Farming System Suggestion

[Reaniel]

Ok, first things first, I must tell you ahead of time that I HATED the old yield system.  The way it was setup isn't really "challenging", but rather annoying, in that a short period of screw-up would rob you of that precious Excellent Yield.  Not to mention that the whole "dying without getting a seed" thing for certain plants or the difficulty to expand for certain plants (unless you get enough excellent yields) is truly frustrating.

So overall, I think a lot of changes in this revamp is a welcoming step in the right direction.  Having plants not die and chance for a seed on harvest took the pressure of losing seeds because of minor mistake off the table, and you get more freedom in testing stuff.

However, the growth/stifle system is too much simplified, and, as I'm sure many would agree, removes the challenge/reward factor of farming.  This leads to the whole "spam mealwood and be done" situation we have right now, and, to me at least, it's worse than the "spam sleet wheat and be done" we had in AU.

So here's my suggestion:  Make it so that certain factors (such as irrigation, fertilizer, temperature range, etc.) would SPEED UP harvest.

As mentioned at the beginning, I really hated when my harvest rating didn't make the cut because of very minor blunder that I couldn't fix fast enough, and having these factors providing instant benefit such as harvest speed would pump up the reward factor.

Here are my list of modifications (Hidden because it's REALLY long):

Spoiler

Let's start off with Mealwood.

Mealwood:
Maturation time: 12 cycles (Remove domestic maturation time)
Air pressure: 150 - 10,000g (Will stifle outside of this range)
-Optional Bonus:
+25% Growth Speed 500 - 5,000g
+50% Growth Speed 850 - 1,500g
Atmosphere: Oxygen, Polluted Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide (Remain the same)
Internal temperature: 10 - 30°C
-Optional Bonus:
+50% Growth Speed 15 - 25°C
+100% Growth Speed 18 - 22°C
Fertilization (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Fertilizer 2,000g / cycle
Irrigation (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Polluted Water 40,000g / cycle

So basically, You'd be able to obtain a yield with almost minimal effort after 12 cycles, with shorest harvest time at 2 cycles. Without Fertilization and Irrigation, the shortest harvest time would be 4.8 cycles (if you can keep the temperature and air pressure in the most optimal range).

Bristle Blossom
Maturation time: 16 cycles
Air pressure: 150 - 10,000g
-Optional Bonus:
+25% Growth Speed 500 - 5,000g
+50% Growth Speed 850 - 1,500g
Atmosphere: Carbon Dioxide
Internal temperature: 5 - 23°C
-Optional Bonus:
+50% Growth Speed 8 - 18°C
+100% Growth Speed 11 - 15°C
Illumination: Light
Fertilization (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Fertilizer 4,000g / cycle
Irrigation (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Water 40,000g / cycle (Yes, I've toned it down because 80kg is just too darn high)

Harvest time with optimal Temperature/Pressure: 6.4 cycles
Harvest time with optimal everything: 2.67 cycles

Pincha Pepperplant
Maturation time: 88 cycles
Air pressure: 150 - 10,000g
-Optional Bonus:
+25% Growth Speed 500 - 5,000g
+50% Growth Speed 850 - 1,500g
Internal temperature: 35 - 85°C
-Optional Bonus:
+50% Growth Speed 51 - 64°C
+100% Growth Speed 55 - 60°C
Fertilization (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Phosphorite 1,000g / cycle
Irrigation (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Polluted Water 35,000g / cycle

Harvest time with optimal Temperature/Pressure: 35.2 cycles
Harvest time with optimal everything: 14.67 cycles

Sleet Wheat
Maturation time: 80 cycles
Air pressure: 150 - 10,000g
-Optional Bonus:
+25% Growth Speed 500 - 5,000g
+50% Growth Speed 850 - 1,500g
Atmosphere: Oxygen, Polluted Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide
Internal temperature: -55 - 5°C
-Optional Bonus:
+50% Growth Speed -44 - -31°C
+100% Growth Speed -40 - -35°C
Fertilization (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Fertilizer 4,000g / cycle
Irrigation (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Water 20,000g / cycle

Harvest time with optimal Temperature/Pressure: 32 cycles
Harvest time with optimal everything: 13.33 cycles

Thimble Reed (No Air Pressure Bonus for Reed)
Maturation time: 8 cycles
Atmosphere: Oxygen, Polluted Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, Polluted Water, Water
Internal temperature: 21.9 - 36.9°C
-Optional Bonus:
+50% Growth Speed 24 - 35°C
+100% Growth Speed 28 - 33°C
Fertilization (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Fertilizer 12,000g / cycle
Irrigation (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Polluted Water 160,000g / cycle

Harvest time with optimal Temperature: 4 cycles
Harvest time with optimal everything: 1.78 cycles

Dusk Cap
Maturation time: 40 cycles
Air pressure: 150 - 10,000g
-Optional Bonus:
+25% Growth Speed 500 - 5,000g
+50% Growth Speed 850 - 1,500g
Atmosphere: Carbon Dioxide
Internal temperature: 5 - 35°C
-Optional Bonus:
+50% Growth Speed 22 - 33°C
+100% Growth Speed 26 - 31°C
Illumination: Darkness
Fertilization (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Slime 5,000g / cycle (Adjusted this a little bit for balance)
Irrigation (Optional):
+175% Growth Speed Polluted Water 30,000g / cycle

Harvest time with optimal Temperature/Pressure: 16 cycles
Harvest time with optimal everything: 6.67 cycles

So there we have it.  This is my personal view as to how to improve the current farming system.  A lot of the numbers merely involve my own theorycrafting, so it may or may not be balanced.  However, the basic idea is the same, where I would really like to see fertilization and irrigation going back to being optional (and thus solving the current problem with limited water AND unrenewable phosphorite), but with VERY clear disadvantage.  Same goes with the temperature range issue, where I'd really like the range bonus in the old yield system giving a bonus of some kind.

