Plot efficiency

[32012323]

Hi there,

I'd really like experienced players views on increasing plot efficiency, I get a kick out of building things, as I know that a few of you do.

So while I've been waiting for the new restart and my next semester of uni to kick in next week, I wanna try to get my shit together with a plan as the first days of gameplay were pretty damn productive with my main.



This is as far as I've gotten without any practical application, I have about half of a similar plot design already constructed but I've decided it's wasted time putting any more effort into it. I also realize the brick wall is overkill, but you have to understand I'm not in a rush to get it done, that's just a finishing touch and another excuse to LP grind. Also, this entire plot will be claimed, I'm way ahead of you and should the time come or the location I start building in be particularly rich in materials I could substitute the plot as a keep within a village, which I'm not keen on but I hardly think I'll be able to maintain the plot (decay screws with me) and balance my real life at the same time all by myself.

I was wondering about a few things, and I hope I can get some helpful suggestions:

- Will closing these sections with palisades restrict efficiency in regard to harvesting in particular? For instance, I'm sick to dead of my 5x7 wheat field providing my character with a single 'return from the brink of starvation'. I'd really like to improve this to the point that I can actually save food for a rainy day, long expeditions, trade and training my alt, is 20x20 asking too much? What ideas do you have for crop sizes so that I can allocate enough room to achieve these goals?

- Similarly will adding connecting tunnels and gates between each section be more of a hindrance?

- With regard to these blocks left with a question mark, do you have any suggestions for practical use? Whether it be for an alt or the crafting main.

- Would it be more practical, assuming I had corridors between each lot, to plant trees along the pathways? Saves space and looks good I suppose.

Umm, I dunno what else to add, those are the thoughts I've got bouncing around in my head right now, if you've got some suggestions to increase productivity that hasn't already been posted on the forums please feel free to share.

Thanks ahead of time!

[Rhiannon]

I'll throw in my regards to your questions.

I feed a 5 person village on a farm area that contains each crop in a 8 by 8 plot for each. The size doesn't matter too much, what matters more is how often you harvest it...are you on enough to harvest every day? With full nature? We have a tavern in which all foods are placed for town sharing. The ability to have all kinds of foods help as well, meaning we aren't dependant on just 1 type of food. SO consider your needs and available foods in determining how large a plot you need...likewise YES, blocking each section off with walls is such a huge waste of time and complicates everything way too much. I would only have 1 wood wall and then a brick wall around the whole settlement. This should be enough without all the tediousness of both building and dealing with a maze within the setllement. Hopefully with the changes, then in this next reset, there will be less need for such overwhelming game klilling paranoia.

As for the unallocated sqaures. You seem to have everything covered, although I do think your "Farm and trees" area is not big enough for both. Perhaps allocate that area to farm crops only, and then allocate some of the corner squares to teees, considering the time it takes for them to mature and the room they need. I would also allocate 1 of those corner squares to be a residential area for member cabins. (if that is you did it like we do, we all have our cabins together, under 1 trusted member's claim for extra protection within the city protection.)

[32012323]

Hey Rhiannon,

Thanks for the quick response, and I agree closing off each section of the plot to its own quarters is incredibly limiting in the sense that I'm wastefully throwing tiles, the intention I originally had with the design is to bottleneck thieves and confine them only to the area they manage to break into.

This isn't so much an issue now considering the reset will be levelling the playing field for everybody, and I doubt somebody will be cranking out 40 STR and a pickaxe within the first week. I'm just an extremely paranoid person and I'd like to be ready in the event that I can't give the plot the attention it deserves.

With regards to the harvesting, I was clocking so much game time I'd be online before the crops had time to recuperate, then I'd continue from there with three seeds per harvest. I'd often have to substitute with chicken genocide at a nearby floral terrain and fishing (when I was desperate) to keep my character from starving, which is the reason for my crop problem. I guess bigger is the better approach when dealing with these circumstances, right?

Is a single palisade good enough? Have you guys had to deal with griefers or potential aggression before in the village?

Thanks for the help!

