farming It's Croplicated... -- Complicating Crops!

[Lakul]

With berry bushes becoming more complicated to farm, I'd love to see some additions to the crop system!

Here are some ideas I had:

 

Grains now have to be threshed after harvesting

• When harvested, grains will drop as a bundle still attached to their stalks. Seeds will drop as normal.
• To remove the grain from the stalk, with the bundle in hand hold right click while viewing the ground. This will start an animation of you beating the bundle against the ground.
• After a second or so, the bundle will break and drop the grains and a piece of dry grass (or flax fibers, if flax).
  • Alternatively, crafting a threshing flail will allow you to do this faster. The flail can be crafted with sticks and rope. Place the grain bundles on the ground in a pile, then whack it with the flail, instantly separating the straw and the grains of the entire pile!

Vegetables now have an extra growth stage (exception: Cabbage) and various vegetable greens are now harvestable!

• Vegetable greens become harvestable once the plant has reached stage 4. When the greens are harvestable the tooltip will read (Vegetable greens: harvestable). Breaking the crop from stage 4 to the 2nd to last growth stage will also yield one bundle of greens if they are harvestable at the time.
• The 2nd to last growth stage is the same as the previous final growth stage--vegetable yields are the same as before. With the new final growth stage, vegetable yields are the same as the previous stage, but the greens of the plant turn brown and unharvestable, and will not drop when the crop is broken.
• To harvest only the greens, you can hold right click on a crop with a knife to remove them. This will drop 1 bundle of greens, leaving the rest of the vegetables in the ground to continue growing. Vegetable greens give 50 satiety when raw, 70 when cooked. Cabbage Leaves give 70 satiety raw, 90 when cooked.
• When the greens have been harvested plant growth will be slowed by 50% until they grow back (3 days). The tooltip will read (Vegetable greens: will regrow in X days). Greens will not drop if the crop is broken before they have regrown.
  • Cabbages are an exception. Harvesting the greens will yield 1 bundle of Cabbage Leaves, and will set the Cabbage plant back one growth stage. As Cabbages do not have the new growth stage where the greens die down, their leaves can theoretically be harvested year-round, temperature and nutrients permitting.

Weeds!

• How wonderful. Tilled farmland will now grow weedy as time goes on. Weediness will increase by 5% each day. At 30% weediness, crop growth will start slowing down, growing slower as the weed load increases. At 90% weediness, the crops will stop growing altogether. At 100% weediness, the crops will die after 3 days if the weeds aren't removed, leaving a dead crop (seeds and any grown vegetables will be harvestable).
• Weeds can be removed by crouching and holding right click with an empty hand on the crop. This will remove 100% of all weeds. They can also be removed faster with the new weed picker tool.
  • Weed picker tool can be crafted with two sticks and a knife.
• Removing weeds will have the chance to yield a piece of dry grass or horsetail.
• Allowing chickens to free-roam your crops can help with controlling weeds. They will eat 1% of weeds per feeding.
• Since this feature could be problematic for multiplayer servers, weeds can be disabled or configured to be more manageable (like not killing crops, reducing how fast they grow, capping how high their growth percentage can be, etc)

 

Let me know what you guys think!

Edited Wednesday at 09:34 PM by Lakul
Fixed images

[ArgentLuna]

I would like it for those plants that do it to goto seed if left too long

[Facethief]

I like these suggestions. My one suggestion is that weeds could, instead of just decreasing growth rates, could instead increase nutrient consumption. While it may not be entirely realistic, it feels like it would be less punishing.

[Lakul]

1 hour ago, ArgentLuna said:

I would like it for those plants that do it to goto seed if left too long

This would make sense for a lot of the root veggies. I can see adjusting the last growth stage for them. Instead of this being the stage where the greens die, the crop will instead start flowering. That is your cue to harvest before it’s too late. The tooltip will read “Will go to seed in 10 days.” If it isn’t harvested before then, the crop loses half of its yield, the greens turn brown and die, and you’ll receive extra seeds.

 

For things like soybeans and peanuts it wouldn’t make as much sense.

 

Cabbages too should have a flowering stage I suppose, or at least they should bolt so they aren’t an indefinite food source.

Edited Wednesday at 11:34 PM by Lakul

[Lakul]

29 minutes ago, Facethief said:

I like these suggestions. My one suggestion is that weeds could, instead of just decreasing growth rates, could instead increase nutrient consumption. While it may not be entirely realistic, it feels like it would be less punishing.

That would be a good alternative!

[LadyWYT]

I like the grains and vegetable greens concepts but don't like the weeds idea at all as that seems way too punishing. The player will need to spend time away from home exploring for various resources or completing the main story; the main story alone requires several days per chapter, on average, to complete, especially if the player hasn't experienced the content before or otherwise wants to spend time looking around for goodies. It's also worth noting that players are getting pushed towards tilling larger fields in 1.22 due to grain crop changes, and trying to keep a large field weed-free is much different than just tending a backyard vegetable patch.

