Proper harvesting tools

[TonyLiberatto 364]

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We usually translate one minecraft block as 1 meter, so a tile block will be 1 square meter.

Trying to harvest 1 square meter of wheat with bare hands would be really hard.

A knife should be the minimum requirement:

Using a knife should still make you cut each stem individually, it takes time.

A better knife makes it a little faster.

The scythe is the only tool that should harvest the whole block in one click.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

The scythe actually currently will harvest 3x3 areas of crops, leaves or tall grass.

[ForestAgain 13]

I didn't know it can harvest crops as well! +1 to the collection of TFC tips and tricks.

[TonyLiberatto 364]

The idea is to make harvesting more believable. 

It just makes no sense to try to harvest any grain with bare hands.

Harvesting right now is so fast with just bare hands that noone bothers to use a scythe.

I believe this would bring more balance to the game.

My proposal is to make it impossible to harvest grains by hand.

Using a stone knife makes it possible, but very slow.

Using a metal knife is better but not the ideal tool.

The scythe is the best for that.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Adding grind for the sake of grind doesn't create enjoyable gameplay. Players are used to being able to essentially insta-harvest crops because that's the way that all other plants work, and how crops work in both vanilla and all other mods. Such a change would also need to be a global one for consistency, and the fact that the code for harvesting crops is currently the same regardless of what type of crop it is, and adding different behavior for different types of crops is going to be a mess to implement. So there's no chance at it ever being added just for grains. It would either be added for all crops, or for none of them.

[TonyLiberatto 364]

I understand Kitty.

Adding this feature just for grains would be too much work.

Specially if you do not see the benefits for it, or simply do not like the idea.

I do not believe this change would add senseless grind.It would add work while in stone age, yes, but it would be more believable and give one more reason for people to make metal tools.

In any case, thanks for the attention.

[Metamorfos 6]

Making a scythe doesn't add a lot of grind though. But I agree that it would be weird to use a scythe to get potatoes

[TonyLiberatto 364]

Yes, I agree using a scythe to harvest bell peppers would make no sense.

We were talking about how some people never replace their stone tools for metal ones and it gave me idea of looking through history.

I am in the opinion that nature is balance, humanity found thousands of years ago that there was advantages to using metal tools, that's what we use today. 

All we have to do is try an mimic the same problems that arrive from using stone tools, and the advantages of using metal.

Large scale Agriculture and metallurgy are codependent. Food security free up man to have other activities, like mining and producing metal tools. Those tools were needed for the work in the fields.

In my mind a grind is a kind of job that no mater what I can never get rid of it, like for example cutting food decay. From the moment that I can just make a metal scythe and make harvest so much easy it stopped being a grind.

For the little I know about Java, I understand that it really would be a lot of work to make this change:

Create a new food class specifically for grains.

Look up the whole code for any place where there are references for the food class and add or change the code depending on the new behavior.

I did not realized that until Kitty pointed out. 

I still like this idea and think it would be believable and add a reason for people to go metal without making it impossible or too hard to survive in the stone age.

[Darmo 303]

I like this idea.  Doesn't seem like it would be too grindy too me, considering how short the stone age is.  Too bad about the code issues.

[bilbobuddy 24]

Yeah I would like this idea because it gives more incentive to metal tools. Also I think it would pair nicely with the less wild crops suggestion