Agriculture, weeds, mulch, and plows

[redram]

So I saw in the 1.2.6 release notes that farmland has a 'low chance' to spawn grass sometimes.  I was curious if such weeds use soil nutrients, or if there's any further plans for a weed mechanic beyond that.  I don't really know how involved you guys want the whole agriculture system to be, but here's some thoughts:

WEEDS - Weeds could use up soil nutrients in their block.  They could even deplete adjacent tiles some.  In this way, large groups of weeds would deplete nutrients fast, as they would deplete their own tile's nutrients, plus those around them, which if those around are also weeds, would compound the effect.  You could have a weed tile drawing down it's own tile, and four weeds adjcent also drawing down the same tile.  They could have their own graphic and take longer to hoe up than regular grass and stuff that is single-hit.  This would make garden care a bit more involved.  Maybe it could even be possible for weeds to show up superimposed on crop blocks.  In this case no need to draw down adjacent tile nutrients.  Weeds would always be mined first so the player could use the hoe to get rid of them without hurting crops.  That or they have a separate weeding mode that does not affect crops.  Perhaps if weeds persist long enough on a fallow tilled block, they revert it to untilled soil.

MULCH - Weeds could be countered with mulch - another use for cut grass.  It could perhaps be applied once to change the appearance of the farm tile itself to have a mulch top, and then once or twice more to put a layer or two on top of the soil, superimposed with the plant (assuming that's possible).  Each layer would deplete over time.   When the farm block itself loses it's mulch, it reverts to the tilled farm tile it was.  The mulch reduces the chance of weeds spawning.

PLOWS - plow could be used to till multiple dirt blocks at once.  The player uses the player on a block, facing a cardinal direction, and it plows X number of blocks in that direction.  The number goes up with plow tier.  Possibly also with player skill.  If 'rooty' soil were added (left by trees), this could only be tilled with plows, not hoes.  Plows could also be used to weed multiple blocks in the same way.  This, in combination with a mechanic that penalizes blob planting, would incentivize row planting with fallow ground between.  Bonus style points if plows can be arranged to require an ox or whatever to use somehow.

ROW PLANTING - it could incentivize players to practice alternate row fallow planting if a system to penalize crop blobs were used.   So maybe a given crop grows better if it has fallow ground on two opposite sides of it (with no weeds).  If a crop disease system were ever implemented, they could also be more likely to get diseases if they have more than two adjacent crop blocks.  Possible yield penalties for too many adjacent crops could be another incentive to spread them out.  So for example could be a random chance, so 2 adjacent crops is fine, 3 adjacent reduces chance for each piece of food by 10%, and 4 adjacent reduces each piece chance to drop by 15%, plus each seed has chance reduced by 5%. That's of course assuming the code is even set up to allow that kind of external factor for block drops.

 

 

[Tyron]

Weeds actually tend to improve the farmland when laid fallow over long time. The requirement to weed the farmland sounds a bit excessive for the "Survive&Build" Playstyle but could be something for "Wilderness Survival".

We did want to make use of cut grass as a nitrogen fertilizer, together with sylvite (potassium) and bone meal (phosphate) it would neatly complete the nutrient system. Mulch would be somewhat complicated to implement.

Plows could be something for the "Survive&Automate" playstyle ^^

Saraty had the idea of companion planting the other day. Having certain crops besides another would yield in a certain bonus. That would also encourage row planting. Another row planting incentivizer would be when legumes increase the nitrogen level also in nearby blocks.

 

[redram]

Ya, most of my suggestions probably will be best for the wilderness style, really.  Anything that makes it more interesting is good to me.  I guess there'll be a use for all that grass then anyway.  How does grass grow btw?  Since there's no random block update mechanic?  And how will survive & build be different from survive and automate?

[Tyron]

The farmland block is a blockentity, hence no requirement for random block updates. Its also the farmland block that actually grows the crop.

On the farmland the grass has a 2% chance to grow every 2-3 ingame hours or so, it is checked with a 15 second timer just like the nutrient recovery and moisture check - but also calculated dependent on the ingame calendar and not whether the chunk is loaded or not, which means your farm can get totally overgrown also if you were to leave the area and come back a year later.