3 hours ago, Lakul said:

Since this feature could be problematic for multiplayer servers, weeds can be disabled or configured to be more manageable (like not killing crops, reducing how fast they grow, capping how high their growth percentage can be, etc)

Honestly, with the suggested implementation, I think more players will end up just opting to turn the mechanic off completely in order to better enjoy exploration and whatnot, rather than feel like they're tied to babysitting their farms. I will also note that there was a mod that tried to add similar weed mechanics(CropsV2, I think was the name), and it's not particularly popular. I'd also say that recent berry bush and grain crop changes for 1.22, while being quite reasonable, haven't exactly been very popular amongst the entire playerbase, so a change that adds more frequent maintenance probably isn't going to be a very popular change either.

A better solution for weeds, I think, would be to improve on the weed mechanic that's already in place. Rather than allow weeds to grow amongst crops, the weeds continue to grow on unplanted farmland, but the player will now need to use the hoe to remove them. If the player opts to leave the weeds alone, then the farmland will eventually turn back into regular grass, at which point the block can be broken and picked up as normal or retilled to turn it back into farmland. A change like this would give more use to the hoe, as well as let the player reclaim unused farmland over time, without the player feeling too pressed to stay at home and babysit crops.

[Lakul]

48 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I like the grains and vegetable greens concepts but don't like the weeds idea at all as that seems way too punishing. The player will need to spend time away from home exploring for various resources or completing the main story; the main story alone requires several days per chapter, on average, to complete, especially if the player hasn't experienced the content before or otherwise wants to spend time looking around for goodies. It's also worth noting that players are getting pushed towards tilling larger fields in 1.22 due to grain crop changes, and trying to keep a large field weed-free is much different than just tending a backyard vegetable patch.

Honestly, with the suggested implementation, I think more players will end up just opting to turn the mechanic off completely in order to better enjoy exploration and whatnot, rather than feel like they're tied to babysitting their farms. I will also note that there was a mod that tried to add similar weed mechanics(CropsV2, I think was the name), and it's not particularly popular. I'd also say that recent berry bush and grain crop changes for 1.22, while being quite reasonable, haven't exactly been very popular amongst the entire playerbase, so a change that adds more frequent maintenance probably isn't going to be a very popular change either.

A better solution for weeds, I think, would be to improve on the weed mechanic that's already in place. Rather than allow weeds to grow amongst crops, the weeds continue to grow on unplanted farmland, but the player will now need to use the hoe to remove them. If the player opts to leave the weeds alone, then the farmland will eventually turn back into regular grass, at which point the block can be broken and picked up as normal or retilled to turn it back into farmland. A change like this would give more use to the hoe, as well as let the player reclaim unused farmland over time, without the player feeling too pressed to stay at home and babysit crops.

All very good points. I wouldn’t want it to be too punishing to the point most players just opt to turn it off. I based it somewhat on my experience with gardening and the daily struggle of dealing with weeds trying to outcompete my veggies, but if it’s not a good fit for the game that’s understandable. I just thought further garden maintenance would be interesting. If anything, instead of outright killing crops or stopping growth, weeds can instead slow growth slightly and cap out at a much lower rate than the original suggestion. That way you don’t NEED to babysit the crops and risk losing them, but there are benefits if you do.

I do like the idea of weeds eventually overtaking unplanted farmland, so that it can eventually turn back to soil!

[coolAlias]

Someone had suggested somewhere an option to slowly improve soil fertility over time, too, which I think would complement your suggestion nicely.

Rather than digging up our farms and replacing the soil with High / Terra, we could instead add fertilizers and compost to e.g. Medium fertility soil over a longer period of time.

As for having to weed, I did a little bit of millet farming once upon a time, and I followed what everyone else did and we only weeded twice - once about 2 weeks after planting when everything is sprouting, and again 2-4 weeks after that to get whatever weeds we missed. This was done with a thin blade sort of like a flat V on the end of a long stick that we pushed through the topsoil, taking care not to hit the roots of our plants, which were in rows about 12" apart.

I could see doing a pass with the hoe once for crops after they reach growth stage 2 to semi-replicate this real life process, and playtesting could determine if it's too tedious and/or what kind of harvest penalty it warrants if skipped.

Rice, flax, rye, and other densely packed crops might behave differently, perhaps not needing any weeding at all.

Btw, I think a reduced harvest is the correct punishment for not weeding from a "realism" standpoint.

