Horticulture/farming ideas

[UltimateGentleman 355]

No restriction on just using greenhouses

Not sure if planned or not, I'd imagine so but just in case, they should be the ultimate growing tool given that they're a risk to use since they're in static mappable locations people could loop round and kill everyone at. You want a base with a greenhouse you'll probably have to fight for it at some point.

 

Timers.

Since you'll have to leave your crops for in game days for them to grow it'd be great if we got in game timers maybe watches so we know when to head back and harvest.

 

Spoiling crops and keeping them alive longer by watering.

Which should be needed because if you're over  an hour or two late to harvesting your crops should spoil, chalk it up to birds, insects or the virus or something. As you're playing you can water them to keep them fresh if you don't need them as food quite yet.

So that on the brink of death you can't plant stuff, log out for 12 hours if an in game day was 3 hours then come back and be saved, the plants should rot instead of being fine for days so people can't abuse that if they have to wait 12 hours chances are they're going to be away at work or sleeping when the plants are ready.

Of course in those 12 hours it's easily possible someone might find their crops and destroy or take them but it's not that big a risk that abusing the system this way shouldn't be addressed, they can just log out with seeds and plant once again.

 

Faster growth rates while playing?

I dunno how/if this could be implemented but it's another way to stop people abusing the fact they can just log out and wait for salvation.

Perhaps one way it could work is you have to water them every hour or so to cut off a day of growth time? I doubt many people would have the time to log in once every hour for 9 hours in order to do abuse the system, some would no doubt but never a game breaking amount plenty people no life the shit out of video games but they're a minority.

 

Poisoning crops.

This would be cool, don't ask me how you could do it but I'm sure there's ways.

You could poison some of your corn so that when some unsuspecting thief shows up, shaking with joy over your tears he'll get to soak up once you come back and see all your crops were eaten they get poisoned and die or knocked out.

This would be good because if you can plant four crops poisoning one takes away a quarter of the food you get so it's not overpowered for you plus you could still fuck up and end up eating a poisoned crop.

This would also be great for setting traps for the inevitable groups of people who go round checking greenhouses, if they want to eat your stuff they've got to take the risk.

 

Can't think of anything else right now, feel free to add your own suggestions.

[Evil Minion 943]

I don't think this "log out and wait for salvation" is a big problem. Plants should grow for days so if someone really likes to wait instead of just playing and coming back later - fine, do it. I think there should not be any designated ownership in game so those crops planted by player A would interact just the same way with player B.

 

Which brings us to another point: Growing and getting spoiled. As written above I think plants should grow over the time of a few days but the exact time should vary depending on several factors like sun (no/slower growth at night), water, fertilizer (find a healthy dose for best speed) and so on. Now because of this they should not rot away or get spoiled too quickly - lets say 3 days grow time on average and about 12 hours until they are completely spoiled.

 

Sounds much but also provides a lot of options: You can run away doing other things in the mean time - without care your plants will take longer which might be an opportunity for others or you might not make it back in time. But its possible as the window is not too narrow. If you stick around and care or them it might be time consuming (not every run-of-the-mill bandit should be able to grow his own food supply) but your plants will grow faster and you can harvest earlier thus improving your yield. And if you really want to grow them while staying offline avoiding starvation you would have to wait quite a long time - enough time for someone to show up and mess with your plants (is it really worth it?).

Edited November 22, 2014 by Evil Minion

[UltimateGentleman 355]

(is it really worth it?).

Well, yeah.

 

If you're starving to death and have the means to make food but not the in game time to grow it it's definitely worth it people might take your crops sure but they might not, the good outweighs the bad in my opinion it would make it way too easy.

 

Only on high pop servers would it be a big risk.

 

 

What if at greenhouses crops required little to none maintenance but in the ground elsewhere they required frequent attention? So that if you want easy food you have to risk it at least.

 

A timer I think is needed it should calculate in game time as a constant to account for the fact that you'd know in real life when your crops should be ready but the time in game will fluctuate so it's not predictable with real world time.

Fact is logging out is going to be damn overpowered, clans will have infinite food as will most people with time unless they get unlucky.

 

I believe it's something that should take a lot more work than just press F to plant log out then come back 12 hours later and well done you expertly grew crops.

[Evil Minion 943]

If your plants grow over days you cannot predict if the server ends up as low pop or high pop in the meantime.

 

I think there could be the following phases:

1. Preparation (~0.5-3 hours on average) - You need to find all required tools, get the place ready and plant the seeds. Here it might be important to plant the right plants at the right place as well to ensure enough but not too much water, sun and temperature for them to grow.
2. Growing (~48-96 hours on average) - Your plants grow at a rate depending on several factors like the ones mentioned above. Depending on place and plant type you might have to care for your plants or they won't grow or even die. Also good care might speed up growth and and makes it easier to predict the time they are ready for harvest. For this growth time should be divided into three parts*:
   1. A fixed minimum base time that depends on the plant and maybe location.
   2. A purely deterministic element that depends on care, weather, time of day etc. Think of it as a amount of points that has to be reached for the plant to be ready - negative growth rates might cause the plant to die if on zero points for too long.
   3. A randomized element that gets reduced by care only. When planting seeds every would-be-plant is assigned its own random value that is added to the base time but certain actions would reduce this part by a percentage - so with optimum care you can bring this close to zero.
3. Harvesting (~8-12 hours on average) - If all of the growing stages are completed plants are ready for harvesting. If not harvested they lose yield at a certain randomized rate (e.g. a single fruit rots away every 10-50 minutes) until nothing is left. So you will get the best results if predicting the right moment for your harvest and the longer you wait the less you will get. And there is always the risk that somebody else will find your plants before you.

Of course clans and people with time will have an advantage - but thats not a bad thing as they also put more effort into this. if they want to. But logging will not be beneficial unless you join the servers in between to look after your plants. But the long timers and (depending on what and where you are farming) required care should not make it viable or enjoyable to plant seeds when hungry and log off until the plants are grown and ready for harvesting.

 

As for casual players: Farming should not be casual - if you want to benefit from this you should either befriend someone willing to take the effort and share or raid someones farm before they can harvest (or let them harvest and take the price afterwards). Some plants might grow on their own (e.g. plants in greenhouses) but the randomness involved would mean you are not sure when to come back.