Farming not very viable even with living off the land 3.

[SheeleMara]

 Talking about modlets adapting the 19.6 replant system earlier in the thread, how difficult would it be to make it to where there was a 50% chance for the plant to break during harvesting and then have the A20 50% chance of dropping a seed when breaks occur? It would still nerf the replanting system but perhaps not make so much extra work to keep it running mandatory? Or perhaps leave the option up to the server creator with a list of farming options, such as whether replanting occurs, breakage and seed percentage chance slider scales, or whether or not farming is even enabled? 

[Zeellott]

On 12/10/2021 at 6:47 PM, Roland said:

 

No, plant your seeds and gain the benefit from them. You'll get more seeds later to get your large scale self-sustaining farm once you do spec into LOTL 3. There is more variety now in the farming aspect of the game. You start out just gardening and using every seed you acquire to grow food. Later once you progress to the point where its viable you can start truly farming and crafting seeds and move from a model of harvesting what you need to fulfill daily needs to being able to stockpile in the future.

This seems like the best strategy moving forward.   I'm a vet, I will adapt. I did try a new game to see if my luck was better and had about a 25% seed drop rate harvesting with LOTL 2 so it was better then the 10 is % I was getting on my first Alpha20 start. I never had actual food problems tho because I have a system that almost guarantees bacon and eggs for dinner night one, its just very time consuming looking for eggs later in the game if that's still my main food source. Thats what a good farm by midgame would save me was time, it was never a difficulty thing for me. Overall I LOVE Alpha20. Thank you Fun Pimps!

[Zeellott]

On 12/11/2021 at 1:30 AM, theFlu said:

Geez, that's massively unlucky. I think we found a Cain ..

But yeh, that's the collapse, with enough players and attempts, it will happen. And as you had several different crops going, as we all will, there's basically several "attempts" going on at once for every farmer; one of them failing is a lot more likely of course, in your case spuds.

 

This doesn't help anyone, I'm just emphasizing that it is sort of expected if the design allows for an unlucky failure.

LOL those damn spuds!! I'm having a better seed drop rate on a new playthru but still well below the 50%. Im going to use Rolands advice and not make seeds from crops until LOTL3 and just stockpile the crops, it just means Bacon and Eggs till endgame. It will be a CHICKENAPOCALYPSE!  MMWWAAHAHAHA!!!

[Zeellott]

8 hours ago, BarryTGash said:

 

You're right - one unrealistic system has been replaced with another. Essentially a sidestep rather than a step forward. I don't know, the improvements to the worldspace seems to emphasise the disparity between between the immersiveness of the world and the immersion-breaking mechanics behind the actions we can take in that world. 

 

Back to farming specifically, the need to replant does make sense for potatoes and pumpkins. Not so for other crops.  Below are some initial ideas...

 

Maybe increasing the amount of time it takes crops to grow, say from 2 days (I think it is now?) to a full week or even more, individually relative to their real world counterparts, decreasing seeds in loot rate (mice/rats ate them all?) and the crop to seed ratio (IRL 1 seed potato can potentially be cut up to grow several plants, but that would be too much so 1 potato = 1 seed potato?) and not treating all crops the same, eg. only potatoes and pumpkins require replanting every harvest?

 

You could introduce a small percentage chance for, say, a corn plant to die after harvest requiring a replant (so the same mechanic as now, just a much lower rate - LoL ranks could reduce this percentage chance, say, 12% no rank to 3% at rank 3 as examples). Harvestable amount would be random between 0 & 3 (1 corn plant, irl, typically produces between 2 to 4 cobs iirc).

 

Living off the Land would no longer give bonus to harvested amount, but would reduce the minimum harvestable amount from 1 at rank 1 to 3 at rank 3. The idea would be to move the 'difficulty' from being mostly RNG-based to mostly time and work investment; for the most part your effort rewards you, rather than Lady Luck. Ideally, you'll end up needing two or more crops of each growable, offset by a few days to ensure a constant flow of produce due to the much slower growth rate and potentially lower quality harvests.

