A (Reluctant) Farmer's Plea

[Lyrroth]

As far as I can tell literally nobody in this thread knows how farming works xd

as far as i can tell, you could explain it to people so idea turns from shitty into something constructive or are you just trolling and you dont know it yourself xd

i dont and i admit it, not even farming tbh lads

[Sevenless]

I do want to smack magic for his explanation, does that count? Bad magic no cookie!

Yes, rolling 3 times instead of 1 is going to give you the same average value over infinite generations, but we only need 1 of those rolls to replant the field. Since we just want the highest roll we get, the average doesn't matter only the best roll we got of the 3. If we rolled -5, 0, +5 each generation the average would be 0 which is expected with a -5>+5 roll range (assuming it's true dice and not weighted). But each generation we're gaining +5 because we replant the best roll. There's a very minor loss of time if we're doing 5 hour plants instead of multi location planting, but it's still negligeable compared to the benefits.

Like I said, this system is great for casual and non-faction villages. But absolutely minmaxing the system is annoying. Long run not doing the multi plant thing will leave you behind compared to top end factions. Personally I don't care, they're going to get ahead either way. But I can see why it frustrates people.

[SaltyCrate]

Where do you get this " 5 hour system" from? As far as I know you can plant your crops with 1 hour intervals, which take slightly more than 2 hours total, and get the same efficiency.

Loftar has explained the mechanic behind it, but it's kind of mathy so people simplify it. Basically every 5 hours the game rolls an RNG value and your crop +/- is based on it. As time passes, you gradually shift from that roll to the next one.

So if I roll +5 for the first roll and +/- 0 on the second (in 5 hours), right now planting will give me +5, in 2.5 hours planting will give me +2-3, in 5 hours it'll give me +0.

Can you link me where did he explain such a thing? Because it totally contradicts my experience, and I am somewhat sure that it is plain false.

[Sevenless]

Can you link me where did he explain such a thing? Because it totally contradicts my experience, and I am somewhat sure that it is plain false.

Mechanic Clarifications
-----------------------
Each batch of a crop which is planted in the same area (roughly two minimaps), time (roughly five hours), and of the same type(carrots, peas, barley, &c), will be given the same random quality modification uniformly, and planted tiles of that batch will thus all have their qualities affected in the same way. This was intended to reduce what we perceived as the simple hassle of having to inspect each seed stack individually, and then perform the rather boring operation of simply selecting the best one. If you wish to maintain different crop "strains" -- presumably to have more samples with different random seeds to select from when replanting -- you may do that by planting several different fields at distances in time or space. We are not entirely sure how farming and potential crop selection should ideally work to be the most fun and engaging. Feel free to discuss.

Qualities of Bee Skeps do not matter for the quality of their produce.

Again, mostly bug fixes, so no new hat this time.

Enjoy!

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=42730&hilit=farming

[Yorla]

2015 year though.

[Sevenless]

2015 year though.

Yup. Farming mechanics haven't been changed meaningfully since then to my knowledge. We're still using that system.

[MooCow]

I never had an issue raising qualities last world, and I didn't play the RNG timer bullshit. It's RNG. You're just playing random odds, and playing odds more doesn't make you win more, it's just more work. It's fine if you're in a village and you have several people on at various times in the day that can help manage it, but if you're alone or one of just two or three farmers, then don't kill yourself with the stress it can cause.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you pull the arm of the slot machine 100 times or 10,000 times, you're still down 10% because that's the house cut. The truth is that the more you pull it, the more likely you are to actually be down that 10% rather than be up or down from the asymptote. When it comes to crops, there is a positive bias of like 1-1.5q per generation, so playing the odds less frequently does mean you're going to have wider swings while raising quality, but in the end, everyone ends up at the same location assuming they farmed on the "server schedule" of the ideal growth times for a particular crop.

Because you 3x times the amount of seeds, by simply plating 3 random variations and picking the best, you change your probability from

-2   -1    0   +1   +2   +3   +4   +5
1/8  1/8  1/8  1/8  1/8  1/8  1/8  1/8

to

-2     -1      0     +1     +2     +3      +4      +5
1/512  7/512 19/512 36/512 61/512 91/512 127/512 169/512


your average raise changes from 1.5 to 3.47
YOU MORE THAN DOUBLE YOUR GAINS
that doubling effect get compounded every single crop cycle.

by the time you get to q 50 they are at q92, when you get to q1000, the are at q2290.

Now, all the sudden, you realize that you sometimes get 2-3 crops that hit the highest growth on the bunch. 92/512 to be exact. Just like the shedding of all of our crops hitting the same value increases our gains, shedding this too will increase our outputs. You will get better and better results the larger number separate random crops, although the returns vs extra work greatly diminishes the higher you go.

This is actually a huge deal, and the devs don't really care to fix it.

[DDDsDD999]

Said it before, current optimal quality system is retarded and forces bots. Millionth thread on the topic, and still don't see any change, :thinking:

[MagicManICT]

Because[...]

