Idea to fix A20 farming

[Orclover]

1 hour ago, PoppaSmirk said:

I suppose that I've simply come to expect My "dread to come from wandering hordes"  not from,  "oh lord,  time to harvest again

 

Thats why we ended up editing the xml file to keep the seed in the ground.  I had fully perked out LoTL and we were all contributing to scavaging farm plot materials (that I would craft), and we were barely keeping our food supplies up enough to not starve for our group.  It just took too much to keep seeds going into the ground to keep a group fed.  We were spreading task around and even just the farming portion was too much for one skilled person to do to feed 5 -6 people, along with somebody else harvesting animals constantly and everybody trying to sustain off of their own found food as well.  The vending machines turned into argument makers as starving people would try to rush the traders every morning to keep their food meters out of the red.  Animals on the map had a life expectancy measured in seconds.  Recipe drops were the most important loot item in the game for 2 weeks.

 

The group hated the changes the devs made to hunger/farming, not fans at all.   Some almost quit playing over it.  But a quick XML file edit to just keep the seeds in the ground after harvest like A19 (thats it) and feeding all of us with a 3 people doing the farming/hunting/cooking became possible without it being a full time job.  No other changes needed to be made to the xml for hunger/growing or anything else for this issue and nobody else had to take skills in perks not related to their preferred stat.

 

We hated it, and it was an easy fix.  Now in single player it probably would have been a non-issue.  Even if we had half the players, it might have been manageable.  But get more than a handful of people playing several hours a day and tearing apart the landscape looking for food, and it becomes a headache.  If those players were not cooperating though, man oh nelly,  yea that's not a game any more, its a job.  Everybody would just be starving constantly.  Nobody would care about the zeds since they can't be eaten.

[Boidster]

The effect of "just keep the seed in the ground" is the equivalent of +5 crops per harvest, since you didn't change the base plant reward, nor the doubling bonus of LotL, nor the chance to get a seed back. Makes sense that it's easier to feed a group like that. Back to zero-risk farming with significantly increased A20 crop reward levels. Much easier than it was in A19.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Orclover said:

 

Thats why we ended up editing the xml file to keep the seed in the ground.  I had fully perked out LoTL and we were all contributing to scavaging farm plot materials (that I would craft), and we were barely keeping our food supplies up enough to not starve for our group.  It just took too much to keep seeds going into the ground to keep a group fed.  We were spreading task around and even just the farming portion was too much for one skilled person to do to feed 5 -6 people, along with somebody else harvesting animals constantly and everybody trying to sustain off of their own found food as well.  The vending machines turned into argument makers as starving people would try to rush the traders every morning to keep their food meters out of the red.  Animals on the map had a life expectancy measured in seconds.  Recipe drops were the most important loot item in the game for 2 weeks.

 

The group hated the changes the devs made to hunger/farming, not fans at all.   Some almost quit playing over it.  But a quick XML file edit to just keep the seeds in the ground after harvest like A19 (thats it) and feeding all of us with a 3 people doing the farming/hunting/cooking became possible without it being a full time job.  No other changes needed to be made to the xml for hunger/growing or anything else for this issue and nobody else had to take skills in perks not related to their preferred stat.

 

We hated it, and it was an easy fix.  Now in single player it probably would have been a non-issue.  Even if we had half the players, it might have been manageable.  But get more than a handful of people playing several hours a day and tearing apart the landscape looking for food, and it becomes a headache.  If those players were not cooperating though, man oh nelly,  yea that's not a game any more, its a job.  Everybody would just be starving constantly.  Nobody would care about the zeds since they can't be eaten.