Let me know what you all think

[brummbar7]

Personally I liked the old system.  Being rewarded for doing things well.  I think they perhaps could have been fine if they'd just gotten rid of seed loss in poor conditions, but retained the yield and seed bonus.   So there's no catastrophic seed failure, but you still get rewarded for doing well, and can't expand (or at least not as fast) if you're not doing well.    The addition of gas and light to the mix was good, but applied kind of loosely.  I like the addition of more fertilizer types, but at the same time now fertilizer makers are far less useful, and domesticated pincha peppers are a dead end in the very long term.  You're now heavily incentivized to leave sleet wheat and pinchas growing wild.   The whole system just needs more depth, more disadvantages, maybe a plant-specific disease or two.  And bad food penalties need to be an actual thing so that we have incentive to actually progress.  The proposal above might work, but it'd be a very complicated info note.  Would have to play it to see.

[x4550]

I like it right where it is.  It's more realistic.  I like having mealwood fields and huge harvests with low to moderate upkeep.  That way I can focus on building and engineering.  I didn't understand the AU meta.  It was moderately interesting getting high yield the one or two times I tried for it, but it was just so high-stakes for such a small area that I couldn't take it seriously.  Maybe it's just a personal preference thing - I like to build big and have as many dupes as possible, not spend all day adjusting thermo-regulators.

[Reaniel]

12 hours ago, Stinktooth said:

I like it right where it is.  It's more realistic.  I like having mealwood fields and huge harvests with low to moderate upkeep.  That way I can focus on building and engineering.  I didn't understand the AU meta.  It was moderately interesting getting high yield the one or two times I tried for it, but it was just so high-stakes for such a small area that I couldn't take it seriously.  Maybe it's just a personal preference thing - I like to build big and have as many dupes as possible, not spend all day adjusting thermo-regulators.

I'm not saying that we should take away casual farming, which is why I'm proposing to get rid of irrigation and fertilizer requirements and make it a bonus instead.

But there should be some reward to engineering and getting it down to that small optimal window that it's worth growing higher crops beyond mealwood.

The way I tried to do the numbers is that if you put in exactly the same effort into the higher crops as you do in the current OU system, you get roughly the same harvest time.  You can do extrem casual farming and still get a harvest, but just much longer.  However, if you really put your focus into it, you'd get about 1.5x more harvest than the current OU numbers.

I just want to get a bit incentives in stuff beyond mealwood, while still allowing people to grow stuff by spamming, if so they choose.

[x4550]

3 hours ago, Reaniel said:

I just want to get a bit incentives in stuff beyond mealwood, while still allowing people to grow stuff by spamming, if so they choose.

I think they're trying to do this by disincentivizing the lesser crops. Have you noticed the "lousy meal" tag sticks around for a lot longer now, the higher their food expectations get? 

[Vanolis]

Your math seems legit you get +1 from me, although I do not agree about the never ending seeds mechanic. This should be reversed back to the way it was, because nothing lasts forever plants are not immortal at some point they should wither and die but hopefully by then you should have tons of seeds to replace them if you do your farming the right way. 

To sum up I think that they should revert to the old limited number of harvests system.

[Sevio]

17 hours ago, Vanolis said:

Your math seems legit you get +1 from me, although I do not agree about the never ending seeds mechanic. This should be reversed back to the way it was, because nothing lasts forever plants are not immortal at some point they should wither and die but hopefully by then you should have tons of seeds to replace them if you do your farming the right way. .

You're confusing "neverending seeds" with "neverending plants". The plants in OU seem "neverending" but it makes more sense if you look at it this way: The replanting is now included in the harvesting action. With a 33% chance of getting an extra seed on top of that.

You may still not like it that you're now guaranteed to get a net positive seed output, but I think that was a reaction to widespread dissatisfaction in AU that you had to farm at a net negative seed output in the early game because your conditions weren't perfect, when you needed a surplus the most in the early game. That's why people massively circumvented it as soon as they could by growing Sleet Wheat.

As for the OP's suggestion, I didn't have time to read the entire list of changes, but it looks like it boils down to allowing you to farm advanced crops while ignoring the requirements, as long as you have space to spare for large farms. I don't think that would be an improvement to the farming system. I'd rather see the requirements for advanced crops changed to make them more sustainable and possibly some extra crop types added to fill in some gaps. This could then be paired with a more severe penalty for eating food below expectations to stop the endless mealwood meta.