Asparagus

[qoonpooka]

The Greeks and Romans went bonkers for this stuff. It's only the shoots that are edible, and planting the stuff at the garden scale is a major investment. Can rely on familiar mechanics to brewers and animal breeders. Specifically I propose that it has a unique growth cycle to reflect the effort that goes into it.

1) Planted with a treeplanter's pot (when you plant the stuff IRL, you double-dig and lay a solid bed of compost because once you've got the bed established, you're not digging it up again for about ten years, so it pays huge dividends to get that planting right) instead of sown from seed directly. If you're worried about Q-bloat just don't have the pot/table Q do anything for it.

2) Once planted, it has a long maturation cycle, similar to grapes/hops/peppercorn - possibly even more like trees.

3) Like wheat/barley, does not interact with beehives.

4) Once mature, goes through a cycle of ten 'harvest' phases that are basically windows, several RL days apart, where the shoots may be harvested, should come with visual flagging, and be set to occur at different times during the RL (so that group play yields best rewards, but everyone's gonna get at least 3-4 cycles in their playtime).

5) After that the plant is spent and must be dug up/replanted - final stage after the yield cycles is when it goes to seed.

Asparagus shoots are extremely versatile for a variety of cooking. I'd suggest they contribute Psy/Con FEPs. (Psy because of how tricky they can be to plant/manage.)

Adds a more seasonal feel to farming, IMO. Moves away from 'twitch' farming.

[KeiKei]

i like it.

another rewarding drawn out thing to do like making steel or domesticating animals or making silk even

[synaris]

i like the idea, but i hate the end result. this would make people hate farming even more, and its already a pain to find people willing to farm. thats why so many people use bots.

+0

[Scilly_guy]

bump,
I've been thinking about starting an asparagus bed IRL, I'd like one to manage in game too, could be tricky and rewarding like OP or more passive and less rewarding, simply like a bush/tree which can be harvested annually for a "salad greens" perhaps or you could categorise it with carrots and cavebulbs as a tuber even though it is not, maybe a leaf?

+1

[Sevenless]

Lot of effort for something that's pretty similar to just gardening it in a pot.