What use, if any, should excess Seeds have?

[LeadfootSlim]

Mealwood seeds in particular just KEEP. ADDING. UP. It's unending. I've got 188 so far and I haven't even hit cycle 100. So, what do you think should be done with this bothersome surplus?

-Fertilizer: Some sort of powered upgrade to the Compost seems like a fitting addition at some point, and if so then maybe it'd be able to handle hard items like Seeds. This makes sense for all types of seeds - including Fungal Spores, if you somehow accrue a surplus of those.

-Food: Want to make your bread more "rustic"? Put some seeds in it! Perhaps this could be done directly, or with the help of an additional kitchen gadget such as a gristmill or grinder. Not as good as Pepper Bread, but at the very least it'd be a way to destroy the seeds for a productive purpose.

-Animal Feed: Perhaps allowing Hatches (or some other animal) to eat Seeds could yield a benefit; reproduction, for proper meat breeding? Or they might undergo a dangerous metamorphosis, requiring fastidious pickup to prevent a monstrous outcome... Either way, it'd be handy later-game, but a nuisance early on when they're potentially munching on your starting seedcrop.

-Research/Synthesis Ingredient? It always struck me as odd that you can learn about farming by looking really hard at... dirt. Maybe adjusting the current research, or future farming research tiers, to require a few seeds as materials? It wouldn't be much, but it'd be something to spice up the early game in terms of milestone requirements.

-Super-Science?: The devs have mentioned "space-age" tech at some point in the future, and if the Neuralyzer is any indication there's some wacky stuff ahead. Maybe we could build a nuclear-powered Temporal Accelerator, and grow your seeds into full Mealwood plants in the blink of an eye for an instant yield!... which would destroy the seed for an immediate food benefit. Of course, that'd still leave you to hoard the useless things till the lategame...

Or...

-Produce Fewer Seeds In The First Place? The agriculture model previously would destroy plants periodically, randomly providing seeds (or not) on death. Eventually you'd get a net positive, but its surplus was certainly less dramatic than what we have now. Perhaps another change to the agricultural model is in order if we're suffering such a surplus?

 

What do you think? Does the seed situation need an interesting solution, or should the numbers just be tweaked a bit?

[The Plum Gate]

 

 

[brummbar7]

I'm hoping in the course of reworking the dupe food preferences, they also tweak the agriculture system so it's not so boring.  And part of that could indeed be reduction in seed dropage.  Even if the system stayed as it is, I think a reduction in seed drop rates to 10% or less would be good.

Beyond that, another things i want to see is a larger variety of kitchen machines, so that we actually have decked out kitchens.  And one of these could be a spice mill, used to grind up seeds for spices.  These spices can then be added to any *prepared* food (i.e. NOT raw meal lice, mushrooms, etc) to increase the quality by one.   It might take 4 mealwood seeds to make one spice serving, but only 1 pincha seeds, 1 blossoms 1 briar, etc.  No spice possible from sleet wheat.  That'd give a use which hopefully might be interesting down the road.

In the more short term, I would like to see seeds compostable, just to be able to be rid of them.

[Michi01]

10 hours ago, LeadfootSlim said:

The agriculture model previously would destroy plants periodically, randomly providing seeds (or not) on death. Eventually you'd get a net positive, but its surplus was certainly less dramatic than what we have now

Actually it wasn't random, the numbers were set and depended on how many growth requirements were met.