by Sevenless » Wed Feb 14, 2024 2:26 am
Adding pointless detail since I was testing it this world:
Potential crop quality change is proportional to the number of days between planting and first possible harvest. This causes problems for leeks for example, because their first harvestable stage only gives 1 leek so it can't be used for quality gain. This is based off the default time required though, any crop growth speed nodes effectively act to increase the rate of quality gain. Mind you, unless you're a bot most of the speed node boosts get lost anyway so it's not super relevant unless you hit a huge one. My carrots this world grow in 3 days instead of the base 4, so that does help.
Crop "quality rolls" were originally supposed to need "5 hours, or 3 minimaps distance" to be "completely unrelated". My testing this world did not support this however, it seemed that only quality of seed and time of planting mattered. Distance had no effect within 4 minimaps. I did not organize any more extreme tests (same low seed Q, different provinces, different continents, etc) but for the sake of any sane person you can consider it to be purely time based.
If you have huge fields (I think I do 2.8k or so tiles of carrots) and get distracted mid plant you'll definitely notice the quality difference as a gradient over time. The gradient comes as the possible quality in the field travels from the last 5 hour roll to the next type idea.