 

Potentially, if balanced (clearly no maths have been done here, just spit balling), it could take a lot more investment (time and effort) to develop a fully self-sufficient farm and it's seen as a long term, late game, goal. In the early game, other than growing a couple of seeds to help bolster hunting and foraging cans (that one steak meal a fortnight treat?), it wouldn't be viable for survival.

 

I think this might provide a scalable, more immersive, experience that can benefit both singleplayer and multiplayer farmers, whilst still maintaining some minor use to those not really interested in farming.

 

Food for thought?

I think you are on the right track here, skill should help curb Lady Luck. Overall I like your idea, 7 days to grow seems more immersive with 1 crop to make a seed. It actually makes it worth grinding for, knowing you can get your crops going right away again with positive crop gain every week. And it would greatly reduce the overall amount of crops which the Fun Pimps seem to be aiming for. The best way to counter it will be way more crops growing then previously needed. That also seems more immersive.

[theFlu]

2 hours ago, Zeellott said:

It will be a CHICKENAPOCALYPSE!  MMWWAAHAHAHA!!!

Well, at least our Cain has directed the murderous rage towards something more constructive...

[pahbi]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Dumbing down?

 

A19: Guaranteed return of all plants upon harvest. Very little thought needed about whether to craft crops into seeds or use crops for food. Zero risk of farm failure. Automatic replanting meant plant and forget food generator.

 

A20: 50% chance return of a plant so no guarantees on how your farm will continue. Careful planning and thought needed about how to use crops. Big risk of farm failure and then need to adapt and survive. Manual planting means you have to re-engage in the farming process each season.

 

Now you might think that planting is tedious and hate the philosophy of setback-adapt-recover gameplay in a survival game. But puting the two designs side-by-side there is no way you can convince me that A20 is more dumbed down than A19. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on exactly how you think things got dumbed down in farming in A20 over A19.

 

All balance issues aside, having to replant is an excessive amount of annoying clicking, reverting the system to not destroying the plant would be more of a quality of life improvement imo.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, SheeleMara said:

 Talking about modlets adapting the 19.6 replant system earlier in the thread, how difficult would it be to make it to where there was a 50% chance for the plant to break during harvesting and then have the A20 50% chance of dropping a seed when breaks occur? It would still nerf the replanting system but perhaps not make so much extra work to keep it running mandatory? Or perhaps leave the option up to the server creator with a list of farming options, such as whether replanting occurs, breakage and seed percentage chance slider scales, or whether or not farming is even enabled? 

 

I can only make the most basic of modlets, but from what I could tell, you can edit the chance of dropping a seed.

 

Also, I tried to see if I could get the plants to not be destroyed when harvesting, in the xml I could see where there was code for downgrading a plant when harvesting, but I haven't had any luck in figuring out how to not destroy the plant when harvesting.

 

 

 

 

 

[Roland]

4 minutes ago, Zeellott said:

just stockpile the crops

I think you should go ahead and use them for recipes and not just live on bacon and eggs. Once you get LOTL 3 then you can start a true farm. Starting a true farm on day 30 isn't really different than starting it on day 1. On day 1 you haven't stockpiled a whole bunch of crops. You grow the farm bit by bit. So use up all the crops to make recipes you can use now and after you take LOTL you can then start turning crops into seeds.

24 minutes ago, pahbi said:

All balance issues aside, having to replant is an excessive amount of annoying clicking, reverting the system to not destroying the plant would be more of a quality of life improvement imo.

 

I understand that. The whole game is an excessive amount of annoying clicking when you boil down what you do to kill zombies, mine ore, build a base, etc. Should we automate it all just to make it less tedious for those people who don't like whatever particular set of mouse clicks involved? I get that it feels more tedious in comparison though.