Survive and Automate is my vision for Minecrafts FeedTheBeast style gaming. So lots of automation tools, jetpacks, etc.
It would come only much later.

 

[Saraty]

Mulch could be just 1 voxel overlay on the top of the tilted farmland? It would add a LOT to visuals of ones garden! Of course benefits from mulching would be awesome to have. Keeping the moisture for plants that are in need of more water at later point would be nice.

[redram]

Ah, gotcha.  So SA takes it into the future, that makes sense.  I was actually referring to how does grass grow on normal blocks.  Any grass block just has an update scheduled very 15 seconds or so?  It's just grass blocks right?  I was mainly curious so as to know what rate it might grow back at, once cut.   As an aside, I ran across a really weird landscape yesterday with short grass and trees on sand.
 

Spoiler

 

 

I didn't know if that was an intended landscape style, or what, but it was an incredibly huge area.  It seems a bit odd to me, to have grass and trees growing on pure sand?  Or is it just meant to be so barren the player can't farm there?  I would assume that in an area like that, new grass will never grow, right?  Maybe in the future those things will be replaced by desert-style plants, like joshua trees and such?  I've always thought it'd be nice to have more than just saguaro-and-sand deserts, but also more badland-ish types.

Anywho, back to mulch, I was thinking the first application would just change the texture of the farmland block, so the top face looked like mulch.  I thought that would keep it simple code-wise.  The added layers was just kind of if it were not problematic.  You do such amazingly different things here I have to re-calibrate my expectations!

And just, to elaborate a bit on what I was thinking, with some of this.  It stems from multiplayer.  In my town we'd often get people who wanted to be farmers, but there really was hardly anything for them to do.  Just the initial planting, and then harvesting.  Even planning layouts is just at the start.  I kind of thought needing to actively weed would give an ongoing care routine for farmers to do.  But I admit that in single player, it's best for the player to be able to do other stuff during growing time.  I assume the player will be able to add fertilizer at any point, ya?  I guess that at least is something they could do during growing season.

[Tyron]

Oh you mean soil blocks without grass coverage? Probably a position based delayed callback whenever a soil block is placed. I haven't added that yet. 

If you mean the tallgrass growing on top of soil: That doesn't regrow right now on soil blocks. I think in that case I'd rather give people grass seed bags so they can regrow it manually if they want. 

Yes that is intended landscape. Google for Grass on Sand ;-)
There exist also classic deserts with saguaros and desert flowers, when the temperature is hot enough. In your case you probably encountered a dry & low temperature area. You can check via /wgen pos climate

A simple overlay for mulch would be quite easy, thats true.

Yes, fertilizer would surely become a game mechanic. We could potentially make farming a lot more work intensive depending on the difficulty level. So you could just up the difficulty for multiplayer.

But yea, we gotta start simple for now.

 

 

 

[redram]

30 minutes ago, Tyron said:

If you mean the tallgrass growing on top of soil: That doesn't regrow right now on soil blocks. I think in that case I'd rather give people grass seed bags so they can regrow it manually if they want.

That is good to know.  So grass will actually be a bit limited perhaps.  So straw may be more valuable than I thought.

I guess it was the trees on the sand that got me more than anything.  You're right, grass on sand is not that unusual.  And I have indeed seen the more 'typical' deserts with saguaros.  Love the extra detail you've put into the saguaros!

[Tyron]

Well, you could still farm the tallgrass with fallow farmland. Plus there's immense amounts of tallgrass being generated in the world.

You found the rather uncommon flowering saguaro? ;-)

[redram]

Oh yes, immense amounts indeed.  But, in the long term, depending on how much need there is for grass, eventually it might start to deplete.  But you're right, it could be fallow farmed.  On long-running servers, a lot of resources get used.  And if grass is an important fertilizer, that's probably a big sink.

I did find a flowering saguaro at least once, yes. 

[Ivan]

I do like the idea of plows. Plows should create a higher yield, higher than ground turned with a hoe could produce. I would suggest a cow/oxen as a passive mob initially, so it can be harnessed to a plow and directed as the player wants. Plows would have to have an endurance indicator like other tools. 

[Ivan]

Weeds and Mulch: Both weeds and mulch affect productivity, one negative and the other positive. I think it could be possible, or would be desirable, to have a streamlined agricultural process that affects soil output.

