Decaying plough is a mindless inconvenience?

[Shask]

I don't know what the mechanics behind the decaying of ploughed fields is, but can you please have some sort of order/timing to it? Currently it just decays randomly, makes your field look ugly as hell, and is just a mindless inconvenience to go and plough the little bits that have decayed. How about decay it after a plant has been harvested 3x on it? So an organised farmer would have 3 crops from a ploughed field, and then know he will have to plough it after the 3rd harvest.

[Garath]

I dont think this is needed. Just because it doesnt look nice or is inconvenient... well, just like being killed, thats H&H life, it isnt nice and regular, most of the time

[Shask]

I dont think this is needed. Just because it doesnt look nice or is inconvenient... well, just like being killed, thats H&H life, it isnt nice and regular, most of the time

Well, you could say that H&H is a real life simulator. You don't see farmers getting out their ploughs for a tiny little 5m^2 of unploughed land, they do it all at once. In real life you could say that a
ploughed field decays in a regular fashion.

[Garath]

currently you have to prepare a square once and thats it untill it decays, which doesnt happen fast or often and is only very noticable in a large field. On the other hand, IRL, people have to prepare land for different crops in different ways, and every time before they can plant. If we look more to reality, the growing would take longer and the growing and harvesting would make the land "unploughed" again

[smieszek_xD]

Although I belive this topic has been talked already in other threads I would like to add a word here. I strongly agree with Shask. If you are working on small fields you may not even notice it but on bigger fields it could be really annoying. Walking with plow to 'patch' all that little tiles add to many clicks for farming which is itself already good way to get carpal tunel sydrome. Many times decayed tiles appear even before I finish plowing whole field. I don't think reality aspect should be the main reason here, but since we are testing an alpha version of the game and we are supposed to make it more playable I think changing decay of plowed fields could spare many annoying clicks. I am not saying that this is most important thing to fix, but it would be really nice if it could be changed in some update.
Just my opinion.

[Potjeh]

If anything is changed, *whole* fields should revert to unploughed. Ploughs are the only metal sink in the game, and value of metal is unstable enough as it is.

[Garath]

Maybe the whole plowed field (or the seeded grass area) should start decaying around the edges first, with a % chance based on how many 'unchanged' tiles are adjectent to them? you'd still have to replow, but it would be more confined to one area of a big field, the outer ring. Removing it alltogether is not a good idea, think of places being plowed in the wilderness and never returning to normal state... the whole world would be plowed after some time

[Danno]

I'm sure I've seen a topic like this months ago. I'd also like if the decay started at the edges and ate its way in. I usually don't even waste time lifting a plow and carrying it near the patch or ruining my plow by running it straight through the field; I just plow it by hand with a waterflask or two in my pockets.

[Shask]

I'm not saying that we should not have plough decay, just that it should be ordered in some way (right now it's random).

I think the best would be to have it based on the number of crops grown on it e.g. 3 crop harvests before decay, for example:

A farmer ploughs a large field -> Plants/Harvests crop 1 -> Plants/Harvests crop 2 -> Plants/Harvests crop 3 -> Whole field decays and has to be repeated from the start

Compare this to the current system:

A farmer ploughs a large field -> Plants/Harvests crop 1 -> Random pieces of decayed ploughed land are scattered throughout his field, giving him a headache and proving to be a major annoyance to patch over -> Plants/Harvests crop 2 -> See 2nd

So in short, any piece of ploughed land would have a maximum of 3 harvests on it, and it would decay. This would allow farmers to plan their fields and actions better.

And Potjeh, this system actually causes more decay of ploughed land, the difference is it's not random. So it's a win/win situation - the metal sink is bigger and it's less of a headache for farmers.

[Lefty]

How about when you harvest the crop, you must replow? Eh? Eh?