How do you increase soil quality?

[cobaltjones]

Are you sure? Also, crop q shouldn't matter at all, as it's always +/- 5, hardcapped by your farming. If it were the general (farming+soil)/2 softcap I think that would be acceptable, as you'd still be able to net q 70 crops with 100 farming and only 40 soil.

Here's an example then:

Lets say you have 1000 farming, q50 soil. You plant a q50 seed, the max quality you can get when harvesting will be 50 + 5, which is over your soil q, so the final result is (55+50)/2 or 52.

Now, let's plant that q52 seed, the max q will be 57, over soil q again, so final result is (57+50)/2 or 53.

Third generation, planting q53, the max will be 58, final result (58+50)/2 or 54.

Fourth generation, planting q54, max of 59, final result (59+50)/2 or 54. And from here you can never increase. Farming in this example is never relevant since it only softcaps the result if the result is higher.

Of course, if the +/- 5 is added after the softcapping, it changes the numbers slightly to an absolute max of 60. ( (60+50)/2 + 5 = 60)

This is assuming no other parts of the formula have changed.

If that's the way it's implemented then that's dumb. Why would the q of the seed factor in to the softcap? Wouldn't it be (farming+soil)/2 not (seed+soil)/2? Doesn't that make more sense.

[Fantastication]

The seed quality is a hardcap. You cannot harvest crops of quality greater than the seed quality + 5.

If that quality is above either soil quality or farming skill, it gets softcapped (i.e. averaged with whichever is under the original harvested quality).

Otherwise, someone with a q1 seed, 1000 farming and q50 soil can then harvest q525 crop. Which defeats the purpose of having a soil softcap at all, you may as well just change it so the farming softcap is based on half your farming.

[cobaltjones]

Well I understand that, but I still don't think the q of the seed should factor into the cap. The way I'm imagining it is that the cap is strictly (farming+soil)/2, so that if you've got q40 soil and 100 farming, the highest q seed you could harvest from there would be q70. THEN the seed q comes into effect. If you've got a q25 seed then it'll harvest 20-30, and if you've got a 120 seed it'll harvest 70.

Makes sense to be but it's probably completely backwards of the way things are actually done.