Bee Box rework - Farm Mechanisms Poll

[ADM]

Hi all... been a while since my last topic I've forgot how I used to greet everyone. erm - anyway. hello ~

Something was brought to my attention since the last update and found myself thinking about it a lot already so maybe I should share that, I also have a couple of questions to highlight player preferences on simple farming structures, I'm a little curious about this.
Okay now for the intro... I swear I'll keep it short for once.

 

Farms for crops have been recently reworked and now there's a little more thoughts put into farming in general, I think it's great but I'm not gonna repeat what have been said for months now and jump into what I wanted to say :
It's about the rest of the farming aspects of the game, food you usually obtain by player made buildings and such, like Bee Boxes. There's more of them but I don't have much to say about them atm like Mushrooms Planters, relocatable plants and misc food productions like Lureplants and Barnacles... maybe I'll have some worlds to put on them another time but I'm okay with most of them... most but not all.
All these things offer unique food sources but share a pretty similar process in term of generating the items, some require items to be but in, but in general it's just you place them where you want and wait once the setup is ready. Players doesn't have much to do to make things work efficiently plus the process is often surprisingly fast.

Today I'm looking to imagine some mechanism enhancements for one of these building : the Bee Box and ask you if you'd be ready for heavy changes like a focused update on such things (like RWYS). The questions have few options, I want to have a clear idea of your opinions but if you have something additional to mention then I'm all hear.

 

What Bee Boxes do and honey farming (as now) :

So to get the best out of Honey you have to destroy all the hives in your world and use the Honey Combs in the Crock- wait no, wrong topic !
Hmm... well the best if not just the only viable source of honey is from the Bee Boxes, and overall it's a great food item just itself but also a strong Crock Pot filler / ingredient for key recipes, it's definitely something you look for during the first year. Being a Beekeeper is kind of an exiting hobby IRL that I doesn't had the chance to perform yet but DST gives us a chance to do it here so that's nice. But the fun of it have noticeably big limits !
Good thing that I have some ideas, eh ?
First thing, Bee Boxes and Honey is 99% of what I was saying in intro, you build the setup which can be done very quickly with the boxes and flowers around, a little Flingomatic to avoid whoopsie situations during summer and you're good forever. Now the little percent left is about what bees can do rest of the time, which could be much better if it was more noticeable and useful : Bees can grow new flowers by themselves, it's interesting cause it depend of the flower type you plant, so if it's an Evil Flower, you get more of that, but problem, there's only 2 flower types that can be used, and the difference is not important except if you want to loose some sanity when you're around your box and get 1 extra Nightmare Fuel per season.
(you can actually get a bigger production if the bees are homeless... but it's not that effective)

So that's what you get, could it be upgraded ?

 

Bee Box interactions with flowers and players (concept) :

Why mentioning all that stuff with flowers ? Well what if there was a flower rework that would allow bees do different things from new flower types ?
Think of it, the nectar bees get out of a flower can make unique flavours, so the honey produced could be a different one on some kind of flowers with various stats and attributes or unique recipes, while some other kinds have effects on the bees to boost their production, speed, honey limit... seriously there's a swarm of potential here ! 
If bees use standard flowers or various sort of flowers at once, the honey would be classic, but special honeys could have an unique appearance on the Bee Box and the item could be displayed a bit like previous seed system, if not just new wacky names like the new seeds when you haven't researched their plants yet like "Super Sticky Honey", "Zesty Flavoured Honey"... I'm more a fan of the second concept especially if that involves new gardening entries for a codex...
But that could also look the old seed way :
And of course... more flowers also means decorating, but wouldn't that require some unique butterflies to transport them ? Anyway we're here for bees...

There's also a bunch of tools that Beekeepers can use that would be a nice addition to the game... here I'm doing some self-promotion but I've made a Bee Smoker on a mod, and it can be used to calm bees so they don't attack the harvester, this completely out stand the Beekeeper Hat but if it requires a specific cost-y fuel to use, I guess it would make a great upgrade to the players than doing the huge dodge to loose aggro from bees every time :

But would that be enough to make Bee Boxes more... playing involving and fun ? Not at all, so far what we visited for a potential rework of flowers and honey only adds diversity but player involvement is also an important part to a good and effective farming process without making it tedious...
Disease flashbacks...

