Hydroponic water usage (?) exploit (?)

[onlineous]

I ran in the same problem with hydroponics exchanging heat into my base since the automation upgrade as referred here:

I started experimenting with valves to restrict the flow of water into the hydroponics tiles. The 'weird' thing that I noticed (and I couldn't find it mentioned elsewhere using the search function) is that I can restrict the flow of water way to far without smothering the plant. I use Bristle Blossoms which should use 80 kg of water per cycle (which should translate to 133.33 grams per second if I'm correct). It seems that plants check for water every x but don't properly take into account if they get enough water. I could restrict the flow of water to 5 grams per second without smothering the Blossoms if I give each plot it's own liquid valve.

Seems like an exploit to me?

 

[Coolthulhu]

Yeah, it's a known exploit.

The "enough resources" check only requires some tiny amounts of water to count as satisfied and it ticks less often than "remove resources" one.

I'm not sure if it's reported on the bug tracker though. If it hasn't been fixed since I first saw it, it probably means the first discoverer didn't report it.

[onlineous]

I must say that I kind of understand the dev's problem with fixing it. 

 

Wat if I give the plants 130 grams per second instead of 133.33 grams per second? Will they smother every 40 seconds (or something close to that) or will it smother 1/40th of a second? This would actually be easier to fix if they would still have those harvest points, I liked that system more than the current system.

[GreatGameDota]

Plants also take a little bit before becoming stifled from lack of water.

[Coolthulhu]

15 hours ago, onlineous said:

I must say that I kind of understand the dev's problem with fixing it.

It's not a difficult problem technically. Having a farm only activate irrigation if water is above certain threshold (say, enough for 3 seconds of irrigation) would fix it without much effort.

They are most likely either unaware of it or decided to prioritize other issues.

[onlineous]

21 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

It's not a difficult problem technically. Having a farm only activate irrigation if water is above certain threshold (say, enough for 3 seconds of irrigation) would fix it without much effort.

They are most likely either unaware of it or decided to prioritize other issues.

That would increase the difficulty of the game a bit though, because you now have 3 seconds of water supply heating up your farm tiles. But it would be the easiest solution indeed.