[Poll] On Crops and Farming

[GimplyGoose]

I've got a potentially controversial farming opinion. I think that growing giant crops after getting a sizeable seed base is less efficient than monocropping nongiants.

Giant crops have the benefit of giving you more produce and seeds (2-3 of each) per planted crop. The increased yield is significant... But not worth the tradeoffs in my opinion.

Giant crops have downsides of requiring nearly daily attention for their entire growing cycle. They need the additional steps of hammering and picking up the drops when harvesting. Giants cannot be grown in off seasons. If you make self feeding crop combos you are usually planting some weaker crops instead of only planting stronger crops or you need to input fertilizers instead.

For example, I think 40 dragonfruit planted is better than 12 dragonfruit, 12 garlic, and 12 onion giants. With the giants, you will end up with more produce overall, but you end up with less dragonfruit than if you monocropped. You also have the advantage of just being able to plant the seeds in any season, completely leave them alone for ~6 or 12 days (depending on season) before returning and harvesting without having to water or tend or fertilize the plants in between.

[GetNerfedOn]

5 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

I've got a potentially controversial farming opinion. I think that growing giant crops after getting a sizeable seed base is less efficient than monocropping nongiants.

Giant crops have the benefit of giving you more produce and seeds (2-3 of each) per planted crop. The increased yield is significant... But not worth the tradeoffs in my opinion.

Giant crops have downsides of requiring nearly daily attention for their entire growing cycle. They need the additional steps of hammering and picking up the drops when harvesting. Giants cannot be grown in off seasons. If you make self feeding crop combos you are usually planting some weaker crops instead of only planting stronger crops or you need to input fertilizers instead.

For example, I think 40 dragonfruit planted is better than 12 dragonfruit, 12 garlic, and 12 onion giants. With the giants, you will end up with more produce overall, but you end up with less dragonfruit than if you monocropped. You also have the advantage of just being able to plant the seeds in any season, completely leave them alone for ~6 or 12 days (depending on season) before returning and harvesting without having to water or tend or fertilize the plants in between.

I would posit that the term is not not less efficient per se, it's more convenient.

If greatest yield is desired, monocropping nongiants will always have lesser yield than monocropping giants. However, I do not deny the convenience and reduced effort of this strategy especially - as you mentioned - if you have a sizable seed base. Spending less time on a medially rewarding chore is nice. 

Anyways this poll's results have proved to me that The Klei Forums has potato blood in their veins.

 

[Bumber64]

6 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

You also have the advantage of just being able to plant the seeds in any season, completely leave them alone for ~6 or 12 days (depending on season) before returning and harvesting without having to water or tend or fertilize the plants in between.

For some reason I was under the impression that lack of water or nutrients caused growth to slow to near zero. You do get some slowdown per stress point, but it's negligible.

I forgot that sufficiently neglected plants actually yielded produce at all. I thought that they matured in a rotten state and only gave seeds. (Rotten plants don't actually yield seeds, but you can wait for them to reset.)

However, it doesn't seem like you can completely ignore crops, or you'll run out of seeds. Wiki says you need to manage one stat. Nutrients are untenable for monocrop. You're going to have to water or tend. I assume both if out of season. (IDK if FFFly works effectively unloaded. You're still going to have to stop by once per stage if not.)

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, GetNerfedOn said:

I would posit that the term is not not less efficient per se, it's more convenient.

He's talking about player efficiency, not space efficiency. Putting in way more effort for slightly more reward is inefficient. 

[GimplyGoose]

3 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

For some reason I was under the impression that lack of water or nutrients caused growth to slow to near zero. You do get some slowdown per stress point, but it's negligible.

I forgot that sufficiently neglected plants actually yielded produce at all. I thought that they matured in a rotten state and only gave seeds. (Rotten plants don't actually yield seeds, but you can wait for them to reset.)

However, it doesn't seem like you can completely ignore crops, or you'll run out of seeds. Wiki says you need to manage one stat. Nutrients are untenable for monocrop. You're going to have to water or tend. I assume both if out of season. (IDK if FFFly works effectively unloaded. You're still going to have to stop by once per stage if not.)

