Self-sustainable combos for every season and efficiency analysis

[hyiltiz]

Efficiency analysis: ideal combos

First things first: notice that each and every crop requires three different nutrients at various levels, but the requirement always sum to 0: nutrient-wise, farming is a zero sum game. See it another way, plants *transform* one nutrient into another, never really producing a nutrient. As a result, it is *impossible* to have a spatial or temporal combo that purely *produces* any nutrient as a net result. For those who prefer fancy talk, we can prove this by using the property of a matrix there row rank equals column rank.

To keep things easy, we want to not rotate over time, but only over space (within a single farm plot tile), so you can keep sowing and reaping the same thing over and over again.

Below are combos that I (and others, most likely) found, ordered from most viable to least viable. All of them are perfectly balanced: they do not consume nor produce nutrients. If plotted with proper configuration, they will always meet family requirement and produce Giant results.

Spatial configurations

You can use any configuration of plant location that satisfy family requirement, following the ratios shown in the tables below, not necessarily 4x4 at all. I'm using the following grid: 1 tile 4x4 crops:

+----+
|aabb|
|aabb|
|ccdd|
|ccdd|
+----+

Any combos with 2 or 4 varieties below can be used with this 1 tile 4x4 crops setup. Combos with 3 varieties can simply ignore one corner to keep it balanced, or rotate that single block over time. This 1 tile 4x4 crops is currently only possible with the Snapping Tills mod by surg:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2302837868

Nutrient requirement and equinutrient replacements

In any season, there are a few plants with the same nutrient requirements, thus can be used as a replacement for each other.
 

Autumn replacements: Carrot=Pumpkin, Potato=Eggplant
Winter replacements: Carrot=Pumpkin
Spring replacements: Potato=Eggplant, Corn=Asparagus, Onion=Pomegranade, Dragonfruit=Durian
Summer replacements: Onion=Pomegranade, Dragonfruit=Pepper.

Unique nutrient requirements with no replacement anytime: Garlic, Tomato, Watermelon.

Full table sorted by seasons availability and nutrient demand similarity:

WIP: I'd rather paste text instead of images. However, I need text to use a monospaced for the tables to be properly formatted. However, using monospaced in this forum seems bizarrely complicated. Still figuring out. Let me know if you know how. Until then, I'll just paste in screenshots...

 

Autumn

Winter

Technically, you could replace Pumpkin with Carrot, but why? Unless you are going after bunnies...

Spring

Summer

[Pikapikap]

ohhhhhhh  thanks for sharing！

[ryvrdrgn14]

This is great. Thank you. 

[Owlrust]

The till mod seems to currently only allow 3x3 planting right now. Tbh I can't say I'm against it, 4x4 didn't feel very legit to me personally.

[hyiltiz]

Oh really? I'll stop updating the mod then But as I said, this is about the combo, not the configuration. You can still put 3 crops per variety.

[Zeklo]

13 minutes ago, Owlrus said:

Tbh I can't say I'm against it, 4x4 didn't feel very legit to me personally.

I think it broke things for plots bigger than a simple 1x1. It sounded like the plants would pull from the wrong plots nutrients or something.

[Cuikui]

The 4x4 grid is legitimate, you can do it without the mod. But it requires so much precision that it's better to do 3x3 than to waste 5 minutes trying to make the 4x4 succeed.