled to it's max, it can then begin it's drying process which would take up to a day or something. Also I see no purpose of even having straw anymore as hay can easily replace it.

[Hubertus 29]

I don't like this idea. You're splitting the functionality of 2 things (straw/thatch) into 5 things (Straw, hay, grass, thatch, hay bale).

 

Straw:

Does nothing other than pit kilns and thatch blocks

Hay/grass:

Does everything straw does, plus can be fed to animals.

 

Why are you keeping straw around at all? It serves no additional purpose, and is more difficult to get than grass/hay. I'd only support duplicate functionality if it also served a unique purpose.

 

Now, as to the spirit of the actual idea: I don't feel like you're adding anything of value to the game. You're trying to slow down the acquiring of pottery, but all you've done is making feeding animals more complicated. Having to dry my 8 grass isn't going to slow me down that much, and is only adding time by stalling instead of growing a tech tree. Also, getting straw from grass is already how people generally get their first pottery. So this idea doesn't actually accomplish what it set out to do, namely stretching the stone age.

[Guest Elagn]

I like still getting straw from cutting grains, and straw should still be able to be used as thatch or for lighting pitkilns, just not for feeding animals, which is a totaly new feature being suggested. If we want to get technical though, thatch was actualy made using cut reeds, which while i dont think is a good idea, is a posibility now.

[TonyLiberatto 364]

I made a suggestion once about making each age longer Here my idea is that it took thousands of years for men to come out of stone age, and that only happened after agriculture was well established. So historically first the tribes had to settle down and start agriculture and pottery, only then came metallurgy. So what I proposed was that the same way that we now have a system when if your hunger gets too low you cannot mine, I proposed that you would not be able to melt metals until you have increased your health, so first you need to have a farm and animals and eat a health diet only then you will be able to melt metals.