Untended plants go to seed. Tended go to harvest. Harvest yield dependent on skill and tending.

[The Plum Gate]

Description:

The farming overlay would show 4 markable options, harvest for food, harvest for seeds, disable harvest, enable harvest.

The math here would be a mass inversion on the marked for seed plants, when there's a harvest action, mass of seeds equal to mass of fruit body would drop.

The chance for additoonal seeds would also be a factor as a bonus.

On marked harvest for food, any seed chance that hits add mass of fruiting body ( kcal ) bonus, so rather than a seed, a bit of extra kcals on harvest.

Enabled harvest would inherit the systemic defaults that currently exists. Seed and Kcals.

Disable harvest would also behave as the systemic default and drop after the default time.

end edit/.

Several variables:

1) Predictable static outcomes when allowing an untended* plant to naturally drop - seeds with low kcal of food. "Allowing it to go to seed."

This would be a means to produce more seeds of a plant rather than harvesting. This would also solve the rotten food in natural habitat issue.

2) Tending increases growth speed to harvest time. Harvesting would produce more caloric products and less seeds.

3) Caloric production is increased when harvested by a skilled farmer. Existing seed drop mechanism would be diminished.

* untended being grown without farmer's touch, grub rub, sweetle intervention, etc.

This mechanism would allow farming for seed. Reduction in plant counts when balancing for food products.

Abandoned farms could produce seed rather than stifle ( unfertilized and untended but otherwise needs met, i.e, balm lilly paradigm ). 

[sakura_sk]

I think untended plants (=not harvested plants wild) already give the 10% chance seed drop. Harvesting them increases that chance (meaning by decreasing the time it takes to drop the produced food compared to letting a plant drop the food on its own). Skilled farmers will have a better chance on seed drop. If tending plants or more skilled farmer reduces seed drop to increase calories, then over time the seed production would drop to 0 (increased attribute in a dupe can't be decreased again).

[The Plum Gate]

3 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

I think untended plants (=not harvested plants wild) already give the 10% chance seed drop. Harvesting them increases that chance (meaning by decreasing the time it takes to drop the produced food compared to letting a plant drop the food on its own). Skilled farmers will have a better chance on seed drop. If tending plants or more skilled farmer reduces seed drop to increase calories, then over time the seed production would drop to 0 (increased attribute in a dupe can't be decreased again).

Imagine all three implementations mentioned. A farmer can give a wild plant farmer's touch.

If your farmer's already have a 1 in 10 chance anyway of a seed, with a modifier that increases this likelihood, I think it would be better to increase crop yield on harvest while being assured that a plant can be left unharvested and produce seeds.

Allowing a few plants to grow to maturity without further time-modifying tending, would cause them to go to seed ( not have a chance of it, but to actually produce more than one seed ). For instance, a plant would produce an equivalent mass of seed as it would food instead of food.

Disabling harvest would send them to seed. Any plant not harvested would go to seed - as is a default already (bharveat disabled ).

This system could easily be tested by having a go-to-seed marker on them in the same mechanism as hallow harvest / disallow harvest / ...allow seed maturity.

And then simply have the plants drop seed mass instead of fruit body mass.

There would be no harvest action on it, so it would require a natural drop. I think the default is 3 cycles, but this could shortened for cared-for plants to begin with.

So irrigated and fertilized plants reach maturity faster than wild ones. We would simply have the option of allowing a plant to produce seeds instead of food, and more food instead of seeds.

More simply a modal declaration: natural, default behaviour, food production, seed production.

We have this already with the variety, but not within specific types of plants.

Some plants only prpduce seeds, perhaps they can produce more when allowed to go to seed and natural drop while being taken care of. While the default behavior is forshortening the time factors slightly in favor of more of a product over time, the extra wait would produce more seeds without a harvest action ( given there's a modified or unmodified natural drop time ).

[sakura_sk]

55 minutes ago, The Plum Gate said:

More simply a modal declaration: natural, default behaviour, food production, seed production

Did you by any chance read future patch notes?  

It seems that something is in the works:

On 1/18/2021 at 12:42 AM, watermelen671 said:

anim_interacts_genetic_analysissation

  Reveal hidden contents

I got too annoyed with fixing the DNA bits on the screen so I gave up.

 

There was also the "original" after every plant for one testing branch update (and then it was deleted until it was ready...).

 

I just think that putting skills and farming in the mix will make it too complicated to handle...  

We'll see..

[The Plum Gate]

I should have titled this as discretionary agriculture.

Perhaps so.

19 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

I just think that putting skills and farming in the mix will make it too complicated to handle...  

I wanted to ammend my thought a little. This may be a solution to that.

--

The farming overlay would show 4 markable options, harvest for food, harvest for seeds, disable harvest, enable harvest.

The math here would be a mass inversion on the marked for seed plants, when there's a harvest action, mass of seeds equal to mass of fruit body would drop.

The chance for additoonal seeds would also be a factor as a bonus.

On marked harvest for food, any seed chance that hits add mass of fruiting body ( kcal ) bonus, so rather than a seed, a bit of extra kcals on harvest.

Enabled harvest would inherit the systemic defaults that currently exists. Seed and Kcals.

Disable harvest would also behave as the systemic default and drop after the default time.

--

Edge cases here being seed only producing plants where no apparent change would occur. So this system is leaning towards fruit body producers unless there's a production boost involved.

Another notable edge case might by grubfruit, which can produce two types of fruiting body but only one type of seed. There might be some players that want a foreshortend time to harvest if they desire to produce spindly grubfruit for the roast grubfruit nuts dish. So this is also on my mind as a production control issue as tending the plants produces grubfruit.