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23 posts in this topic

There's been a bit on this topic already so I am gathering the pieces and putting them here. This is strictly about the process of collecting, growing, and harvesting crops. If you have any ideas about cooking or how anything discussed here could be used to that end please post here. This is also not about animal collecting, raising, and butchering animals. Those subjects can be found here and here. The main things I found doing quick searches was two posts of Darmo's which I have combined into one, and one post by me. While bees are mentioned, for a more in-depth discussion on bees go here.

Darmo

Spoiler

 

On 5/30/2016 at 10:48 AM, Darmo said:

I think that ideally it would be a scaling system.  So if the player is in the stone age  and has like, 5 maize plants, the game goes easy on them and doesn't hassle them.   But if the player is going bonkers with their farms and has 150 planted crops in one hex, up the difficulty and bring in some hassling animals.  The more crops (or animals) the greater the chance.   So ideally you're only becoming annoying when the player already probably has a lot of crops/animals anyway.   And if the hasslers despawn after destroying X crop blocks or animals, you can control the damage.  Each hassler will reduce the total crops by no more than a certain amount, so as not to wipe out the player's stuff in one shot.  This in turn reduces the chance of the next one spawning.

If the chance is based on crops per hex, it could encourage the player to spread their fields out a bit, reducing the chance for each field  (or pen of animals) to be hassled.  Or it could just be based on a single block check that scans for crops/animals in a 5 block or whatever radius, and depending on the count, maybe gets hassled.  Where the hasslers spawn might be tricky.  If fences are used as a defense, you don't want the hassler spawning within the fence - that's cheating.  That might limit the enclosure size.  If it got too large, the check might not realize there's a fence, and spawn the hassler inside.

I hope I'm not hijacking your thread Therighthon.  Your macro idea of island-wide spawning I like, and don't have a lot to suggest, especially given my lack of knowledge of the code possibilities.  I might suggest that aside form picking from the 3 categories you suggested, maybe there should also be only 1 production animal of each type.  So an island might only have 1 certain wool producing animal, or milk producer.  If some animals produced more than a given commodity than others, then one island might have a really good milk producer, but poor wool production.  Another might have both be not great producers, and another might be have really good ones.  I guess some could be absent altogether.  It just might make the islands have different characters, rather than each one being the same animals in different skins.

FOOD SCARCITY

 

 

With regards to food scarcity, there might be a couple things we can do.  One would be to make it so that immature plants do not drop seeds (which is logical).  That would make it harder to just mass-gather seeds at the start and have a gigantic garden right off the bat.  The player might have to actually leave plants in place till they mature, come back, and get the seeds. 

Second, if a plant is mature, and then force-drops it's seeds, either through overshadowing, or cold, the seed that becomes a tile entity cannot be harvested.  It sprouts again in the same spot, the next time the temperature reaches a certain point.  It will sprout with less nutrients since it was already previously growing in the same spot, so second time around it will be slower growing. Nothing new can be planted on that spot with a seed tile entity.  This is representing the fact that many plant seeds, once dropped on the ground, would be almost impossible to distinguish from the dirt and pick up.  Many will germinate very rapidly.  You could differentiate by type - corn and potatoes for instance are pretty easy to salvage, but for balance sake maybe treat them all the same.  If the seeds are popped off by a tree, they could germinate as soon as they have more light and high enough temperature, but may well not have enough time to mature to produce seeds.  Or if there's a warm spell in the middle of winter.

I think the overall effect of making seeds a little harder to get, might be to reduce food availability a little bit.  But probably a lot more in the early game, so there needs to be consideration if that's desired.

In a related way, crops could become 'over-ripe'.  Currently in my tropic base, I just leave my food in ground forever.  Who needs a sky freezer when the crops are just there forever?  It might be a good idea if crops reach a point where they mature, die, and drop a seed, in the forced replanting described above.  This would require a bit more garden care and overall, reduce the ease with which one can accumulate food, I think.  Irl, most plants, once they've born fruit or seeds, they either naturally disperse those seeds, or the fruit becomes so ripe it drops.  In either case, the food value is often lost. 

Second, weather effects - drought, hail, floods, blight.  My impression is that right now, rain is just rain.  But there could perhaps be varying levels, and the highest levels might raise the level of freshwater rivers and lakes by 1 meter?  This would flood all adjacent low-lying farmland, and wash away the crops, seeds and all.  There'd be no way to prevent natural disasters though, so they'd need to be kind of rare. For flooding to make sense, it might need to perform a broad check to make sure it happens in a basin - for instance around a land-locked pond.  Otherwise things might get out of hand? Reeds and sugar cane may be unaffected by flooding.   Special coding might be in order in some cases.  Hail damage may pop off seeds and food, but the food is just loose.  So if the player isn't there to get it, it vanishes (rots).

Third, perhaps make there be 'crop-hasslers'.  These could be wild animals - birds, raccoons, squirrels, deer - or, depending on the plans for TFC2, actual hostile mobs - orcs or other mobs raiding your place, burning/trampling your crops.  The advantage to this mechanic is that it could scale with the player.  Player has more crops?  This attracts more pests, especially if close together.  IRL, deer will run wild in corn fields.  More buildings/wealth/food might attract hostile raiding mobs.  Oh, and locusts, which would be a mix of natural disaster and crop hassler, in that the player could not fight them, but they would be more likely to attack if the player has giant fields.  There could even be crop-specific insect swarms.

Fourth, blights.  Maybe specific diseases for each crop, maybe a general blight for all crops.  The more crops in close proximity, the more you lose when it happens.  This would encourage crop diversity, if each plant has it's own disease, or spreading out of crops, if it's one general disease.  A contagion radius of 4 blocks would require the player to either use half (or less depending on layout) of their farmland to avoid blight.  As an aside, the preventatives or antidotes for such blights might be a good use of chemistry, if a chemistry system comes about.

Now, if crop diversity becomes beneficial, it might make sense to limit natural crop spawns a bit more.  I haven't performed any detailed examination, but right now it seems like about any crop can naturally spawn almost anywhere, aside from reeds.  I could be very wrong about that though. Rice and sugar cane for instance, should probably only spawn in tropics.  Same for banana trees. Olive sort of Mediterranean.  While it's true that most crops *can* grow in about any climate with human help, they all had a natural origin.  Tomatoes in South America for instance.  Limiting the natural crop variety would encourage exploration a bit more, if food variety is desirable.

The net effect of the above would be to make food more uncertain.  This would encourage more preserving possibly.  It might also have the knock-on effect of making the cooking system more worthwhile to master in order to get the most food value from your food, but I would not bet on that, especially in the later stages.

 

Stuff by me

Spoiler

Farmer - You've already said food is too easy, well here's a farming profession.

