Crop quality keeps dropping despite high farm level.

[Vroomfondle]

My concern was the -5/+2. It seems it was unfounded. I threw together a little simulation in python. I ran it with several different soil qualities, plot sizes, seed qualities, and iterations from 10 to 1000. Seed quality will still increase after soil quality as long as you replant the best seeds harvested from a plot. With the smaller plot sizes (<10 or so) the rng can be a bit brutal, but overall increases will be seen. That is with a standard 3 seed harvest. I didn't try it with tea.

I too was hoping for something along the lines of (soilQ + seedQ)/2 where you would see an immediate effect with better soil since the other resources give immediate effects, but this isn't as terrible as I initially believed.

[Zirikana]

by logic a q5 soil should RUIN that seed

That's not so much logic as assumption. I actually disagree, and find the idea of crop q approaching soil q at a steady, constant rate over many generations due to random walk from the RNG, regardless of absolute q values, to be just fine. Any other alternatives are just arguing about the rate at which this happens.

Seed quality will still increase after soil quality as long as you replant the best seeds harvested from a plot.

Really? you mean to say that regardless of what relative q values you put in for seeds and soil, the seed q always increases in the long run? Or do you just mean that it occasionally happens over some iterations? I find the first hard to believe, and the second perfectly acceptable.

Also, in your simulation, let's say your plot size is N, then do you replant the best N seeds from the entire harvest of 3N seeds in the next generation, or does each individual tile get the best seed from the three harvested from that patch alone?

[cobaltjones]

prayer of life got removed. the rest of your logic is pretty flawed as well. gg.

How is it pretty flawed? Under the current system, if I've got a q90 seed, it makes ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE if I plant that seed in q5 soil or q85 soil. How does that make any sense at all?

math is pretty hard, huh

How am I wrong?

[Vroomfondle]

Seed quality will still increase after soil quality as long as you replant the best seeds harvested from a plot.

Really? you mean to say that regardless of what relative q values you put in for seeds and soil, the seed q always increases in the long run? Or do you just mean that it occasionally happens over some iterations? I find the first hard to believe, and the second perfectly acceptable.

Also, in your simulation, let's say your plot size is N, then do you replant the best N seeds from the entire harvest of 3N seeds in the next generation, or does each individual tile get the best seed from the three harvested from that patch alone?

Harvest the whole plot, and refill the whole plot with your best seeds. I haven't graphed it or anything, but yes. I always saw increases. The smallest sample set I used was 10 tiles over 10 iterations (q100 soil, q100 seeds). Small plots of things like Tea and pumpkins may be more vulnerable, but everything else seems fine. btw, I based the simulation purely on the chat logs from IRC. +5/-5 up to soil quality, and -5/+2 after. If there is some other mechanic is involved it wasn't taken into account. I used random.randint(-5,2), so yeah...if a different method is used...

[sabinati]

The problem with the current implementation, is that once you've got high Q seeds (Prayer of Life anyone?) soil quality becomes absolutely useless. Planting q100+ seeds? Well why bother seeking out a decent q80 soil spot to set up your farm? Just find the nearest soil patch you can and go to town. Also, because it's +2/-5, it's in your best interest to plant absolutely massive fields in order to have the best chance of getting those few raised seeds. Yeah that sounds smart.

Either make it an actual softcap where soil q plays an important role and increase in values is slowed but still possible [(farming+soil)/2], or make it a strict hardcap and allow us a way of increasing soil quality through fertilization or another new method.

As it stands the +2/-5 situation is fucking retarded and I'm just amazed that anyone would actually think it would be a decent way to integrate soil quality into farming.

how are you going to get those q100+ seeds to begin with? crop improvement will be glacial speed with max +2 increase per generation. people with good soil will be able to raise their seeds to soil quality quickly, after that it will be max +2 per gen, and given the distribution will probably average +1 on a good gen.

how are you going to upkeep quality on that absolutely massive field? you must have some great faith in the RNG.

