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Author Topic: Does farming ever become a challenge?  (Read 1513 times)

darthbrumbledore

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Does farming ever become a challenge?
« on: January 28, 2021, 03:52:32 pm »

In normal biomes that is...

I'm still pretty new to DF but every at the start of every fortress I plant all my plump helmet seeds, set up my stockpiles and brewing, and then never have to touch it again. I have branched out a little with pig tails for thread, but I'm currently running into the issue where I have too many plump helmets and have to keep expanding stockpile space. I have been cooking some of them, hoping to bring my seed stockpile down a little, and I've sold some batches as well, but Urist McFarmer catches up quite quickly.

This is sort of the opposite of a problem, so I'm fine with an abundance of food rather than a deficiency (as opposed to my first bit of time with rimworld where everyone starved...a lot), but any tips on better food and farming management?
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Does farming ever become a challenge?
« Reply #1 on: January 28, 2021, 04:36:37 pm »

In the current system, yes, there's no real challenge once you know how it works. Like many things it's due to be revamped into something more detailed/challenging later.
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darthbrumbledore

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Re: Does farming ever become a challenge?
« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2021, 04:39:24 pm »

Thanks, I mainly just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something right on accident.
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gchristopher

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Re: Does farming ever become a challenge?
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2021, 04:44:28 pm »

Yes, currently a small number of farmers can feed large forts. It's easy to over-produce crops, even more so once you start using surface crops that all grow year-round.

A few things that can help with farming management are:

- Don't worry about too many seeds; just set whatever maximum seed amounts work for you in d_init.txt
- Create several small farm plots (even 1 tile plots), so you can toggle planting on and off as needed to find the right rate of production.
- Don't allow any barrels in seed stockpiles. That reduces hauling conflicts.
- Grow plants with multiple uses so they can be consumed in multiple industries (pig tail, quarry bush, rope reed, kenaf, cotton) or with flour as a product to produce both solid and liquid.
- Use quantum stockpiles. (Again, don't use barrels) That will keep stockpile space sane. Plant storage is one thing that easily gets unreasonably huge without quantum stockpiles.
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Stench Guzman

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Re: Does farming ever become a challenge?
« Reply #4 on: January 28, 2021, 10:50:06 pm »

The short answer is farming is not a challenge under most reasonable circumstances.  You can even avoid farming entirely if you live on a biome like a forest or some grasslands that allow for a lot of plant gathering.

Long answer:

-it can be a challenge if you live on a glacial biome with little access to soil
-you can vastly overproduce, keeping dwarves from performing more valuable tasks
-some plants can't produce seeds for whatever reason
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Does farming ever become a challenge?
« Reply #5 on: January 29, 2021, 04:45:27 am »

There are lots of bugs in plants that prevent seed recovery. The most common one is that they don't produce anything that can be processed (e.g. booze, thread) or eaten raw. When cooking is the only option you can't get any seeds as seeds are destroyed when the plant is cooked.

As mentioned, at some time in the (far) future farming will be overhauled and made more detailed and less over productive.
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gchristopher

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Re: Does farming ever become a challenge?
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2021, 07:35:58 pm »

I haven't checked it lately, but one of the core features of Modest Mod is various fixes for seeds for plants that couldn't be cultivated otherwise.
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