Finding wild plants is pretty easy but no most the time it doesn't drop seed and the seeds don't stack. Now that you've gathered seed you plant it next to water, it's late spring. This is the first time you have farmed and you have about 12 plants that you sow into the ground. 3 of the seeds get used up but generate no plants you have no idea. You ignore it for a couple days and come back and 2 of the plants are gone! That night while you are around your camp fire you observe a wild pig come up and eat 1 of your plants! You chase them away. The next day you put up a 1 high dirt wall around your crops, then dig a trench around that. You look proudly at the 6 plants that are left. Over the next few nights you observe wild pigs unable to cross your barrier. The plants are starting to get a bit higher and you notice that 5 of them are kinda of yellowish and don't know what to do about it, 4 of them die over the next few days and 1 turns green again. One day while working on something else you notice a goat has gotten over your barrier and ate 1 of the last two plants remaining! You angrily chase it off and it easily jumps over you barrier. You look down at your 1 plant left. It was the one that had turned yellow and then green again. It's almost mature. You watch it like a hawk over the next couple days as it becomes mature. You harvest your 1 carrot plant and get 2 carrots. You decide you want to replant them. The first one you fail to obtain a seed from, but the second one you get a seed.

flash forward

You are now and Adept farmer. Your wood working buddy has helped you with making a fence around your crops to keep out the animals and made lattices for growing berries, and supports for orchard trees. They also have the seed and yellowing problem with the additional problem of birds. You have learned that if you use bone meal on the soil before you plant, less of the seed fails and that you have to re-plow each time you plant in the same spot. A good portion of your crops still get yellow and die but the carrots that came from that first seed you raised seem to be more resistant. You have learned to rotating your crops helps you get more use out of the field but still have to let a field go fallow some times. You usually get 2 plants plants from a crop, though sometimes only one, and you get seed from the produce every time now. You are also starting to raise bees to produce wax for candles and wood work and honey. They have their difficulties such as getting stung, wood worker needing to build frames and replace them every other year, you need a smoker, you need to find a queen, occasionally they start swarming, and you need to moderate the amount of honey you harvest or they may die off especially in the fall and over winter. The whole honey collecting and processing has it's set of tasks. More that side topic here.

flash forward

You are now an expert farmer. You have found that using a mixture of bone meal and ground fish eye in a mortar and pestle on the soil almost always guarantees the seed will work. You and the wood worker have made scare crows to help protect your berries and orchards. Instead of planting by hand with each of the seeds taking up a slot, your wood working buddy has teamed up with the blacksmith this time to make you a seed planter that can hold like 25 seed. They occasionally need to fix it. You have learned yellow plants are caused by pests and have found that planting certain plants together in a field helps fight pests. You have learned that putting a 1 block gap between groups of plants helps stop the spread of pests. You now test the soil with your metal hoe to see the nutrients, soil hydration,and aeration. You have learned you occasionally need to water in the summer. You have found fish or ground up sylvite help add nutrients back into the soil and no longer have to let a field go fallow but now weeds pop up that use the nutrients at a rapid rate unless you pull them. You have cultivated various plants to be more pest resistant and to produce 2 produce almost every time, and about half the time get 2 seeds out of every produce, sometimes getting 3. You have also made yourself a bee keepers outfit from flax that prevents you from getting stung.

flash forward

You are now a master farmer. Your blacksmith and wood worker have come together again to upgrade your seed planter to use the bonemeal mixture you've been using and it even uses it more slowly than you would have by hand. Your stone mason and wood worker have made a seed refilling stations so all you have to do is click your seed planter on the one you want the seed for and it fills it up. Your cook has made a pesticide from extra garlic and weeds that works great on your crops and orchards. You never lose plants when you add that to your other pest prevention techniques and has also made alcohol which is really effective at killing weeds. Your crops you have cultivated to produce 2 to 3 produce every time, they are drought resistant so you no longer need to water them during the summer, and you get 2 to 3 seed from each produce meaning you have plenty of seed and produce. 

 

Cliff Notes because not everyone will spend the time to read for 15 minutes.

  • Wild plant spawning decreased by number of plants and animals in the area.
  • Wild seeds only appearing in certain climates
  • Reduced chance to get seeds/can only get seeds from mature plants/can only get seeds from produce.
  • Bad seed that won't grow.
  • Plants that are not harvested in time will die and regrow.
  • Temperature, water, and light effecting the plants.
  • pests and blights needing pest/insect/fungicide.
  • Animals messing with your crops both grown animals and birds.
  • Growing different crops together being beneficial.
  • Leaving space between crop fields being beneficial.
  • Crops breeding - various resistances.
  • weeds.
  • fields needing to go fallow without fertilizer.
  • farming equipment - planters, seed silos.
  • needing lattices for berries.
  • needing supports for fruit trees.
  • functional use for scarecrows/ bird deterrent.
  • Having drops tied to farming skill.

 

 

Edited by Stroam
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This topic interests me a lot.  Food is kind of the foundation of survival, so it's one of the first things the player will need.   In the server forum, on threads where a person must post what they are good at / what they can contribute to the server, I think that farmer is one of if not the most mentioned occupation.  I *know* there's people that want to do this as their main vocation.  So I'm really hoping it actually has scope to BE a vocation in TFC2. 

I think it's worth saying, for anyone who may not have seen it, Bioxx said here that he is leaning toward dropping the TFC1 food decay system for an Ark-like system where the food stacks in pieces, and the top piece is always decaying.   So it's worth remembering that plants won't drop oz of food any more, but pieces, more like vanilla MC.  So no more having to combine/split/trim food is how it's looking.

So Stroam has made a very broad list of agricultural factors above.  Working off the assumption that we want agriculture to be a viable and complex trade, I think it's worth focusing down on things that might be affected by skill and/or tool tier.  Because I think that an important part of a true trade is having tiered advancement, and good skill bonuses.  Such things might be:

Spoiler

 

-Speed of harvesting a crop affected by tool & tier (this has been suggested in another thread but I couldn't find it).  So some crops are hand harvestable (corn, peppers, beans) but other are much faster with tools (shovel for potatoes, onions, carrots, and garlic), or scythe (grains).  I think by lengthening the time it takes to harvest, farmer town members become more valuable, as they can free up other players from harvesting.  As an aside, if grains need a scythe, grains in the stone-age will be very time-consuming to harvest.  Might be good depending on difficulty level desired.

-Amount of food gained could be affected by skill and/or tool, but I think it would be best if quantity of food harvested was primarily affected by how healthy the plant is.  This is what will make the supporting processes important.  If your plant is well watered, fertilized, near bees, kept disease/pest/weed free, and is in the right climate, then it will yield the most.

-Chance to get seed(s)/saplings from harvested plant seems like a good candidate for skill to affect, perhaps along with health of plant.

