Fruit Tree's

[Davis]

Hello, 

I wanted to make a thread here before making an suggestions because I'm still unsure of a few things. I'd appreciate a developers comments if they're able to!

My only question is as follows; 

1. Do fruit tree's continue to spawn throughout the map and during your game time like wild crops do? 

The reason I am asking this question is because I think they're going to be wildely hard to propagate due to the success chances of cuttings taking and turning into a tree. Also, the branches you cut do not grow back as stated in the wiki, so the trees you maim are useless after you've cut from them. if the above question holds true, then these tree's are finite and will eventually die out. I can't see this being a major issue on a single player. However, on a multiplayer server like the one I play with 35-40 active players I can see them quickly disappearing and nobody actually being able to get a larger orchard going and I think that ruins the farming experience. Purely my opinion of course, love the addition regardless just think they could be worked on if the above is true. 

@Tyron

 

[Streetwind]

12 hours ago, Davis said:

1. Do fruit tree's continue to spawn throughout the map and during your game time like wild crops do? 

Unfortunately, wild crops do not respawn, and never have - unless there's been a change in 1.16 specifically that I'm as yet unaware of. You just keep finding ones you have missed the first few times, because Murphy's Law.

[redram]

As Streetwind says, crops don't continue to spawn.  Regarding fruit trees, I will attempt to answer with what my impressions are, but I am not a coder and do not make the final decisions so my impressions may not be 100% accurate. 

It was a huge undertaking to make the fruit tree mechanic, and like many things we didn't get in every aspect we wanted to.  They will hopefully see further refinement down the road.  The main reason they have such poor establishment chance is that they (like berry bushes) require no nutrient/fertilizer inputs - they're just free food.  Albeit not near as often as berry bushes.  Berry bushes are also due for a change to their mechanics, and we had intended to do so in 1.16, but did not get to it. 

Regarding the branches not regrowing, I tested and it does appear that's not happening.  I'm not 100% sure it was intended that they regrow, although I thought it was.  I'll point it out to the team.

[Sparkle Kitti]

1 hour ago, redram said:

Berry bushes are also due for a change to their mechanics, and we had intended to do so in 1.16, but did not get to it.

Do you know what kinds of changes are planned?

[Thorfinn]

I have not found a fruit tree yet, but I've only got a little more than one evening into 16 so far.

I can't recommend one way or the other, but I see someone already has a mod to give cuttings 100% chance. I'm probably going to hold out, at least for a while.

[redram]

52 minutes ago, Sparkle Kitti said:

Do you know what kinds of changes are planned?

They'll be made so that you cannot just go around hoovering them up and insta-planting them.  You'll need to take a cutting and grow it out, a bit like fruit trees (though probably without the fail chance).  Both berry bushes and fruit trees may eventually require fertilization (or at least, yield more with fertilization).    Also bees in proximity may affect yield.  Plus a host of other real world plant characteristics for trees, such as alternate bearing.  What we have now is really just the basic framework.

[Davis]

8 hours ago, redram said:

As Streetwind says, crops don't continue to spawn.  Regarding fruit trees, I will attempt to answer with what my impressions are, but I am not a coder and do not make the final decisions so my impressions may not be 100% accurate. 

It was a huge undertaking to make the fruit tree mechanic, and like many things we didn't get in every aspect we wanted to.  They will hopefully see further refinement down the road.  The main reason they have such poor establishment chance is that they (like berry bushes) require no nutrient/fertilizer inputs - they're just free food.  Albeit not near as often as berry bushes.  Berry bushes are also due for a change to their mechanics, and we had intended to do so in 1.16, but did not get to it. 

Regarding the branches not regrowing, I tested and it does appear that's not happening.  I'm not 100% sure it was intended that they regrow, although I thought it was.  I'll point it out to the team.

I appreciate you clearing it up. I always thought that wild crops continued to spawn throughout the map, year after year. 

Glad to hear more work will be done to the fruit tree's and that this is their first iteration. I appreciate the swift response. 

Edited January 20, 2022 by Davis

[Irulana]

I don't think fruit trees are free food. They very exclusive ones. After traveling thousands of blocks we have currently one tree survived in our orchard>< So my savegame probably will get few another GBs until we have few more>< I think they are too rare. I didn't find any ground mushrooms too but many on trees), I think it may something broken with it.

[Ashery]

Some thoughts re:planting cuttings:

Instead of simply planting a cutting in the ground and rolling the dice (with terrible odds), make the player actually work for it.

1. Cuttings must first be nurtured in a planter for a couple growth stages before they can be replanted at their final location. Their base chance for survival as a cutting could be equal to the fertility of the soil placed in the planter (This requires adding some functionality to planters, but it's straightforward and adds a touch of realism, albeit to an object that, at least as of now, doesn't see much use).
2. While in the planter, the tree must be watered on a daily basis. Any stress the cutting/sapling experiences, such as failure to be watered or being subject to extreme temperatures, could potentially kill the plant, with the odds getting higher as consecutive days of stress go by. For a bit of extra complexity and realism, the cutting/sapling's tolerance for stress could gradually increase over time until it maxes out at the end of the first stage.
3. When the sapling is mature, which could be any point during the second stage of growth, the planter containing the sapling can be picked up like a skep, dropped into a 1x1 hole at the location you want the tree planted, and then shattered (the planter, that is) to finalize the process. (Open to other ways of that last substep, but what I have is functional).

