jorb wrote:Each time a crop increases a growth stage it checks for a beehive. If it finds one that beehive ticks up +1 (burst/use/call it what you want), and the time toward the next growth stage is reduced for the crop in question. If the beehive has been used 50 times it cannot be used again until it has regenerated. It regenerates on average 6 uses per hour.
(In case anyone's wondering, this post is old but I've confirmed the mechanics still work as described because of my stupid turnips)
There are many instances when players will plant more than 50 tiles of the same crop together (animal fodder requires 1000s of tiles). Basically all crops only tick 1 growth stage per day. Each hive can only pollinate 50 tiles in a burst, so it's 1 hive every other row of 25 tiles. Hives reach roughly 13 tiles in either direction this this is using their radius/charges about as effectively as possible.
This results in kind of silly looking bulk fields like this:
Letting hives store an entire 24hrs of production would mean I get to cut the number of hives in half and I think this looks a bit better:
Side note:
Also I think average player wildly misunderstands how beehives work and put way less hives down than they should if they want to fully pollinate their crops. With how big the radius is vs how few tiles within that radius it will actually pollinate it's not very intuitive.
Some kind of interface with the hive that gives feedback on how much it can pollinate is an option. Reducing the radius is something I absolutely don't want, but it would reduce what people expect from a hive. And the other possible answer would be higher tiers of beehives that have the same radius but pollinate more tiles.