 

 

Talking of tediousness, bees work very hard all day so maybe the player could lend a hand and help in the bee workplace :
I think that's how beekeeping could be a better activity in game, the bees aren't exposed to much hazards while we're in a complete hostile world (apparently), so what about seasonal little jobs you could do to help bee from threats like wild weeds and perfidious bugs ! Eventually this could require to lower the default honey production rate, I'm not sure of this but I expect the effort/reward of honey production to scale properly. At least, a good beekeeper would be properly paid with honey without wasting time, doing that once per season at least would give you a decent production for a moment.

I'm well aware that some parts of the rework idea require to remake the entire system on how the pollination and harvesting of honey work on bees and box but what it takes to make something great ! and for trying myself to do something like such on mods for quite a while now I can say it was not too much of a challenge to do.

 

Well that's about it for now ! I could develop ideas for Bee Boxes much more but this was just to show a scenario on how I'd like things to look for a farming building instead of using the traditional : Do this > Get that, system of the game, or at least give it additional steps... I believe it look more both beneficial for multiplayer roles and realistic, the realism of the game is not an important criteria but skipping too many key points of a normal behaviour in nature can often make things a little boring. So I hope you enjoyed the read and maybe got some ideas I'd like you to tell me about, until then, have a good one.

[Hornete]

I like the different honeys idea!!! I had an idea for bees to make corrupted/monster honey from evil flowers, or a special kind of super sweet seasonal honey where bees could pollinate Cacti when they're blooming during summer. Maybe they could pollinate sea weeds too!! I'd adore to see more types of honey.

[Cheggf]

I just want a way to make the bees not sting me without needing to set the hive on fire.

[Notecja]

I have mixed feelings about bees rework.

New farms made ever harder for me to move from base to any place around world and speaking of RWYS I hope I dont have to pet evey bee. While some play with extra flowers sounds like some extra fun around setup (evil honey? Sound super tasty! Or cherry honey?), as much I dont wanna pick honey with club/spike/sword in my hads and nervous looks arond. Just enough that lord of fruit flies spawns in 0.000001s in my garden just after my first giant crop finish growing. 

Smoker looks and sound like something quite missing for now and I would really wecome that thing. 

 

 

[ADM]

4 minutes ago, Notecja said:

I hope I dont have to pet evey bee.

[Notecja]

5 minutes ago, ADM said:

snip

Are you... going to do it, don't you? 

[Souper]

Like many mechanics of the game, I would love for bees to get some love similar to farming. But other things are more pressing at the moment, in my opinion anyway.

[GelatinousCube]

I love the Bee Smoke Box!!! There definitely needs to be a handheld item that keeps bees away now...

[landromat]

Passive food generators are boring. I like your idea

[Szczuku]

I could tolerate the idea of every flower resulting in different honey type if it worked along the lines of regular, evil, succulent or lunear tree flowers. If every single different model a flower has resulted in a different honey type that'd be dumb and confusing

[VouMorrer]

initially, i would say no to bee rework, but i've read your idea and now i want it too.

i dont like the part of needing to take care of bees (in multiplayer worlds, i usually play wortox, i kill bees for soul and hardly eat any food), but the honey variety seems fun!

if you are planning to add new flowers, it means new butterflies as well right? or maybe is possible to craft a tool that can pick the flowers alive?

and i want cave fern honey. they are not flowers but fern seems prettt useless.

also, the collecting of different flowers in different biomes can make the beekeeping more engaging, perhaps?

as for the mushroom farms, please! they deserve better than the living log planter.

and for lureplants... i better not say here what i think of them

[ArubaroBeefalo]

I have mixed feelings because it will be awesome but idk how will affect to the complexity of the game. Just see how a lot of people cried because the rwys farms are """difficult""".