[BarryTGash]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Dumbing down?

 

A19: Guaranteed return of all plants upon harvest. Very little thought needed about whether to craft crops into seeds or use crops for food. Zero risk of farm failure. Automatic replanting meant plant and forget food generator.

 

A20: 50% chance return of a plant so no guarantees on how your farm will continue. Careful planning and thought needed about how to use crops. Big risk of farm failure and then need to adapt and survive. Manual planting means you have to re-engage in the farming process each season.

 

Now you might think that planting is tedious and hate the philosophy of setback-adapt-recover gameplay in a survival game. But puting the two designs side-by-side there is no way you can convince me that A20 is more dumbed down than A19. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on exactly how you think things got dumbed down in farming in A20 over A19.

 

That was poorly worded. The intent was not to compare A20's farming to A19's farming, rather comparing the much more immersive world system in A20 to the simplistic mechanics behind other aspects, like farming - whether the A19 system or A20's. Ultimately, it would be great to see a similar attention to detail that world generation has received given to other aspects of the game eventually - I appreciate it can't all be done at the same time.

[pahbi]

17 minutes ago, Roland said:

I understand that. The whole game is an excessive amount of annoying clicking when you boil down what you do to kill zombies, mine ore, build a base, etc. Should we automate it all just to make it less tedious for those people who don't like whatever particular set of mouse clicks involved? I get that it feels more tedious in comparison though.

 

Well it didn't take long for that tired worn out type of reasoning to appear

 

 

[Roland]

2 minutes ago, pahbi said:

 

Well it didn't take long for that tired worn out type of reasoning to appear

 

 

 

Oh brother...worn out? It's easy to just state a counterpoint as a worn out argument. Its more compelling to demonstrate why the reasoning isn't sound. I say that clicking to plant is no different than clicking to upgrade 100 blocks or even to place 100 blocks in function. The only difference is that if a person enjoys building they don't mind the mouseclicks and if farming is something they wish they didn't have to do then the clicks are boring. Automating replanting is great if you don't enjoy the farming aspect of the game but if you do enjoy it then you don't mind planting by hand.

 

So explain where I am off rather than using that tired worn out type of dismissal to easily ignore someone's POV that differs from your own...

[pApA^LeGBa]

But it´s kinda true @pahbi.

 

There had to be something done to nerf farming. You could swim in food and feed an entire colony with it. And still have leftovers after that.

 

It´s not really annoying. For SP you don´t actually need that much farm plots to have a good supply of food. Ofc if you try to make a lot of dukes on servers with farming, that´s gonna be very hard now. But that isn´t the intended purpose of farming. That was just something that was used because farming was OP.

 

They constantly fixed things that would let you get tons of dukes super easy, like selling vehicles or beds for example, crafting beds and selling them used to make you rich in no time. They wanna keep the dukes down a bit.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, Zeellott said:

LOL those damn spuds!! I'm having a better seed drop rate on a new playthru but still well below the 50%. Im going to use Rolands advice and not make seeds from crops until LOTL3 and just stockpile the crops, it just means Bacon and Eggs till endgame. It will be a CHICKENAPOCALYPSE!  MMWWAAHAHAHA!!!

 

Really astonishing, your continual bad luck.

In my SP game with LotL 1 I just had another two seasons, if anyone wants the details:

Spoiler

First season the 12 seeds made 6 seeds so after seed-crafting the lost seeds I still had a net gain of 18 produce.

 

In the meantime I had bought  and found 24 potatoes, 15 blueberries and some seeds and decided to convert the potatoes to seeds and add the other seeds to the farm, so I was at 22 seeds.

 

Then next season I harvested 2 plants too early for no gain at all. The other 20 seeds got back 10 seeds and a gain of 35 produce. If I wish I could increase the farm by 4 seeds without adding anything.

 

To summarize my previous post and this: 3 seasons, each as near as possible on 50% seed return. And with LotL 1 my farm increased from 11 to 22 or 26 seeds without really trying and still getting produce for cooking as well.

