After playing around with farming in testing server and watching several peoples optimized farms, I feel like things are off to a good start. I like some of the current balance ratios and really like the complementary set ups for certain blocks increasing yield and seed drop. The rice crop has been particularly entertaining to me and I have spent some time looking to optimize it in particular. However, I feel like some balance changes and a slight add on to the farming loop would make the entire system better.
In particular, seed drop rate seems to be the biggest sticking point for most players. Even an optimized farm does not yield enough seeds to replant the next crop. Personally, I think this is good and serves a purpose- it prevents farms from devaluing themselves and wild seed drops. The problem is that it does not feel good to go gathering more wild seed every time you replant your crop.
My solution is fairly simple. An alternate or forged fertilizer spray (I’d call it Defoliant) that kills the mature plant and converts all potential yield into seed instead. With the current balance, an optimized crop that is sprayed with defoliant would drop about 2.8 seeds per plant but would not yield food drops. This means that if you defoliate every 3rd crop, you would have enough to raise the next two with almost no loss in seed. A player would have the option to always raise their crops with the goal of max food yield with diminished seed return, or always defoliate their crop to max seed drops with 0 food yield, or strike a balance of harvesting and defoliating their crop. Players who raise crops could buy seed from players who raise exclusively seeds.
I would also like to change the levels of optimization a little bit to make a fully optimized crop feel much more notably better than an moderately or poorly optimized farm. I would not make too much of a change to the yields of poorly optimized farms, but a perfectly optimized farm should have more food yield than it currently does, maybe raised by as much as 50%. I would balance this with a reduction in current seed drop roughly equal to the food yield increase, and pair that balance change with the above suggested defoliant add on.
In summary, yield more food for a highly optimized farm to make the pursuit of a perfect farm more fulfilling, but also add defoliation to swap that food yield into seeds every other crop rather than gathering wild seeds every time you replant.
Rather than defoliate, just convert a tick from growth to “going to seed” where if you leave the crop an extra tick, the fruit withers down to just the seed. You get the extra seed to build your reserves, and folks too worried about growth time get a reprieve.
Could another option to get seeds could be having possibility to grow plants to “wrong kind of” soil? For example if we could enrich soils to get increase seed yields instead of fruit yield or get more uses for compact soils (compact silt is still not found new use outside of building and transformation options)
Only if all the dead wild stock and cuttles come back as zombies.
While I certainly like the more akin to life scenario I figure people won’t want crops to die so I’d lean to Havok’s idea of two types of crops. I think that is a good way to balance things and provide options while not back tracking towards the concerns the devs had around unlimited resources.
Plus while I like the seed machine idea I feel this is easier to accomplish over another full machine asset.
I think have the option to harvest crop for seed only to allow farmers to skip the seed gathering in return for said plant to receive no crop yield is a super idea and a clever way to make everyone happier!!
I’m not sure why any of the various alternate methods of getting seed ration to 1:1 is better then just changing the seed drop ratio. In the end any of the ideas from a machine that turns crops into seeds to a having an optimal seed production set-up and an optimal crop production set-up all end at the same place: players getting enough seeds to replace their crops in exchange for reduced crop-yield. So why are any of these suggestions better then simply changing the ratios directly? It just makes things more confusing for newer and more casual players.
Two major reasons. Firstly, a 1:1 should not be attainable except in perfectly optimized farms. That means that any farm that is not perfectly optimized will still suffer from diminished returns on seed and must return to that game loop of farming wild seed. Additionally, you are forcing anybody who wants to simply break even on seed yield to conform to a meta farm format. This discourages creative builds and “punishes” anything but the meta format.
Additionally. I feel my defoliant idea adds more meaningful choice and improved gameplay while also allowing players to be more creative with with their farm builds and more engaging in a farming economy.
Effectively defoliation will still require that the last tick of a plants lifecycle is “going to seed”, the primary difference is that by triggering it with a tool, you can choose which mature plants reach this stage. By making the final stage a seed stage, you create a narrow window the player must watch for to harvest their crop. Too soon and a plant yields only its original seed, and too late and you only get seeds again.
Currently this isn’t even possible though. The best return is 67% seed return with a 104% harvest (going by debug info).
In terms of defoliation, I’m not against it, but I would rather not have yet another forge boon to deal with. Thanks to testing, I’ve learned what I had been doing wrong while forging for ages, but I have no interest in having more forging requirements. I wouldn’t care about sacrificing my crop as long as I can either extract seeds from the produce or defoliate crops for seeds to get as close to a 1:1 ratio as possible.
Edit:
Maybe instead of defoliation, have some sort of “breeding” function, where two fully grown plants near each other have a small chance each growth cycle to spread a new crop to an adjacent spot, provided planting conditions are met.
Having to watch for the correct tick would be awful. The crops ripen at very random times, sometimes it’s a single (ingame) day from planting, sometimes 200 days even for a basic earthyam. In a field of crops, you’d have to watch it 24/7 to catch the individual crops at the right stage. They can also skip growth stages.
Yes, exactly. With the defoliation mechanic, a plant would effectively reach maturity in it’s 7th tick, and only hit it’s withered state if triggered to do so with the defoliation spray. In most cases, (If I understand how the system works correctly) spraying a plant with defoliant would not instantly wither the plant, but trigger it to do so when the 8th tick triggered. If I am wrong about how the ticking mechanic works, then it would simply instantly wither when the 8th tick is triggered by the spray. Either way, the end result is that the plant reaches perpetual “maturity” in the 7th tick until acted upon by the defoliant spray where it reaches the withered “gone to seed” state.
I agree with those numbers based on what I have been seeing in game for most plants. I was simply arguing with why - even if the ratios are rebalanced to allow 1:1 ratio on seed return - that would be a poor solution.
Ok right. The idea itself isn’t bad, but I don’t think it’ll happen. They already have the levers set up to affect the drop rates. And that’s the growing conditions. It’s already programmed, so they only have to change a few numbers in a config files. And pray the ancients if they put the defoliation spray behind the exo-wall, like all fertilizers.
It would require additional development to implement, including a new withered asset for every crop type. The most immediate solution would of course be to return block secondary drops (yams from mud, berries from leaves, etc) though at dramatically reduced drop rates. Personally, I strongly dislike that solution on a long term basis. It feels like reverting back to a place holder mechanic rather than reaching a proper implementation of farming.
I would assume it is a long shot this time around as well… but I can’t believe that the game would never ever mature and grow the features behind farming. It seems like an easy addition that could quickly be tagged on in the next dev cycle. It certainly is a good mechanic.
How about what I hope would be an easier fix. If the Crop (Earthyarm Plant) is grown near item one resource (sand) you max yield the Fruit (Earthyams) produced and if it is grown near a different resource (mud) then you maximize seed production. They could still have one common resource (water) to truly optimize production.
This would eliminate the need to create a new tool, having to basically touch every plant in order to determine if you wanted it to produce seeds, and creating a new state for the organic and inorganic plants (they do not have a withered state at this point as far as I can tell).
Edit: or the suggestion made above, if you plant in one type of soil you get max fruit and fewer seeds another you get max seeds and less fruit.
Could you just have a different gathering tool? That way you could decide what you want when you come to harvest?
Like a sickle/scythe for the produce and a hoe for the seeds?