-Seed viablity is interesting, and I think a very good skill candidate.  This would occur when planting the seed, because if 'bad seeds' were their own item, they'd stack separately from good seeds and the player could easily figure out which is which.  Instead, when the player plants the seed, the plant has a chance to be normal, weak, or terminal.  A terminal seedling will not advance.  A weak one will grow to full size, but yield much less, even under optimal health.  Normal is of course normal.  This by itself would make skill very important.  As an example, if a novice has a 50% chance to get a seed when harvesting, and then a 50% chance for the seeds they DO get to be terminal, they will overall have a 25% chance to get a viable result from harvesting a plant.  Perhaps only 12.5% to get a normal plant.   As the player increases in skill, it's assumed they learn to recognize the best seeds, and just throw out bad ones.  This is the 'logic' of how they plant more normal plants as their skill goes up. 

-Crop breeding/tree grafting would probably be best for skill (tool could affect grafting success some).  But I'd consider these very 'detaily' things, probably not necessary to have a robust agriculture trade.

-If diseases/fungus/pests/weeds make it in, then the player's skill could affect their ability to identify threat, and then once they've made the 'antidote', it could affect the chance of each application of being a success.

 

So kind of a summary:

I think direct yield at harvest should depend on factors other than skill or tools.  Skill will indirectly affect it through the player's ability to treat ailments, which will reduce yield if not kept in check.

Tools might affect:  harvest speed, success chance of grafting

Skill might affect: chance to get seed, chance to plant normal seed, chance to identify ailments, and chance for each treatment to be successful.

I feel like tools are a bit weak in uses, but if harvesting speeds dramatically improve, that and durability might make higher tier tools more attractive.

 

As an aside, I wanted to drop this link to a suggestion I made for burlap bags to make fruit farms harder to set up.

Another suggestion: using straw as mulch.  A good use for all that extra straw that builds up.  Helps increase health of plant, and disappears when plant is harvested, ensuring a continual use for straw.

I'll also add here a couple suggestions I made in Peffern's Terrafirmapumpkins thread, don't know how many people read those mod threads:

TRELLISES

Spoiler

One was for there to be trellises for crops like beans, tomatoes, or peas if they made it in.  I always thought it weird that wild ones spawn with a stake.  I'd suggest a wild versions of these crops that are just sprawling on the ground.  Maybe they take more than one square if possible.  But even if that's not, they're just a short stake-less versions, and they drop much less food than trellised versions.  A trellis might be 9 sticks in a cube.  This would give use to excess sticks.  If grape vines were ever a thing, they could also use trellises. 

SPRAWLING GOURDS

Spoiler

The other thing was for gourds/melons to have their own growing mechanic, where there is a central 'parent' plant, and then it spawns more vines around it.  As a rl gardener, once nicknamed 'the gourdfather' by a neighbor, I can tell you that gourd vines will absolutely take over a garden.  They should be planted well away from any other plants, or they will cover and smother them.  So the parent node either spawns more vines ever so often up to a certain size of block (5x5 maybe), or, it generates a defined number of vines up to a certain range from the parent, but not enough to fill a block.  So maybe a parent generates up to 40 vines blocks if well taken care of, in a 7x7 square.  A 7x7 square has 49 squares, so the vine won't totally fill the square, but it mostly will (But only the most healthy and well fertilized vines would get the max 40 vine blocks).  This is most similar to how gourds actually work.  New vine blocks must spawn next to an existing block belonging to the same parent plant.  Certain ones of these vines blocks will actually flower and produce a fruit, but not all.  Number depends on how healthy the plant is.  It'd be pretty interesting if, as in rl, the player could remove all but one fruiting vines, and the remaining fruit would grow extra-large, as is done with pumpkins to get the largest ones.

 

Edited by Darmo
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While food may be the foundation of survival, we need to make sure that food does not become too cumbersome to the player. We need to strive to create a balance between a fun profession and the ability to let growing food sit in the backend of the project list during non-planting/harvesting months. Obviously, no farming activities would go on during winter but the summer months should not have to be spent tending to the farm when they could be spent exploring/building/conquering. I would love for there to be a more in-depth part of farming, but it needs balancing. 

This piece system seems interesting. I do not play Ark so I am not too sure how this system would work. Would we essentially be having stacks of 320 ounces with the decay section on an automatic timer? Due to the 64 stack of 5 ounces of Minecraft items? Or would different food give varying amounts of fulfillment? Similar in the way that berries seem to replenish less food than meat in Ark according to my brief look at their page on food.

The tier system could also work for increasing the capacity to do farming work. The most important of which would probably be the hoe or the plow. These can also be used to reduce tedium in later stages of the game when dealing with farming. Technically, farming does not require the land to be tilled to go crops. The crops that are grown from non-tilled soil are very poor, however. Being able to plant crops anywhere would not be good for the balance of the game either. Farmland gives a solid way to determine where farms are and are places that determine where seeds are able to be planted in Minecraft. What if there were varying tiers of farmland, though? (Maybe use dry farmland and hydrated soil to differentiate?) 

Farmland that is plowed using some of the more primitive technologies would result in fields that are harder for crops to grow in. Plowing a field is described as a way to create a seed bed for the crops to grow in. These crop beds would make the growing of crops a lot more effective. Primitive technologies such as stone or early metal tools (Stone-Bronze?) would not create good beds for plants to grow in. These poor beds would have a greater chance for weeds to be grown in them. When the player is in this phase of the game, they are unlikely to have the resources to create lots of fertilizer for their crops. This means that they will need to be more hands on with their farms. A side effect of this would mean those very small villages or single players would have to first focus on farming for the first year or so until their agriculture skill is high enough to have time to focus on other activities. (if singleplayer) Early neolithic villages were solely built for farming anyway IIRC. Villages of multiple people would need more food to support the larger population. This would mean that the village farmer would not quickly grow bored after the same time it takes the singleplayer to get a high enough skill to multi-task. They would need to be working on larger farms after all.

 

Farmland that is plowed using more advanced technology (Iron+) would result in fields that are easier to grow crops in. The better farmland would do a better job of breaking up the weeds that may still be alive. Weeds would not be as big an issue. Improved farmland could also be affected by fertilizer more effectively. A healthier crop would be able to be grown in these improved fields. Improved farmland would also allow greater nutrient spread throughout the crops. This could allow for the possibility to get two crop cycles in once the skill is raised high enough. 

Another area that could be improved through technology tiers would be dedicated farming tools. Farming Trowels could be used to pick up the plants that you mentioned Darmo. Hand scythes or sickles could also be crafted to cut down the grains as you also mention. Trowels would only be effective at gathering plants. Shovels would still be used for excavating soil in large projects. Sickles would function similar to scythes in that they could quickly cut through grasses. Sickles would lack the 3x3 ability that scythes have, though. Seeing as we now have a 9x9 area to work with in regards to the knapping/clay molding interface, these tools could be created without conflicting with existing shovel or scythe patterns. 

Your second point about the amount of food being harvested is definitely a good choice for something that the agriculture skill and healthy plants would modify. Seeds should also be affected by the skill level and health of the plant. I agree with your paragraph on Healthy, Weak, and Terminal plant types.

