What happened to precision for greater rewards?

[Yucie]

I've recently started watching some videos from the community and stumbled upon a video regarding the creation of "excellent yield farms", where very specific conditions with little margin for error resulted in greater crop yields and seeds.

That sounded absolutely brilliant, as a true test to mastering the systems at your disposal for a greater reward as an optional choice for those who want to take things a bit further. That sounds leagues better than our current set it and forget it gameplay, beyond just farming but in general.  So why (and when) was it removed?

For some context, I'm a newbie who went in blind with two cycle 300+ maps on miserable/fatalistic without any plastic or refined metal buildings, with a basic electrolyzer setup, some mealwood farms and berries, and no ranching at all. I got bored and decided to watch some videos to see what the community does and was surprised to see the great setups people make, yet wonder why the game isn't motivating us to utilize or improve and master the mechanics at our disposal as so many of you challenge yourselves to do. It's cool to challenge yourself but there's no in-game benefit for doing so and I feel that's a missed opportunity this game could really benefit from.

I understand this is early access but that concept was already implemented with farming and I just wonder why it was removed, with hope that it will return someday.

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Also, thank you to the community for showing me just how deep the rabbit hole could go if one truly wanted to engineer something great. My engineering experience will enjoy the debug mode for quite some time even though it does seem rather pointless for the moment.

[Rainbowdesign]

I think it was removed during the farming upgrade and i think the reason might be that they wanted a design concept that is strait forward and maybe in some future upgrade return it more balanced. Some upgrades ago the best way was to simply grow mealwood. sure it will be back.

[PhailRaptor]

Personally I agree, the Agriculture Upgrade's system was a better overall direction, it simply had horrible number balance that could have been worked out.  I think in the end I think the devs decided that it wasn't what they wanted out of the game.

[Im_not_Included]

It was updated around Outbreak upgrade, when mushrooms and such were implemented. It was a great system for strong and experienced players with a rather large deficit for new players/not as good players. You wouldn't think so, on the surface it was greater rewards for greater yield, but the seed drops could kill young bases if you didn't toe the razors edge on high yields. Additionally at the time, we did not have as much automation and a huge aspect of gameplay was manual, uphill battle.

 

It was fun when you got it, but not so much if you didn't. Its kinda how ranching was at first and still a little bit is - a bit of a time sink. When I played before Outbreak it was great but I spent so many cycles setting up the buildings to run a farm, instead of actually running the dang farm. 

 

Don't get me wrong, the current seed spawning mechanic gives us a mountain of the stuff in minutes, which is hilariously ridiculous as soon as you hit cycle 50. 

 

I think the old way pigeon holed a lot of the players and devs as well. Based on their streams, that is the last things the devs want to do. Maybe the system in place now would allow them to rebalance a lot easier later. Currently all it takes is 6 weeks for the game balancing to need tweaking again, with the fast content update schedule they have now. Who knows if this system is the one we end with, or if its just a place holder to get us through and we find a happy medium at the end. 

[Soulwind]

It needed some serious tweaking, but I personally don't think it should have been completely removed; but I'm not the developer making decisions...

What I would like to see would be a mixture of then and now. 

1) Add the plant lifetime (to require re-planting seeds) to all domesticated plants. 

2) Leave mealwood alone as is other than replanting.  This gives new bases/players time to prepare for the other plants.

3) Add back the high-yield band, but make it a wider range than it was before (it was way to narrow a margin to hit) to the other plants.

4) Add some requirement for balm lilly growth (probably phosphate, as that's all that really makes sense).  Right now it's completely plant and forget.

5) Make the farmer's touch application faster and/or change it from a growth spurt to a yield upgrade (either flat yield bonus or expanding the high-yield range band while boosted).

6) Up the seed drop a bit for average yield farms so that an average yield farm is basically seed neutral and high yield farms are seed positive.

7) I would also like to see plants have some resource interaction.  Berries should consume CO2 and release O2, Shrooms should drop some fertilizer or maybe algae, etc.  This might be hard to get balanced correctly though, so that farming doesn't overshadow all the other solutions for resources.

[Coolthulhu]

The old system was bad because:

• It had plant lifetime and replanting that used up seeds. Both just plain terrible ideas, no way to defend them.
• It had a very narrow temperature range that required cooling. That was another hurdle for new players and a requirement to build a cooling system just to get proper food output. Early game is the hardest already.
• Fertilization that couldn't be turned off, but wasn't strictly required.
• Air pressure requirement was just plain redundant.
• Sleet wheat free food.

[Lilalaunekuh]

3 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

It had a very narrow temperature range that required cooling. That was another hurdle for new players and a requirement to build a cooling system just to get proper food output. Early game is the hardest already.

But this would be the only thing I want back

(Not with the old numbers, but the idea to increase yield seemed nice. I think of something like the critter morphs)

[Alfons100]

What if using Special Fertilizer (Micronutrients) would activate the more perfect farming tiers. Without Farmer's Touch they grow anywhere, if you start giving special nutrients the plant will also begin to demand better temperatures/atmosphere before stifling. So it basically activates 'hard growing mode' but greater reward.

[BadlyBurned]

I don't know, I find farming almost totally useless since the ranching/cosmic update. I NEED lime, so I have to breed eggs.. the amount of eggs I get just make having any sort of farm completely pointless as I'm already at 250k calories saved up and growing steadily just on eggs alone.

AFTER I've finished with lime and the surface, crops will be more useful as I'll need them to keep feeding my dupes in the late late game when I no loner have algae for fish, or any minerals left for hatches. Not to mention Dense puffs which apparently can be farmed for eggs and fed oxygen, which might even make late late game crops not even needed.

What I think they need is a way to produce lime through farming, or at least a different form of lime collection outside of eggs. Until then, I only use plants to feed dreckos and that is it.