One of those trees yielded 1 L of peaches (4), while websites seem to say that a single peach tree yields 1-6 “bushels” (= 35 to 210 litres) of fruit.
Why are yields so low in cataclysm? Artificial scarcity?
A lot of work goes into orchards (cutting, pest/disease control) that’s not happening in the apocalypse.
Sure, but still. 1L is less than 0.5% of normal yield.
When I was younger, we had apple trees at my home that we did very little to no care for, and we still got decently substantial yields from them. There were probably less wild animals than if they were completely in the wilderness, but we had wildlife come through and eat their yield too.
I’d have to do more remembering/asking to figure out exactly how much we got, but was it quite a lot.
I have an apple tree that is not cared for, and it yields 20kg of fruit per year, easily.
Gameplay vs. realism. One tree could supply one survivor with enough fruit to last him for seasons, dehydrated.
Something’s gotta give.
Just an opinion. While I can see limiting overall yield per year due to various blob and fungal reasons as well as tree may not be in its prime fruit bearing years, trying to maintain a type of challenge in the game. I completely agree that current yields are entirely too low.
My quick math shows normal peach trees potentially yielding 210l per year for a perfect tree and perfect harvest to as little as 105l per year. How about low balling to about 70l per year? It could also open up avenues of trade with NPCs as they are improved.
Edit: I just realized, to make it more realistic, obtaining the full harvest in one (e)xamine wouldn’t be likely due to some fruits not ripe, as well as the time it would take to work over the entire tree. It also begs the question as to how to harvest from the top most branches of a 14 foot tree. As a further compromise, and to account for tree height, maybe simply allow 5 times during a growing season you could (e)xamine a peach tree. Each time you pick the tree gives you between 8-10l of peaches. You would then have to wait X number of ticks to harvest again. This would give each tree a minimum of 40l to a maximum of 50l.
Well, one thing that’s not being addressed is the time it takes to harvest the tree. An average laborer working in an efficient environment with the right equipment - which includes a ladder, storage bins, etc - can pick anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000 pounds of apples per day, working sunup-sundown days. This works out to 250-833 pounds of apples per hour, or 508-1300 large apples - which works out to 85-220L per hour.
So, an unskilled laborer working in suboptimal conditions, alone, could probably achieve somewhere in the realm of 50L - 80L of apples per hour. Dunno what the numbers on other trees would be.
One also has to consider the fact that the harvest window for fruit trees is actually pretty limited - short enough that seasonal changes of a few days are critically important for scheduling harvest logistics. Harvesting too early or too late reduces yield from underdevelopment or rot/pests/insects, respectively. In-game, fruit trees are harvestable for the entire (default) 90-day season with no impact to yield.
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LoL I just edited my post when I realized this. Talk about timing 
I mean if I knew anything about coding I would try to implement some kind of eyebot or other small type of robot that could try to harvest Farm plots within a zoned area but I have no idea how easy or hard the prospect might be to implement in game. (Farmbot/ harvester drone)
Easiest way I could see both sides being happy is maybe making something like the forklift arms for vehicles that would Shake trees and would get more yield at the cost of battery life.
as far as farming is concerned, you can already make an autoplow/seeder vehicle as well as a harvester (using reapers)
but these dont work for trees specifically, and thats the current topic.
the trees ARE harvestable multiple times, but they have to regrow… perhaps increasing the time between harvests of the tree with a bit more yield would be best? you’ll end up filling your inventory with fruit from an orchard, but its very likely a lot of it will go bad before you dehydrate it, and you’ll need the tools to dehydrate it anyway.
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Maybe require a stepladder or equivalent to fully harvest a tree? Harvesting would be done until your inventory is full or you interrupt it or the tree runs out of usable fruit.
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Perhaps [e]xamining a tree should tell the player how many harvesteables remain on it, ask how much they want to harvest and then inform how long that will take.
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Right now terrain and furniture have no sort of state tracking, so doing anything complex with partial harvesting is not really possible. Harvesting a tree swaps the terrain of the tile, because there is no state stored there.
Wonder how hard it would be to ‘place an item’ on the tree, as if you would a counter top. You then could make ‘the harvest’ a placeable item on the tree. ‘The harvest’ could then rot/produce less fruit as it sits until gone. But of course that would run into all sorts of issues just trying to create this as a workaround wouldn’t it? Such as replacing during correct season and likely more.
i mean, easiest way to ‘solve’ this problem is to make the tree a container, and set the time for moving an item out of it equivalent to the time you’d supposedly take to ‘pick’ an apple.
but that would lead to weirdness like you could put apples back on the tree so they wouldn’t rot. among other things.
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