[Rhiannon]

Because of our loocation and lack of bothering other people, we have had no griefing, and maybe only 1 or 2 little theivery items (I had 2 q112 tree pots and a hq herbalist table stolen as they were both sitting just outside the village authoriy), aside from that no, we've had no griefing or theives ever. I think with the reset, the long long grind griefers will need to do to become greifers now (no sitting on a boat shooting bears no more..lol). I would indeed try to allow the game to be more peaceful and try to not be too paranoid. I would also suggest making sure to plant you an apple and mulbrerry tree inside your village so you can always pick them and never have to worry about starvation. I'm like you as well, I'm on so much I rarely MISS watching a crop grow before my eyes...LOL Lisewise be sure to get a couple chicken coops, always a good source of chicken meat in a starvation pinch. With the huge selection of foods now, you shouldn't have the starvation problem anymore. Especially if you be sure to plant a couple fruit trees in town for easy acccess.

If theives can get into your brick wall or wood wall they can get into anything...so overcompensation only wastes your time as they don't really care...if they want to grief they will find a way no matter what defenses you put up. Once you have the town authority you can collect scents if they do.

[32012323]

Those are some pretty valid points, I may as well just make it one big block, stick 2-3 doors and then brick wall a few tiles ahead when the time comes. You're right, if a griefer ends up getting through the brick and palisades what's one more to them just to gain access to another area?

Appreciate the help Rhiannon, thanks!

[Rhiannon]

Those are some pretty valid points, I may as well just make it one big block, stick 2-3 doors and then brick wall a few tiles ahead when the time comes. You're right, if a griefer ends up getting through the brick and palisades what's one more to them just to gain access to another area?

Appreciate the help Rhiannon, thanks!

Exactlly,if they are that hell-bent (not to mention bored, unimaginative, lazy, and childish..lol) to get inside your settlement for whatever, they will do it. And as you said, if they can breach the wood wall, or the brick one or both, then one more wont matter nor stop them. So all that mazing and division within your settlement just serves to waste all your time and trees. I've been here quite a while, and even the admtted griefers have stated they usually (usually) just messed with those who messed with others or started crap with them. Just find a nice corner of the wrld and tend to your own business and I think the majority of folks leave everyone else alone. Truth be told, we never have managed to finish our brick wall in all these months (sheer laziness), not mention losing 2 of the gate keys = left open to the wild..lol) and still haven't had much problem with anyone.

[Potjeh]

Why do you need that much space for metalworks? And what *is* winery? Grapes go in the the farm lot, and you can fit the wine press and a couple of barrels anywhere. Your livestock area, on the other hand, is a bit too small, if you're planning on fitting the coops in there two.

It's easiest to give tips by example, so here's my farm:


The place is roughly 50x20 tiles. Just outside the farm is my tree lot, taking about 20 x 20 tiles (didn't think of it when I was building the wall).

Anyway, everything is situated by one of the two movement lines. There's the central path, and the path around the pens. You want to keep these main arteries straight to make it easier to move around in times of lag. You also want to have as few of them as possible, because they take up space. The less space you use on your farm, the less time you will spend on walking around, which increases your efficiency.

Crops all go together, makes it easier to harvest them, and it lets you fine-tune your production by changing the end rows to the neighbour crop (for example, I found that I don't have enough pumpkins so I changed two wheat rows into pumpkin rows). My crop area has just three more rows beyond what you see - one each for grapes, hops and hemp. You don't really need that much of those (well, you don't need hemp at all, but I like to have everything). Carrots and onions aren't needed in large quantities either, so one row of each is sufficient. Poppies are similar, but since they grow slower I used two rows to be on the safe side. Tea is mostly decoration. Anyway, with these fields I get each day a cupboard of flour, 10 linen and enough auxiliary crops for all my baking needs. The pumpkins alone can feed all the animals you see here. Seed sorting chests go along the central path, so you never have to walk far from the field. I'd like to stress that you should avoid having too large fields, because that is counter-productive to quality raising.

Animals need a buffer zone between their pens and the outer wall, to make sure that newborn calves and lambs don't spawn outside your wall. This buffer can be used for coops or fruit trees, as you see. Troughs should be next to the crops and sorting chests, so you don't have to navigate any obstacles to fill them.

The mansion serves as the general storage and workshop - anvil, crucible, herbalist tables, barrels and a ton of cupboards are inside. On the other end are two cabins, southern one is cheeseworks, northern one silkworks. As you can see, there's a mulberry planted right by the silkworks door, to make it easier to feed the worms. Cupboards for growing worms are on ground floor, so you don't have to enter cellar when feeding them (can be slow when the game is laggy), and the cellar is for breeding cupboards and the loom. Cauldron and spinning wheel go on top floor, to cut down on walking when you unravel and spin. Cheeseworks has cauldron, tubs, cupboards for guts and empty trays, a barrel of vinegar and a bunch of racks, nothing that needs explaining.