Hoe soil = 40% growth chance for planted seed

Plow soil = 70% growth chance for planted seed

Adding mulch increases chance by 10%. Mulch would also decrease chance of disease.

Each level of fertility adds 5%

Mulch is added by player carrying mulch in bag, which is depleted with each seed sown.

Advantages of plowing: seed bag is attached to plow, so seeding is done automatically along side adding mulch. With Hoe, Mulch is added from players bag, but seeding is done 'by hand'. I am not suggesting the process with a plow is in any way automated, just the players has to do less steps, which reflects the efficiency of technology.

------

I see a model like this as resolving calculations upon planting and leaving less (or nothing) to be tracked except basic plant growth.

Creating mulch should be done using mulch pit, or mulch box (which could be crafted)  

[redram]

2 hours ago, Ivan said:

Creating mulch should be done using mulch pit, or mulch box (which could be crafted)  

Now, you're not conflating mulch and compost are you?  Compost is decayed organics worked into the soil to increase fertility.  Mulch is just any opaque material placed on top of the soil to retain moisture and reduce weed sprouting.  Irl there's no time component to mulch aside from the gathering, and I don't see a lot of game benefit to requiring it.  With a finite grass supply, I think it will be a valuable enough resource over time that there's no need to require it be left to 'brew'.  I'd see it as a starting-tier gardening tool.  Also I think it should directly affect weed growth chance, and be able to be hand-applied to any tilled tile at any time.

Compost on the other hand would make sense to require some time to 'brew'.  Requiring that it be applied simultaneously with hoeing or plowing is an interesting wrinkle that would definitely require a bit more planning on the player's part, vs being able to just apply it whenever they want.  I like it.

Aside from that, I like the sound of the rest.   I do still like the idea of weeds as an ongoing threat, that encourages some care of the garden, vs plant-and-forget.  If plants have a number that tracks their health, the end result of this health at harvesting could affect the yield.  It could be initially affected by various planting conditions as mentioned, as well as player skill, but also very important could be weeds over time.  I'd assume each crop block does a callback timer that progresses to the next stage, and at each of these points it could check around it for weeds.  No weeds, more health added.  Lots of weeds, little health added.  There could be different kinds of weeds, some subtracting more than others.  If plant disease were ever a thing it could also affect these health checks.  So at maturity the plants with 100 (or whatever) total health yield a lot, the ones with less yield less (but maybe always a minimum of 1).   Different strategies could arise.  Focus on farming well, and get tons of food, and if preserved well maybe next year don't farm at all, focus on other stuff.  Or, do no weeding or plowing, just hoe and get enough food to get by.  It opens up a genuine path for a dedicated farmer in multiplayer scenarios.

[Saraty]

I have already 2 mulch types in my mind, which would be the simplest to add considering the materials we already have in VS: cut grass clippings and wood chips. Straw could be yet another one (however it has similar benefits to the grass clippings).

If we dive into more detail: aside from assisting against weed, keeping the soil moist and balancing temperature, wood chips add a lot of carbon and grass clippings - nitrogen so ratio of both would need to be considered. Mulch from pine trees (and I think coniferous trees altogether) raises the soil acidity over long period of time. So something like individualized mulching could be a thing for future updates.

Now talking about compost: me and Tyron grew very fond of idea adding Terra Preta (man-made highly fertile soil). Tyrons father is an organic gardener who makes Terra Preta on his own. Now the cool thing about it is that it would require lot of grinded down charcoal (love the idea of giving it yet another important role besides being used solely as fuel), bone and organic waste / manure. Charcoal and bones are already planned for closer future so player could potentially mix those two with the soil in the special container (?) and let it stay certain amount of time to turn black. 

I would also offer to rename existing "very fertile soil" to Terra Preta and let it be found in ranges starting from jungle until savannas resembling the real life. 

[skol]

Just scanned through older suggestions in order to prevent duplications and came back to the topic of mulch.

Saraty, you wrote about the mulch types you have in mind. You most probably know https://www.backtoedenfilm.com/organicgardening.html - my wife stumbled over this some months ago, now we are planning to give it a try and change the way we use our garden.