 

Glad you guys were able to change things to work better for you. The three of us left things vanilla and with one person farming at LotL 3 she brought in so many crops that for two weeks of game time she stopped farming because we had plenty to last us for a long while. >shrug<

[PoppaSmirk]

Well,  We tend to all come together in one Hosted World,  at least That had been our modus operandi for several years.  With A20 However it seems everyone of Our Friendly group is playing in My Hosted game,  Plus they keep 2-3 other game saves running.   This is in part because one player doesn't enjoy when zombies run at night, and that same player has been tossing hissy fits over not being able to find certain things, so in their  RGW the loot % is set at 300%  But when We all do play in My Hosted World, everyone brings back items and contributes to the "loot box"  and all share.   So if Any find seeds, they all drop them into My box for Farming Supplies.  Just as all food goes into the Foodstuff box.. Myself and one other in Our group do tend to be the ones that enjoyed getting the farming up to speed.  We share the same base,  and work to develop its defenses,  but at some point once We find enough tools ( like augers and chainsaws)  then everyone seems to also land claim a separate poi as their personal base,  but We battle together  at the main base for horde Night.  So far its simply been that things are very scarce.  Such as searching for about 10 days with the goal of setting up a chemistry station.  We had an extra beaker since Day 27,  so 8 days of everyone being on the lookout specifically for acid,  not just for that but to work toward minibikes for all.   Since I had LoTL2,  I was best suited to harvest crops.  The replanting doesn't take a lot of time,  just that Myself or anyone would see the sudden downturn in the harvests.  Of course I thought it was simply a couple of bad harvests,  but thats a bit of the point.  You can do everything right,  and still find food supplies shrinking.

 

[Orclover]

39 minutes ago, Boidster said:

The effect of "just keep the seed in the ground" is the equivalent of +5 crops per harvest, since you didn't change the base plant reward, nor the doubling bonus of LotL, nor the chance to get a seed back. Makes sense that it's easier to feed a group like that. Back to zero-risk farming with significantly increased A20 crop reward levels. Much easier than it was in A19.

 

 

The other option for sustainable crop usage for a group is to make about 10 times the number of crops as you normally would have per item.  For our group we have 2 farms with about 80 farm plots covering almost all seed types.  Obviously more corn and potatoes than anything else really.  If we just contineud to grind potassium and rotting meat for several RL weeks we could make 300 farm plots of just potatoes and 300 farm plots of just corn and it would have about the same effect (easily returning the seeds needed to self sustain with LoTl3 and providing needed veggies). Then we could undo the changes to the xml file.

We would also quit playing, nobody in our group wants to do that.   

 Its 7 Days to Die, not 7 Weeks to Get a Sustainable Ecosystem in place for a Small Group.

 

Easier to just make a simple edit and go back to zed killing for fun, not profit.

[Roland]

1 minute ago, Orclover said:

 

 

The other option for sustainable crop usage for a group is to make about 10 times the number of crops as you normally would have per item.  For our group we have 2 farms with about 80 farm plots covering almost all seed types.  Obviously more corn and potatoes than anything else really.  If we just contineud to grind potassium and rotting meat for several RL weeks we could make 300 farm plots of just potatoes and 300 farm plots of just corn and it would have about the same effect (easily returning the seeds needed to self sustain with LoTl3 and providing needed veggies). Then we could undo the changes to the xml file.

We would also quit playing, nobody in our group wants to do that.   

 Its 7 Days to Die, not 7 Weeks to Get a Sustainable Ecosystem in place for a Small Group.

 

Easier to just make a simple edit and go back to zed killing for fun, not profit.

 

You guys must eat a lot of food. Out of curiosity are you eating to keep the food bar above 50% when the first penalty hits or are you eating to keep the food bar constantly filled with overstock calories counting down?

[Orclover]

 

6 minutes ago, Roland said:

The three of us left things vanilla and with one person farming at LotL 3 she brought in so many crops that for two weeks of game time she stopped farming because we had plenty to last us for a long while. >shrug<

 

For 3 people how many farm plots did you need?  Were running around 130'ish I think for 6.

[bloodmoth13]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

 

I think your bigger problem is playing with 3 other mates who aren't helping you with farming. As the perked player it should be you harvesting and crafting seeds but then you should just stick the seeds in a container and let them do all the planting.

 

It might also be better for you to stay at LOTL 2 and have one or more of them spend a point to get to LOTL 1 and have everyone contribute by creating farms and sharing surplus. Then it isn't one person farming to feed four but two or three people farming to feed four. 

 

As a team you guys have to talk about the fact that you don't necessarily want to go that deep into Fort so farming isn't going to all be piled on you-- it's going to be shared.

 

I don't have a problem with this model. If TFP were to switch to this I wouldn't be mad. If a mod was made that changed farming to this I would definitely check it out.

