My issue(s) with Farm Plots

[Hollowprime]

We need realism back in the game. If you've played zomboid you'd know it's not hard to find seeds and make a little bit of soil. The hard part is watering the plants (this can be automated on 7d2d) and taking care of the plants that grow very slowly.

Hoe is not necessary but farm plots should work as a super fertilizer like in A16 . Feeding the crops with water and taking care of them should be a bigger focus.

 

Some ideas I've gathered from other games like zomboid, don't starve, the long dark and the forest:

 

-Finding seeds should be fairly common

-You randomly gather seeds from harvesting plants.

-Food rot should act as a fertilizer.

-Seeds are edible

-Watering the plants is mandatory (but can be automated)

-Adding rot to the plant is necessary as the soil nutrients are drained

-Plants take a lot of days to grow (at least a weak) but since they can be planted en masse the provide a lot of positive gain

-Crops can be destroyed by zombies

 

Edit: Also food degradation is mandatory as it adds a difficulty level as well as a means to get fertilizer in the game.

[FilthyCasual]

No excuse for bad design. You can't make players play nice, true, but you can design things so it is difficult for them to play naughty.

 

In this particular example....let's see if I can think of a good idea.....oh....this is a hard one....how to make it so players on large MP servers do not get shafted for Nitrate by other players selfishly removing the surface nodes....give me a few minutes....OK! I've got a brilliant idea....out of left field mind you....I have no idea if this would actually work it's so "out there" and crazy!! But here goes....

 

What if surface boulders gave a small amount of Nitrate (and Coal?) as well as Stone when you mined them? Mind blown?

 

Lol.

[Whorhay]

Problem is there isn't anything keeping people from chopping up all the boulders, and never has been.

[dex314]

So I took your guys' advice and had little trouble finding the nitrate but the bottle neck for my whole server is the rotting flesh. Not only do you have to kill wild animals to get it (or magically find these gore piles that someone else hasn't already harvested), but there just aren't that many animals. I had to kill 2 whole zombie bears to get enough meat to make 1 farm plot. So from a game design perspective that's severely limiting since farming typically requires more than a few plots to be effective. Some may say there are hunter perks to increase yield, but it seems silly to have to boost hunter and living off the land to farm. With dirt everywhere it just seems silly to gatekeep this. Farm plots, rotting flesh etc should all add extra yield but regular soil SHOULD be able to host plant life. I think that'd be the best compromise in my mind.

[Kalen]

So I took your guys' advice and had little trouble finding the nitrate but the bottle neck for my whole server is the rotting flesh. Not only do you have to kill wild animals to get it (or magically find these gore piles that someone else hasn't already harvested), but there just aren't that many animals. I had to kill 2 whole zombie bears to get enough meat to make 1 farm plot. So from a game design perspective that's severely limiting since farming typically requires more than a few plots to be effective. Some may say there are hunter perks to increase yield, but it seems silly to have to boost hunter and living off the land to farm. With dirt everywhere it just seems silly to gatekeep this. Farm plots, rotting flesh etc should all add extra yield but regular soil SHOULD be able to host plant life. I think that'd be the best compromise in my mind.

 

Go to the desert.... you'll have no shortage of vultures for the rotting flesh.

[theFlu]

One of my sides is just hoping they'll add rotten flesh to traders...

"1 stack of spoiled meat plx"

"ehhh, wut? we got some meat stew here and .. "

"no thanks, just a stack of rotten flesh, please"

"oo-key.. that'll be, 10k dukes"

"oo, cheap as well, it's a deal!"

[DocKong]

It is a strange decision to use rotten meat at all.

You wouldn't be able to have a crop in real life, if you use rotten meat. It attracts vermin, that's all it does. Crop ruined.

Farm plots should be made with soil and plant fiber, maybe nitrate, ideally herbivore dung.

Then again, game rules are game rules. Rotten meat instead of horse ♥♥♥♥e, carnivore fantasy.

[dex314]

Go to the desert.... you'll have no shortage of vultures for the rotting flesh.

 

Yea from a gameplay perspective sure there is a way around it, but we shouldn't have to find clever ways around bad game design. For example, leaving a lush forest filled with plants, trees, and berries, to find a barren desert in order to plant seeds in the lush forest filled with plants is just silly. The forest dirt supports life. That should be the end of it.

[Kalen]

Yea from a gameplay perspective sure there is a way around it, but we shouldn't have to find clever ways around bad game design. For example, leaving a lush forest filled with plants, trees, and berries, to find a barren desert in order to plant seeds in the lush forest filled with plants is just silly. The forest dirt supports life. That should be the end of it.

 

Gotcha, I wasn't speaking to whether or not it made sense.... you mentioned rotten flesh was a bottleneck, I was just trying to help out.