What is the idea behind this alternative method: This would allow farming without plough (and even without a metal hoe - a digging stick would be sufficient).

I'm a biologist by qualification and for me it is really striking how bad and compacted the soil gets by tilling is and how strong the continuous yield depends on frequent fertilization. Especially by plowing the valuable topsoil material is transported down to the anaerobic millieu below and anaerobic microorganisms begin to turn the organic material into methane and ammonia (means not only loss of carbon and nitrogen by gas, bad for the climate as well). Plowing and hoeing open the soil for all kinds of seeds (including weeds) and for the loss of moisture (and breaks the capillaries that reach the ground water). Therefore this soil must continuously watered (watering the weed seeds as well). This enforces the need of weed control (by hoeing or chemicals).

In my opinion the alternative method is worth to consider before deciding the benefits of hoeing, plowing and fertilizing. In my opinion the traditional tilling benefit is speed in the initial soil preparation, especially when not only manpower but also "horsepower" and automation is available. Fertilizing is important as it compensates the continuous loss of carbon and nitrogen. And of course germinating weed is a problem. This matches the plowing advantages that Ivan described. The size of the fields that can be tilled by one man can be larger. The yield per man should be better if there is no limit of space, water or fertilizers.

The alternative method would need more time to prepare and apply the ground cover and poke a little hole for each seed to be planted. When dry, an initial watering is needed (artificial or by rain) but no further watering if the natural humidity allows the growth of gras. Regarding the growth chance per seed this method is superior to the traditional tilling. And the growth chance of weed is minimal (as the weed seed cannot access the covered soil). Soil treated in this way has no loss of fertility, to the contrary, it gets more fertile by time as the lower layers of the mulch turn into compost and increase the thickness of the topsoil layer. The yield per plant should be better (more nutrients)

The alternative method would be ideal for early stages of the gameplay, when no metal tools are available.

Use of mixed mulch:

I think the mulch types that Saraty had in mind can be generalized as a mixture of leaf and wood components (the ratio depends on the source of the organic material). In order to obtain enough material for ground cover, it would be ideal to consider additional organic materials: especially all sorts of broken foilage and other organic remains from plant harvesting and crafting.

The main problem of this kind of organic drops is the limited inventory capacity. Therefore I suggest a simple way of dropping a single stack of items as a unordered pile somewhere in the landscape. Those piles would  prevent the items from despawning and the inventory from congestion (not only for organic items, also for stones, ores, skulls, whatever).

• A pile of organic stuff could maybe turn to compost or Terra Preta by longer time. Compost could be applied to the topsoil layer to increase the soil fertility (as redram stated).
• The organic stuff could be kept dry and used as fuel.
• The organic stuff could also be used to feed animals.
• But the material could also be grinded to mulch (a simple hammer stone should be sufficient)
• Several sources of mulch (like grass clippings and wood chips) could be mixed to obtain a 1:1 ratio of wood and leafs (foilage clippings should already have this ratio)

The mulch layer could be placed on top of the soil like a snow layer. It should be possible to plant into this layer without hoe (using a digging stick) and without constant watering.

 

[DMKW]

I do like the idea of manure being a thing.  Right now I get by mostly on vegetables, as I have a farely solid farm going and my animals don't produce offspring very often, so I leave them be.  Manure would give me more use for them.  I suppose they could drop bone as well.  

Not sure how much I love the idea of having to feed my animals.  I suppose if I could fill a trough that lasts for many days that might work.  If I plan to build little villages all over though, I certainly don't want to have to run back and forth to fill troughs or risk all my animals dying.  There would have to be a way to assign a villager to animal upkeep if that were the case.

[redram]

2 hours ago, DMKW said:

Not sure how much I love the idea of having to feed my animals. 

Ya, that's definitely something to be careful about.  I think the better idea, if its decided to make animal fodder a thing, is to have the animals get 'skinny' or 'malnourished' if not fed well, but not die.  In such a state they yield nothing, or reduced amounts.   It's especially important in a multiplayer server context, since the game proceeds while some players are absent. 

