From the Improved Farming, Rebooted thread:
To sum the progress of the thread up, while I was initially in favor of a very simple system, I was successfully convinced of the need for a more robust system to track soil nutrients. Generally, I'm working with a 6-variable model right now, although there's things I am wavering on expanding into making more variables to include. These variables are Water, N, P, K, pH, and biomass.
Here, I think it may still be worth discussing the mechanics, though yes, I could wade into the actual execution/gameplay UI stuff more (see below). From real-life practical experience, I think the balance of water, carbon, mineral, and air is more important than the management of phosphorous, potassium, and pH. So much more that I feel the latter would not add significant depth to the process of agriculture and waste management, while possibly adding too much hassle/micromanagement, though I would remain open to a later implementation.
As an aside, please keep in mind that context is important, and you're quoting something I said from 5 years ago, so it would help if you could actually link the post in question.
Anyway, everything you are arguing should be present is present besides "air", although if we want to start talking about air being tracked, I think that goes beyond mere agriculture. Biomass is "carbon", but it's only tracking the usable carbon, instead of, as previously mentioned, just a lump of charcoal.
Beyond that, all you're arguing is that some things shouldn't be tracked because they don't add depth... for reasons you don't explain. I've argued that they would be useful as ways of differentiating fertilizers, as opposed to making just one or two fertilizers fit all problems. How is this not the case?
For that matter, you argue for your system in terms of "real life experience", then argue against what I have said in terms of "game depth". You don't argue why yours adds any game depth, how it actually reduces any complexity, or why it's only a bad thing when the NPK system is grounded in realism.
For that mater, the core of what I am asking of you remains unanswered: How would players actually interact with any of this data? That is far more important than what is actually being tracked. Am I to assume you basically want the system I outlined, you just oppose the under-the-hood numbers I'm talking about? If it's just NPK that upsets you, I mainly followed that model because it's the model Toady had already talked about wanting to implement, my whole thread is about how the interface for player interaction with that system can be made in such a way as to create both an excellent simulation and something that doesn't require constant player babysitting.
Biomass, meanwhile, exists largely for the purposes of growing funguses, which cannot photosynthesize, and as such, need something to decay to grow and gain chemical energy from. Biomass is basically just a measure of dead plants...
We should take care not to discount the fungi and bacteria. They are the primary consumers, an equally-but-oppositely important role as plants' primary production. They are capable of dissolving rock into plant-available minerals, sponging up water and nutrients more effectively than even the densest clay, and (especially important) fixing *air*borne nitrogen into *water*borne (plant available) nitrogen through a symbiotic relationship with plant roots (trading N for C(arbohydrates (Energy))).
I would argue carbon (what you call biomass) is not just dead stuff and food for microbes, but the primary vehicle of energy and structure of all *living* things, big and small, dead or alive. The order of importance/priority here of manipulable soil characteristics should be water=carbon, then nitrogen, then I don't really care. Agriculture that focuses on micromanaging N-P-K, pH, and other isolated chemical nutrients is a narrow and unsustainable approach to soil-building - essentially the task of doing the work of a universe of microbes, and honestly, we do it rather poorly, resulting in widespread degradation of soil life. Here, the brothers have an important choice to make: do we model our world after destructive techno-industrial practices, or do we model the world after regenerative agricultural processes. I'm arguing that one is better than the other, and is just as engaging/fun.
Actually, over the course of argument, what biomass was supposed to cover changed. I suppose I forgot to change that part, so thanks for pointing that out.
In any event, I again have to return to the fact that you're basically arguing that simply taking a few variables out of a simulation without discussing in any way how the player interacts with this system somehow makes the game not only deeper, but somehow also encourages a different philosophy of agriculture without, again, actually talking about any of the actual mechanics of simulation or how the player engages in them.
If you are trying to just argue order of importance, then you're not arguing against the algorithm, you're just arguing against the value of some of the (easily changed) variables within the algorithm. Mechanically speaking, there is no "importance", there are just numbers, and what the math dictates, "importance" is a judgement made by the players. I don't see how you convey any of this importance through what you are actually discussing. You aren't talking about any actual mechanic other than comparing some soil variables to an ideal set of soil variables, which is exactly the model you're supposedly arguing against.
Also, you suggested the segregation of urine and feces implementation as well as sewer systems. What about a single-tile building called "latrine" which collects/fills with both types of bodily wastes, which could be placed easily in convenient locations around the fortress, so that dwarves don't have to go far. Like placing garbage cans around the office so you don't have to go far to throw stuff away. The "Use Latrine" job could be handled similar to how hunger and thirst work, perhaps of similar periodicity, and with good placement, relatively non-disruptive to primary work-flows. A new hauling skill could be "haul manure/mulch", with latrine-to-farm being the primary path.
Sure, chamberpots are fine, too. I like the idea of also including sewers with flowing water to collect it all, however, because I like designing automated systems.
Farm-tiles are something like 1-7 water-level, but also for carbon and nitrogen, with 3-4 being the ideal state, so adding too much or too little both (states of 1-2 and 5-6) cause degradation of crop quantity/quality.
I'm not sure why people are so hung up on sevenths... You know that exists because, combined with the magma bit, it means map tiles can contain all water data in four bits, right? Farming-related information would not be stored in the map layer, and would be stored with the likes of grass length, as a special feature of certain surface tiles. (No point in storing soil data on non-soil tiles.)
Anyway, you'll need to have much more than a single-digit (in decimal) integer value to properly store substantially different water consumption rates, much less evaporation rates. Dwarf thirst, for example, is measured with a 32-bit integer, IIRC, which is incremented by 1 per game tick. Farming ticks are generally 100 game ticks, so it could possibly be a lower value, but still, we're probably looking at a short per soil stat per tile/area, depending upon how data is organized.
I also again have to ask why you're holding an argument explicitly about the Agriculture Rebooted thread in a separate thread when you're basically going point by point through that thread... It's much easier for people to track every argument about the thread when it's actually contained within the same thread.
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Topic: Agriculture: A balance of simplicity and complexity (Read 10002 times)