Stunted / Stifled Growth

[The Plum Gate]

It appears we lost the ability to grow plants as if they were in the wild - it would be nice to get a stunted growth plant rather than not get any growth at all - stunted grow would simply set their harvest timer to that of wild type growth until the domestic requirements are met and are planted in a player placed farm tile, planter box, or hydroponics tile. They have the additional domestic growth requirements, yes, yet they grow in the wild. But they don't grow at all in the current arrangement when they're stifled due to not meeting the additional domestication requirements. The plants grow on their own - and yet they don't? It's a bit confusing - there are numerous reasons that the plant becomes stifled and not stunted.

My suggestion is two fold:

Stunted when not meeting the additional domestication requirements - plant grows according to wild type model.

Stifled when not meeting the baseline requirements - atmospherics, lighting, temperature, ( all requirements other than the additional domestication requirements )

Plant benefits from domestication model, timing, etc, when all requirements are met.

[Michi01]

I think it's for balance so it's not too easy to grow crops. You'd simply need to grow four times as many plants to be able to grow any plants for free (not counting temperature, light and atmosphere requirements) and a lot of people would probably do that.

[The Plum Gate]

at 88 cycles for sleet wheat, it seems like it would incentivise planning to meet those requirements in order to get the food faster rather than opening up large areas specifically for farming... meanwhile the plant gets put where you want it and grows, albeit slowly.

An overwhelming number of people are just spamming mealwood in planter boxes ... they actually do better in farm tiles as decor goes.

If you're growing all of the food, it seems to take less plants, but more resources - the counterbalance in this stunted growth is time, you posit that people will simply plant more ( I guess in intervals ) - this requires that you find the seeds to begin with - which are all in the biome where they grow, which essentially means you already have access to the domestication requirements <- this being the current system, not too easy, not to hard, but a lot of guesswork when it comes to resources and the inevitable question of payoff

The problem is total food disasters loom when you are having to choose between food and oxygen because other important gameplay elements use the same materials as your plants - in the early game, this can be quite the balancing act and usually leads to nontrivial colony problems down the road.

I'm not suggesting that they make farming easy by the numbers, it simply makes no sense that they grow in the wild without these things being spoon fed or piped to them, and yet placing it in a farm tile or hydro tile completely stops their growth if you run out of resources.

[Botaxalim]

Making farm too easy will welcoming new player and less rant about game learning curve

Making farm too complicated will make newbie player rage, because their colony is starving thus no food to produces in early stage of game

There need progress from early game, mid game and late game, right now most players just spam (planter box mealwood) early game strat till end game. Not enough incentive upgrading farm to next level, because

• too much work for starting, setting hydrophonic tile, room, pumbling, light, temp
• Dupe Time tending fertilizer/phospor/slime to maintain
• and not much reward after that

Beside testing and trying other food, there not much motivation upgrading from mealwood, better use easy way, and explore the other game thermodynamic, secret, new technique building/machine etc.

 

[Michi01]

I'm assuming that they're planning to add a proper food quality system so that players have an incentive to move on from mealwood, while still letting it be an easy food source early in the game.

[The Plum Gate]

Activating the quality feature sounds reasonable.

 

[brummbar7]

Getting rid of wild planting was a very good thing and I hope it does not come back in any form.  It's already easy enough to just leave the wild plants in place and harvest them.  At least it gives the player an incentive to preserve the biomes outside the base, rather than just wrecking everything (especially cold biomes).  I now watch my wild pinchas and if I find they're too low of temperature, I build a little mini-abyssalite box around them with a space heater and temp switch.  Cold is a lot harder to provide individually, so I just try to enter cold biomes from the top when possible, to discourage heat migration.

[Michi01]

I think wild planting had its right to exist when wild plants still died off after a few harvests because it made no sense for plants to even exist in the wild otherwise, but I agree that the new system without wild planting and with plants that don't just die off is much better.

[The Plum Gate]

I like the immortal plant model, or perennial model as it were.

There may be an even ground between the two.

Neither a domestic or wild model. Something with more player feedback in the farming overlay, and maybe in the planting tile as well.

Say the plants have very minimal baseline requirements and meeting those gives you the minimum yield over the maximum harvest cycle. Then there are additional, optional things you can do to increase yield, such as fertilizing and watering, etc.

These optional patameters could be converted into optional tasks when clicking in the farm tile they're planted in. Like a checkbox system. Checking the box to have the dupes tend to those requirements and thus decrease maturation time as well as increase yield. Or for general havest control.

The takeaway here is that not meeting the additional requirements would cause stunted growth ( at current wild type maturation times ) rather than causing the plants to not grow at all.

The feedback aspect of this that opting into meeting those additional requirements would increase yield.

As an example: ( some plant, I'll call it the Nupe )

Optimal temperature: 18 - 23c

Suboptimal temperatures: less than 18 -or greater than 23, death at less than 12 or greater than 28

Lighting: Light or Dark (any)

Fertilization: Phosphite - 4kg per cycle or Fertilizer 4kg per cycle

Atmosphere: types: Carbon dioxide, Oxygen, Natural Gas. optimum pressure: 450 - 1100g. Extended pressure 150 - 3000g. Death at less than 100 or greater than 3200 (for an extended time)

Irrigation: polluted water, water

Optimal temperature and pressure would effect growth rate and time to harvest, going beyond above or below would cause plant death.

Fertilizing would cause a decrease in the time to harvest. Different types would have different effects. 

Irrigation would be similar to fertilization.

Hitting the base requirements  ( optimals ), would cause minimal yield. Botching those would cause plant death. Meeting the extras would decrease growth time and increase yield.

I know this sounds pretty much the same as what we had before, the difference would be manual control over domestic growth factors via the planting tiles - and the notion that there would be both growth and maturation in some time frame even when growing in suboptimal conditions.

Irrigation, and fertilization would also have effects. Think of them all as additive growth factors which increase yield and decrease harvest cycle time.

So the Nupe might have 4 times the yeild when grown optimally, or no yeild at all due to not meeting enough requirements, or it might die all together ( plants have died! )

[brummbar7]

i think really, if they just went back to something like the AU system, where yield varies with conditions, but with the simple difference that plants just continually regrow, as it is now in the OU.  That way you don't have newbs losing all their plants and seeds.  You have some conditions cause stifling (atmosphere type and pressure and light) while some affect the yield (temperature water and fertilizer).   Newbs can use larger farms with poor conditions to meet their food needs, while more experienced players can get better yields with smaller farms, and use the surplus water for more oxygen for more dupes.   Seeds will only be yielded at the upper tier(s), so newbs will have a tougher time expanding their farm.  You get rid of food system collapse, but keep rewards for skilled players - everybody wins.  

But, even the current system will probably be more tolerable once they implement actual increasing demands of food quality, so there is incentive to use the higher tier food.

[The Plum Gate]

On 9/11/2017 at 1:10 AM, brummbar7 said:

But, even the current system will probably be more tolerable once they implement actual increasing demands of food quality, so there is incentive to use the higher tier food.

This will need to be well timed with the leveling of dupes.