[Saraty]

On 11/12/2017 at 11:21 PM, skol said:

my wife stumbled over this some months ago, now we are planning to give it a try and change the way we use our garden

Oh wow, what a coincidence! Me and Tyron decided to ditch the plowing of our big garden just few month ago and proceed with a really large, black plastic cover for winter instead, for the first time.  That's lovely to hear that you guys share the same vision <3

I very much agree on using mix of mulch or compost in layers for VS and give player an alternative to the soil tilling. Currently stone age is deprived of planting crops due to the fact that hoe can be only made once player has moved to the copper age. Mulch layers would be a perfect fit, requiring more work!
 

On 11/14/2017 at 2:20 PM, DMKW said:

Not sure how much I love the idea of having to feed my animals.  I suppose if I could fill a trough that lasts for many days that might work.  If I plan to build little villages all over though, I certainly don't want to have to run back and forth to fill troughs or risk all my animals dying. 

Yes, feeding animals should be optional and therefore give off benefits like milk, wool etc. I like the ideas of  @redram ! Animal that has become malnourished could stop yielding products altogether. Some breeds even aggressive but very weak when trying to attack?

Also, in long term, we can have animals that can sustain themselves if given enough space. For example an eaten grass (by any animal) would regrow on a regular intervals so player can choose a fitting size of land for his animals (in closed areas) and see if they do well. When space gets too crowded, grass would not be able to regrow fast enough to supply all animals, so few would start to starve.
Animals, that are living in wild would go search around to find another meadow, if patch of grass runs out.

[redram]

So I wanted to talk more about stone age hoeing as has been mentioned a few times in other threads (including the playstyles thread) and in looking for a more appropriate thread found this rather old one.  The game has changed a bit since especially the earlier part of this thread.  Don't know if any plans mentioned have been modified.  But I wanted to talk a bit more about stone age farming.

I do think that allowing the player to do some rudimentary farming in the stone age would be a good thing.  @skol mentioned above, a 'mulching method' for stone age farming, which could work.  I got the impression he was wanting that to be a superior farming method though, and I might point out that that sort of subverts the general metal tier progression of the game, but maybe that's not a big deal, there are certainly plenty of uses for metal.

Another suggestion (which draws upon mentions from other threads) might be to change the entire hoe meta, and make it so that hoes only produce 'hoed ground' rather than farmland.   The difference between these would be that hoed ground has less nutrients, and reverts to dirt after the crop is harvested.  It also only accepts moisture if within 2, or maybe even 1, block of water.  Then, the farmground we currently know is only gotten via a plow ('farmland' or 'plowed ground'), which requires an animal to pull.  It has more nutrients, accepts moisture from greater range, and perhaps takes longer to revert to dirt (higher tier plows give more harvests before reverting).  If we have weeds eventually, then better tilled ground would have less chance of weeds.   In this way we try to set up a  way for stone age people to farm, but also a clearly better system once the player has metal.  It would also help incentivize higher tier hoes if hoeing ground actually took time rather than being instantaneous, then this time could tier with material.   Or, another way to incentivize higher tier hoes, might be that hoes directly subtract from the player's hunger bar.  Higher tier hoes subtract less (or none at the top tier).   In this way, esepecially in the stone age when food is perhaps a little harder to come by (assuming berry bushes are eventually seasonal), the player might want to consider how much farmland they actually need, rather than just indiscriminately hoeing everything in sight.

The idea being not only to allow the stone age player to farm (if laboriously), but to break away from the bad hoe mechanic inherited from TFC, where nobody ever makes more than a copper hoe because the benefits just aren't there.  The hoe becomes a 'quick and dirty' farming tool (easily transportable), or a mainly weeding related tool.   Instead of just requiring a simple 100 units of copper and lasting forever, good tilled farm ground requires a more substantial amount of metal, and also a domesticated animal.

[Stroam]

Plants

weeds - main reasons to get rid of weeds are they block out the sun, they use up water, and they harbor pests. I think them converting farmland to grassland is punishment enough.

mulch - interesting

Aoe tilling with a beast of burden drawn plow - eventually, I'm sure.

rooty/rocky soil - I like the idea of rooty or rocky soil not being able to be plowed by hoe, but at the same time what's preventing them from digging it up and putting soil down? It's not as if it were rare.

