Fruit Tree Frustration

[PhotriusPyrelus]

I'm really annoyed at these things, from the bare 40% chance to successfully plant one after savaging a natural tree of 25-50% of its fruit production, to the fact that both cultivated but especially natural ones can die over the Winter.  So trees I don't even know are there could die before I notice or find them?  Annoying.  I understand player-planted ones being more susceptible to cold from a gameplay perspective: you want the player to be mindful of where they're planted and to take care of them with greenhouses or whatever, but natural ones should be exempt, so they don't die before the player even realizes they're there.

[dakko]

Yeah, I just saw this happen in Ashantin's video. Really surprised that natural fruit trees could die like that.

[Maelstrom]

It's pretty realistic though.  Last year my area had a late snow storm (mid May) that killed mature established trees.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

9 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

It's pretty realistic though.  Last year my area had a late snow storm (mid May) that killed mature established trees.

How realistic is it that oak trees grow from acorn to full tree in under a year? How realistic is it that months last 9 days instead of ~30?  How realistic is it that I can die from lack of food in about 2 days?  How realistic is it that we never have to drink water or sleep?  How realistic is it that you cannot grow fruit trees by planting fruit in the ground?  That's the whole point of fruit.  It's not to feed predatory species; it's the propagation of the tree's own species.  Same goes for berries and berry bushes.

Please, spare me the realism argument.  There's plenty in the game already that is unrealistic for the sake of gameplay.

I do agree that realism can be fun.  But it can (and often does) detract from the experience.  I believe this is such a case, and the game can already differentiate between player-planted crops and naturally-generated crops (because naturally generated ones will replant themselves [though apparently only if on soil? I've had some Rye on gravel seem to fail to replant] if they spend too long at maturity), it wouldn't be hard to add that distinction to trees and make natural ones immune to cold.

[dakko]

Not to mention that natural fruit trees only spawn at world gen, or new chunk gen, whatever. Having them die in a cold snap is a catastrophic loss. That this same mechanic is not affecting any other tree or plant defies logic.

[Echoweaver]

So, all models are wrong but some models are useful. The game mechanics are trying to model realism while being playable as a game. Thus the 9-day months because nobody wants to play 30-day months.

It seems to me that, in nature, if a wild-grown tree has lived through enough winters to reach tree size, then it must be able to live in the climate it sprouted in. That means it should be able to live through an average winter. Only a dramatic cold snap should be able to kill it.

[Maelstrom]

@PhotriusPyrelus I never said it was fun, just realistic.  I agree that some realistic things are fun but other realistic things are decidedly UNfun.  That unfun factor can vary between players. 

On this topic I'm undecided.  I would get frustrated (i.e. not fun) finding a dead wild fruit tree, but I don't think it would be unfun for me either.  If I could have iron doors sealing charcoal pits like they do coke furnaces, I would happily take dying wild fruit trees.

[Lesdmark]

Making something "feel" like realism without actually being realistic is what most designers aim for when trying to make a "realistic" game. I think that when a game mechanic gets in the way of fun, it should probably be examined to see it it needs to be changed. I do understand that part of the appeal of the game is the way the mechanics imitate an earthlike world. It is too easy thought to get tedium confused with depth and complexity. I think the trees dying might just be a bit tedious in this case because the mechanic does not serve any particular need. I mean if the goal of the game was to keep as many fruit trees alive as possible, then the mechanic makes more sense. I have about 400 hours in GTNH (I feel most people will know what that means) so I like a bit of depth and complexity combined with grind.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

Eh, well, guess it doesn't matter.  Sometimes I forget just how easy stuff like this is to alter.  assets/survival/blocktypes/plant has two fruit tree .json files where you can edit the rooting and grafting chance, and also the death temperatures.  So I guess I'll just tweak those like I did tool durability.

EDIT:

2 hours ago, Lesdmark said:

I mean if the goal of the game was to keep as many fruit trees alive as possible, then the mechanic makes more sense.

