[Feedback] Testing 224 - Crop return ratio info

It would be good to know how much produce a crop will give by default when being harvested at the fully grown state; this information could be added in the seed item’s description/tooltip along with all the other information already there.

Something like in the earthyam bulb item saying: “Yields 1-2 yams” or whatever is accurate.

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Crop yield depends on the configuration of the surrounding blocks.

Is the default yield interesting?

I’ll be able to tell you with more precision soon, my first regular yam harvest is almost ready; should be at least another 10 minutes to be sure. :slight_smile:

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@James, After about 45 minutes not all crops are ready but I’ll harvest anyway.

Details on this field:

  • 730 Earthyams
  • All planted in Tilled Silty Soil

Firstly, I started by harvesting these plants, closest to the sand edge, the only part of this field that had the bonus sand next to the crop. In the debug info there was variance of the seed/produce yields even along this row.

The yield from the harvested plants in the following screenshot was:
22 Seeds | 66 Produce

Then, I harvested all other mature crops for:
249 Seeds | 994 Produce

Reaching a total of:
271 Seeds and 1060 Yams harvested.

However, of the 730 planted crops, after almost 4 hours, there were this many still in a state where they hadn’t grown to fully mature state:


This suggests there may be too much variance in growth time even under the 100% normal growth time modifier, as many of these plants were not ready well into an hour past the time they should be for harvest.


Note: I did inspect individual crops with the debug info before harvesting, and the crops closest to the sand did indeed have the best ratios stated in the debug; this was the best crop in the whole field, perhaps for having extra water near it besides the bonus sand:

The worst crop values I could find were:


Another note: It was very easy to accidentally harvest crops that weren’t completely mature in the same field, despite the majority of the crops being mature.


Conclusion:
The current balance for the yield of Produce, i.e. actual Yams, would feel fine at the moment, yielding between 1-3 under these conditions, averaging at about 2 per crop.

However, the yield of the Produce does NOT feel fine (to me) since the yield of Seeds returned was only around a quarter of the total Produce harvested. The remaining plants that haven’t matured yet will certainly not be able to yield over 200 seeds.

To me, the current ratio feels very poor without being able to turn the Produce back into seeds. If I could get back 1 seed from every single crop, getting even 800 yams out of the 730 crops would feel far more reasonable, since at least the process would be easily repeatable.

If I had actually gathered 730 wild seeds on my own, I don’t think that right now I’d be willing to go looking for another 500-ish wild seeds just to replant this entire field, which to me, feels like a small field, despite the proportionally larger time invested here.

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Great work. I would prefer something like an 80% return on seeds and being able to turn earthyams directly into usable bulbs to make up the difference.

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There’s debug info for this…? Wow that makes it so much easier :smiley:

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To add a further personal observation on all of this:

I have never been in favour of the regen-farming mechanic, however, with its complete removal and without very good seed return ratios on farming, like @redlegdaddy (I think it was you) mentioned in another thread, all that farming will accomplish for things like yams will be a time-gated, and hence reduced, production of all types of yams and starberries across the board.

And in the Live version of the game, it can already feel quite tedious to farm these things using the regen-farming methods, so considering the set up required to make a crop farm and the planning required to make it have ideal conditions, it feels absolutely crucial that farming has the potential to be as easy to get into as possible while also minimising the amount of wild-seed gathering required once a farm gets going.

It is important to remember just how much some people value their time, and while I personally have the time to test this, I will extrapolate that many people might feel like there’s too much time committent to farming to bother doing it, even at a casual level, unless the seed return rates become near or at 100%, at least if no seed-making machine comes into play.

If a seed-making machine came into play, the current seed return rates could be acceptable, but the produce may need a little tweaking.

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Small update; after harvesting most of the remaining crops just now, only 2 non-mature crops are left.

I ended up with a grand total of 354 seeds, potentially 356 if the 2 non-mature crops gave me 1 each. This averages out at 48.49% chance of a seed with this field setup (730 crops in total).