[Laz Man]

No excuse for bad design. You can't make players play nice, true, but you can design things so it is difficult for them to play naughty.

 

In this particular example....let's see if I can think of a good idea.....oh....this is a hard one....how to make it so players on large MP servers do not get shafted for Nitrate by other players selfishly removing the surface nodes....give me a few minutes....OK! I've got a brilliant idea....out of left field mind you....I have no idea if this would actually work it's so "out there" and crazy!! But here goes....

 

What if surface boulders gave a small amount of Nitrate (and Coal?) as well as Stone when you mined them? Mind blown?

 

Seems like the current implementation leads to more dynamic gameplay. Those who go out and find the nodes first have a way of marking them (map marker and remove surface boulder). Sounds like a welcome feature in a competitive MP game.

[Laz Man]

Perhaps a better design would allow seeds to be planted on dirt as well but with a significantly longer time to grow....or not grow at all. That way the efficient farming is not something that is unlocked right away.

 

The immersion folks are happy, the balance folks are happy. 😎👍

[Orclover]

snow), it is still possible with effort. I dont believe that it naturally happening no matter what you do in every playthrough would be a good thing. It does only take finding 1 nitrate vein to have enough to make an immense farm.

This right here.

 

We ran into the "farm wall" back at the start of experimental and it was frustrating at first because of how much has changed. But once you get a grasp of what resource is where then you can get a farm started as fast as you can find the seeds. Once you have a pick of any sort and can find that lil spikey silver nitrate ball in the wild (usually in forest for us for some reason) then that part of it is taken care of. Clay is everywhere, dig up a few buried treasure quest or just dig around the nitrate and you have clay covered. Last is the gore blocks.

Its literally everywhere.

In small batches sure, but it is everywhere. Need 10 per plot so its less daunting than it appears. Thats 3 bodybags or .75 of a zombiedoberman, .5 of a zombear, or about 2-3 goreblocks (red innard/rib looking things everywhere). These gore resources are literally all over the place once you got an eye for it, kinda like honey. Honey is desperately needed that first week for infections and you are scrambling to find any but eventually you learn to just chop up tree stumps and you got more than you know what to do with. Same thing. Anyways when you chop up the bodies, use a knife or shiv if you have to, machete if you can find one. You get just a biiiit more out of it than an axe. A noticible difference and every bit helps. Once you got a 5X5 farm plot down (thats 250 gore blocks) the rest is just icing on the cake. By the time you get a bicycle you should have a farm that big if you keep your eyes peeled and move around enough.

 

Like I said, its daunting until you get the swing of it (kinda like 7d2d!). But the good thing is once you get a farm going, you don't have to bother with it again.

 

It is a strange decision to use rotten meat at all.

You wouldn't be able to have a crop in real life, if you use rotten meat. It attracts vermin, that's all it does. Crop ruined.

Farm plots should be made with soil and plant fiber, maybe nitrate, ideally herbivore dung.

Then again, game rules are game rules. Rotten meat instead of horse ♥♥♥♥e, carnivore fantasy.

 

Actually from an in game "canon" explanation it makes sense. Hear me out bro don't shoot yet.

 

Remember that one old mansion, with Grace in the under cavern lair? They have that weird super-science supercorn crop they are making that makes awesome food. What are they using to make all those crops? Dead bodies, lots of em. Possibly even the zombie bodies i'm not sure. So maybe the reason we are all using the dead zombodies for crops is because it turns into some sort of super-fertilizer that grows our crops to full maturity IN.....(drum roll) just a day or two! Ok I am giving way too much credit to the devs I know, but it would make sense...in a fake reality video game way. That we are building these zombie fertilized super plots with their bodies not because we have to. But because we desperately need food (notice how much we are eating wtf?!?) and we cant wait around several months for corn and potatoes to grow up.

[DocKong]

 

Actually from an in game "canon" explanation it makes sense. Hear me out bro don't shoot yet.

 

Remember that one old mansion, with Grace in the under cavern lair? They have that weird super-science supercorn crop they are making that makes awesome food. What are they using to make all those crops? Dead bodies, lots of em. Possibly even the zombie bodies i'm not sure. So maybe the reason we are all using the dead zombodies for crops is because it turns into some sort of super-fertilizer that grows our crops to full maturity IN.....(drum roll) just a day or two! Ok I am giving way too much credit to the devs I know, but it would make sense...in a fake reality video game way. That we are building these zombie fertilized super plots with their bodies not because we have to. But because we desperately need food (notice how much we are eating wtf?!?) and we cant wait around several months for corn and potatoes to grow up.

You have something there. Everything has mutated. Including us. Hobo Stew anyone?

There is a good explanation: some Ash read that damned book out loud.

[Orclover]

You have something there. Everything has mutated. Including us. Hobo Stew anyone?

