Here is a way to support crops going to seed without breaking the existing system

[Guimoute]

Jumping on the idea that crops are officially in an in-between state, here is a way to add realism without requiring new systems. It's only using the existing crop stages system and changing the drops.

Currently, only grain crops go to seed (fixing the fact that food item and seed item are separate is outside the scope of the present suggestion).
Vegetables should flower and go to seed too but that poses the problem of seed vs food, as unlike grain, the ripe crop is not a seed. My suggestion is simple:

• Keep the current systems.
• Maturity stage: vegetable crops yield the maximal amount of food items but no seed unlike now.
• Flowering stage: the model is different, the food yield is drastically reduced (think fibrous carrots), still no seed.
• Gone to seed: different model, food yield is zero, large amounts of seeds.
• After some time, whose length can be tuned to balance fun and punitiveness, the crop should die. Currently dead crops still yield 1 seed, you could remove that drop and let the farmland be self-seeded the following year. The seed did mature and fall on the soil after all. That gives players a second chance at the cost of patience (the farmland plot is taken, they didn't get any food, the net seed count is 0 for that year).

That also opens up the possibility of new food drops for specific crops. Cabbage flowers are delicious stir-fried for example. That makes missing the mature crop time window less punitive for new players. 

Spoiler

 

Edited March 22 by Guimoute
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[redram]

Yes, going to seed will be a thing in the future.  It's kind of toying around the edges though, and not really a priority right now, as far as implementing it by itself.

[Streetwind]

I'm entirely ambivalent about this, playing singleplayer exclusively, but I can't help but think... wouldn't this result in major pushback from the multiplayer community? Those who play on permanently-online servers?

They already face the problem that their food rots away while they are offline, but at least they can plant crops, and when they log back in, they can harvest these crops and have something to eat. With this change, you'd have to harvest plants before they reach the last stage in order to get food. So someone logging onto a multiplayer server will find all their crops have passed that stage already, and now yield only seeds, not food.

[Guimoute]

@Streetwind

I see the problem. In the mean time, I also think it doesn't make any sense to be able to sow crops and come back at any time to harvest it. That's part of what makes the south OP, both for people who live there (no need for conservation since everything is stored in the ground) and for people who live in the north but come every 6 months to sow or harvest.

My secondary suggestion about self-seeding plants alleviates the problem a bit and makes crops closer to fruit trees, as in you must use the right time window but you don't lose anything if you missed it.

People in servers need to adapt. Salted food in cellars, carrying some food in their inventory (+ the mod to avoid offline food spoilage). It's a problem that is not caused by my suggestion so I won't brainstorm on it too much.

[redram]

To address your concerns @Streetwind, it will not be a thing for *all* crops.  Just some.  For instance any crop whose seed is also the food, it will certainly make no difference (grains). At least some root crops will likely remain basically the same as they are now.   The idea is for crops to not all just be essentially reskins of the same thing, with minor variations in temperature and nutrient and so forth.  We want them to actually *feel* different to grow, as much as we reasonably can.  So server players might avoid those crops which are trickier to grow, but not all crops will be like that - but on the flip side, having a dedicated farmer than can give the trickier crops the attention they need, hopefully will be rewarding.  You may even get things like biennial crops that only produce seeds on a second year, but produce a lot of seeds then.  We'd like to have varieties that produce better with trellising (tomatoes, cucumbers, peas), varieties that yield a little over time, rather than a large yield all at once (beans, peppers), and more.  

Right now there are technical differences between crops (nutrients, temperatures), but in the end they all still feel the same to grow - ya stick em in the ground and come back at the end.  Variety is what we want, not same-ness.   And it goes beyond the plants themselves, we have plans for all kinds of adjacent systems.  In totality, it'd be an update on its own probably.  Which is essentially why we've avoided much 'tinkering around the edges', so far. 

[Streetwind]

Ah, interesting. Well then, we'll see what the future brings...

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, redram said:

...but on the flip side, having a dedicated farmer than can give the trickier crops the attention they need, hopefully will be rewarding.

Hmmm. Doesn't seem to address the issue that the guy playing the farmer class is going to have to be active anytime the server is running, or the crops will go beyond mature into seed, or rotting in the field, or whatever. Looking forward to seeing how that is addressed.