Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[towerator]

(first post here, yay! I'm sorry if this was suggested already.)

1) Annual growth cycle

  Today, as it stand, there are two kinds of crops, all of which are destroyed entirely when harvested:

-Aboveground crops: these can be planted all year round, but with the caveat that only crops native to the biome can grow.

-Underground crops: these can be grown anywhere, but only during a certain period of the year.


The thing is: evolution-wise, this doesn't make that much sense.

More than a few meters unter the surface, temperature is almost constant all year round. Around temperate latitudes, it's always around 12°C. This is why, even at the top of a heat wave, if you have a cellar you can refresh yourself by entering it. For underground plants, it makes little sense to stop growing during a period they can barely discern at all, if even. One could assume that says, the plant of the genus Triticum that would one day become the cave wheat we've all come to brew and love would rapidly lose its growth patterns, made anarchic by the lack of any trigger for its growth season.

On the other side, aboveground plants in temperate biomes just simply cannot be cultivated in winter without at least a greenhouse: the plant either doesn't recieve enough sunligt or simply freezes and dies. All but the extremely oceanic environements show similar patterns. On the tropics and the equator, the problem is lessened as temperature variations are a lot less extreme. Hence, you should only be able to grow even local plants within a reasonable boundary of time.  As a bonus, during a short period of time in the summer, you actually can cultivate stuff from hotter biomes! They would wither and die even during spring and autumn, but as the temperature is at its highest they can briefly live.



tldr: Subterran crops should live all year, unlike aboveground ones.


2) Non-annual plants

Not all plants die when harvested. Take the humble tomato as an example: after slowly growing into a vine for months, the plant starts to grow several fruits, which then ripen into delicious tomatoes. However, for some "indeterminate" varieties, the ripening isn't simultaneous: it can take a month for all tomatoes to be harvestable, after which the plant dies. In-game, this could be represented by the plant having two stages of growth, first into a green Tau symbol, then, when a batch is ready, into a red Tau. When dwarves harvest a tomato crop, it doesn't disappear, and switches back to unripe again. Approximately a week later, it's ripe again, and so on. At the 4th batch or so, the plant is exhausted and dies.

Similarily, what about perennial plants? Alfalfa is such an example in the base game. It doesn't die during the winter, thanks to its root system. Such a plant could revert to a non-harvestable, but non-destroyed stage once the harvest is over. During winter, the plant stays in the ground, and hibernates. Once more clement weather comes back, it starts growing again, and so on several times.

tldr: some plants stay rooted once harvested, and some can even survive the winter.

Edit and edit 2: got confused by a wikipedia link and briefly thought perennial plants were already in the game. Oops...

[PatrikLundell]

The reason for the difference between underground and surface plants is that the underground plants were introduced first, many years ago, in an environment that saw seasonal changes (flooding, etc. I think). The surface plants were introduced later, and, I think, were sort of placeholders for a future agriculture arc that's still in the middling future (i.e. a decade or so).

Thus, at some time nutrients, soil moisture, and other stuff is intended to be introduced, which should also involve a balance of yield. One might think biennial (e.g. raspberries) and perennial plants might be introduced together with growth/harvest seasons for everything that's relevant as well.

It can be noted that wild surface plants do have growth seasons in DF, but once they're planted in fields they become all year round ones, sprouting growths that can be harvested (together with the rest of the plant) out of season.

[towerator]

It can be noted that wild surface plants do have growth seasons in DF, but once they're planted in fields they become all year round ones, sprouting growths that can be harvested (together with the rest of the plant) out of season.

I'd like to add as a disclaimer that I generally don't do aboveground crops. However, my point still stands somewhat, it'd take a very stable temperate weather for a plant to be actually harvestable year-round.

One such place is the Canary Islands: the temperature is 20-30°C year-round (although it doesn't rain in summer), so with proper irrigation and farming you could do all-year crops.

[Sarmatian123]

For brew variety in fortress, I usually go for quite a few surface plants. However, I always keep my farming under roof of sticking out from the ground fortress. I like non-cave adapted Dwarves. These Dwarves puke less. So making all plants die seasonally on surface in what essentially is in my case a greenhouse, is not making much sense to me. "Inside Light Above Ground" exists also under cover of trees, which are not a greenhouse for growth below them. Maybe farming fields and wild plants should use different logic for "inside light above ground"? But then, a player could put farm field under cover of trees on surface and enjoy greenhouse benefits too... Specially in biomes, which freeze during winters...

[towerator]

For brew variety in fortress, I usually go for quite a few surface plants. However, I always keep my farming under roof of sticking out from the ground fortress. I like non-cave adapted Dwarves. These Dwarves puke less. So making all plants die seasonally on surface in what essentially is in my case a greenhouse, is not making much sense to me. "Inside Light Above Ground" exists also under cover of trees, which are not a greenhouse for growth below them. Maybe farming fields and wild plants should use different logic for "inside light above ground"? But then, a player could put farm field under cover of trees on surface and enjoy greenhouse benefits too... Specially in biomes, which freeze during winters...

The "Trees count as inside" problem could be fixed by making so that if you're less than 5 tiles away(with no wall inbetween) from an open-air tile, it still counts as outside. A proper greenhouse could then be made, although the concept of greenhouse is somewhat anachronical for DF's tech level. Presumably, annual plants would work just as expected in a greenhouse, however some perennial plants need a cooldown period even when in a greenhouse.

To make greenhouses more challenging, what could be made is that you would still need a pollinating agent (ie bees or bumblebees) to allow for growth. This would also make beekeeping more useful.

[SixOfSpades]

These topics of discussion are approaching the old Vivarium thread. (tl;dr: Allow the player to designate a zone where the game will make annual temperature/humidity checks [with these factors possibly being locally influenced by your labors], and procedurally assign that zone to a biome that matches those artificially-induced conditions. This would let players create their own mini-biome inside of a different, natural biome.)

But IIRC, yes, Agriculture is going to get a MAJOR overhaul, and underground crops not being seasonal (but still requiring fallow seasons) is almost certainly going to be one of the many realistic changes.

[Taras]

You really can mod this in current game. But when you make underground plants all-year, when aboveground will grow only their seasons, most players will farm more underground.

[towerator]

You really can mod this in current game. But when you make underground plants all-year, when aboveground will grow only their seasons, most players will farm more underground.

A possible justification for balance: underground crops have less energy to spare for reproduction/germination/whatever, so logically they'd also be less productive than above-ground crops