 

I also think the current model is fine. I'd have to actually play both to decide which I like better and would prefer.

 

As far as spoilage, I think an ongoing spoilage mechanic that is a timer would be too hard to implement. I've been thinking a lot about an idea that on the bloodmoon all uncanned food has a chance to change to spoil. I was even thinking maybe a 30% chance to spoil and a 1% chance to change into some kind of super sludge with cool benefits when used in a recipe...

Thanks for taking a look and giving feedback, appreciate that. Might need to look into modding so I don't just go on about ideas that nobody can try.

I like spoilage as a concept but I feel like it would only work on single player, imagine playing on a public server and your food supplies are all destroyed because you couldn't play for a week.

It's a difficult problem to solve because I really like the idea of advancing cooking with working fridges, ovens and tinning stations

[Orclover]

1 minute ago, Roland said:

 

You guys must eat a lot of food. Out of curiosity are you eating to keep the food bar above 50% when the first penalty hits or are you eating to keep the food bar constantly filled with overstock calories counting down?

 

Were each going through a stack and a half of beef stew/veggie stew per play session on average.  Some (like me) go through 3 stacks easily (melee build at pretty high game stage) a night.  Everyone is using vehicles so they are only sprinting around poi's.  Food bars are generally kept replenished whenever the first warning message was popping up.  The first couple weeks everyone was kept in a state of near starving and it was really irritating the players, they assumed we would never get it under control and were going to quit to head to other games if we didnt nerf the hunger system itself.  We made changes to crops instead (which we were already getting up and running but converting all food to seeds).  They still complain about how quickly hunger hits (thirst strangely is never a problem) just going about their days but at least now they can keep eating.  If this was RL we would probably all look like a bunch of sumo-wrestlers.  Days are set to 90 minutes (I know it screws up everything), most of us play 6-9 hours a night.

 

It was worse on the first server we set up.  We were eating every living critter in 2 bioms and were all still starving with health loss.

[Roland]

Ill have to check tonight when I get home. I want to say around 30 but they were all corn and potatoes. But we also had bacon and eggs dishes, fish tacos, chili dogs, and sham chowder in addition to all the meat stews we were able to make. We tend to only eat once we are hungry letting the bar dip down close to 50% before eating a dish that takes us back up to the top so we had plenty of food and the crops kept coming in until we had a huge surplus. She finally stopped farming until our storehouse of food was almost empty.

 

We struggled a bit at first until she got up to LotL 3 but the fully perked skill has been plenty for our group. We don't make baked potatoes or corn bread. We only make the filling meals.

[Ianua]

I have LOTL 3 and I still don't get enough seeds everytime to replant. I harvested 14 corn plots and got back 10 seeds. Now of course that means I had enough corn to make more seeds, but it happens frequently enough that I am always making a few seeds each rotation.  Maybe I just have bad RNG. Replanting doesn't take that much time for me, but I am only feeding three people. I have 42 plots at my main base (after recalling that mushrooms don't need a plot or a space next to each other.)  Yeah, we do have to eat often, but it isn't gamebreaking.

[Orclover]

9 minutes ago, Roland said:

We tend to only eat once we are hungry letting the bar dip down close to 50% before eating a dish that takes us back up to the top

 

Ya know, if there wasnt a warning message that popped up until much later, like the orange warning took twice as long to even activate, then our group probably wouldnt even notice the loss of hp/stamina.  Its the message that drives them crazy.  Like they HAVE To fix the hunger pains right then and there, they hear a groan after all so they think they have to fix it.  And blinking red message sends them into a panic, hell a few of them were sure they would starve to death (never happened, ever).

 

Tone those two messages back a bit (and change nothing of the effects, just temper the warning) and a lot of the freaking out some players do over the hunger system might abate.  You probably wouldnt even need to change anything other than the warning.

[bloodmoth13]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Your fertilizer scheme is a possible method, no question. And by changing the returns of fertilized ground one could even add the feature that LotL 0 does not allow a self-sufficient farm. Which is something the developers seem to want and you desperately don't want as you consider it broken that way. Unless you can convince them that one of their current design goals with farming is wrong you already have lost no matter what your scheme does

 

One disadvantage may be that fertilizer needs one bit in world blocks reserved for recording the "fertilized" state, a very scarce and expensive resource. This may have been part of the reason to remove fertilizer and the old way of farming and my guess is that that alone is a hard sell (unless there is an easy alternative available).