 

 

 

[pahbi]

50 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

Oh brother...worn out? It's easy to just state a counterpoint as a worn out argument. Its more compelling to demonstrate why the reasoning isn't sound. I say that clicking to plant is no different than clicking to upgrade 100 blocks or even to place 100 blocks in function. The only difference is that if a person enjoys building they don't mind the mouseclicks and if farming is something they wish they didn't have to do then the clicks are boring. Automating replanting is great if you don't enjoy the farming aspect of the game but if you do enjoy it then you don't mind planting by hand.

 

So explain where I am off rather than using that tired worn out type of dismissal to easily ignore someone's POV that differs from your own...

 

Oh come on, if you don't know why its not sound, you don't deserve your post...

 

In any case, I'm pretty sure the fun pimps can create balance without resorting to tediousness.  Since this is just an alpha, I'll just edit the xml files and see what the devs come up with in the future.

 

 

[Ianua]

Ok, so I can see a little bright spot in this. I have a devil of a time hitting the hit box of some of the plants. About 70% of the time I try to hit the coffee or blueberry plant I hit something next to it (or 2 blocks behind it). Drives me fricken bonkers. I finally figured out a way to hit the plants so as to not damage anything but the intended. So I usually spend time replanting in A19 anyway.  I think there is something about my graphics since I can see the "x" it shows the correct plant name, but when I punch I hit air, or farmplot or neighboring plant pretty frequently. Does not happen with aloe, corn, potato, pumpkin or yucca.

[pApA^LeGBa]

3 minutes ago, Ianua said:

Ok, so I can see a little bright spot in this. I have a devil of a time hitting the hit box of some of the plants. About 70% of the time I try to hit the coffee or blueberry plant I hit something next to it (or 2 blocks behind it). Drives me fricken bonkers. I finally figured out a way to hit the plants so as to not damage anything but the intended. So I usually spend time replanting in A19 anyway.  I think there is something about my graphics since I can see the "x" it shows the correct plant name, but when I punch I hit air, or farmplot or neighboring plant pretty frequently. Does not happen with aloe, corn, potato, pumpkin or yucca.

 

I just stand directly on the plant hitting it from above. So far i get a 100% hit rate.

[Roland]

27 minutes ago, pahbi said:

Oh come on, if you don't know why its not sound, you don't deserve your post...

 

I don't deserve....my own post? Does it mean I don't deserve your post if I admit I don't know what you're talking about? 

 

All I know is that I haven't heard a counter argument from you. Only a vague dismissal that my POV is tired and worn out and that I'm somehow not worthy of having my own post. 

[Maharin]

We so rarely deserve Roland's posts.

 

[theFlu]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Really astonishing, your continual bad luck.

Laws of large numbers .. the system is designed to work well most of the time and completely screw over a couple unlucky players. Working as implemented

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

On 12/8/2021 at 10:57 AM, Fox said:

It's called forced difficulty. The devs think growing food is too easy now so they're making it even more of a pain in the butt to get, as if we didn't already have enough problems to worry about in-game.

 

See, I would counter this by having zombie crows that attack farms and summon hordes. 

[Fox]

1 hour ago, SenpaiThatIngnoresYou said:

 

See, I would counter this by having zombie crows that attack farms and summon hordes. 

I'd actually be happy with that, because then, at least it's additional content rather than a boring grind fest. Having to protect the farm with turrets or electric fencing... I mean, who would object to that? That sounds interesting and fun to me.

[Rince]

I'm back at the absolute meat diet. Grilled meat and bacon and eggs all day. All the days. Plus the canned food that I found around.

 

I have gathered a good number of seed, but don't wanna to deal with the constant replanting. So, I just go around killing the local fauna. Wish that the deers were more plentiful... I found just one so far.