Cross breeding of plants could be a sort of mini-game that village farmers could have to keep them busy and coming back from year to year. Players could breed their plants together to form crops that have a resistance to certain conditions. (cold, extreme heat, weeds, etc.) Cross breeding would be made easier with a higher skill level in agriculture. A player could use a tool to figure out the characteristics of plants so they can decide which ones they want to breed with each other. 

 

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So I've never played ark, but I've watched several LPs.  I think the basic idea would be, for instance you butcher an animal.  Instead of 160 oz of meat, you'd get maybe 32 or 64 pieces.  To my mind, since in current TFC the player eats 5oz at a time, it would be logical that 1 piece approximates 5oz in TFC1.  160/5=32.  So it would seem logical to guess that food pieces will stack to 32.  So you have your stack of 32, or whatever, food.  There's timer counting down always on that stack of food.  In ark it's circular, but in TFC it might be that line.  But it goes down kind of fast.  For meat maybe fully depletes the timer in 2 minutes.  At the end of that 2 minutes, 1 piece of meat is subtracted from the stack.  The timer starts over.   In another 2 minutes another piece goes.  So you're losing discreet pieces of meat.  In 64 rl minutes, that whole stack is gone.  But, you do things to preserve it.  So maybe you salt the meat immediately.  That doubles the timer to 4 minutes.  So, it kind of seems more urgent, because you're actually watching pieces of food decay.  But you have to assume that there will be sufficient preservation methods to extend the timer quite a bit.   Bioxx explains some of the advantages of this system in the post I linked.  Another advantage is that salt could be required for each piece, rather than 1 piece of salt doing an entire huge lot of food. So grinding salt may be a thing. But in TFC2, what this will probably mean is a very healthy crop might drop 12 pieces of food, while a sickly one drops 2.  Or whatever.  But it will be in pieces, not oz.  There has been discussion of making prepared food give more fulfillment, and/or other bonuses.  But that's kind of another topic.  Basically raw foods would be bottom tier.

You're definitely right that it needs to be not too cumbersome Alpha.  It'll be a balancing act and probably take a lot of >Alpha< testing.  *rimshot*

I like the tiered farmland/plows idea.  That's definitely a good way to work in more tiered metal.  My straw mulch suggestion was intended as another form of farmland, but I definitely like your idea of plowing in nutrients for more extended fertilizing, and reducing weed chance.   Maybe for weeds it doesn't need to be another 'tier' per se, but the block gets a negative modifier to the chance to develop weeds.  The higher player skill the more negative the modifier.  I wonder if hoes and plows could be used in a block breaking fashion, to bring speed into the equation?  Like, you break a dirt block with a hoe or plow, and instead of dropping the dirt, it immediately places the hoed/plowed version there?  It just seems a shame that there's so little point to making higher tier hoes.  If that's not mechanically possible, maybe some kind of mini game to take the time?  Something like the hide scraping, except tier zero (stone) lets yo do 1 pixel at a time, tier two 2 pixels, tier three (bronze) 4 pixels, tier four 8 pixels, and tier five (steel) does the entire tile at once, basically how it is now in TFC1.   It'd make the player value their plowed ground more in the early game. 

It'd be really cool if plows could be hooked to an animal.  Not entirely sure how the moving/interfacing would work.  It'd be pretty amazing if you had a switch and actually had to guide the animal to position the plow correctly.  But as far as using it, maybe you right click on the dirt tile, it gives you the same minigame as the hoe, but the result is you get multiple tilled tiles in a line (so you have to pay attention to what way you/the ox is facing).  So 2 tiles at tier 0 (if there even is a tier 0 plow),  Maybe 7 tiles at tier 5 (tier+2)?  This could continue on up the tiers.  So in that case you'd not only make the minigame easier, you'd multiply the results.  If there's an animal husbandry skill, that could play into the number of tiles that get plowed as well.  Now if you use the plow and right click on farmland, and you have fertilizer in your inventory, then you get another minigame to distribute that along the tiles in the same way, and depending on your agriculture skill, you might get bonus 'satiation' of fertilizer.

There definitely could be more tools for harvesting.   Just depends on if the devs want to spend the item ids.  You could get really specific and have potato forks if you wanted to, specifically for potatoes.  I was just trying to stick with tools we already have.

When I have more time, I'll post something about plant health.  I just discovered Bilbobuddy made a post awhile back that had a lot of these ideas.  He makes the interesting proposition that maybe hoes can only turn dirt into farmland, but it takes a plow to turn grass into farmland.  It's a cool idea, makes the player spend a little bit more time digging up the dirt first in early days.  Though that would directly conflict with TFC1 behavior where hoeing dirt results in farmland with no nutrients.  Could be changed though. 

Edited by Darmo
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As I mentioned before, I think seeds should only come from produce to make you early on weigh your next meal verse sustainability. I also believe seeds should not stack. This is so that it's possible to include genetic information in the item and makes it annoying enough that planters and seed silos are desirable as they would hold a lot of seed. If the seeds stack you can't include genetic or viability information because a stack removes that data. 

Skill of the farmer should effect their ability to see soil and seed stats, how much seed they obtain from produce, plant health, and carry over to bees. If you tie skill to produce drop then a highly skilled player doesn't need to take care of the plants as they can get plenty of food from a very few plants. Also you need farming to be more effective than scavenging, yet not so effective that you don't need cooking.

Weeds I think should not directly effect plants. I think weeds should more rapidly use up the nutrients in all square around it with a radius of 1. This makes them undesirable because nutrients should return slow, and if any plants are near it they will have less nutrition. At the same time pests should spread to nearby plants, that way you don't want bunch your plants up too much because of pests, and don't want too much empty field because of weeds. You also want to make plants grow really slowly when not adjacent to other farmland so people don't hoe in a grid skipping enough to prevent pests and weeds.

Genetics should effect how tolerant the plant is to various conditions and how much produce it drops. So basically it's survival under various conditions and it's drops. The two things should be inversely related. A crop that sucks at surviving should have a higher yield than a more tolerant plant. Which means you want to find the right balance of drought, pest, frost resistance for your area to maximize your yield. If the plants aren't resistant they have a greater chance of dying which gives you nothing, yet a plant that is resistant to everything also gives you no produce. 

If you make people use hoes more often like having to re-hoe to increase aeration in the soil, then the durability of your hoe matters as you don't want your hoe wearing out too quickly. Darmo, you mentioned breaking speed. While that isn't feasible for tilling soil, it is feasible for plant harvest. So you could have different tools have different breaking speeds for plants in the same manner you can have picks breaks blocks at different speeds. You can also make it so that if you don't use the right tool you don't get any drops like punching stone in vanilla minecraft. This would be a good way to introduce tiered metal tools.

Anything you come up with to effect plants by doing something to the soil needs to effect a stat in the soil and not break it because then it becomes a different block and destroys the stats.

