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[Royal Surveyor]

When someone says "Dwarf BusyWork," I'm a little confused.

Does a dwarf who does busy work gain experience?  If so, wouldn't that mean a planter would achieve legendary status much more quickly?

Edit:  My grammar filters are set to 'suck' tonight.

[Draco18s]

You reduce the amount of experience per task.

[Othob Rithol]

What is the default for food with no [GROWDUR] token?

Using [GROWDUR] or [GROWDUR:] they grow instantly. I only checked those just in case there was a logic hang-up.

Plump Helmets with no GROWDUR tag planted on the first few days of Granite yielded on the last few days of Slate. That is about 6 or 7 weeks.

1008 ticks / 12 weeks = 84 ticks per week (or 1 tick per 2 hrs)
84*6=504
84*7=588

So my guess is the default GROWDUR is between 504 and 588.

However, 500 is the most common GROWDUR value of indoor plants, and no outdoor plants have a GROWDUR, I'm willing to bet that 500 is the actual default value.

500 ticks / 84 ticks per week = 5.95 weeks

Somebody that runs both indoor and outdoor farms should check to see if, for example, cave wheat and whip vine have the same growth time.

[Misterstone]

I'm sorry if this has been covered (I didn't read the whole thread, whew...) but maybe the easiest way to handle this would be to have crops such as plump helmets which can be eaten raw be less productive, say just one helmet to one square, while crops (such as cave wheat, etc.) that need to be processed either produce many units per square (say four or five), or produce more food per growing square once they are processed.  If this happens, milling should be a little easier (make it so donkeys/horses/etc can be assigned to mills) so no one starves in the first winter.  That, and get rid of crazy abusive stuff (like 5 brew per food unit being turned into food via cooking).  Just a few simple measures like this would make it more balanced, IMHO.

The other half of farming would be livestock raising and fishing, which can also produce tons of food for little effort.  I guess thats arcs and arcs away though.

[Xonara]

I honestly didn't bother reading 8 pages of this but I'll just throw the way I think DF should be and a few suggestions. As I see it, DF was written with these things in mind, and to appeal to it's current fanbase should adhere to principles like these:

• DF is intended to be immersive, but the game's rich and complex decision making and creative problem solving based game play is much more important. If Toady only released "legends" or somehow made the dwarves act on their own without building walls around themselves and starving to death the game would undoubtedly have a much smaller, and very different fanbase than it has now.
• Doing the same thing every time you start your fortress is repetitive and from what I've heard Toady is quite averse to repetitiveness. But don't take my word for it, you need only look at the massive procedurally generated worlds and histories, the incredibly diverse wildlife/biomes/rocks/minerals, and of course the seemingly infinite possibilities for what you can DO.
• No pointless micromanaging. All items should have a use, there should be no pointless transition stages for objects, this increases the work unnecessarily. Things like this are "filler" and don't add in any way to the game's work/reward complex. There is always a much more interesting and entertaining way to do things.

Now, I'll talk about what I think the problem with farming is. The main issue seems to be that it's not challenging enough, not enough work and too much reward. A game that simply states how fabulously wealthy and successful you are would not be fun, as odd as it may sometimes seem this is the way it is. Farms produce far too much food and don't require enough of the problem solving that makes the game so fun. They're simplistic food factories. As far as anyone can tell, the dwarves poke the seeds in, go to sleep and make a wish, and the next wake period there's a bounty of flawlessly healthy, exquisite mushrooms growing by the dozens regardless of the hordes of vermin or the terrible plant diseases or the inhospitable soil, which should be rock hard and sucked dry of nutrition the way dwarves currently farm.

I don't really feel that bigger plots are the way to go about this. Why? For one, it's filler, there's more interesting ways this could be solved. All this is is more hauling and assigning more farmers instead of assigning them to something more interesting. I don't exactly like the idea of having 20 farmers in my 100 dwarf fortress. DF is all about problem solving. This is too much work, not enough reward. Farming is now exactly the opposite of the current problem and now it's somehow worse. Also, DF does NOT have to adhere to reality. In fact, DF is so awesome it defies the concept of fixed amounts of space! You can fit 55 cows in a hallway without even knowing how wide it is! A water level of 7/7 which fully takes up a tile has been compared to the height of a dwarf (supposedly 4 feet or so I believe), which of course is much smaller than us humans. Yet, mountains might be 100 z-levels high at most, making The Incredible Mountain of Extreme Height only 400 feet. If DF adhered to the concept of fixed space, that mountain's worth of stone inside that tiny tile (come on, I'm not the only one who uses it) would probably start fusing if it could.

