Silkworms on Trees

[ShadowSeaWolf]

This is an idea I had after loosing my silkworms on the herbalist table.

What if, instead of putting silk worm eggs on the herbalist tables, you instead took a male and female silk moth and attached them to a mulberry tree. For example you can right click on the mulberry tree and it will bring up an option to attached the moths, or maybe just click and drag them to the tree. Some time would pass, maybe one in-game day, and then the tree would become covered with silk moth eggs. At this point you would no longer be able to gather anything from the tree, like branches, fruit, or bark. The eggs would eventually hatch, and over time the worms would eat the leaves on the mulberry tree. Eventually the tree would become covered with the silk worm cocoons, and you would be able to gather them from the tree. Then you can wait for them to hatch and re-attach them to the trees or unravel them to gain silk.

However to eliminate the ease of getting silk, the worms could also be eaten by birds or dry up in the sun or something. Then maybe some things could be put in to help prevent your worms from dying, or you'd have to check it regularly to scare away birds.

This would help people who can't play all the time get silk without loosing their worms on the herbalist tables. Plus it would be slightly more realistic than simply leaving eggs on a herbalist table, then feeding them leaves in a cupboard.

[sabinati]

hmm, it's an interesting idea... could be a limiting factor in silk production. currently you can just have one nice tree provide all your leaves, but doing it this way would necessitate larger amounts of mulberry trees.

the main reason i don't do silk anymore is that i no longer have time to log on in the morning to move worms to a cupboard, this would remove that annoying "must log in" mechanic but still make it somewhat of a challenge to do silk.

[OvShit]

What if the max ql of worms would be 1/2 of tree ql? Then you have to choose whether you want safe silk or good ql silk.

[Potjeh]

This would kill the silk market by devaluing silk. Hell, linen would be worth more. Silk is supposed to be high end good, so it should be hard. It's why steel isn't fire and forget either.

[mvgulik]

Then you can wait for them to hatch and re-attach them to the trees or ...

mmm.
"Then you can wait for the silk worm cocoons to hatch ... at witch point the tree start spawning flying silk moths, and if you have catched them again ... you can re-attach them to a (healthy ?) trees again."

This would kill the silk market by devaluing silk. Hell, linen would be worth more. Silk is supposed to be high end good, so it should be hard. It's why steel isn't fire and forget either.

Kinda agree with this.

[ShadowSeaWolf]

What if the max ql of worms would be 1/2 of tree ql? Then you have to choose whether you want safe silk or good ql silk.

I dont really see why the ql of the tree would matter, though the leaves would, and would be applied the same as it is now. So there wouldn't be much difference between the original way, and this way.

This would kill the silk market by devaluing silk. Hell, linen would be worth more. Silk is supposed to be high end good, so it should be hard. It's why steel isn't fire and forget either.

Sorry but could you explain this a little better, because I'm not entirely clear on how silk would be devalued. This way it would probably take twice as long for people to get silk as the way its set up now, only its better for people who cant get on all the time or forget about their silkworms. This method would be best for patient people, which nearly no one is, so the silk market would remain intact, wouldn't it? Also you have to think of the drawbacks of this, like how some worms would probably be eaten by birds or whatever. If theres something I'm not considering or have mistaken, please fill me in on the details.

[Granger]

Making silk isn't hard. It is time consuming (the 'pick leafs' part) and forces you to login twice per day (and the server being up then) to keep it running.

So to modify the OP idea:
Mulberry trees chould be seeded with hatched worms, not with moths (since they would fly away).

Dinner time duration for worms can stay as-is, could be implemented as a single counter.
As soon as the worms turn into cocoons you can pick them from (but not reattach) the tree to unravel them.
Make the tree need a decay hit to regenerate leafs after the worms have eathen before being able to accept new eggs.
Leaving the cocoons on the tree will lead to moths launching from the tree (for a nice optical effect in the world, and a game of run and catch in case you want more eggs, moths would need to be made persistent for this to work though so they survive server reboots).

In case you want to make it harder:
Have the eggs not hatch in case they are not on a herbalist table placed outside (so they get some warmth from the sun) when it's time for them to turn into worms.
Let tree q drop one point (down to q10) each time a moth cycle is done (since the worms chew away on the tree, damaging it).
To make silk regional (in case we get climate zones some day) the turning of eggs into worms could be prohibited in areas with wrong temperature (or q of moths drops).

How many eggs a tree could hold is up for discussion, maybe draw up to 10 eggs from your inventory when using 'seed eggs' to attach them to the tree?

