Rain Barrel for Irrigation

[WingedRayeth 11]

I had this idea for a new item to help with mid to late game farming. Usually water sources are inconveniently placed and you have to clear a lot of land around a lake or river, or place dirt in the water and then let it sit for a while until it builds up the nutrient levels, before you can farm in the early to mid game, since you can't move water without the proper steel bucket. So I had the idea for a rain barrel that could be crafted once you have metal smithing.

 

The barrel would consist of 4 Tuyeres and a wooden barrel. You would place the barrel in the middle of a 3x3 crafting grid and then the 4 Tuyeres around it to make a + shape. This item could then be placed on the ground and filled with rain or from a bucket, and it would irrigate the land up to 4 blocks away, like a water source block does, until the water runs out, with the water level draining so that maybe 1 or 2 buckets get used up per day. This would allow farming in dry regions and in open land that might not have ready access to a nicely placed source of water.

[Natesky9 11]

Not a bad idea at all, I like it. It would be a makeshift water source for farmland that would require some investment, and a bit of upkeep.There are so many good farm spots that are nowhere near to water, and this would give incentive to place farms close to water, but not already on the river banks. I always hatred making farms right next to bans, because it never made sense-the soil would erode irl...

This is a good solution, and it would contribute to gameplay without making too heavy of a change. I really hope this gets considered.

[WingedRayeth 11]

I got the idea from my current world. I have a huge area of perfectly suitable flat land to the south of my house, a big wide area that I already cleared the trees out of, but all my farm land is to the north hugging a bit of lake I settled next to, and I unfortunately built too close to the lake to be able to properly square off the corners, and it takes a while to re-build nutrients because I set the config of my world to have a 360 day year. ^.^;

[GreenLeaf 198]

really good suggestion! i hope the devs consider it!

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Remember that you don't actually need water to farm in TFC. You can till some soil out in the middle of nowhere with no water in sight and the plants will still grow, just at a slightly slower pace.

[WingedRayeth 11]

Oh I know, but it is convenient to have a water source handy. 

[Hector49er 31]

I feel the Tuyeres are not needed. It would be sufficiently difficult and believable to just make unsealed water barrels water surrounding farm land.I know a lot of old gardeners who use barrels and water cans to water their plants every evening.

 

Realistically a plot 81m² (871ft²) would easily consume 2 barrels per day (assuming a 40 gal capacity to barrels). I would feel much better about having water barrels only irrigate 2 blocks away from themselves. That would work to 24m² (296ft²) and at 2 buckets per day I feel this would be believable and semi accurate. It would also be sufficiently labor intensive refilling the barrels to cancel out the imagined time that would be spent distributing the water between plants without being totally life-sucking.

[landryx 36]

Remember that you don't actually need water to farm in TFC. You can till some soil out in the middle of nowhere with no water in sight and the plants will still grow, just at a slightly slower pace.

why don't you implement a way to water plants with a tool then...and rain like a leave.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

 

 

Obviously I don't expect new forum users to read through the entire change log archive, but soil saturation due to rain/nearby water was actually part of very old versions of TFC (v2 Build 48). It was removed in Build 53 because it was felt that the system was just too complicated for the very little it added to gameplay.

 

48 Changelog:

• Soil also has a water saturation level which can be replenished via nearby irrigation or rain (Rain replenishes much better). In the future there will most likely be such a thing as over-saturation for some plants requiring the need to control your irrigation.
• Crops grow based upon the current temperature, amount of sunlight they receive, water saturation, and time

53 Changelog:

• Crops have been altered to simplify the code and make using them a tad easier. Water saturation is no longer tracked. A mechanic similar to vanilla is now in place where not having water nearby confers a negative bonus to growth speed.

[landryx 36]

indeed, i didn't know that 

cool the mechanism already existed hehe

[WingedRayeth 11]

I feel the Tuyeres are not needed. It would be sufficiently difficult and believable to just make unsealed water barrels water surrounding farm land.I know a lot of old gardeners who use barrels and water cans to water their plants every evening.

 

Realistically a plot 81m² (871ft²) would easily consume 2 barrels per day (assuming a 40 gal capacity to barrels). I would feel much better about having water barrels only irrigate 2 blocks away from themselves. That would work to 24m² (296ft²) and at 2 buckets per day I feel this would be believable and semi accurate. It would also be sufficiently labor intensive refilling the barrels to cancel out the imagined time that would be spent distributing the water between plants without being totally life-sucking.

 

 

The reason I suggested the Tuyeres is for balancing, and making sure you are well into the point where you are actually smithing metal, not just casting. So you need to have that copper anvil before you can make an irrigation barrel. And this would be a new item so you couldn't get away with using a large clay vessel, it would have to be a wood barrel. As for the rate of flow, I wanted something in between tedious and fire and forget. If you have to re-fill the barrel every day, that is tedious. If you let it sit for 10 days at a time, I think that would be too easy. Using 2 buckets a day seems like a happy medium. You have to re-fill the barrel about once every 5 days, which isn't tedious, but you have to keep an eye on it.

[LiesTech 11]

Good show man. I agree that this is a good idea especially when you live in the Northlands and you need that water growth boost so you don't lose your crops!

[snaketokill 24]

make higher tier tuyeres rain barrels have better range