 

Another disadvantage from my point is that fertilizer makes farming even more work (producing fertilizer and fertilizing). A point TFP might actually like and that would probably appeal to Roland as well. At the moment more work would make farming so unappealing that most players would not bother anymore. Naturally that can be corrected by balancing meat resources.

 

 

old fertilizer required poo, my fertilizer has farmable nitrate, bone and rotten meat, which seems fairly abundant and replenishes with zombie dogs, vultures and zombie bears, or rotten piles on the ground, so it shouldnt be too hard to get imo.

 

With fertilizer your farm size would by necessity be much smaller, currently you are limited almost only by how many plots you can put seeds into (provided LotL3) with my system you would only use as many plots as you could realistically fertilize, so in some ways it would be more work (in general it would, but i think that is fine as a cost for producing food) but in others it would make infinite sized farms less realistic.

 

I did consider unfertilized farms only providing 1 crop per harvest with 3 harvests per seed which would be inefficient but i decided that the effort of harvesting 3 times for one meager crop is enough of a cost to justify it. A self sustaining farm of only unfertilized crops would be a nightmare for upkeep as it would take 15 harvests to get one more seed, by the time you get a self sustaining farm that is profitable from only farming you will be weeks into the game looting at least t3 PoIs so i think it is justified. 

[PoppaSmirk]

18 minutes ago, Roland said:

Ill have to check tonight when I get home. I want to say around 30 but they were all corn and potatoes. But we also had bacon and eggs dishes, fish tacos, chili dogs, and sham chowder in addition to all the meat stews we were able to make. We tend to only eat once we are hungry letting the bar dip down close to 50% before eating a dish that takes us back up to the top so we had plenty of food and the crops kept coming in until we had a huge surplus. She finally stopped farming until our storehouse of food was almost empty.

 

We struggled a bit at first until she got up to LotL 3 but the fully perked skill has been plenty for our group. We don't make baked potatoes or corn bread. We only make the filling meals.

I just took the LoTL3 skill yesterday after finally getting My FORTITUDE stat up to 5 a day earlier.   So I should harvest the first LoTL3 level crops on Day 36,  when We all go back into play it will be prep for Horde Night.     I think my frustration came in feeling that I had no option other than spend My last 3 skill points toward just getting LoTL3.    its been very strange that when I first took LoTL2,  I had a fair surplus,  enough to replant the same number of crops,  with 4 to 9 food items left in each of the crop types.  Then after the 3rd harvest it seemed I was getting less and less seeds back after each replanting.

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, Orclover said:

Days are set to 90 minutes (I know it screws up everything), most of us play 6-9 hours a night.

 

I think plant growth time is tied to real time, not in-game time, and stamina use/food drain would also be tied to IRL time right? So you get a fully-grown plant after 63 minutes and you run around so much and swing your club so many times in 63 minutes. So hopefully your 90-minute days don't screw up the plant mechanics too much.

 

Another way maybe to adjust the balance for crops (not so much for your group; you seem like you've found a solution that works for you) would be to reduce growing time a bit. More crops per unit time. Benefit is that since it's a relatively large number, it can really be fine-tuned. Maybe 55 minutes is fast enough, or maybe 42.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Ianua said:

I have LOTL 3 and I still don't get enough seeds everytime to replant. I harvested 14 corn plots and got back 10 seeds. Now of course that means I had enough corn to make more seeds, but it happens frequently enough that I am always making a few seeds each rotation.  Maybe I just have bad RNG. Replanting doesn't take that much time for me, but I am only feeding three people. I have 42 plots at my main base (after recalling that mushrooms don't need a plot or a space next to each other.)  Yeah, we do have to eat often, but it isn't gamebreaking.

 

It is absolutely normal that you have to make seeds every replant if you want to keep the size of your farm. On average you have to craft the seeds for half of your whole farm

 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, bloodmoth13 said:

old fertilizer required poo

 

They should add chicken poop to nests. That stuff is purple tier fertilizer.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[theFlu]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

As the perked player it should be you harvesting and crafting seeds but then you should just stick the seeds in a container and let them do all the planting.