This would:
a) make it easy on Loftar since no new interface needed, just flower menu options to 'seed slikmoth eggs' and 'pluck cocoons' to be added to the mulberry trees.
b) take away the boring task of picking leafs to fill cupboard after cupboard
c) end massproduction of silk using the combination of one tree, a shitload of cupboards and tables plus a restless robot doing all the clicking
d) would enrich the world through the optical effect of launching moths

Please discuss.

[ShadowSeaWolf]

I agree with most of your ideas Granger.

However, maybe instead of attaching the moths or worms to the trees it should be the eggs. It would make better since than giving your moths the possibility of flying off, but easier than leaving eggs on the table and putting the worms on later. Also most moths and butterflies lay their eggs on trees anyway (im not entirely sure about silk moths though...) so it would make a lot more since to put the eggs on the tree.

As for the cocoons those weren't exactly my best thought out plan Maybe it should be done so if you want them to turn into moths you just leave them on the trees and not attach them. However that also could be irritating when they fly off it, so I think you should be able to leave them on or take them of and let them hatch into moths. That may or may have not been what you were trying to say though.

I'm not so sure about the trees losing quality though. Trees are pretty tough, so unless there were a lot of worms on it I don't think it would make much of a difference to them. Maybe it should depend on the number of worms you put on it. Like the max you can put on it would be say... 20. Then when you remove the 20 worms when they turn into cocoons the tree would die if its low quality or just loose some of its quality. It you put around 10 worms on it then it might lose a few points. Something like that maybe. Any thoughts?

[mvgulik]

Making silk isn't hard. It is time consuming (the 'pick leafs' part) and forces you to login twice per day (and the server being up then) to keep it running.

I think your underestimation the "isn't hard" part in relation to the "time consuming" and "login twice per day".
Both effect the general available of silk.
Or: it makes is not so easy to maintain a constant silk production. Unless the player is systematic and dedicated.

[Granger]

Making silk isn't hard. It is time consuming (the 'pick leafs' part) and forces you to login twice per day (and the server being up then) to keep it running.

I think your underestimation the "isn't hard" part in relation to the "time consuming" and "login twice per day".
Both effect the general available of silk.
Or: it makes is not so easy to maintain a constant silk production. Unless the player is systematic and dedicated.

Having spend more than 1k RL hours on world 3 with my main toon alone i think that i know when i say that silk production isn't hard, just time consuming.
It can be done while having a normal job, since you have an 8h window to move the worms after an 8h waiting time after putting eggs on the table. So drag eggs to the tables in the morning (~10 minutes if you're slow) and move the worms to the cupboards when coming home after work, fill them with leafs (or you have already done that the day before when you cleaned out the cocoons to either hatch or unravel them).

After the setting up the environment (tables, cupboards in mansion cellar) you can easily create a merchants robe per day without having to resort to having no life.
Setting up a silkshop inside a mine you are only limited by the time it takes to cook the cocoons (since while doing that you can do the food gathering for the worms with an alt).

It is just that the most boring (and best to automate) part of time consuming is to port to tree, pluck a full inventory, click 5 times till you have the cupboard open, wheel in the leafs, rinse and repeat. Unraveling cocoons at least gives more idletime inbetween, and LP.

So the idea to get rid of the repetitive task to pick leafs is imho a very good idea, doing it in a way that environment limits amount of silk which can be created (by limiting the amount of cocoons which can be created per tree and interval) is a good idea. Having one mulberry tree being able to cather for 50 herbalist tables 3 times a day isn't that convincing.

I agree with most of your ideas Granger.

However, maybe instead of attaching the moths or worms to the trees it should be the eggs. It would make better since than giving your moths the possibility of flying off, but easier than leaving eggs on the table and putting the worms on later.

I thought about seeding the trees with eggs too (started with that idea).

This would make silk easier (since you only have to interact once to gain worms), but i wouldn't complain. You would no longer need herbalist tables though, which in my implementation would be worse than now since they would be required to be outside (=hit by decay) instead of being crammed away in a cellar or a mine, build once with high enough q and then forgot about till next world reset.

As for the cocoons those weren't exactly my best thought out plan Maybe it should be done so if you want them to turn into moths you just leave them on the trees and not attach them. However that also could be irritating when they fly off it, so I think you should be able to leave them on or take them of and let them hatch into moths. That may or may have not been what you were trying to say though.

So in case you would have to take cocoons off the tree, how should they turn into moths?
And what should happen to the cocoons you leave on a tree?

I'm not so sure about the trees losing quality though. Trees are pretty tough, so unless there were a lot of worms on it I don't think it would make much of a difference to them. Maybe it should depend on the number of worms you put on it.

Imho the trees need to have a limit on amount of worms they can hold, plus they need to suffer - else you could scale silk production by just planting enough trees once and be done with it (leading to others in this thread stating that silk will be worth less than linnen being right).