There is a good explanation: some Ash read that damned book out loud.

 

"Klatuu, Verada....

"

 

Names Ash, Housewares.

[Kalen]

"Klatuu, Verada....

[ATTACH=CONFIG]30335[/ATTACH]

"

 

Names Ash, Housewares.

 

"Necktie.... nickle...."

[meganoth]

So I took your guys' advice and had little trouble finding the nitrate but the bottle neck for my whole server is the rotting flesh. Not only do you have to kill wild animals to get it (or magically find these gore piles that someone else hasn't already harvested), but there just aren't that many animals. I had to kill 2 whole zombie bears to get enough meat to make 1 farm plot. So from a game design perspective that's severely limiting since farming typically requires more than a few plots to be effective. Some may say there are hunter perks to increase yield, but it seems silly to have to boost hunter and living off the land to farm. With dirt everywhere it just seems silly to gatekeep this. Farm plots, rotting flesh etc should all add extra yield but regular soil SHOULD be able to host plant life. I think that'd be the best compromise in my mind.

 

Long running servers need to reset chunks or spawn cars and other limited resources regularily, so I heard. So why not gore piles too?

 

Animal hunting was always a long-term side activity in the game. You never could say "I go hunting now" and be sure to come back with a bag full of meat. Take no hunter perks and you need to accept a low return from hunting.

 

I find the balance in SP and co-op private MP quite good at the moment. In my SP game I have about 14 farm plots at day ~25 (60 minute days). I already have a generous stack of ingredients and cooked food now. If I desperately needed more rotten meat I probably would hit one of the small military bases, they have body bags lying around by the dozen.

 

Kudos to Orclover for a nice theory

[Kattla]

Gotcha, I wasn't speaking to whether or not it made sense.... you mentioned rotten flesh was a bottleneck, I was just trying to help out.

 

Well, another use for rotten flesh....

 

 

And that result in a food with 0% of food poisoning btw..

Logical?

[Kalen]

Well, another use for rotten flesh....

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]30336[/ATTACH]

 

And that result in a food with 0% of food poisoning btw..

Logical?

 

Hah, and with a dose of paint to boot!

[Laz Man]

Hah, and with a dose of paint to boot!

 

the blue paint is for the can silly....or is it?

[Kalen]

the blue paint is for the can silly....or is it?

 

Some mysteries are better left unsolved.

[Maynard69]

Ya, busy servers are kinda screwed. It is still possible but could be a huge pain. I never understood the point of busy PVE servers though. For PvE might as well play just co-op with friends, or solo play. Only played one once when I first started. Tons of PVP though.

 

To be fair tho, they are designing the game for at most 8 man servers. Higher is not recommended.

 

I suggest a recipe to turn fresh meat into rotten meat 1:1, and/or add rotten meat to traders. (If not both of these would be a pretty ez mod to do, no?)

 

(I dont see a problem for PVP, more reason to raid/ take over bases with farms)

[Kattla]

I suggest a recipe to turn fresh meat into rotten meat 1:1, and/or add rotten meat to traders. (If not both of these would be a pretty ez mod to do, no?)

 

To make fresh meat actually useful? Good idea.

[Maynard69]

To make fresh meat actually useful? Good idea.

 

I dont agree that meat is not already useful, It's not the be all and end all of food now, but still useful.

 

Higher tier foods are still worth it, especially if you dont want to be hitting up vending machines every freaking day.

[Verdigriss]

Rotten meat is definitely not 'super abundant.' It's one of the more annoying resources to gather, and I gather from ALL those mentioned sources. It's like gold now, which makes no sense at all.

I understand the gameplay reasons behind making zombies unharvestable (though that is a good idea for a mod, FilthyCasual), but why isn't there a recipe to turn regular meat into rotten meat? There ought to be a garbage can workstation that slowly turns meat into rotten meat, rotten meat into nitrate, and cornbread into moldy bread. I would love that.

[Gothyc]

I agree. Rotten meat is only "abundant" if you think a 5x5 farm is enough. Since I started playing in A15, I always loved farming, and I'd go industrial scale. Hundreds of plants. 10x10 of each crop. Now on day 22 (120 minute days), I have 36 farm plots. I've resigned to the fact that I will only be able to do 10 plants of each type, and even that is going to take ages. I have collected every scrap of rotten meat I've seen. Carcasses, body bags vultures, dogs, even hunted zombie bears in the bear den.

 

Nitrate is not a problem. Rotten flesh is. Either make it more abundant somehow, or lower the cost of the recipe by half. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to be able to have ~70 plots (up from 36 for me) on day 22 if you've gone out of your way to gather all the rotten flesh you see since day 1.

 

EDIT: Oh, and yes, I even went and got a couple points in Huntsman to increase yield. It's not helping much with the rotten flesh.