Plant food

Game Talk The Bunker
1

Time to produce 1x plant food:
2x bone meal: 30m (4x per 60m)
1x chitin powder: 15m (4x per 60m)
100x lye powder: 18m
-> 5x charcoal: 30m (10x per 60m)
OR
1x ammonia: 36m - needs chemistry set
-> 1x charcoal: 6m (10x per 60m)
1x plant food: 20m
Total : 113m (with lye) or 107m (with ammonia)

I don’t know how much faster the plant will grow, but if you have to spend 2 hours working to fertilize one plant, it is most likely not worth it. Except at the beginning, when you need to multiply some rare seeds.

2

Making the plant food only takes 20 minutes. That seems reasonable. Some of the ingredients you could find in other places.

Apart from that I have no idea how the farming system works.

3

Farming is more “realistic” in this game, and it takes a very, very, VERY long time. I think it’s also proportional to the length of the seasons.

4

I would shower the person who makes a farming guide with praise btw. As soon as the wiki is fixed it would be an ideal spot for that.

5

[quote=“Soyweiser, post:2, topic:5529”]Making the plant food only takes 20 minutes. That seems reasonable. Some of the ingredients you could find in other places.

Apart from that I have no idea how the farming system works.[/quote]

Look, even if you could shrug off intermediate products, which you realistically cannot, because plant food is IMO not supposed to be a make one and done item, bone meal and chitin powder is not lootable, as far as I know. And that makes minimal crafting time 65m.

6

Looking at the code (map.cpp:4183, iexame.cpp:1169):

Plants need 3 seasons (see options) to grow from seed to harvestable plant. Each time a submap is loaded into the reality bubble and the plant is older than a season length, it ages into the next grow state (seed -> seedling, mature plant -> harvestable plant).

Fertilizer can be added once in each growing state, it reduces the length of that state by 2 days.

A unfertilized plant takes exactly 3 * season length days to grow to the finial state. A plant that is fertilized in each state takes 3 * (season length - 2) days to grow to the final state.

I think if you can wait 3 seasons, the saved 6 days don’t really matter.

7

That sounds about right. I live in the northeast near the Appalachian mountains and the Allegheny National Forest. Honestly, though in some areas you do need to fertilize - around here, we have some of the most fertile soil on the planet. That is true of Appalachia in general. The short growing seasons (spring and summer being it, unless your growing lettuce/etc. which can grow all winter with preparation) are a pain, but you don’t really need to fertilize for stuff like gardens, or even hobby farms. I know half a dozen organic farmers whom have never used any fertalizer at all, and I have relatives whom feed themselves ‘mostly’ on gardens that are not really that huge or that much effort - that have never used any either. And if you do want to, there’s always compost/leaves.

I’m in a rural area though. If you go into suburbia it can be a very different story, especially in places where they have junk in the soil, or bricks underneath, or have sold off the topsoil at some point in the past. But in general, if you go out into the country, its not a problem.

In any event, without people around, I would presume (still new at the game though!) that a hunter-gatherer lifestyle will be far less work then an agrarian one, which is the case historically speaking.

8

How about increasing the harvest size with the fertilizer, rather than shortening the growth cycle?

9

[quote=“BevapDin, post:6, topic:5529”]Looking at the code (map.cpp:4183, iexame.cpp:1169):

Plants need 3 seasons (see options) to grow from seed to harvestable plant. Each time a submap is loaded into the reality bubble and the plant is older than a season length, it ages into the next grow state (seed → seedling, mature plant → harvestable plant).

Fertilizer can be added once in each growing state, it reduces the length of that state by 2 days.

A unfertilized plant takes exactly 3 * season length days to grow to the finial state. A plant that is fertilized in each state takes 3 * (season length - 2) days to grow to the final state.

I think if you can wait 3 seasons, the saved 6 days don’t really matter.[/quote]

Wow, that is even worse than I thought… bone meal, chitin powder and plant food serves as menu crafting clutter at this point, it look more like a trap for a player to waste his time on

I suggest to either remove it entirely, or have plant food create more charges. like 10 at least, to be somewhat useful. Edit: I take it back, unless you are able to make 2 harvests in one year, it is useless entirely.

Or this:

10
11

Thing is, is does not help at all.

It is not obvious at first (to me it wasn’t), but if you can’t replant and harvest once again in the same year, shortening the one and only harvest is pointless. The only difference will be that you get your harvest few days sooner, which does not help you at all, unless you are dying from hunger at that time - unlikely. And if you are dying from hunger, it is because you wasted your time crafting plant food instead of hunting or looting :smiley:

12

I don’t think you need to plant in spring.