My kiln is to the south of cheeseworks. That needs to be moved next to the oven, because waterfront is just outside the gate. The coops by the oven need to be moved next to the other coops. The mulberry tree there needs to be replaced by a high quality fir for branches. The oven stays there, because cooking ingredients are in the mansion.

Yeah, I realize I just described how my own farm works, but I hope you can get some useful ideas from it.

[minck1]

The pumpkins alone can feed all the animals you see here.

Will pumpkins be available on the new map?

[32012323]

I wanted to pay you the compliment earlier Potjeh, but my farming layout mimicks yours from what I was able to see in another thread (I think it was the animal efficiency thread), with a few alterations since I was pretty much slumming on a two week old character, like straw baskets for seeds and crops instead of chests and two log cabins for storage before the mansion could be built. It's a pretty efficient design you've had going on your plot, hats off.

The only reason I'd wanted a big space on the winery lot was for show, for instance, a mansion and mock it up like a tavern for general stuffing about, but to be honest I don't think I want it any more. Way too much time and effort for one mansion let alone two, I was learning that the hard way over the last week.

My coops were built as a buffer unwittingly, I had no idea at the time about the calves spawning outside the wall, thankfully they hadn't. I honestly believed it was just being more efficient with the tiles you have on your lot.

I do want to ask about the carrots though, since they're the easiest source of PER food I can reasonably acquire without too much effort. Do you plant/harvest less carrots because your farming alt has no interest in prospecting, or is it because of the ready access to butter, eggs and milk to create better PER food? Herds would maul me since I had no access to metal armor, higher combat skills/stats and violent lag storms mid-fight, so I had no access to any livestock related goods, also I was waaaay out in the wilderness (we're talking level IX animals).

The design I'd sketched up only represented walled off plots though, depending on each respective plot's requirements and subject to my paranoia I would have had them connect to each other through gates and corridors eventually. It was made with the intention of supporting 5-10 players self-sufficiently without relying on other foods/items out of desparation like I was saying earlier in the topic, as well as trying my best to visualize it as a keep. But after checking out your design and considering Rhiannon's suggestions I can see some holes forming in the idea already, it might be best to keep resources expended on this place left to a minimum.

Thanks for the suggestions, you've been a great help!

[Rhiannon]

Very nice setup Potjeh, I'm a bit more decorative and so not quite as efficient, My stuff is a bit more spread out, and of course like I said (decorative) we have a huge "Oriental gardens" section with decortaive trees and flower beds (using poppies and flax) in and around the village idol. I admit our village and the way I have it set up would probably only score a 60 out of a possible 100 on the effieciency scale as I spend way too much time playing the Babylonian decorator...lol

I agree on the winery...grapes and hops for beer and wine should just be with all the other crops in the farm section. Keep your workstations where you use them most, like our tavern is right next to the ovens, sausage grinder in the tavern celler, all raw materials are brought to the cooking area which is close to the farm plots which is by the tavern. Always locate the appropriate tree close as you can to the needed workstation. Our highest quality tree is next to our metal area which contains highest quality kiln, forges, smelter ect. So that it's branches are close for fuel. Likewise with keeping highest quality mulberry tree next to where you do your silk work. So we followed most of your stated advice with our village, just not as compact or effecient but following all the basic foundational guidelines you mentioned. Lots of good advice there for village design, just factor in your own decorative flairs and desires, but follow the basic principles Potjeh mentions.

I'm one of those who likes a lot of decorative flair so don't come anywhere close to the efficiency of Potjeh, but only because all my areas are alot farther apart to make room for all the "show"..lol But they do follow his basic principles.

To the carrots, I love my carrots, specially when too lazy to cook carrot cake, I found carrots to be a good source of perception for my ranging, though I did do plenty of carrot cake, I mostly just chowed down the lazy on raw carrots to get my per to 50 (after that it can become tedious but sandbox = time so I was in no hurry).

Regarding pumpkins, yes I would like to know that as well, never seen wild pumkins, I assume there will be a wild spawn added? I do like my pumpkins for animal feed and the panckaes.