The Agricultural Downgrade

[Vanolis]

Hi this is my first time on this forum, I always thought that it would be something about suggesting new ideas but after the new "upgrade" I felt compelled to point out a few things.

First, I love the new disease system and I think that it has a lot of potential, however everything you did in the last update AU now it seems to be downgraded. For example the new plant growing mechanic is not good. In the old mechanic there was more in-depth strategy on how to plant and what to plant. For example mealwood was good at the beginning but after you established your colony getting Bristle Blossom was essential.  For me mealwood was like making short term investment which pays less but you can do it faster, and  Bristle Blossom was long term investment which pays more but you need stable colony to produce it.  As it is now there is no need for other plants except mealwood, which pays  much more than any other plant for less resources spent. 

Second, the difference between planter box, farm tile, or hydroponic farm is very minimal. Another strategy ruined. In the old system I would balance between using all of them but now all that seems worthless. Once you got the better tile you should use that.

Third, the usage of fertilizer is now for only 1 plant? WHY? we have 2 machines to  produce fertilizer only to use it on one plant. Which you might get if you find the ice biome which is also rare with this "upgrade".  Why do we need to build compost so early in the game to make fertilizer if we are going to use it waaay later. 

Lastly I would say I understand the need to simplify things to attract new players, but you basically KILLED the agricultural upgrade with this one. Also the people who a drawn to this game like to be challenged and would not mind a little complexity as long as it is well thought off which it was with the AU.  I hope that someone will see this and correct this mistake immediately. My suggestion is to cut short the next update put less new content and focus more on re-balancing the farm system and everything else.  

[Sevio]

I do agree that it's quite strange now to have 2 fertilizer making machines, one of them very early game and then have nothing useful to spend fertilizer on. (I don't consider Sleet Wheat viable due to its high water use, and Bristle Blossom is even worse than that) I think this may have gotten overlooked among OU's focus on disease and then bugfixing and polish, or at least postponed to another update for refinement.

One easy way to remedy it would be to add a fertilizer requirement to bristle blossoms, reduce water use of both bristles and sleet wheat and increase sleet wheat's fertilizer requirement slightly.

As  for planter box vs farm tile vs hydroponic farm, the differences are subtle but I think those can come to be appreciated. Hydroponic tiles have automated irrigation via piping, while farm tiles require manual water delivery but have no negative decor. Planter boxes are the early game option, but I agree they become quite useless later on unless you simply must have a farm built on airflow or mesh tiles. I wonder if that could be any use at all...

[Daikataro]

Yup, agree on this, the only positive change was preventing the plants from going totally extinct like they used to, and the introduction of mushrooms. Other than that, I was finding myself at a loss at what to do or how to irrigate plants, as they have no specifics, and yes seeds that aren't mealwood or dusk caps are a waste of resources, given their high resource consumption rate, and harder care requirements, for comparatively lower yields. Yes they are required to make the high level cuisine, but your colony can live off raw mealwood and fried shrooms and be happy and stress-free.

I too, would love seeing a balance between using low level seeds and farming options, and the high tier ones. Shorter life cycles, higher yields, longer spoilage time, as it is now, we have zero incentive to move to a Bristle Blossom or Sleet Wheat farm, when shrooms and Mealwood are cutting it just fine, for a fraction of the time and effort.