13

If the plant survive winter, isn’t that a bug?

Even if you can plant any time, I am afraid that 30m craft for 3 days shorter growth on one plant is not enough to bother with it.

Why?

You just plant one more seed, it takes 10m, and it is essentially doubling the production. While 3x fertilizing plant gives you what, 25% shorter growth, which is 25% production boost.

14

Like I said before, I know little about farming right now. (This topic has more than tripled my knowledge). So I don’t know.

15

There are few problems in current system:

  1. If the plant food is optional, either nobody will use it, or it will be unrealistic -> it would have to triple your harvest to be even remotely useful.
  2. its enormous hassle, fertilize plant in each stage? crazy
  3. it does not work at all with non-default length of season

Here is my suggestion, how it should be changed:
Add second stage of Till soil to construction menu, with fertilizer as requirement, name could be Fertilize soil.
Split plants to 2 groups, some could grow in Till soil as it is, more exotic plants would require to be planted into Fertilized soil.
Now, as it is currently, Till soil is changed into Flat ground after harvest, same should happen with Fertilized soil.

Would be cool to add fertilizer as a loot somewhere (farm, grocery?), plant food could be your homemade replacement.

16

[i]There are few problems in current system:

  1. If the plant food is optional, either nobody will use it, or it will be unrealistic -> it would have to triple your harvest to be even remotely useful.[/i]

That seems to me more a factor of how annoying it is. Again, its -not- going to triple your harvest, at least not in this region of the country. Especially not with the small scale polyculture like what I imagine most players would be doing.

2) its enormous hassle, fertilize plant in each stage? crazy

I havn’t done it. But it does seem like a lot of work. It seems like a reasonable procedure to make fertilizers; I certainly know of people who cut up junk fish and use it as fertilizer, but there are easier ways to go about it. Though, truth be told, gardens and farms do take a small amount of repeated work. There’s a -good reason- why it took man so long to actually move on to agriculture, and even longer onto monoculture. Its just…a lot of work. Much more so then the alternatives.

17

[quote=“secretfire, post:16, topic:5529”][i]There are few problems in current system:

  1. If the plant food is optional, either nobody will use it, or it will be unrealistic → it would have to triple your harvest to be even remotely useful.[/i]

That seems to me more a factor of how annoying it is. Again, its -not- going to triple your harvest, at least not in this region of the country. Especially not with the small scale polyculture like what I imagine most players would be doing.[/quote]

Indeed, triple the harvest would be unrealistic, I just wrote that, didn’t I?

It is annoying because it is worthless… if it takes 10m to Tile soil and plant one more seed, why would anyone bother with fertilizing which takes 6 hours and does nothing (now) or 1.5 hours and does nothing (change by Soyweiser). And that is not factoring resources you are using for that.

[i]2) its enormous hassle, fertilize plant in each stage? crazy[/i]

I havn’t done it. But it does seem like a lot of work. It seems like a reasonable procedure to make fertilizers; I certainly know of people who cut up junk fish and use it as fertilizer, but there are easier ways to go about it. Though, truth be told, gardens and farms do take a small amount of repeated work.

Farming takes a lot of work, in reality. But in this game, you till the soil for 10 minutes, plant the seed and you are done, no additional work required until harvest. And to be honest, I would hate if it would take more work, this is not farming simulator. I want to plant a seed and be done until the harvest, though I am willing to accept a step in between Till soil and Plant seed, that would Fertilize soil. Mandatory for some plants (if optional, nobody will do that), and you will do that once per plant, not 3x like it is currently with fertilizing.

Also, crafting of fertilizer must be easy enough, or people will just skip plants that require it.

Edit:

There's a -good reason- why it took man so long to actually move on to agriculture, and even longer onto monoculture. Its just...a lot of work. Much more so then the alternatives.

Alternatives are hunting and scavenging… funny thing is that in experimental version, the work on destroying the wildlife continues: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/6801
and scavenging means you have to move again and again, to loot some potato chips.

I like farming, and I think it is done well except the fertilizing part, which sucks, but it is optional, so it is not that big problem. I think that suggested solution by me would be better, but it is not the biggest problem the game has right now anyway.

18

Maybe make it mandatory in the winter?

19
  1. It is unrealistic, no amount of fertilizer will help you against the cold weather.
  2. Making the fertilizer is so time-consuming right now, that people will just wait for spring anyway
20

Well I am not realy that up to date on farming.
And I am pretty sure someone low on food would use winter as well.