I think it should probably be changed to working like this. And this would suck, I guess, but something like this:
- Some large huge amount of time to till the soil. Currently, as noted above, in the latest experimental it takes 10 minutes a plot. This should be increased. It should basically be an all-day affair to get a workable general area going. I’m not sure how the balance of eating/planting works out, but I would imagine it should be 8 hours work/x amount of squares.
- It should be another 8 hours work to plant the seeds.
I would probably try and balance it out by ensuring that 2-4 days were spent farming and doing nothing else; but you’d get enough food out of it for a season or two.
Given the area, I would probably not encourage fertilizer. I mean, I live here. There are areas which have been overfarmed or stripped, but for the most part you just need to use compost, which will be more useful then fertilizer anyways. There is nothing exotic that will grow with fertilizer that won’t grow without it.
- It should be two seasons to grow (plant in spring, harvest in summer or fall) and anything left over in winter should die, as should any seeds planted, with the sole possible exception of lettuce and kale, which basically survive forever unless the lettuce bolts during the summer. You will never grow bananas, lemons, oranges/etc. here, ever. I -have- grown lemons, but you have to use a specific rare variety of portable lemons and move them inside before the fall. It just won’t happen.
Also, I would require a 10 minute/tile ‘pull weeds’ action a day, or have a risk of a substantially lower harvest. That way, people whom don’t want to bother can go off and scavenge, and those whom want to bother, can just hole up in their farm, which would be realistic too.
I think this would be more realistic for the area, and I suspect would satisfy everyone. But I mean, I’m trying the system as is right now. So far, I mean - its OK. If you ignore the fertilizer part, it works, especially as a game, and I don’t really think there’s an immediate need for a whole overhaul. I’ve been looking around the forums a lot over the past few days, and I think there are way more important things they are already working on.