If you do not initially tend/water and plant in off season you will accumulate 12 stress points which means you don't get seeds back. All you have to do to get to the 11 threshold is tend or water the plants once while they are in a seed stage and you are good to go. If you are planting in season you don't even need to do that much.

[GetNerfedOn]

3 hours ago, Cheggf said:

He's talking about player efficiency, not space efficiency. Putting in way more effort for slightly more reward is inefficient. 

I'm feeble of mind and not sure i quite follow; my word use of efficiency is always oriented towards maximum output for reasonable / low expenditure of resources. Hence, a doubled yield seems efficient to me considering the effort given

Is the player efficiency here being spoken of referring to freeing up the time a player has to do other things while the crops wait in the background? correct me if im wrong

1 hour ago, GimplyGoose said:

If you do not initially tend/water and plant in off season you will accumulate 12 stress points which means you don't get seeds back. All you have to do to get to the 11 threshold is tend or water the plants once while they are in a seed stage and you are good to go. If you are planting in season you don't even need to do that much.

Now that you mention this i recall a streamer who took this to the extreme directly post release of RYWS; instead of planting seeds on the farm plants for giants they'd plant everything they had in one go on the ground as Wormwood and just run up and down the crops every now and then and still get seed gains

[Cheggf]

15 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

I'm feeble of mind and not sure i quite follow; my word use of efficiency is always oriented towards maximum output for reasonable / low expenditure of resources. Hence, a doubled yield seems efficient to me considering the effort given

Is the player efficiency here being spoken of referring to freeing up the time a player has to do other things while the crops wait in the background? correct me if im wrong

Yes. Time is a resource. If you just till the ground then plant the seeds that's often inefficient since you might not get a seed. If you also add barely any extra time at all to water the plots and play an instrument for half a second you will double your yield for practically no extra increase in time invested, so it's very efficient. However, going for giant crops is an absolutely enormous increase to time investment. There are plenty of reasons to go for it where it's good. They give a lot of seeds, they look cool, it's fun. But if you don't need any of that it's usually a poor investment. You're getting 175% more crops, but you're putting in way more than 175% more time. You need to keep going back to the crops over & over & over again then when you harvest them you need to do the pluck animation on all of them as normal, but also hammer them a bunch, and pick everything up off the ground, it adds so much time.

Giant crops are fun, they're good for getting a lot of seeds, and they look cool, but they're not a time efficient way to gather crops.

[GetNerfedOn]

21 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Yes. Time is a resource. If you just till the ground then plant the seeds that's often inefficient since you might not get a seed. If you also add barely any extra time at all to water the plots and play an instrument for half a second you will double your yield for practically no extra increase in time invested, so it's very efficient. However, going for giant crops is an absolutely enormous increase to time investment. There are plenty of reasons to go for it where it's good. They give a lot of seeds, they look cool, it's fun. But if you don't need any of that it's usually a poor investment. You're getting 175% more crops, but you're putting in way more than 175% more time. You need to keep going back to the crops over & over & over again then when you harvest them you need to do the pluck animation on all of them as normal, but also hammer them a bunch, and pick everything up off the ground, it adds so much time.

Giant crops are fun, they're good for getting a lot of seeds, and they look cool, but they're not a time efficient way to gather crops.

I think i can follow now, thank you

In this case there are two crops which absolutely benefit from this strategy, which are Tomato and Watermelon; while their nutrient requirements are split into two separate kinds they're at the lowest of any crop and can be provided for in one fertilizing session or even through leftovers from monocropping their counterparts so there's a higher probability of them also returning seeds for minimal effort

[Cheggf]

2 minutes ago, GetNerfedOn said:

I think i can follow now, thank you

In this case there are two crops which absolutely benefit from this strategy, which are Tomato and Watermelon; while their nutrient requirements are split into two separate kinds they're at the lowest of any crop and can be provided for in one fertilizing session or even through leftovers from monocropping their counterparts so there's a higher probability of them also returning seeds for minimal effort

Yeah the farming system freakin' rules. There's so many different ways that you can optimize the crops. You can do things like that where you get a bunch of toma root & watermelons due to their low nutrient requirement, you can do crop combinations to have them feed each-other although possibly detracting from your yield with lesser wanted crops, you can just use fertilizers to compensate for the monoculture. It's so creative.

[zzzzzzzzzzz]

I like farming and cooking food.