That is such a bureaucrat solution thou..

"Sir, we have an issue. Farming is a boring one-man job"

"Well, the solution is clear, my dear. Make it a two-man job with a layer of logistic in between, and add some wasted time. Maybe add an overseer and a pre-planner to boot."

"Most excellent, sir, I shall draft the appropriate proposal immediately!"

[Roland]

2 minutes ago, theFlu said:

That is such a bureaucrat solution thou..

"Sir, we have an issue. Farming is a boring one-man job"

"Well, the solution is clear, my dear. Make it a two-man job with a layer of logistic in between, and add some wasted time. Maybe add an overseer and a pre-planner to boot."

"Most excellent, sir, I shall draft the appropriate proposal immediately!"

 

Well when you say it like that.

 

But, I suspect the reality to be much more simple like...  "Plant your own damn seeds people!"

 

Done.

[PoppaSmirk]

33 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

Well when you say it like that.

 

But, I suspect the reality to be much more simple like...  "Plant your own damn seeds people!"

 

Done.

*grin*  Reality is that I call out over voice chat  "Time for Harvest"  then I start off reciting how much yield I get for each food type and how many (or most cases how few seeds returned),  do quick math in My head of how many I have to use use crafting new seeds,  then run inside to the farming box to check for any drop off looted seeds,  then go back outside quickly and replant,  then as I stop at the Foodstuff box, I call out what the final yield was as I deposit the food;  then listen to the groans in response from the rest of our group.  usually a 2-3 minute process overall,  but the frustration,  now ....Thats priceless.   *smirk*

[pahbi]

Farming was the very first thing that got xml edited.

 

As much as the rest of the game has progressed by leaps and bounds, farming took a step backwards and turned into a tedious unfun chore.

 

 

[meganoth]

12 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Well when you say it like that.

 

But, I suspect the reality to be much more simple like...  "Plant your own damn seeds people!"

 

Done.

 

Furthermore, when there was a bad harvest where you had to convert most of the produce to seeds and food might get scarce it should be possible in a group that allegedly cooperates(!) to tell the others to buy food from the trader machines again and do some more hunting for 3 days.

 

This is a new concept called "adapting to the circumstances". 😉

 

I have the exact same problem in my current MP co-op game and the same protests of my co-players that they don't want to be bothered 😎

Edited January 13, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, pahbi said:

Farming was the very first thing that got xml edited.

 

As much as the rest of the game has progressed by leaps and bounds, farming took a step backwards and turned into a tedious unfun chore.

 

 

 

It is quite easy, this game is a hybrid of quite a handful of genres. There are players who like the mix and there are a lot of players who are after just a some parts and those usually protest if other parts are expanded. Having played a pure survival game like "Don't starve" for 5 hours I can assure you that survival can be a lot more "backwards unfun" than this.😉

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Orclover]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

It is quite easy, this game is a hybrid of quite a handful of genres. There are players who like the mix and there are a lot of players who are after just a some parts and those usually protest if other parts are expanded. Having played a pure survival game like "Don't starve" for 5 hours I can assure you that survival can be a lot more "backwards unfun" than this.😉

 

Oh man that game turned eating into a full time job.

 

I think we are all just very thankful that you made the game in a way that is incredibly easy for us to edit it to our taste. Fine tuning is always important.

[meganoth]

14 minutes ago, Orclover said:

 

Oh man that game turned eating into a full time job.

 

I think we are all just very thankful that you made the game in a way that is incredibly easy for us to edit it to our taste. Fine tuning is always important.

 

I'm just a random player, I did not make the game at all.

 

Now I grant you that you selected the most stamina-burning playstyle of all and that could be a large reason why the food balance is out of whack.

 

People who just shoot the whole horde night or while running through a POI in light armor use a pitiful amount of food while someone (I assume in heavy armor) using a club or sledgehammer for ALL the fighting is really uncommon, I'm not sure the testers inside TFP really did test that. You are not the common case!

 

You might even record your daily usage of food and explain your play style in a bug report. But I think they might just say working as intended and that such a playstyle needs special focus on food procurement.

 

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)