If that was the goal of the game, I should think there would be ways to insulate and protect the trees beyond just building a relatively expensive greenhouse.  For each one (since only one such tree can fit in a greenhouse).

Edited June 3, 2023 by PhotriusPyrelus

[Lesdmark]

1 hour ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Eh, well, guess it doesn't matter.  Sometimes I forget just how easy stuff like this is to alter.  assets/survival/blocktypes/plant has two fruit tree .json files where you can edit the rooting and grafting chance, and also the death temperatures.  So I guess I'll just tweak those like I did tool durability.

EDIT:

If that was the goal of the game, I should think there would be ways to insulate and protect the trees beyond just building a relatively expensive greenhouse.  For each one (since only one such tree can fit in a greenhouse).

I think the game would be called Fruit Tree Protection Simulator if that was a major consideration. Lol

[1Joachim1]

On 6/2/2023 at 2:36 PM, Maelstrom said:

Last year my area had a late snow storm (mid May) that killed mature established trees.

in my area in my country (spain) we have quite delicated fruit trees 'cause they bloom quite early (orange, peaches, and hazelnuts) and a few late freezes can kill the production of fruit, but so far i only saw ill trees die from freezing, sure it's not a "cold" place at all (my area gets -5ºC in harsh winters at most but get's +33ºC in the summers easily ) . one really really rare weather here is Hail and for the temperature range you can understand how rare it is, it occurs every now and then unexpectedly in april (where all those trees are blooming, some of them bloom in march) and then it destroys crops, killing most plats and hurts trees, but trees don't die, they just lose most of the production (if not all) and a few branches get torn into shreed (Efectively killing that branch) but nothing that good climate could solve. heck, even the ones in my small farm that i never watered in my life prosper nicely. 

some trees are not living in the perfect conditions, for example pine trees.. you can see them on rocky mountains and in cold areas (or both) but it doesn't mean it's living in the ideal spot. pine trees also develop quite nicely in warmer climates with soft ground, but other species of trees are more aggresive and have better surviving strategies (such as blocking sunlight, or for example, or extracting large and toxic amounts of metals from the ground ) and push pine trees into more extreme climates where other plants can't really thrive.)

fruit trees are quite rare in VS so having them spawn in harsh biomes for them to live in, makes no sense, they should be able to survive the climate where they spawn, since "human" intervention "isn't" a thing, most of the trees should have died already for the time you pop out and only the fitting ones, the ones that adapted to the climate should be there.

which brings me to the ingame mechanics: make the trees suffer from heat/cold damage reducing the production itself quite dramatically instead of straight killing them. 

[Thorfinn]

On 6/2/2023 at 12:53 PM, Echoweaver said:

So, all models are wrong but some models are useful.

Or are useful at least part of the time, under certain boundary conditions. A fellow traveler!

2 hours ago, 1Joachim1 said:

my area gets -5ºC in harsh winters at most but get's +33ºC in the summers easily

We had that range in May. Wiped out the apple and crabapple blossoms, but the cherries were late enough that they look to be OK.

2 hours ago, 1Joachim1 said:

which brings me to the ingame mechanics: make the trees suffer from heat/cold damage reducing the production itself quite dramatically instead of straight killing them.

Nice idea. Seems like it would be a nightmare, though. After a couple game months go by, how many fruit trees are in the 10-20k block radius that you've generated? Tens of thousands at a guess. Each of which now needs to have weather generated to see whether or not it is stunted, and to what degree.

A garden with a few hundred crops is not a big deal. It mostly has the same weather. 

I think I would prefer a more "realistic" form of doing cuttings, using the leatherworking mechanic and loosely based on how nurseries actually do that. (Though it does not work with all fruiting trees.) Place some arbitrary number of soil blocks into a barrel full of water to leech out the fertilizer, the better quality soil, the better the fertilizer, reflected in an improved chance of cutting survival. Transfer the liquid to a bucket. Place cuttings in the bucket to let them root. Transplant into planters to let them develop a root ball. Transplant into the wild.

