I found
this wiki page, which is interesting, but obviously not very useful when we have harder farming enabled in Masterwork. In particular, I'm looking at "days per harvest."
Now, I don't like to just ask questions without trying to figure it out first, and as such I've found GROWDUR in the plant raws... but I don't know how this number relates to a given number of days. For example, in stock Cave Wheat has a GROWDUR of 500, and on the referenced wiki page it has a "days per harvest" of 42.
Is it a linear relationship (eg days per harvest = GROWDUR * 0.084) or more complicated than that? Has Masterwork modified any other characteristics (eg baseline harvest yield) that I'd need to take into account while planning farm sizing?
I have further questions (for example is CLUSTERSIZE the baseline harvest yield, and following that how is that modified by chance, skill, fertilization etc) but this part specifically is key - and these other questions really aren't specific to Masterwork and can be asked elsewhere.
EDIT: *sigh* no sooner do I ask, I find
this which answers my question! Leaving this post up for others to find, should they have the same question.
In short, for v0.34 fortress mode, there are 1200 ticks in a day, 28 days in a month (33600 ticks per month), and 12 months per year (403200 ticks per year, or 100800 per season). One unit of GROWDUR is equal to 100 ticks (so 1008 in a season, or 336 per month).
NOTE: This is not true in Adventure mode (86400 ticks/day), and I have no idea how it works in DF2014 (I suspect it's very different due to world activation).For example: a plant with a GROWDUR of 600 takes 60,000 ticks to grow, or 50 days (1.786 months).
Now, I don't have RAWs handy with harder farming enabled to get a good number for anything there, but using thit information you should be able to figure out how many harvests you get per year from your RAWs quite easily (look in raw/objects/plant_standard.txt). Presumably the amount of food and drink a dwarf needs over time has not changed (approximately 8 food/year, 16 drink/year), so hopefully this all will help you estimate your field requirements for a given fort population.
