Reclaimable Farmland

[PhotriusPyrelus]

As I understand it, the reason you can't break farmland blocks and receive back dirt is to avoid people destroying the block after some nutrients are depleted, getting back the dirt, replacing it, tilling it again, and getting a new, fresh, nutrient-restored block.  However, having tilling a farmland block be a permanent, irreversible change as well as not getting back anything when the farmland blocks are broken is...  annoying.  And also really weird.  And it just really, really bothers me.

So what if the hoe had a secondary function (or perhaps a new tool to prevent accidents; like maybe a soil rake, or a pitchfork?) where, if you use it on a tilled block, it turns it back into a block appropriate to its current level of fertilization up to a maximum of the original soil used (since the game remembers that).

Conditions would look something like:

If (N,P, or K <25%) --> Barren Soil
else if (N,P, or K <50%) and if (original block == low fertility or better) --> Low Fertility Soil
else if (N,P, or K <75%) and if (original block == medium fertility or better) --> Medium Fertility Soil
else if (N,P, or K <80%) and if (original block == high fertility or better) --> High Fertility Soil
else  --> original block quality soil

Since that may be confusing to some readers, let me give some hopefully illustrative examples using medium fertility soil; freshly tilled it has 50% nutrient levels on NPK.

If you were to "untill" it with...

50% in each N,P,K, it would turn (back) into medium fertility soil.
50% N and P, but only 49.9%K, it would turn into low fertility soil.
0% N and K, and 80%P, it would turn into barren soil (I realize barren soil has a default of 5% nutrients, but I really don't think anyone's going to exploit to re-fertilize barren soil...)
100% in each N,P,K, it still on turns back into medium fertility soil, because that's what it started as.  No mass-printing of terra-preta with fertilizer.

And if you don't want to go through the trouble of making a new tool for it, but also think adding it to the hoe would be too confusing or mistake-prone, what if this same behavior was applied when the farmland was covered with a solid block, like how grassy blocks eventually lose their grass when covered.

 

---alternatively, and much, much more simply---

What if breaking the farmland block gave back "despoiled farmland" of the same fertilization quality (barren/low/medium/high/terra-petra), so for example "Despoiled Farmland (Low Fertility)".  But when placed, it creates a normal farmland block of the original fertilization quality but starts at 0% N, 0% P, 0% K, and 0% moisture.

I don't like this solution nearly as much as the above because it still has tilling be a completely irreversible action, but at the very least you don't get the complete strangeness of breaking a dirt block with the 'right tool' (be that a shovel or your meathooks) and getting back *nothing*...

[Maelstrom]

Better to have the conversion to a soil block happen when dug up with a shovel.  The only time I want farmland blocks back is when I'm digging them up to relocate them.  It would be a pain to "untill" the farmland only to have to dig it up.

[Thorfinn]

Using hoe causes problems with mods like Primitive Survival where there is already something the hoe does to tilled soil.

The mod (Farmland Returns Soil, maybe) returns the best dirt block which does not exceed the current fertility level of the farmland. Or at least that's what it used to do in 1.16 or so. I have no idea what it did when you were fertilized over the max for the type of soil. Bonus feature: you don't have to create a new tool for it. Shovel, open hand, whatever, it just returns dirt.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

3 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Better to have the conversion to a soil block happen when dug up with a shovel.  The only time I want farmland blocks back is when I'm digging them up to relocate them.  It would be a pain to "untill" the farmland only to have to dig it up.

...  Duh.  That's a much better solution.  x_x
 

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Using hoe causes problems with mods like Primitive Survival where there is already something the hoe does to tilled soil.

The game cannot allow its development to be constrained by potential conflicts with mods that a relatively small handful of the player base are using.
 

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

The mod (Farmland Returns Soil, maybe) returns the best dirt block which does not exceed the current fertility level of the farmland. Or at least that's what it used to do in 1.16 or so. I have no idea what it did when you were fertilized over the max for the type of soil. Bonus feature: you don't have to create a new tool for it. Shovel, open hand, whatever, it just returns dirt.

I should've known there'd be a mod for it.  Didn't really know where to start looking for it.  Wish I was a modder, I'd've made it myself.  But I'm not, so all I can do is whine in the suggestions forums and hope.  XD

[Thorfinn]

No worries, @PhotriusPyrelus. It's often easiest and quickest to post a suggestion and hope someone can point you in the right direction. I doubt anyone minds. I just point out mods that exist to help people fine tune what it is they want in the game. If you decide that mod is what you want in game, that is easy to recommend. "Please put X into the game. Thank you." If you want something different than that, explaining different in what way is very helpful.

BTW, Primitive Survival is one of the most popular mods out there. Between that and Medieval and Expanded Foods, you get most of the servers out there, or did last I looked. I'm not saying that should hold back development, no. Just that it's nice to demonstrate awareness of how much any given suggestion will affect such a large number of players.

[dakko]

11 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

BTW, Primitive Survival is one of the most popular mods out there.

That's funny, I was just thinking the same thing when I read "relatively small number of players." Not that it matters, as I also agree that development should not be constrained by potential conflicts with a mod...but, yeah, Primitive Survival is very popular.