Also a warning on AOE. It sometimes causes you to break something you didn't want to break. For Instance carpenter safes and warded glass which should be able unbreakable and any AOE block breaking item targeting a block next to it. Now I have not checked what is causing that so I would just be cautious. 

Things that shouldn't be added mostly because they are either not feasible is growing plants outside of farmland and animals pulling plows. 

Edited by Stroam
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How about this idea, weed infestation is measured in units per cubic meter (one block), say every now and then more weeds sprout adding a unit (the rate affected by certain stats, especially those that help crops grow) and the max is twenty, now let's say that by hand picking you remove a unit with every swipe of your hand and four units when you have a hoe and the weeds completely removed when you use a horse drawn plow (but the plow destroys crops so normally either by hand or by hoe when there is a crop), for fallow to be effective weeds must be kept to a minimum because they use nutrients to, fertilizer also increases the growth of weeds so when using fertilizer the crops have to be weeded regularly 

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I agree with the fallow. and you do propose a good idea with the weeds. A farming block is 15/16's tall.  This means you could visually show weed growth on the farming block. You could have a green pixels appearing on top of the farm block. The top is 16x16 so stage one could cover 1/4, staged two could cover 1/2, etc. I would keep the number to 16 because minecraft stacks are traditionally powers of 2.

stage 1: 1-4 weeds : 1/4 farm block covered

stage 2: 5-8 weeds : 1/2 farm block covered

stage 3: 9-12 weeds : 3/4 farm block covered

stage 4: 13-16 weeds : totally covered farm block

If the farmer doesn't take care of the weeds by 16th weed, then when the 17th should be added it turns into a dirt block. When that happens it destroys all the nutrients of that block because it's now a new block. Another thing I would change is when you currently hoe grass on TFC 1 the farm block has full nutrients. I would decrease that to 1/4 th nutrients so people don't let grass grow back over it and re-hoe it as a way to avoid fertilizer. I've actually used that trick in tfc 1 on just fields, it does destroy the dirt but who doesn't have tons of dirt laying around in chests?

Edited by Stroam
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I like both the weed proposals - the one where weeds grow on fallow blocks, and also the one of pixels above.  The pixels above isn't all that great visually - it'll end up looking like some weird floating layer of slime.  But I suppose it may be logistically easier than having a weed graphic superimposed over the crop at a 45 degree offset,  much less a multi-stage weed graphic that must coexist with various crop stages.  It'd sure look better that way though.

The thing I like about fallow block weeds, is that it would provide another use for the plow.  By planting in long parallel rows, the player could use the plow to plow up weeds in long stretches between the rows.  Then a hoe for weeds on the crop blocks.  You'd need to encourage this kind of planting though.  So in terms of discouraging mass-planting, maybe say that any crop block with more than two adjacent crop blocks is more prone to disease.  At the same time, say that plants that don't have adjacent farm land on all 4 sides grows slower.  This discourages the player from just having single rows of plowed ground with grass between in order to avoid fallow ground weeds.  It does beg the question of whether water should be ok as one of the four sides, but if that's allowed then people will probably dig big water-filled trenches between their crops to stop the weeds.  So I'd go with only farm ground counts.  Irl, too much water is as bad if not worse for crops than too little.

I also agree that it'd probably be good if freshly plowed/hoed ground did not have a full nutrient stack, in order to encourage fertilizing.

I kind of like the idea of seeds coming from produce, to force that choice, at least in the early game. maybe at high skill levels the player gets seeds just from harvesting as well. 

The hoe speed by tier could be somewhat approximated by having an animation similar to a firestarter, ya?  And it only has a percent chance to work?  And the chance is higher per tier of the hoe?  That way on average it could take more time using lower tier hoes.  Between that and weeding, I think you'd definitely have plenty of durability use for hoes.

For animals and plows, even if they can't be hooked directly, maybe using the plow checks to make sure there is a draft animal (with yolk and harness?) of some kind within a certain radius of the player?  Then they at least need to have one nearby.  So the player would probably at least want to keep it on a lead so it doesn't wander out of radius.  At the same time, farm animals should eat crops above a certain maturity if they get the chance.  Just so the player doesn't permanently leave cows in their fields so as not to worry about moving them during planting time.

For a plow minigame (if it uses one) you could have a vertical scrolling graphic maybe, and it has dirt tiles (in plow mode) or weed pixels (in weed mode) all over.  As it scrolls down the player clicks as many pixels/tiles as possible before they scroll off the bottom.  Depending on the percent they get, this is the pecent of tiles tilled/weed destroyed in the line.  Plow tier, player skill, and draft animals strength might all slow down the scroll speed, making it easier to get everything (but give the player speed up option if it's going too slow for them).  And/or, they might increase the target area of the click, making it easier to hit the moving targets.

Non-stacking seeds would be kind of drastic.  But I guess maybe that might be a good use for burlap - a seed sack.  So you keep the seeds in a seed sack, and when you're planting you hold the seed sack, right click the sack on the ground, and it just plants the next seed in line?  Seems doable.  Before seed sack tech, you're stuck with manually removing them from jars and putting them on the hotbar.  And yes, I think that high player skill would be the good easy way to tell what seeds have special traits.  You could maybe deduce it earlier if you carefully observed that some plants have less disease, or grew better in drought.  

I do see a possible gameplay disadvantage to this; For me, my early game is basically me traveling a long ways until I find that perfect spot.  Along the way I gather various seeds, bushes, and fruit trees.  The result being I usually am well stocked in growables by the time I find my home.  I definitely believe that fruit producers should not be easy to mass-collect, given that they're kind of a later tier food item.  But crop seeds, by making them not stack, the player will not be able to collect many in early wanderings.  Now I'm all for it, as it would either make the player settle earlier, or take more risks on transient food sources until they find their ideal spot.  Then range from that spot in seed collecting trips.  I just hope that wouldn't turn off too many people.  The harder it is overall, the smaller the audience will be.  On the other hand, it would probably help encourage towning, to avoid that hard early game.

If we had more uses for crops, it would help in terms of keeping farming useful in the later game.  One way to do this might be to allow the player to feed crops to animals, and this is much better for the animals than just grass.  Also, if villagers make it in, and you can trade with them, produce items might be a trade currency.

Edited by Darmo
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The benefit of having weeds tied to the farmland is that it works on both planted and fallow fields. I was thinking instead of a seed sack, using a planter, but a seed sack could work. Later planters made of metal and wood could carry significantly more seed. A pot does 4 which is annoying, sack could do like 32 which is fine fore one person. Planter could do 64 which is quite a bit, and then you could upgrade the planter to have seed containers that hold 64 seeds and allow quick swapping. The weed graphic I don't know which would be easier honestly, something to leave up to the developers really. 

