Revamp crop farming

[Luanes]

I think the actual system is okay, when you put a seed on the ground you get the +5/-2 modifier for the seed quality. But it sucks when you get 2 - 3 downgrade in a row and you don't have that much time to play to plant 4 times in one day and just pick the better one.

So, my suggestion, is to give another way to increase the seed quality beside just planting.

What if we "study" the seed?

You take the seed and put in your study report and, after some time, the seed that you selected increased in +1 quality.

The time to study should be something like: the time to the seed be growth on a neutral ground and make it reduce the time based on the quality of the seed and farming.

example:

A seed take 3 days to be growth ( 72 hours)
And it's quality is 10.
You have 10 farming skill.
So the time reduced would be ( quality ) /( farming skill ) = (10)/(10) = 1 ( which means 100%, or no reduction).
So the total time to increase from 10 to 11 is 72 hours.

But now you got 100 farming and the same seed quality ( 10 ).
So th time reduced would be ( quality ) /( farming skill ) = (10)/(100) = 0,1 ( which means 90% reduction )
So the total time to increase from 10 to 11 is 7,2 hours.

This way you can always plant a many of your seeds and just take some and put on the study report, so, if you had a downgrade, you have at least some seeds which a guaranteed +1 quality in the same time the crop would take to grow (if you have enough farming skill ).

Problem: If we just use the seed, it will take only 50 seeds for slot ( 1 for tubers ;/ ) which i think "it's fine". But, along with this, we should be able to create an item that use 2 - 3 slots of our study report to put more seeds ( maybe 500 ? )

What do you think?

[Headchef]

I think it's an interesting idea but unsure if it is the way to go..

[Sevenless]

Wouldn't it just be easier to argue planted crops shouldn't go negative in value? 0>5 as the range instead of -2>5

It is frustrating to lose 3 quality rolls in a row. You need to keep stockpiles of old seed around just in case RNJesus hates you. With 0>5 as the new range, at least you aren't constantly worried about keeping seed backstock. Doesn't change gaming the system with multiple plants going in larger villages, but eh. I feel it'd solve a fair bit of the frustration for the ever day farmer. Long term I'd prefer to see the "x4 as much work for 10% better quality gain" turned into an actual mechanic rather than gaming the mechanics.

[Luanes]

Well, It's fun to have this possibility ( downgrade many times in a row). The thing is, we can avoid that with some effort ( planting in different times by now and saving seeds). I just want to have another way to have a guaranteed improvement.

[ZanathKariashi]

Could introduce fertilizer.

You have your base crop quality rate based on merely tilled ground.

However, by "planting" some mulch/shit on the ground before sowing, you can get a guaranteed quality boost for several harvests (1 harvest worth per 10 points of quality, minimum of 1), with the boost being based on the quality of mulch used. Any fertilizer will improve the base quality by 1., 25+ mulch would increase the base by 2. (or you could have it affect the land for a flat amount of time, though per harvest would be the most logical).

Which could help offset bad luck or accelerate quality growth for the extra effort.

in the case of trellised crops, you can simply add more mulch every 6 days to improve the quality of the trellised crop by however much the mulch value is worth, allowing you to slowly build up their quality without having to constantly replant.

Oh, and now that we have some simple pathfinding, Auto-harvest/plant for trellis please.

[Granger]

What again was the reason to remove individual quality rolls per plant in favour of per field/some hour planting window?

Should it have been the now put to rest tri-quality system (that lead to overflow the inventory with partly filled seed stacks as of all the possible random combinations) then the 'one quality change per planting period' should also be put to rest and the old quality-per-plant (which with only one quality can only lead to, worst case, 8 partly filled seed stacks) be brought back.

[qoonpooka]

Also, seeds stack now, and average their qualities. Which really dilutes the downsides to one-roll-per-plant.

[Sevenless]

What again was the reason to remove individual quality rolls per plant in favour of per field/some hour planting window?

Should it have been the now put to rest tri-quality system (that lead to overflow the inventory with partly filled seed stacks as of all the possible random combinations) then the 'one quality change per planting period' should also be put to rest and the old quality-per-plant (which with only one quality can only lead to, worst case, 8 partly filled seed stacks) be brought back.

Seed sorting via botted clients was too much of an advantage. Also, the current mechanism does not require more than a single tile of crop to be farmed, where with RNG fields you'd want to keep more around for better results (usually 10?). Not sure the second argument is important given the volume required though tbh.

Mind you, we've incorporated "dumb" botting mechanics like that into the UI for a while now so eh. Seed sorting does require significantly more UI interfacing than the current, even if it's well coded with auto sorters.

[Granger]

Seed sorting does require significantly more UI interfacing than the current, even if it's well coded with auto sorters.

Seed sorting for everything but massive non-seed fields requires 1-2 containers and a client that supports moving-all-of-this-[quality-asc/-desc] (which is what every custom client supports) and 10 seconds for a few clicks. If you use the official client without even quality display without 2sec mouseover... sure, you have a point - but then we wou,d need to get rid of way more in the game as using the official client is such a disadvantage.

[qoonpooka]

Seed sorting does require significantly more UI interfacing than the current, even if it's well coded with auto sorters.

Seed sorting for everything but massive non-seed fields requires 1-2 containers and a client that supports moving-all-of-this-[quality-asc/-desc] (which is what every custom client supports) and 10 seconds for a few clicks. If you use the official client without even quality display without 2sec mouseover... sure, you have a point - but then we wou,d need to get rid of way more in the game as using the official client is such a disadvantage.

Amber, at least in World 7, had mouse-wheel quality sorting. Now it's got shift-alt-click for that and I think mousewheel does recency, so yeah, I'm not sure why botting was such an advantage beyond the massive amount of time saved manually harvesting each square - which is an advantage that remains.