[1Joachim1]

18 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Tens of thousands at a guess. Each of which now needs to have weather generated to see whether or not it is stunted, and to what degree.

 

lets be honest here, fruit trees... i don't really see them attractive... one of my flaws in these kind of games is that i don't really like to travel on foot a lot so, even in an ingame year there's not so many trees i've discovered. maybe it's also my ingame temperature range, i tend to play on colder areas, but i'm not having so much luck with fruit trees. also risking the 60% chance of not getting a tree hurts, like a lot. specially because i'm not the luckiest man alive..

solutions i can suggest?  we need a "seed" mechanic for trees, it ensures the growth, instead of a 40% chance it's 100% but in turn, it takes up a full year to grow the first "true branches" (basically the minimum size for the tree to yield fruit at appropiate season). and you need a bunch of fruit to get a single viable seed.

another solution could be, having a tree inside a greenhouse ensures the tree will not die of frost even if it's getting too cold. this way you have both effects. you want yield quickly? graft them and risk killing the tree... you want the tree to survive the winters? spend some time with infrastructure and mine a lot of quartz..

[Thorfinn]

Fair enough.

When the fruit trees first came out, I thought I would give them a fair chance, so every one I saw I would trim all the branches and plant them in the general vicinity, figuring there would be all these Johnny Appleseed mini-groves throughout the world. I envisioned it that they would be the fall and early winter equivalent of berry bushes. Turns out that's not the case. Either they do not fruit at all the first year, or I just never happened across one in fruiting season. They do "take", though IME, probably not 40% of them. Offhand, it seems closer to 1/4 or less. My mini-groves are most often 1 or 2 live trees amongst 3 or 4 dead sticks. But it's not that they die off that bothers me so much as knowing that I'll be off in a new world long before they bear fruit, so to me, they are a complete waste of time and durability.

One of my first night priorities is a stack of ladders to use as a nerdpole because when you are done, just take out the bottom ladder and you get them all back. From about 20 in the air, fruit trees stick out like a sore thumb. Not that I'm using them to find the trees anymore, but you can't not notice them. But that's the best way I've found of spotting copper and especially flax in the first few days. And affixing a block or three of packed earth to the top of the ladder leaves a nice trail of very obvious breadcrumbs. Useful for those of us not using maps.

[Varenvel]

On 6/2/2023 at 2:36 PM, Maelstrom said:

It's pretty realistic though.  Last year my area had a late snow storm (mid May) that killed mature established trees.

 

its not , fruit trees have seeds inside fruit , this is how its spreads and how it evolved, some animal eats it , and "fertilises the seed later" , most games hatre that idea and just make regular seed and never program you can "just plant fruit"

only game i seen do sort of it was "Eco" who had some fruit give seed when eaten raw , and dwarf fortresss(eating uncooked fruit and veggies depending on it gave seeds , also seeds were removed when brewing)#

i live next to national park and we had plenty of fruit trees who grew becouse "somone threw cherrypits away"

https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/wtf/tomato-grows-on-an-island-that-nobody-can-enter-thanks-to-scientist-who-pooped-in-the-open-348074.html

there is also that , so dont claim "realism" to downplay others when your claim is the unrealistic one.

by game mechanics could do that rabbits/racoons who eat fruit could spread berry bushes or trees , or that trees have chance to "spread every season" and lower chance of dying every season or something like that

 

i played many minecraft mods who had them and im fine it being rare , but it being super rare and "it dies in wild" more looks like bug then anything else , especialy considering no vendors sells them and its not rare seed like "pumpkins"

 

 

and while tree's dying its semi realistic , if its in climate it is from that dont happen(tho human induced climate change introduced some anomalies)

Edited June 16, 2023 by Varenvel

[PhotriusPyrelus]

@Varenvel I appreciate the sentiment, but Maelstrom already clarified that he wasn't necessarily supporting the idea, just that he thought it was realistic.  Yes, sometimes fruit trees die of cold.  That was never really in dispute.  I merely dispute that it is not fun, and there's plenty of other compromises on realism for the sake of fun (or sheer game balance).