[(farming+soil)/2] is actually a hardcap of soil + 5, hth.

[Zamilpen]

The only thing soil does is changing the slope of quality change from 5 to 2 if Seed Q > Soil Q. Pretty much it gives the HQ soil node owner a headstart.

[Gedrean]

The only thing soil does is changing the slope of quality change from 5 to 2 if Seed Q > Soil Q. Pretty much it gives the HQ soil node owner a headstart.

Not so much a headstart as a giant advantage. If you own (and sufficiently pally or brickwall off) a substantial soil node, you basically are going to be the only one able to make those level crops for a good distance around, giving you a hell of an advantage over your neighbors. If it were a head start it would let them find better crop q to start with, but as it is, once you've got a good selection of crops, it's really going to be your soil q that limits where your crops will get to - hope you got a good soil node, cuz otherwise you're stuck at 1/3 the advancement rate of other players with better.

[Zirikana]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this... the [-5,5] and [-5,2] refer to upper and lower bounds for quality changes from the original seed after harvesting, right? So in the first case, the average net change in quality will be zero, unless the player culls the appropriate seeds to increase quality over generations. In the second case, the average net change should always be negative over many generations, regardless of the farmer, because the directed random-walk will always pull the seed q down. With 5 chances to decrease, two to increase, and one to stay constant, and with a max of three offspring per generation, even if you pull the best seeds from each generation, you're still losing ground over time.

In either case, if you assume optimal culling, the "rate" of increase or decrease is more or less constant, with a little bit of noise from the RNG. Soil quality in the current system only serves as a target for seed q to equilibrate at, not as a driving force to make it the rate of change faster or slower.

Or am i totally wrong here?

[Gedrean]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this... the [-5,5] and [-5,2] refer to upper and lower bounds for quality changes from the original seed after harvesting, right? So in the first case, the average net change in quality will be zero, unless the player culls the appropriate seeds to increase quality over generations. In the second case, the average net change should always be negative over many generations, regardless of the farmer, because the directed random-walk will always pull the seed q down. With 5 chances to decrease, two to increase, and one to stay constant, and with a max of three offspring per generation, even if you pull the best seeds from each generation, you're still losing ground over time.

In either case, if you assume optimal culling, the "rate" of increase or decrease is more or less constant, with a little bit of noise from the RNG. Soil quality in the current system only serves as a target for seed q to equilibrate at, not as a driving force to make it the rate of change faster or slower.

Or am i totally wrong here?

You're kind of correct. You seem to be overthinking the math though:

If your soil Q is HIGHER than your seed Q, your RNG range is -5 to +5. That ensures a roughly equal chance of increase, and at full nature, 3 seeds per harvest, you have actually a pretty good chance of at least staying the same or going up (6 out of 11 total results). Since you're getting 3 seeds per harvest, you're likely going to gain enough seeds that you won't be decreasing the size of your field.

If your soil Q is LOWER than your seed Q, your RNG range is -5 to +2. That gives you roughly 3 out of 7 chances of increase or staying the same, not quite as bad but still pretty decent. This is per seed on 3 seeds per harvest as well.

End result: You'll probably see some increase, maybe a tiny amount of decrease here or there, but not so much you'll be hurting for good quality seeds that will keep you increasing or at least equilibrating about your soil Q.

[Zamilpen]

Zirakana, your statement does have some valid points but there are a few things that you may have possibly missed. The first is that the math there doesn't take into account of a simulation of a lot of tiles that are attempting growth as well as reinforced by their neighbors should it fall behind. The more crops tiles there are, the more insurance of a higher quality that you have.

Also there are two crops that deviate from the standard 3 per tile rule particular though: tea and pumpkin. Tea only produces two seeds at least thus is partially subjected to both yours and my statement while pumpkins only produces one quality per harvest. The thing with pumpkins however, is that once you get a good quality, it will cover for 7 other tiles as well. Of course the big downside is its very slow growth rate even with beehives.