Row planting - rows planting wasn't done for the plants' benefit. It made it easier to harvest especially when you didn't want things on wheels squishing your crops. Around here row sized is determined by the space between the wheels of the equipment you are using. Plants do need spacing from anywhere between two fingers to 4 steps depending on the crop but that's too small to represent in-game.

companion crops - interesting idea. 

watering - If you look at the popular farming games like stardew valley and harvest moon, they have you water your crops.

Hoe mechanics

Hunger cost - I like this idea, not the metal requirement part but the upgrade part. Maybe after smithing X many hoes and wearing out X many hoes you learn a better hoe recipe. I don't think the hoe upgrade issue TFC had applies here since the main issue is once you've tilled your farmland you never need to do so again. If there was an endurance bar and it used endurance and replenishing endurance bar increased the rate of hunger depletion I would like it even more. 

Animals

Feeding - Animals require a lot of feed. A good way to use up all that extra food people farm. Load up a trough daily and let them eat. Having high food costs is also a great way to limit how many animals people have. If you free range animals they don't require as much food assuming there isn't too many in a small area and they eat up/tramp all the grass. As for people leaving for extended periods of time. An NPC farm hand that you have to pay would be a nice way to automate it for people who are more hands-off and would be a reason to sell stuff to a trader so you can pay your worker.

[dakko]

(copying from discord discussion)

I like your ideas for penalizing the crudely tilled ground, Red Ram.

The problem that I have with metal hoes is that it requires a skill set previously learned in other games. The race to smelting is a strategy that has to be learned and perfected. Which is fine. Once it becomes second nature, players are eager for that pickax anyway, so waiting to plant their seeds is no big deal.

Also, as Airova mentioned, tools aren't even necessary for growing crops on a small scale. For game mechanics, it makes sense to require a tool; a crude stone age farming implement would be more in keeping with the rest of the game, and more realistic too.

So here is the catch (and this is probably only a hardship for single players): a player starts a game, and unless they've already perfected the race to smelting, or already know how to keep themselves armed and know how to hunt efficiently and cook their food, they are going to starve to death. Unless they start prepping to smelt pretty quickly, it's game over. Why can't we spend some time in the stone age and maybe struggle our way to copper?

[tony Liberatto]

@dakko   I Completely agree with your statements. But I would also go a step further.  I would make the Player first Master agriculture and animal husbandry before he/she was allowed to work metal.

We have all this beautiful setup with all these stone tools, and most players just rush through it as fast as they can. 

I want the player to be able to build a complete base with the tools and resources available in the stone age.

[dakko]

While I would enjoy that approach, there are too many people that wouldn't. I would rather have the individual player approach the game in the manner that they prefer.

[redram]

11 hours ago, tony Liberatto said:

I want the player to be able to build a complete base with the tools and resources available in the stone age.

They're already "able".  It sounds like you want to force it.  I'm against any artificial gating like that.  If it were logical great, but there's no logic to having to "master" agriculture and animal husbandry before working metal, as things stand.

As for the 'race to metal' in the current game I have no problem with it, and I don't think the learning curse is a problem either.  The game makes it perfectly easy to be a hunter gatherer as it is, with never-ending berries and wolf meat, cattails, plenty of docile animals around.  Learning and improving at a game to me is what keeps one interested in the game. 

[tony Liberatto]

14 minutes ago, redram said:

They're already "able".  It sounds like you want to force it.  I'm against any artificial gating like that.  If it were logical great, but there's no logic to having to "master" agriculture and animal husbandry before working metal, as things stand.

 

 

A complete base includes a farm with sustained crops. The player is not able to build a complete base in the sense that he does not have access to agriculture before metal.

 

How natural, or logic, is to gate agriculture behind metallurgy? 

Historically mankind developed agriculture and animal husbandry long before metallurgy. Food security comes before technological development. Even though technology makes easier to secure food. 
 

So, yes I would prefer for the game to require the player to make a farm and domesticate animals before he goes looking for metal. It makes sense in a survival way. 
It is really weird that you are stranded in a weird dimension, and before you make sure to have food to last you go looking for metal.

I think an achievement system that unlocks metallurgy would be the way to go. 

You are free to disagree, as always. But the truth is that neither I nor you would know how much fun or maybe frustrating this would be without actually trying.