If seed only drops from produce then I guarantee that you'll have less than what you are use to, specially if uncooked food doesn't fill up your hunger as much. You are right in that if people want to avoid the early game survival aspect they can have a starting town. I definitely would make all herbivore animals eat grass like sheep and if they don't have enough they die. Feeding them would allow you to put them on smaller fields, breed them, and maybe mature faster. More on that in a different thread. 

I would make the hunger bar decrease slower. I would make uncooked food fill it up significantly less with diminishing returns on food you recently ate. I would make cooked food fill up the bar significantly more. I would also make it so when your hunger bar runs out you start taking damage. These changes would make foraging every day until you have a farm setup necessary. It would encourage you to seek out a variety of foods. It would encourage people to cook their food and make a variety of different meals. This would be similar to how it was in a mod pack known as Blood n Bones. If you haven't played it I suggest you watch a lets play to get an idea of the early game to see where I'm coming from. (BTW I do not suggest copying anything else from that modpack because while it was fun, it was also super hard and at times more fun to watch other play then playing yourself. In the best armor and weapons in the game, you could still die in a swamp at night)

For water I too would make your thirst bar decrease slower. I wouldn't make drinking fill up less but I would make drinking non flowing water have a chance of making you sick which can be negated later by tediously filtering your water, or adding alcohol to your water.

Because you couldn't die from hunger in TFC 1 and it had the slow and zooming effect I purposely didn't eat while building. This allowed me to ignore food, less chance of breaking more blocks then intended with my higher tier picks, and place blocks more precisely. Hunger should never be a benefit. When mining I didn't drink water because you don't need to move very far in mining, you don't die of thirst unless it's warm. Usually had a water barrel up top so that when I wanted to leave I could drink then empty the barrel to fill it up. Grab the other barrels full of rocks, dirt, gems, and ore. Got on my horse so I could move again and ride home with sometimes 4 barrels of stuff with one of them being full of small vessels full of stuff. 

As for the horse drawn plow, if you allowed animals to eat crops this would merit not leaving a cow/horse in the crop field. For plowing you could equip a plow on a beast of burden which then works it's magic in an area around the animal. You could then lead the animal around on the field letting it work it's magic on the field. There is always the chance to miss a section which would make those farming levels useful so that you can see where you missed and either bring the animal back around or finish it with a hoe. 

Edited by Stroam
horse drawn plow
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Mechanical planter would be fun.  It'd be cool if it wouldn't fit in containers so you had to just place it as a block.  Fun scenery, and useful too!  What tier were you thinking for this mechanical seeder?  Steel?  I feel like it needs to be spaced a ways down the line, so that players truly appreciate it when they get it.

Some thoughts on pests, diseases, and fungus.  To bring these into the system, I would think it would be a good idea to link the identification of them to player skill.  So they mostly center around the player identifying them and applying the right treatment.  Here's a way it might work:

Players have 4 skill levels: Novice, Adept, Expert, and Master (could be more for TFC2).  Let us say that a full treatment for a specific ailment depends on exactly identifying the ailment.  The ailment will involve four characteristics that tell the player how to treat it. 

The first characteristic is the simplest: it's either a insect, mold, or disease.  The player knows only this at the novice level.  At Adept they know the next level of detail.  So instead of "insect" they see beetle, moth, worm, or aphid (molds: mildew, mold, smut, and rust.  Diseases: blight, wilt, canker, rot).  The next level (expert) is to know a descriptor, of which there are four of each type.  So this might read to the player as "striped beetle" or "spotted moth".   And finally at master, they get an entire name.  This could replace just the descriptor (Troll Beetle instead of striped beetle) or it could replace possibly both.  So what was a "smooth worm" might become a "leaf miner" at Master.  They're all listed on the wiki only by their true name, but they each have a short description.  So at Expert you have to look at the wiki, and find out which four beetles are spotted or which four worms are smooth.  Then you get the third ingredient from their recipes (which will all have the same first three ingredients).  But at master you're straight-up given the name.  And maybe WAILA even shows the treatment recipe after the name in-game.   This would be a list-heavy page, with 64 insects, 64 molds, and 64 diseases. 

So at novice, the player knows from the wiki that all insects must have, say, saltwater as a basic treatment measure.  They can apply just plain saltwater to any insect infestation, and know that it will help a little.  Not nearly as much as a full treatment.   Diseases might be treated with mineral water, and fungi with alcohol.  Alcohol is obviously a lot harder to get than the other two, but this is just an example for now.  And maybe fungi are more deadly by nature. But anyway, once the player knows the species of the ailment, they know the next ingredient.  So adding bone meal to your saltwater will treat moths better.  Again, this would be on the wiki.   There will be four adept-level additives, and so it's not terribly hard for the player to just experiment at novice to make their treatment slightly better.  It's only four tries to cover the saltwater plus the four possible second level additives.  But it is more work, and will waste some materials, and even after you get the first two right, it's still only half the full treatment.   There could also be a percent chance the treatment will take to make it a little bit harder if needed.  The final two descriptors could also be known from the wiki, or could be randomized from a small or large subset.  A large subset would make experimenting for the last two descriptors almost impossible at novice.  But even if fixed, with a 4/4/4 pattern, a novice might have to try 64 recipes to happen on the total correct one.   And that's probably enough.  If it was arranged so you could only treat a plant once per day, 64 would definitely be enough to mostly confound novices from experimenting.  Expert treatment level might involve flowers ground in a mortar, and Master level might involve minerals also ground up (these grindings can also be used in alchemy).   So a treatment will have metadata showing the ingredients, like sandwiches.  If a novice tries to guess full recipes, they'll use up a lot of minerals in the process. 

There could be a consequence to random experimentation, in the form of genetic weaknesses.  So you might have a corn variety that, if given a treatment with bismuth powder in it, will greatly harm or even kill it.  That might be minor if bismuth is a last tier ingredient and so used on few thing.  But if the plant is weak to second or third tier ingredients, there may be a lot of ailments whose treatments would harm the plant.  So if genetics came in, the player might not only be trying to gain beneficial traits, but get rid of weaknesses to treatment ingredients.

I hope that all came across clear.

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082809-28.jpg

Yah I'd say some level of smithing and wood working would be required. I remember using a modern version of this when I helped out with agriculture research. 

The system you proposed definitely needs refinement, and is quite complex. Lets see if I can synthesize it a bit more. Going to push back knowing anything to simplify it. I'm also going to do it in powers of 2. 

