Summary:
When farm plots are harvested shortly after loading into an existing world (first action the game considers harvesting), the amount and order of seed drops are always the same.
The RNG used to determine harvest results is not initialized randomly and generates the same sequence repeatedly every time the player loads into the world.
Game Version: A20.4 b42
Platform: Steam
OS/Version: Windows
CPU Model: AMD Ryzen 5
System Memory: 16 GB
GPU Model and VRAM: RTX 3060 6 GB
Screen Resolution: 1920*1080
Video Settings: Custom
Game mode: SP
Did you wipe old saves? yes
Did you start a new game? yes
Did you validate your files? yes
Are you using any mods? no
EAC on or off? off
Status: NEW
Bug Description:
In my current playthrough I realized after a couple of harvests that I was getting the exact same amount of seed drops every time when harvesting directly at the beginning of a play session: From the 3*8 farm plots is was getting a total of 8 seeds (4 pumkin seeds, 1 hop seed, 3 corn seeds) repeatedly. The seed drops even occurred in the same order, e.g. the 7th hop plant was the one to drop the seed.
This also means that if I stuck to my schedule of harvesting my farm I would only ever get 33% instead of the 50% seeds back - since there is no random variation to statistically even out.
The fixed starting value of the RNG seems to be based of the seed of the world, so for a different world players might get overly lucky or unlucky with their harvests , when they have a tendency to do the farming as one of the first actions in their play sessions. Given the growth time of 2 hours might correlate quite often with a typical time for a play session, this can happen 'by accident' to quite a few people.
The random number generators seems to be seeded with the same starting value every time you load into your current world.
I'm not sure if this RNG initialization is done by accident or intentionally (could be for debugging / testing purposes), but I think this should at least be changed to something that actually varies over the playtime within a world.
Detailed steps to reproduce the bug:
1) Plant a sufficient amount of crops in farm plots and let them grow
2) When the crops have grown, exit the game to desktop and reload your game
3) Perform the harvest and note the amount and order of seed drops
4) Replant the farm and let the crops regrow
5) Exit the game to desktop again and reload your save game
6) Perform the harvest and note the amount and order of seed drops again
7) Compare the two harvest results and find them to be identical
Actual result:
Harvesting a grown farm directly after loading a save game will produce the same amount of seed drops at every harvest within the same world. The long term average of seed drops will not be 50% in most cases.
Expected result: (what you expect to occur)
Harvesting a grown farm directly after loading a save game will produce a randomly distributed amount of seed drops at every harvest within the same world.
The long term average of seed drops will be 50%.