Simple and straight forward, but still actual work. The same process could work for berry bushes, too. There's one little exploit that's easy to see right off the bat that involves digging out the tile immediately below the tree in order to retrieve the original higher quality soil in order to reuse it, but there are ways around that (Downgrading the soil underneath the tree to medium if it was originally something higher, or for a move involved and realistic solution, introducing a rudimentary root system that would stabilize nearby soil and prevent it from being dug up).

Hell, you could even keep in the current method for planting cuttings in addition to the above, they'd just have a much lower rate of survival than ones that are properly taken care of. There's also the thought of modifying it so that the base chance is (soil fertility)/2, which would keep the status quo when a cutting is planted on medium fertility soil.

[Khornet]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:39 PM, redram said:

Regarding the branches not regrowing, I tested and it does appear that's not happening.  I'm not 100% sure it was intended that they regrow, although I thought it was.  I'll point it out to the team.

Hi, if you have direct contact with developers, could you confirm a couple of things regarding fruit trees? I would love to update the Wiki with it, as of right now it's only possible to find these things out through datamining the game, which I don't know how to do.

First of all, you're probably aware that fruit trees are (were?) bugged as of 1.16.4-rc.1 - the planted (in soil) grafts reset their growth process every time the chunk us unloaded, so they effectively don't grow or die if you wander away from them... or so I saw somewhere, in my case the graft just didn't grow/die at all in 24 in-game days. I didn't see any patch notes regarding that in 1.16.4-rc.2, although I did see this "Fixed: Some derp with fruit tree branches not regrowing after being cut" - I have no idea if this is the same bug...since tree branches are probably not the same as planted grafts?

Second of all: what is the exact time it takes for a fruit tree to successfully "take root" or die? How many days?

Third: greenhouse interaction with fruit trees: the Wiki states the +5°C bonus from a greenhouse ONLY applies to the vernalization process (cold temperature required to trigger flowering and bearing fruit) - is that still the case? One of the 1.16.1 notes read: "Fixed: Fruit tree not fully respecting greenhouse benefits" - does "fully respecting" mean the temperature bonus applies to the trees' dying/dormant temperature thresholds? This is a VERY important detail for temperate climates, as some trees (peach/cherry) would only be growable in greenhouses.

Fourth: do wild fruit trees behave the same way as wild crops, as in their branches will (supposedly as of the freshest 1.16.4-rc.2 build) regrow only when they are in the player's loaded chunks area?

Fifth: any chance to update the tree stem in-game tooltips (block descriptions) with the above info? Like +5°C greenhouse bonus similar to farmland?

Sixth: what is the amount of space required for fruit trees to grow? I know their branches/leaves can grow out to 2-block distances away from the cutting/stem/trunk, but can you effectively grow them on a single soil block, surround by other blocks, even farmland (asking this in light of optimizing the usage of greenhouse space)?

Edited February 16, 2022 by Jacob Kos

[redram]

21 hours ago, Jacob Kos said:

Second of all: what is the exact time it takes for a fruit tree to successfully "take root" or die? How many days?

This I do not know exactly (I'm not a coder).  But from my creative mode testing, iirc, it take perhaps 4-6 months (at default setting of 9 days per month).  Fruit trees are intended to have more 'realistic' growth times, vs crops.  So they take a very long time to progress through their stages. 

The rest of your questions I don't know for sure.  Tyron coded the details, and the greenhouse interactions.  I can say that the trees indeed need only the dirt block they sit upon to grow, and for all I know after they 'take' they may not even need that one.  This is part of the half-finished nature of fruit trees.  There will probably be more interaction with the surrounding soil added at some later date.  It was just too much work I think, to try to fit all the details we wanted into this first iteration.  I'll tag @Tyron here in case he has time to answer any of this.

[Khornet]

2 hours ago, redram said:

This I do not know exactly (I'm not a coder).  But from my creative mode testing, iirc, it take perhaps 4-6 months (at default setting of 9 days per month).  Fruit trees are intended to have more 'realistic' growth times, vs crops.  So they take a very long time to progress through their stages. 

Hey, thanks for the reply.

IMO this needs tweaking, waiting this abysmally long time just to find out your cutting died is very disappointing. Maybe set a preliminary, shorter stage (before the long growth process proper) that would let you find out if  the cutting takes root or dies?

Very curious about the greenhouse temperature bonus in particular though, it can make or break my peaches/cherry trees.

[Yuellien]

Tagging onto this thread because of the "fruit tree + greenhouse" discussion: I've been starting in Icy biomes, and native fruit trees that spawn in Cold areas have been dying over the winter, presumably of the low temperature--except this is where they spawned in the first place. I'd understand a cutting but not existing trees. I'm going to cover some with a greenhouse this year and see if I can keep them alive through the Young stage.