Edited 23 hours ago by coolAlias

[runnybabbit]

Don't forget, just as there are extra problems and processes real life farming has to deal with, there are also things farmers can do to increase yield/save labor.

 

For instance, grain crops often produce types of hay in addition to grains, which can be mulched or fed to animals. Those animals can be run on fields to return nutrients though their droppings and even seed the field with nutrient-fixing microbes. There were also crops like clover which would fix nitrogen and could be plowed into the ground to increase carbon content, which helps with water retention and the afore-mentioned microbes. Ye-olde farm methods could result in land becoming more fertile over time, compared to modern fertilizer methods that have much better yields, but leave the land nutrient deficit and must be fertilized again next season. 

Speaking of animals, pigs and to a lesser degree chickens can be used to 'turn' soil, mixing the organic matter on top. Sheep and especially goats are good at eradicating all sorts of brambles and weeds (so long as they are not toxic) and for clearing land. Farm animals were very important to pre-modern agriculture without even considering their use for drafting to plow fields or run mills etc. 

Another thing, usually done at smaller scale today, is companion planting. Certain crops/herbs benefit other crops, like keeping pests away or providing a natural trellis while not really competing for nutrients. Most plants actively put biochemicals into the soil to either support their growth/growth of friendly species or inhibit competition. Most pre-modern cultures had some grasp of this and knew to 'plant x next to y but not with z'.

 

If we were to see more depth in crops, I would like to see some of the above added as beneficial mechanics along with the extra 'chores'.

But as I hinted at before, currently the game has something more closely inspired by modern farming practices, which usually rely solely on fertilizer and crop rotation but generally ignore many other tools used by most of human history. I would love to see and overhaul that adds some of those traditional methods, as you'd get opportunity for more overlapping gameplay systems, like having a reason to get goats other than for fancy milk. 

Edited 20 hours ago by runnybabbit

[Nesodos]

I like the idea for threshing the grains.
It adds a bit of extra (realistic) work but "rewards" useful dry grass for most grains. (well, technically you would get straw which is different from grass)
Additionally it should also come with a threshing machine to automate with mechanical power and the option to compost dry grass.

The plant green idea seems to be a bit too convoluted and some satiety is a really bad tradeoff for extending growth time.

Weed pickings seems like a major chore and killing crops is overkill.
IRL oridnary weeds would primarily slow growth by consuming nutrients and blocking sunlight once they grow tall.
Might be ok if it caps at 30% growth penalty when at 100% weeds and if we could craft a rake to remove the weeds in a 3x3 radius.
As a "reward" it could also have the option of finding random nuggets or local stones in addition to grass/horsetail.

[Lakul]

1 hour ago, Nesodos said:

I like the idea for threshing the grains.
It adds a bit of extra (realistic) work but "rewards" useful dry grass for most grains. (well, technically you would get straw which is different from grass)
Additionally it should also come with a threshing machine to automate with mechanical power and the option to compost dry grass.

The plant green idea seems to be a bit too convoluted and some satiety is a really bad tradeoff for extending growth time.

Weed pickings seems like a major chore and killing crops is overkill.
IRL oridnary weeds would primarily slow growth by consuming nutrients and blocking sunlight once they grow tall.
Might be ok if it caps at 30% growth penalty when at 100% weeds and if we could craft a rake to remove the weeds in a 3x3 radius.
As a "reward" it could also have the option of finding random nuggets or local stones in addition to grass/horsetail.

It would be interesting to have a threshing machine! More powered machinery please!

I added the greens idea--convoluted though it may seem--mostly because in my garden we use the carrot and parsnip greens (they make delicious stir fries!) so it seems wasteful that they don't get used ingame. Technically you'll be rewarded with MORE food if you simply let it grow out and leave the greens on. But, you'll have the option to harvest some of the greens early if food is a struggle, which can be handy early game, or to feed livestock. I can see about buffing the satiety values to make it more worthwhile, as well as adjusting the growth debuff (make it 20%-30% slower instead of 50%).

As with the other comments on the weeds, I can see about nerfing them significantly. I like the 30% growth penalty cap--while someone suggested having the weeds deplete the soil of nutrients, technically if the growth is slowed this will happen by default. As for benefits of weeding, I really like your suggestion of finding rewards. I like the rake idea, it can be a step up from the weed picker (weed picker would instantly clear weeds from 1x1, weed rake would clear 3x3). As for rewards, instead of dry grass/horsetail you would receive Weed Clippings, which can be fed to livestock or thrown back down onto the crop as a mild fertilizer (or composted for better fertilizer), as well as a random chance to find bugs that can be used as fishing bait. Additionally, there is a small chance you may turn up something shiny, like a nugget!

I'm at work now so it'll be a while later, but I plan to update the main post with all of these suggestions!

Edited 7 hours ago by Lakul