Now draw that out over 1000 days, not just 1000 plantings. The end results are still about the same. I know how the math works. That's why I don't beat my head against the wall with this nonsense. After a year, if your carrots are at q1000, and mine are q900, does it make that big of a difference? But maybe chance said mine are at q1000 and yours are only at q900. Given all other factors in the game, I'd rather speed my crops up via bee skeps or other factors that have come (and gone) over the years rather than play the wheel of fortune.

[ricky]

ok lets address some of the feedback given:

Geographic Variance:

Geographical randomness will feel like ass to most people, can almost guarentee it. Feels like ass with trees already. No one wants a turnip node, it's living location information invisible until a notable amount of investment goes into your base, etc.

increase geographic randomness
No no no, remove it, this was pure cruelty from the very beginning.

it's not ass. Keep in mind you aren't getting a Bad location for x crops. You can potentially get a Better location for x crops. If the growth rate is bound between 1 and x, you'll never have a speed slower than what is currently implemented. You can just have a better spot.

it appears the developers want desperately to include randomness in farming and treefarming. They've previously attemped random rolls per crop (seed sorting!), but that's easily gamed (and is), leaving a static crop growth per world. They've created realms which buff various speeds of crops, and if you weren't aware, crops already do have geographic speed variance. I'm asking to increase it to a point where over several dedicated months a village can attain an advantage in a certain crop. This, for the most part, is negated by the 5hr crop rotation that cropbots perform. (perhaps there already is a large enough variance to create market advantages, but we the players couldnt possibly know for sure)

So if I want to get a good place to plant grapes I should randomly put pclaims, walls, build treillis, plant stuff wait like a week, measure every growing time and then pick the best place hoping that my region is not just generally bad or repeat the same across continents.

Doesn't it sounds just a bit insane?

No, it's not insane. If you want to maintain the bleeding edge of crop quality to (presumably) keep up with your neighbors, then either they're going to have to do the same, or accept the fact someone might have better speeds on certain crops.
If you want to find the two dozen or so crop nodes that give 2x growth speed, be my guest. creating the infrastructure to support this would be beneficial to the game and the player would have to undertake some risk in transporting their goods back to their main location.

The fact is that if the developers want to create a variegated crop quality across the whole map, assigning quality rolls is not the answer. assigning geographic variance so difficult to game that it would be insane is the answer.

5 hour cycle is really unpleasent to minmax, great for everyone else. I don't think seed sorting is healthy either. Might as well just go to flat crop increase based on time planted (since we have decimals now), it would be functionally identical from player point of view if the game starts auto sorting/planting. Literally.

lots of folk are addressing how the 5hr system works, along with the stress that is the rolls associated with it so i'll make it clear here again: remove crop rolls and add a static +2 or +3 growth per harvest. no longer would we need to sort seeds (we do now as someone mentione in this thread, it's just per harvest and not per crop), we wouldnt need Xhr field rotations to ensure maximum quality (it's ambiguous, people arent sure how it works, and is gamed). In fact, there's already a system in place where crops left fully grown "save" time to roll over for the next planting, so people with day jobs don't have to replant ASAP to ensure their quality gain (or to get in on the 5hr field roll). static crop rolls, along with the "rollover" time fully grown crops have both fit well into the geographic variance angle to seed randomness.

gotta say this is very subjective... maybe a sign you've been playing too much the game...
personally the part i like the most is farming, to the point i keep thinking of farm designs, where flower fields would look better, where wheat fields would shine the most beautiful...

I almost put a * by my statement saying that this is subject to the user! True, some people really do enjoy farming! and the best part about this suggestion is that this doesnt affect how farmers who enjoy farming have to farm (besides maybe the 5hr rotation). if you like to log on and harvest your crops once a day, that's still an option if you stagger your fields. If crop flags are added, it's not necessary you use them. perhaps the only joy that I can think of being denied with an update like this is the joy of getting a *really* good crop roll if the variance is reduced or removed. As far as simply being able to farm though, those who love it shouldnt be adversely affected.

Now we have permanent plowed fields, auto harvesting, auto pickup, auto drinking, free "seed bags" that hold one extra seed, and almost no seed sorting, stock piles, and double the inventory size. Now that farming takes less than 1/50th of the work, people still suffer because their plots are 50x bigger. Jorb has mentioned this before, but it needs to be repeated.

People will expand their farms until they reach a point where they can't stomach it any more.

I mentioned in my OP that i have 10 9x9 fields. that's nothing. that's 810 total tiles of crops. I intentionally made my farm small (my whole settlement, actually) to ensure I would push it. they say "the path to hell is paved with good intentions", and building mapgrid sized farms is one of them.

As far as I can tell literally nobody in this thread knows how farming works xd

as far as i can tell you're talking out your ass xd. go pound sand or provide real structured feedback.