  • Novice -  knows nothing because this is where everyone starts.
  • Adept - knows the first two ingredients, and if it is:
    • insects 
    • pests,
    • blight,
    • pathogen
  • Expert - knows the first two ingredients, a third, and if it's:
    • insect(small or tiny) 
    • pest (rodent or birds) 
    • Blight(mold or fungi) 
    • pathogen( single cell or nematode)
  • Master knows all 4 ingredients and if it's:
    • insect
      • large(beetle or moth)
      • tiny(mites or aphids) 
    • pest
      • rodent(mice or vole)
      • birds(starling or sparrow)
    • blight
      • fungus(mildew or black spot)
      • mold( slime or water)
    • pathogen
      • single(bacteria or virus)
      • nematode(Root or cyst)

It's generic enough that unless you research it can apply to any plant. Since there is fewer ingredients in the method I outlined I'd make it so it can only be applied once per plant life cycle, or you can allow them to apply more than one and if they apply the second before the time limit it kills the plants though I'd go with the nicer path and not let them. I would also make it so if you have 2 ingredients and they match 2 out of 4 then the plants have a 50% chance of recovering, 3/4 would be 75% chance. If you got 1 ingredient wrong it would be a 0% chance. You could also delay the visual update so you don't know instantly if it is effective or not. Also I'd make the chance of it happening no more than 1/32. That way early game you aren't hurt by it too much. It's not until you have larger fields that it becomes a major problem. I would make it have a chance of spreading to crops up to two blocks away. Meaning early game if you space your plants really far apart you can partially protect from it wiping out your entire field.

 

Edited by Stroam
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Agriculture TFC2 Reply

 

Since I am a little bit late to the party on the responses here, this might get a little bit long.

 
Quote

“Instead of 160 oz of meat, you'd get maybe 32 or 64 pieces.”

 

This sounds good to me. 2 minutes of decay seems really short but the numbers can always be tweaked. A good balance could likely be found through >Alpha< testing. (Love that pun btw) Having plenty of options to counter decay would be good to have in the game. Access to salt for meats and cheeses and lime water for brine would be essential on all the islands to keep decay at bay. I don’t know how I feel about a healthy plant dropping 12 pieces of food. That would correlate to 60 oz of food in the current system. As far as I recall, the largest plant yields came from potatoes and maize which was only 32 oz per plant. As said above, future >Alpha< testing would be needed to find the right numbers.

 
Quote

“maybe some kind of mini game to take the time?  Something like the hide scraping”

 

This mini-game is probably better than the other one that you presented. The version that is more akin to a firestarter (dubbed FSP) is probably based too much on RNG. The FSP version would probably be easier to code the increased skill/metal tier. Just shift RNG more and more in the player’s favor. However, tilling a field shouldn’t be based on RNG. I believe that the hide scraping mini-game would work here just fine. Not as you suggested it, though. Your description would take 256 durability with stone tools to till one soil block. That is about three and a half stone hoes of igneous stone btw. I propose that tools made of bronze and lower material would click 4x4 squares of the area on the ground. This would only require 16 clicks to till the block. The increasing tool durability on higher metal tier tools would give the incentive to upgrade your hoes. Having to haul out inventories worth of hoes to the farm would get tedious for large scale farms. Iron and greater tools would click 8x8 squares on the farmland. Only 4 clicks once the player reaches this higher tier of power over the land. Your one pixel and increasing by a power of two plan could work as a de-weeding mode on the hoe if we go with the spreading of the weeds over the farmland block.

 
Quote

“seeds should only come from produce”

 

If this method was added to the game, it would mean a huge problem for inventory management. Food would not be able to stack Ever. All of the carrots gathered from carrot plant A would be unable to stack with the carrots from plant B. Inventory is enough of a hassle in the beginnings of TFC1. Having to use up two inventory slots every time that the player decides to gather a plant would quickly over clutter the inventory. While clay is easy enough to gather to make the pottery needed to hold the crops and seeds, the logs would be a different issue. 8 logs per pit kiln gets pretty expensive for bulk firing in TFC1. Especially, if the thread on sawmills gets added to the main game. Start at Stoam’s point about sawmills with the large picture at the bottom.  (Harder to gather logs) There needs to be a compromise between having the ability to store the seeds in the early game and making late game seed holders useless.

 
Quote

“If you make people use hoes more often like having to re-hoe to increase aeration in the soil, then the durability of your hoe matters”

 

This could go along with my earlier point about giving the hoe more usage than a simple point and click one and done tool. Hoes could also be used to get rid of weeds that are growing in the player’s farms. Not sure how the weed system would work, though.

 
Quote

“The thing I like about fallow block weeds, is that it would provide another use for the plow.  By planting in long parallel rows, the player could use the plow to plow up weeds in long stretches between the rows.  Then a hoe for weeds on the crop blocks.  You'd need to encourage this kind of planting though.  So in terms of discouraging mass-planting, maybe say that any crop block with more than two adjacent crop blocks is more prone to disease.  At the same time, say that plants that don't have adjacent farmland on all 4 sides grows slower.  This discourages the player from just having single rows of plowed ground with grass between in order to avoid fallow ground weeds.  It does beg the question of whether water should be ok as one of the four sides, but if that's allowed then people will probably dig big water-filled trenches between their crops to stop the weeds.  So I'd go with only farm ground counts.  Irl, too much water is as bad if not worse for crops than too little.”
6
 

This mechanic more or less actually exists in Minecraft already. Crops will grow fastest if they are planted in rows with empty farmland around them. I will just drop the link to the gamepedia page for people to look at and see the math behind it. A little bit too in-depth for the already novel I have going here already. The only change needed to be added to the mechanic would be for all crops to recognize each other as identical crops. Otherwise, people could just plant rows of alternating crops and not have to deal with the till rows of empty farmland mechanic. A solution to this would be to remove the three different nutrients and just replace it with generic one broad type labeled nutrients. That way, people trying to place crops everywhere end up with completely ruined fields the next year. If they stuck to rows of crops, they would only need to shift their crops over 1 block next year.

 

Let me know your thoughts on these points.

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7 hours ago, Th3A1ph4D0g said:

Food would not be able to stack Ever.

If genetics are involved you are right. A compromise, when harvesting a plant you have the option of harvesting it for seeds or food. 

7 hours ago, Th3A1ph4D0g said:

8 logs per pit kiln gets pretty expensive for bulk firing in TFC1. Especially, if the thread on sawmills gets added to the main game.

I agree. In this thread I outline a late game method of reducing fuel. I would change the pit kiln from 8 logs to 16 or 32 sticks if my suggestions to wood getting implemented. For further discussion please reply to the linked thread.

7 hours ago, Th3A1ph4D0g said:

This mechanic more or less actually exists in Minecraft already.

This is both surprising and may not relate if the crop growth based on time passage vs ticks. Time passage allows it to grow while you are away or sleeping while ticks must have the chunk loaded or have a tick simulator. 

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Re: Alpha

Those numbers I was tossing around on food decay and drops were just off the cuff stuff.  I was just trying to get across the idea.

I'm open for whatever on minigames.  Just tossing out ideas.

Good point on the seeds from produce + genetics problem.  Stroam, how would one give the option of harvesting the same block for seed *or* food?  As I understand it (from what I was told in response to my butchering thread ideas) blocks either drop a thing or don't, you can't make it dependent on tools, unless it's a right click function?   What if crops have a mature form, where they give produce, but then later an overripe form, where they drop only seed?  Then the same mechanic and tool could be used on both.  I guess it would be tricky though with plants where the seed IS the food, like all the grains.