Interactive is most of the times funnier than just clicking but you know how the world works

[ADM]

3 hours ago, Szczuku said:

If every single different model a flower has resulted in a different honey type that'd be dumb and confusing

I was only thinking of using special new flowers in addition of the standard flowers the game had for now, of course if we had 12 types of honey for just the classic butterfly flowers, that would be insanely stupid. ^^ That's the reason why I've made custom flower models on the honey example on the post. Plus, some of the flowers would not have a special honey but just passive effects for bees on the hive, like augmenting the max amount of honey, faster movement speed to get around flowers quicker, more pollination efficiency to cut the time to produce honey... things like that

I think there should be just as much kinds of honey as we can think of good properties for them, I let this up to others, but it seems like Nightmare Honey for Evil Flowers is already a very appreciated idea.

[Karitha]

I was thinked about it and i was waiting for this day lol. The flower idea is smart and I have few more ideas.

I love slightly complex systems which let player control the our harvests.

Beeboxes don't need bees to be builded anymore and will not produce honey until player don't put any bee in it. When player open a bee box this screen will pop up.

There is three slot. Players can put Queens on queen tab, Kings on king tab. After a while, a breed worker will be spawn which visually and generally takes Queen's genes and little things from kings. Sometimes bees will have mutation which gives them negative or possitive skills. With bee milk, worker bees can be queen and with honey, workers can be turn into kings.
Wild hives will have 5 types.

HIVES & HONEY AND MAIN EFFECTS:

Stone Hive: 

Stone hive will appear on rock biome and hive will drop stone queen. Stone queen workers are really slow but have huge health like 500. They can use boulders as flowers too!

Have a chance to give mineral honey. Mineral honey have different recipes. Gives shield effect cost of slowness.

Sea Hive:

Sea Hive will be appear on sea and hive will drop sea queen. Sea queen workers can work on sea and be faster when it's raining. They can use sea flowers too but pretty ineffective in summers.

Have chance to give wet honey. Wet honey have different recipes. Gives fish luck cost of being wet.

Cave Hive:

Cave Hive will be appear on caves and hive will drop cave queen. Cave queen workers only can work on dark like night and caves. They produce light and warmth. They can use lightbulbs as flowers!

Have chance to give glowing honey. Glowing honey have different recipes. Gives shining effect cost of a little sanity.

Ice Hive:

Ice hive will be appear only in winter and will drop Ice Queen. Ice queen workers can only work at winter.

Have chance to give cold honey. Cold honey have different recipes. Gives cold effect cost of little health.

About kings:

Kings have little effects and can have so much different abilities different from Queens.
If a queen get mutated it will stay same generally and have one extra effect. But kings can have 4 different effect. Kings can be produced by feeding a regular bee too! A regular wild bee will give a king without effect. With this, players can have workers with 5 different small effect and one main effect.

Few Small Effect Ideas:

-Slowness
-Speed
-More honey
-Less honey
-Higher chance to get special honey
-Lower chance to get special honey
-More worker bees
-Less worker bees
-Abortive
-Aggresive
-Passive
-Extra damage for workers
-Less damage for workers
-etc.

[Notecja]

Moonflowers?

 

[Hornete]

2 minutes ago, Notecja said:

Moonflowers?

Woah. did you draw those?

[Notecja]

1 minute ago, Hornete said:

Woah. did you draw those?

Yep. But honestly is hard to replicate DST style.

[Hornete]

Just now, Notecja said:

Yep. But honestly is hard to replicate DST style.

Make it a mod, RIGHT now. Please These are so bloody good.

Sorry if that was agressive but seriously these flowers are so good I would adore to see them in a mod!

[Cheggf]

47 minutes ago, Notecja said:

Moonflowers?

 

Legit looks like unused content or something. Great job.

[minespatch]

3 hours ago, Notecja said:

Moonflowers?

Moonmoths should come out of them, I'm for this!

[Notecja]

Guess... Am I digging my grave? Bloomshrooms

 

[ADM]

That's some very unique and pretty plants there, @Notecja ! amazing job

[Just-guy]

What about Lunar Bees.

Bees in the Lunar Island will transform into Moon Bees, and pollinate Lune Trees as they are part flower and give a special type of honey. Unlike regular Bees, Moon Bees require a special Beebox to be placed on a Lune Tree.

[Frosty_Mentos]

On 2/3/2021 at 3:26 PM, Notecja said:

Guess... Am I digging my grave? Bloomshrooms

 

yoooo, those are pretty dope