 

Instead of this new system I would had liked the A19 but with some tweaks. Maybe higher requeriments for the farm plots and slowing growing time. (Both alleviated with the LotL perks). Maybe a fertilizer that could be crafted to speed up the process, but not mandatory.

 

12 hours ago, Roland said:

I think you should go ahead and use them for recipes and not just live on bacon and eggs. Once you get LOTL 3 then you can start a true farm. Starting a true farm on day 30 isn't really different than starting it on day 1. On day 1 you haven't stockpiled a whole bunch of crops. You grow the farm bit by bit. So use up all the crops to make recipes you can use now and after you take LOTL you can then start turning crops into seeds.

 

I understand that. The whole game is an excessive amount of annoying clicking when you boil down what you do to kill zombies, mine ore, build a base, etc. Should we automate it all just to make it less tedious for those people who don't like whatever particular set of mouse clicks involved? I get that it feels more tedious in comparison though.

Well, in my case the issue is that those excesive clicking are fun. Yeah, even mining ore.

Replanting the farm... not so much.

[meganoth]

10 hours ago, theFlu said:

Laws of large numbers .. the system is designed to work well most of the time and completely screw over a couple unlucky players. Working as implemented

 

Sure. But in the case of farms the more seeds you have the more robust the system gets and lthe less likely it is to fail. With 36 seeds it is on the order of a one case in the universe fail.

 

But I reread his first post now and noticed I didn't read it carefully enough. It seems it was only the 8 seed potato part that failed. And ok, that is unlucky in a way that could happen to someone on the forum.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

My problem is less about farming being not viable, but the amount of crops you need to make recipes.

Increase seed cost and crop yield by 5x and add stacks of 10-30 of every crop to random containers.
Unless you do something like this, we will all live on a paleo diet until the very late game. (grilled meat and bacon&eggs)
Because I'm not wasting my only 3 potatoes on a one off stamina buff.

[Morloc]

 

All this talk about farming, and no mention of vending machines?

Interesting...

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[Urban Blackbear]

Hit day 40ish this weekend and got my first A20 base and farm up and running, so here is my feedback on farming. More in depth about my experiences with the LotL ranks below.

 

LotL 1: Basically a freebie and I've found enough farms in two towns to keep me in corn for a long while. Take it even if farming doesn't appeal to you but you still like to eat. Farming is not viable at this stage so save your seeds if you plan on investing further.

 

LotL 2: Started a small 10 plot or so farm just to see how it went. My initial stock was 3 coffee, two yucca, two blueberries and 4 mushrooms on the wall. My coffee plants were yielding enough to keep me going, my blueberry plants were yielding a little slower but are still kicking, my yucca died out with no replacement seeds or crops (my fault for not holding yucca fruit back) and my mushrooms all died out but I had enough to replant and was slowly building a stockpile. If you don't choose to go any higher in this with LotL then you'll need to keep a supply of replacement seeds on hand to replant possibly all of your plots with everything before you can start accumulating crop stocks.

 

LotL 3: Expanded my farm to 40 some plots. I'm now rolling in corn, blueberries, coffee, mushrooms, yucca, potatoes and pumpkins. Yields are high enough that keeping a supply of seeds on hand is useful but not necessary unless you have some really bad luck. This is were you want things if you don't want growing food to be a concern.

 

My final thoughts: I don't mind the changes. It was too easy to get a sustainable farm in A19 and as far as I'm concerned these changes were needed to make LotL 3 viable because it wasn't before. I'm not crazy about replanting everything every time but crops magically living forever was unrealistic in most cases. You'll have to have LotL 2 at least to make farming yield slow (sometimes very slow) returns and LotL 3 for any kind of large scale farming or reasonable returns. Considering that skill line is maxable at Fortitude 5 its not that big of a deal. Honestly the whole Fortitude skill line is more useful than it was before since I find myself taking the Huntsman perk now as well. Those two combined eliminate food issues for me.