Hoes for aeration sounds like a bit much to me.  I think between tilling farm plots, and hoeing weeds, they should have plenty of uses.  We've had a couple ideas for weeds.  One being a texture overlay of some kind, that gets more filled in as the weediness of the block progresses.  The player uses the hoe against them in a hide-scraping-like minigame.  I've afraid the overlay might be rather ugly though.  I was hoping to have a weed plant graphic in the same block with the crop, offset 45 degrees.  And then the player uses the hoe to 'mine' it, which would take time depending on tool tier.  But I fear that would probably be way to block id intensive, as you'd either have to make a version of every stage of every crop with weed superimposition, or you could limit it to just mature crop blocks to reduce the number of block ids required.  Never mind having multiple weed stages per individual crop stage, if the crop is growing slow.  I do feel like a weed graphic would probably be best for fallow ground weeds. 

Very interesting on the vanilla mc crop mechanic being similar.  I think we could keep the same nutrient mechanic, maybe have weeds drain all 3 at the same time, as well as reduce crop health (need to do a separate post on crop health - maybe tomorrow).  By adding ailments in there, I think you'd provide a fairly strong incentive for row crops vs masses.

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3 hours ago, Darmo said:

Good point on the seeds from produce + genetics problem.  Stroam, how would one give the option of harvesting the same block for seed *or* food?  As I understand it (from what I was told in response to my butchering thread ideas) blocks either drop a thing or don't, you can't make it dependent on tools, unless it's a right click function?   What if crops have a mature form, where they give produce, but then later an overripe form, where they drop only seed?  Then the same mechanic and tool could be used on both.  I guess it would be tricky though with plants where the seed IS the food, like all the grains.

Well I looked around and couldn't find the poster whom told you it wasn't possible, but unless certain functions were removed in an update or I am just miss understanding then this and this which outlines ways to drop different drops based on tool used. If it isn't possible you could set it up to a right click function like you mentioned. I know I just recently used IC2 crops which only dropped crops when right clicked by had a chance of dropping seed when broken, and I know thaumcraft gives you native clusters sometime instead of ore blocks. Tinkers construct has sword  that give you a higher chance for head drops. Basically there should be a way to do something akin to this method.

Edited by Stroam
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5 hours ago, Stroam said:

Well I looked around and couldn't find the poster whom told you it wasn't possible

Huh, you're right, I don't see it in the butchering thread...  Either I'm totally mis-remembering which thread that was in, or the butchering thread got messed up during the forum transfer somehow...perhaps due to cjhc12's thread getting spliced in?  That or I hallucinated it.  But I'm pretty certain I remember being disappointed to be told it wasn't possible (or was a huge effort) to vary drops depending on tool used to break.  Might have to re-add that part of the discussion to the butchering thread I guess.   If it is possible, a good candidate for seed harvest might be a grass seed scoop, used to strip seed from long stem grasses.

SeedScoop.jpg

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For the weeds, we might not need a mini game, I feel it might be too time consuming since most people will have fairly big fields.

We could make it so that weeds spawn randomly on tilled soil and can only be destroyed by hoes, thus also increasing the use for hoes. Since in real life weeds help the ground "regenerate", maybe the longer weeds stay on a block of tilled soil, the more nutrients it regenerates? The disadvantage would be that if the weeds are too close to other crops they will smother and destroy them. That way there's a goo reason for crop rotation and fallowing fields.

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6 hours ago, Darmo said:

grass seed scoop

Funky.

3 hours ago, Donjons said:

I feel it might be too time consuming since most people will have fairly big fields.

That's the whole point. We want farming to be a profession that not everyone does.

3 hours ago, Donjons said:

Since in real life weeds help the ground "regenerate"

I am going to need accredited peer reviewed articles on that before I believe it. During my years of agricultural research I've never heard that. But if you are interested on nitrogen fixation then here's an open access book that highlights various aspects of nitrogen fixation.

Edited by Stroam
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What if the vanilla inventory is replaced by an inventory where the you can have every item you want until the sum of all the items' sizes reaches a N value. The better example i know is Unturned. I don't mean to to copy that inventory system, I only want an inventory where the limit is based on item size and not slots.

So you could carry 64 seeds (1*seed) OR 21 sticks (3*stick) OR 6 hammers (10*hammer) OR 3 hammers, 7 sticks, 13 seeds (3*10+7*3+13*1=64)

And you could equip additional items like sachets (+32 space for SEEDS ONLY) or scabbards (sword won't use space in inventory but only there)

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5 minutes ago, Diego il Catanico Jr said:

hat if the vanilla inventory is replaced by an inventory where the you can have every item you want until the sum of all the items' sizes reaches a N value.

I do like the idea however it's a little off topic. I'd stick this suggestion in it's own thread.

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1 minute ago, Stroam said:

it's a little off topic. I'd stick this suggestion in it's own thread.

I don't think is really off topic:

On 24/10/2016 at 0:41 AM, Th3A1ph4D0g said:

If this method was added to the game, it would mean a huge problem for inventory management. Food would not be able to stack Ever. All of the carrots gathered from carrot plant A would be unable to stack with the carrots from plant B. Inventory is enough of a hassle in the beginnings of TFC1. Having to use up two inventory slots every time that the player decides to gather a plant would quickly over clutter the inventory. While clay is easy enough to gather to make the pottery needed to hold the crops and seeds, the logs would be a different issue. 8 logs per pit kiln gets pretty expensive for bulk firing in TFC1. Especially, if the thread on sawmills gets added to the main game. Start at Stoam’s point about sawmills with the large picture at the bottom.  (Harder to gather logs) There needs to be a compromise between having the ability to store the seeds in the early game and making late game seed holders useless.

But probably I (or we) could think about this inventory system and suggest it in an elaborated post. Related with encumbrance of course.

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38 minutes ago, Stroam said:

I am going to need accredited peer reviewed articles on that before I believe it. During my years of agricultural research I've never heard that. But if you are interested on nitrogen fixation then here's an open access book that highlights various aspects of nitrogen fixation.

I meant that leaving the ground to fallow and weeds to grow is less demanding on the soil than growing crops. I'm no agricultor and I've never studied that field (hehe field, get it?) so I have no idea how nitrogen fixation works, I was just taught in school that crop rotation was beneficial for ground renewal, that's why I was saying that. Thanks for the link I'll check it out.

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I was just taught in school that crop rotation was beneficial for ground renewal, that's why I was saying that. 

Crop rotation is important for the soil to regenerate. The soil "regenerates" since it's nutrients are not being used up by plants. I use the word plant here on purpose. All plants need nutrients to survive. Weeds are plants just like crops and will use up these nutrients just as crops will. Having a field of weeds in your fallow land would actually be worse than having empty land. The weed field would have a much easier time of spreading into the land that your crops are on and destroying those fields.

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