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[Draco18s]

I think that, as written, is something Toady intends to do at some point (there's already parts of it, farms do dry out right now, though I've noticed no pattern to it).

However, it becomes incredibly hard to not-starve in certain locations if you ALWAYS need water (this of course, does follow logic: it is hard to grow food in a desert), which I think just needs some tweaks before Toady adds it (i.e. desert growing edible plants in vanilla or portable/buyable dirt).

[Skizelo]

Exactly my thoughts on both.

Great minds think alike? Or great minds skim oneanother's posts and then accidentally regurgitate it?
I like the idea of one in a [large number] crop giving the message "[plant] has been struck by blight!" and then every other other plant of that type dying and any seeds planted failing to grow (this would need an easy way to get plots to let go of seeds) for a season or year. Make it worthwhile to diversify rather than using plump helmets for everything.
I'm not sure I understand the fertilization talk at all, but it seems awfully resource intensive. If every plot grown needs to be scattered with potash or stuff from the refuse pile, then farming goes from useful to useless instantly.

[Wolfius]

No matter what changes you make, it should still be possible to viably farm through the simple 'designate plot -> assign farmers' method as done now.

The cost being reduced yield, but it A) avoids forcing those who don't want a farming sim to play it, they just need to allocate more farms and farmers, and B) doesn't make it impossible to live in areas without a certain resource - as if a lack of water isn't bad enough as-is.

[PTTG??]

No matter what changes you make, it should still be possible to viably farm through the simple 'designate plot -> assign farmers' method as done now.

The cost being reduced yield, but it A) avoids forcing those who don't want a farming sim to play it, they just need to allocate more farms and farmers, and B) doesn't make it impossible to live in areas without a certain resource - as if a lack of water isn't bad enough as-is.

You make a good point; I think the basic idea for this is just that "farming" tasks need to be done thruought the season as the farmers go thrugh the fields, maintaining the crop, and sometimes have them bring buckets of water for the plants- meaning that having constant supplies of water near the crops is a good thing, instead of a one-time deal.

[JujuBubu]

yep, thats how I read it.

and fertilisation is allready included, it increases the yield of a plot, maybe if you just lower the max yield of a plot without fertilizer would be enough, and more ways to get the stuff than burning wood.
so the basic idea is constructive not restrictive

additional to that I would like to buy water in barrels.

Because some environment just need to be fed from outside .., I don't want to know how many
caravans a dwarven Las Vegas would need to feed them.

[Draco18s]

I'm not sure I understand the fertilization talk at all, but it seems awfully resource intensive. If every plot grown needs to be scattered with potash or stuff from the refuse pile, then farming goes from useful to useless instantly.

Fertilization in my mind wouldn't be required as there are RW farming techniques that don't require any form of active fertilization, it would just be an alternative method of keeping production high with no crop rotation (an fertilization method could also be done similar to the old 2D version by running water through the room).

Reason being that RW fertilization doesn't increase crop growth directly, what it does is balance out the soil nutrient value to replace what the crop that's growing needs to grow (for instance squashes leach nitrogen out of the soil and beans replace it), so without crop rotation you need to fertilize with various substances to keep the soil pH correct and the nutrient value (depending on what you're growing) high, but not too high (see Fertilization).

[Techhead]

Or a different model:
A blight event occurs randomly, to any one type of crop that has at least X seeds planted.
Each farm plot with that crop will automatically have 1 plant wither and die.
As long as the withered plant is in the ground, each planted square of the crop in the same farm has a Y% chance of also withering and dying.
Either have farmers be quick about tending their fields, or lose entire crops to disease.

Its like a siege, but it kills plants instead of dwarves. (Or tries to)

Also, the drying of fields sounds like a good general upkeep model.

[Skizelo]

Gardener's Question Time stylings.

Ah, I see. But wouldn't the game need to track an awful lot of data (not to mention deciding what effect goes with what fictional plant) to get this working? The simplest model for this I can think of is that each plot gets a new value; a freshly irrigated square, with nothing planted on it is 0. Plants and different fertilizers either add to or detract from this number (which could maybe be visually represented by tones of brown, I'm not sure of ASCII's limits) and a positive plant would thrive in a negative soil and wilt in a positive one, and vica versa with a new wave of water resetting the counter.
It still sounds like too much micromanagement to me but maybe I'm being shortsighted.

[Belteshazzar]

Sounds like the subtasks I suggested along with corresponding tools to replace the workshops. Smaller tasks automatically incorperated into larger jobs to make them somewhat more involved while not requiring much more microtasking.

[Draco18s]

Ah, I see. But wouldn't the game need to track an awful lot of data (not to mention deciding what effect goes with what fictional plant) to get this working?

Yeah, a bit of data is needed, that's for sure.  If you wanted 1 "number line" from -n to +n, you could add that in using as few as 3 bits per farm (it'd be a small scale and multiple plants in the farm that wanted different soil types (one thrive + and one thrive -) would both get as if they were at 0.

Though I think a dual scale (ie two lines from -n to +n) would allow for more interesting crop interactions.
Ex.
N: Nitrogen
P: Phosphorous
Plump Helmets like +N and -P (and moves soil -N and +P)
Cave wheat like +N and +P (and moves soil -N and -P)
Sweet Pods like -N and -P (and moves soil +N and +P)
Pig Tails like -N and +P (and moves soil +N and -P)
Quarry bushes like 0N and +P (and moves soil -N and -P)

6 bits of data per farm would give you a -3 to +3 scale on both (with 1 extra state on each left over if you want to have a perfect middle), which isn't much, as we're talking per-farm.  No reason to do it per-tile.

Final thought: 7 degrees of variation doesn't quite work because each plant would add or subtract 1.  but what if we did it such that the "scale" was dependent on the size of the farm?  Largest farms are 10x10 (100 tiles) and you can easily get enough sliding scale space in 7 bits (14 total).  Thought we might want 100 on each side, so add a bit.  8 (and 16), which is a mere two bytes per farm.  Sounds good to me!

(Plants would modify the soil value upon maturation IMO)

[Granite26]

Bloat335, IMPROVED FARMING, (Future): Improved outdoor farming. I've already copied down a ton of NPK tables. We'll see what's inflicted upon you. A skilled farmer should make any fertilizer requirements very straightforward and easy to deal with.

You're forgetting potassium...

[Draco18s]

Yes, I know about the bloat.  Thanks.

Potassium: Yes, I know about that too.  If you want that too, just add another n bits as per above.

[Techhead]

If you want alternatives to potash, here are a couple that could be made by dwarves:
Slag- It makes a good fertilizer, as it is rich in both phoshorus and lime. Produce a bar of slag whenever a bar of steel or pig iron is produced.
Bone meal- Good source of phoshphorus.
Blood meal- A extremly high, natural souce of nitrogen.
Compost- Made piles of rotting food and bodies.

I can imagine it now, goblin corpse compost, goblin bone meal, and goblin blood meal. Gives a wonderful taste to plump helmets.