Useless hoe

[Yeetiee]

If I had to point the most useless tool in the game, the hoe wins unanimously. After making big enough farmland, the hoe is no longer needed and can be thrown away.

To make farming more efficient we have a scythe which is now a multi-crop uber-tool. In real life no sane person would use it to gather carrots or onions.

To balance those issues I propose limiting scythe to grains and making hoe a neccessary tool to gather vegetables like carrots and onions.

[dakko]

If we are to have a tool for gathering root crops, please let it not be the hoe. As an avid gardener, that would just... just. It would spoil in-game gardening for me since hoes are so NOT the type of tool needed for that task.

Perhaps an alternative idea to making the hoe more useful:

Require hoeing at the start of the growing season, or between planting crops. Or the hoe can be used for destroying/cutting grass on farmland. That would be much more in keeping with the real use of a hoe.

[Yeetiee]

4 hours ago, dakko said:

Require hoeing at the start of the growing season, or between planting crops. Or the hoe can be used for destroying/cutting grass on farmland. That would be much more in keeping with the real use of a hoe.

I can live with either of those things. Still using hoe for root crops is better than scythe which doesn't even make any sense.

[Anthony frailey]

i wouldn't say useless in all cases.  there is alleged crop rotation, always options to build more farmlands elsewhere if establishing multiple homesteads in different regions of the seed. 
If your soil ever goes barren, you might want a hoe to get that fresh terra preta tilled up for use. 
theres always little things, like  readjusting pumpkin patches every so often. Greenhouse maintaining over several seasons of over-use, 
Is a bit silly scythe harvest roots, but equally you can punch leaves with fist to get sticks, or sound like a badly tuned harmonica when you mistep to fast off a high ridge getting minor hurt even more silly.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Anthony frailey

[Thap]

Yes, farmland should need to be rehoed each time it bears crops or lies fallow. Yet again, TFC+ has got it mostly correct.

Edited December 1, 2022 by Thap

[dakko]

15 hours ago, Yeetiee said:

I can live with either of those things. Still using hoe for root crops is better than scythe which doesn't even make any sense.

Yes, I like your idea about limiting the scythe. Personally, I've only used the scythe for grains and grass. I didn't know it cut other crops until your post.

[The Teller]

Maybe the land can become 'un-tilled' after an amount of time due to a lack of use. For example in the winter seasons players wont be using their farm lands as much and over time the tilled earth becomes dirt again due to natural erosion or some other phenomenon. 

This will support a need for a Hoe in longer runs due to the soils continued degradation and can even help with keeping the soil from being over used. This also has an in-game use due to people not farming much in winter. Although, the warmer climates may not see much use it this. Maybe something like a heat wave which can kill crops can create the same effect that winter does. Sort of like a Dust Bowl season in hot climates. Granted I haven't really been in these hotter biomes so I don't know if such a thing already exists.

[Ogi Teh yeti]

@The TellerI'm not disagreeing with your idea but as it stands currently in game when you break farmland blocks they drop nothing. I believe it was said that it is on purpose to avoid players just breaking and placing terra preta farmland without having to care about its nutrient levels as replacing it would reset it. I would imagine that unless it is easy enough to code in a way for each farm block or dirt block to remember what nutrient level it was at then your idea at present wouldn't work. That being said, it isn't a bad idea imo, as thoughts other people have brought up could work like using cover crops to maintain its farmland status over winter, assuming a few things are all implemented.

[Rhyagelle]

Requiring more tilling after each crop seems like a good idea. 

[The Teller]

@Ogi Teh yetithat is true that I didn't even consider what would happen if the land ran out of nutrients. Granted the coding will be a nightmare no doubt but for the sake of concept I'm not goin to really involve that can of worms. I'm no coder, I do not know the limitations.

Bringing your point into account it could be made to where even if the land reverts back it still retains its proper nutrient lvls it had at the time, but like you said its not coded to retain such info. so instead of reverting back to dirt maybe a knew block type with retaining that info as its whole purpose. The block could be called something like Disturbed Farm Soil or Degraded Farm Land. This can give the player another opportunity to check the nutrient lvls before planting like crazy and risking the chance of just ruining their farm land and having to destroy all their soil n such.

When I take mechanics into account I try to think in the line of MineCraft's ideology, which is roughly 'if something bad happens its the players fault not the games' for instance lightning could destroy builds n such which the player has really no control over, thus the lightning rod was made. Now the players have control so if their build is destroyed by lightning its their fault because they didn't have a lightning Rod.

In the case of farm land, it wont be the games fault for the land going barren but the players. The players had every chance to look at the Nutrient lvls and fix em, even more so when the land Degrades and has to be Hoed again.

So I guess my suggestion is two fold. Gives more use to the Hoe while innervating the farming system. Sorry for the rant tho.

Edited January 24, 2023 by The Teller

[Thorfinn]

The hoe is one of the better tools for exploration if you are playing without a map. Nothing else leaves an indelible, unmistakable trail of breadcrumbs. A close second is a stack of sand or gravel not of this region, which basically means you need 2 stacks.

[Maelstrom]

Only problem is those large sand/gravel deserts.  Instead of sand/gravel, maybe a stack or two of hay bales?  No matter what there ain't no mistaking that for a naturally occurring block

Edited January 30, 2023 by Maelstrom

[Thorfinn]

I'll usually just use flowers or a single chunk of firewood or even a firepit on sand/gravel. Firepits are nice because it gives you a chance to leave junk behind to maybe pick up later.

[MrKlamma]

I think, after harvesting your crops, farmlands should go back to their originally form, so the hoe would make more sense
 

[Maelstrom]

The problem with that is the depleted farmland soil would revert to the original nutrient levels and create a farming exploit.  Additional coding could make this idea work, but I don't know how difficult those changes would be.

[Davis]

On 12/1/2022 at 3:26 AM, Thap said:

Yes, farmland should need to be rehoed each time it bears crops or lies fallow. Yet again, TFC+ has got it mostly correct.

I wouldn't mind this, after a late game technology is introduced that tills more than one block at a time. Having to re-till the land after every harvest is realistic, but on a large scale in game farm with the current mechanics, it'd be horrible.

[Maelstrom]

Sooo...  something like a horse and plow?  

[dakko]

On 2/1/2023 at 6:56 AM, Maelstrom said:

Sooo...  something like a horse and plow?  

Why does that make me think of John Deere's Harvest in the Heartland for DS? It was so satisfying to drive that little tractor around the Harvest Moon-esque farm! But, um, yeah. Horse and plow could be fun! I'd support that. Or a sheep and plow. Or something.

[Khornet]

I've suggested an extra usage for the hoe back in some thread where I was whining about how hard it is to "farm" grass - let us use the hoe to "till" the flat-grassed (harvested/trimmed) soil blocks to the point where they're exposed earth for the purpose of regrowing grass. One hoe use (click) to turn grassy soil into non-grassy soil, another to turn it into farmland.

Although this doesn't really apply that much anymore, since we can now trim grass to a re-growable state with the scythe - THIS process, however, is much too slow to my taste, which brings me back to the hoe "stripping" soil of all grass, since it's faster than digging out and replacing the soil blocks.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Khornet

[Maelstrom]

But I do like that idea.  Once grass is removed the only way to get grass growing again is to break and replace the block.  Why not have two modes to the hoe like the scythe?  One option to till farmland the other to turnover sod so that long grass can once again grow.

[Awutak]

A Hoe has two sides one for tilling as all seem to know.

The other side is for weeding, to loosen up the ground aroung the crops and to bring fertilizer close to the roots.

It would be nice to get better harvests by better fetilizer-input due to weeding and or loosening with the hoe.