The total yams harvested were 1375, potentially up to 1381 if both remaining crops gave 3, but they’d most likely be giving 2 each.

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Now go farm up up 300ish more seeds XD

By my current seed gathering estimates (72items/10mins), on a world that has a supposed 0.5% occurrence rate of earthyam bulbs, I would gather about 432 seeds in 1 hour.

Well, at least only in the case that I don’t stop for anything else.

I really don’t have much energy to do much more seed gathering right now though and I have to do real dinner soon. :man_shrugging:

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In the interest of continuing to provide data, I have just harvested nearly all the Exotic Earthyams I had planted. 654 of the 656 sowed plants were harvested.



From this harvest, with a field with these average conditions (debug window):

There was a total of 1268 produce, which places the crop:produce ratio at an approximated and averaged 1:1.938~ , and there was a total 320 seeds, which would be enough to replant about 48.9% of the field, which is 0.1% off the margin expected from the debug info. Almost every plant gave me 2 yams per crop, which seems reasonable, but I would prefer at this point to be able to turn some of that produce back into the seeds…

This does highlight the importance of being able to see this debug info as actual metainfo when looking at crops. A player without the debug info won’t be able to prepare themselves as accurately for the amount of seeds they’ll have to gather to replant the field next time.

And in my case, I wouldn’t replant the field at all, until I had all the seeds I needed again, as I’d prefer to collect the entire field at once and not bit by bit.

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I think the debug menu info (current seed and produce chance) should be made visible to all players, a hand held crop analyzer or something.

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Indeed, because with that info I quickly worked out this is a potentially optimal layout for the Chaggeatarin plant:


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Ehmm, nice, but I have no idea what I’m looking at, mud and soil? Could use some more explanation…

Also for the people who have no idea, what is a Chaggeatarin plant?

Chagg replaces one of the old grass seeds tho I forget which one.

Why are we asking for a higher seed yield vs produce from the devs if time is the concern?

If each plant dropped 4-6 yams then with 100 seeds you could get over 900 yams ( with current seed drops)

Wouldn’t more produce save more time then more seeds? If we lower yeild and increase seeds you have to replant the seeds X more times to get the same outcome

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I just exitted the game to have a look at doing some lunch, but off the top of my head this is the Flour plant.

I’ll make a diagram later explaining what the screenshot is showing.

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It is both that the time and efficiency of the WIP farming is worse than the current systems for getting the same mats. If you do not have to gather then farming becomes a nice way to trade time for being able to do other things while your crops grow, but if you have to gather everytime then it is worse than both AOE block farming and surface gathering in that regard.

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At least I would not have to gather every time in between a harvest. I just went looking for seeds versus cheating them and got about 10 in roughly 5 minutes. So for me to replant a field of 300 to get the 600 yield I need to gather (300 - (300 x .67)) 99 more so I need to spend 50 minutes gathering before replanting the entire field. Not worth the increased harvest in my opinion.

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Ok, so, using the data found here by @Mayumichi:

I was then able to work things out for maximum yield like this:

Basically, the central crop here will receive a bonus to its yields for having up to 3 water blocks, up to 3 mud blocks and up to 8 extra tilled soil blocks within the blue radius.

All the other blocks within the radius, the ones marked as “not required”, can be whatever you want, but this layout means that all the crops in those tilled soils will receive bonuses up to the maximum, as far as I was able to plan.

If, for example, you only have 2 water blocks and 1 mud block and 4 extra tilled soil blocks around the central crop, then you will get a crop that is not maxed in its yields, but that will grow and bear fruit anyway.


Let me know if more explanations are required or if there are more questions.

Edit: Small clarification on something I overlooked/forgot to mention when putting this together. Currently, the bonus/benefit to the central crop can only be attained within this radius, if the blocks are on the same horizontal level.

This means that blocks at the same height as the actual plant or below the soil will have no effect. I have reported this elsewhere in my initial findings investigating this mechanic, though I forget where that post is exactly.

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