Anyway, I suggested earlier that the quality of soil could be based purely on ratings and modifiers. Different soils would have an overall quality rating. Certain plants in particular might not grow very well, or might thrive, in certain soils and there could be an additive modifier to reflect this. Also, fertilizer could increase the soil's base quality, depending on the fertilizer's quality. A multiplicative modifier based on soil moisture could be implemented by representing soil moisture as the most water that recently occupied the tile, from 0.0 to 7.0. The moisture modifier would multiply (base_soil_quality + good_or_bad_soil_for_plant + fertilizer_value) by the soil moisture. Moisture would be depleted by your crops, drainage, and evaporation. Any amount of moisture above 1.0 is excess and is counted as 1.0. It would be safe to have a moisture of 2.0 with no detrimental effects and you wouldn't have to irrigate them as much this way, but beyond 2.0 the moisture value is subtracted from [(base_soil_quality + good_or_bad_soil_for_plant + fertilizer_value) * moisture_value]. If the crops are submerged in 3 depth water (not 3.0 moisture) for, say, 2-3 minutes at 100 FPS your entire harvest will be ruined.

The final value could be how many crops will grow in the tile. If the final number is a decimal, the tenths place would represent the chance that an extra crop will appear. A value of 3.3 for example means that you will always get 3 crops, and you have an approximately 1 in 3 chance of getting an extra one. Here's the final problem.

[(base_soil_quality + good_or_bad_soil_for_plant + fertilizer_value) * moisture_value]

Here's the possible fertilizer values. Different fertilizers could be obtained in different ways and be more or less effective than potash.

Shoddy:0.06
Well-crafted:0.12
Finely-crafted:0.25
Superior quality:0.5
Exceptional:1
Masterful:2

Here's some standard soil base quality ratings. Some are negative or zero, which means you cannot farm in them without fertilizer.

-2: completely unusable for farming, period
-1: dismal soil, completely impractical to use for farming, you'd probably be better off with another food source
 0: bleak soil, incredibly difficult to grow crops in
 1: harsh soil
 2: poor soil
 3: average soil
 4:rich soil

Here's some overall examples.

I'm planting in poor(2, sand?) soil with exceptional(1) fertilizer. The water is getting low at 0.7. I'll only get a meager 2.1 crops for each tile, which is reasonable.

I'm planting in rich(4, loam?) soil with masterful(2) fertilizer. A plumbing accident has flooded the area in 4 depth water. Luckily it was drained before the entire harvest was ruined. I'll get a good 4 crops per tile.

I'm planting in dismal(-1, eeeviiiillll soil) soil. I'm using masterful(2) fertilizer. The moisture is good at 1.3. I will get one crop per tile.

So what do you think about this method?

[Krash]

I honestly didn't bother reading 8 pages of this but I'll just throw the way I think DF should be and a few suggestions. As I see it, DF was written with these things in mind, and to appeal to it's current fanbase should adhere to principles like these:

• DF is intended to be immersive, but the game's rich and complex decision making and creative problem solving based game play is much more important. If Toady only released "legends" or somehow made the dwarves act on their own without building walls around themselves and starving to death the game would undoubtedly have a much smaller, and very different fanbase than it has now.
• Doing the same thing every time you start your fortress is repetitive and from what I've heard Toady is quite averse to repetitiveness. But don't take my word for it, you need only look at the massive procedurally generated worlds and histories, the incredibly diverse wildlife/biomes/rocks/minerals, and of course the seemingly infinite possibilities for what you can DO.
• No pointless micromanaging. All items should have a use, there should be no pointless transition stages for objects, this increases the work unnecessarily. Things like this are "filler" and don't add in any way to the game's work/reward complex. There is always a much more interesting and entertaining way to do things.

I've gotta say I like your suggestion, but this part is even better.

[Draco18s]

A water level of 7/7 which fully takes up a tile has been compared to the height of a dwarf (supposedly 4 feet or so I believe), which of course is much smaller than us humans. Yet, mountains might be 100 z-levels high at most, making The Incredible Mountain of Extreme Height only 400 feet.

Yeah, mountains are tiny.  But I think its more a limit on the Integer number space than anything (only so many bits we can assign to any given location, thus world heights range from 0 to 100).

Anyway, much of your suggestion is stuff I've proposed in the past, or similar.  I'd actually suggested a 2-variable soil quality chart, phosphorous and nitrogen (yes, I'm aware that there are more variables than those two IRL) with 5 levels in each (-2, -1, 0, 1, 2) ranging from "depleted" to "over-saturated" with P or N and different crops would prefer different soils (like in real life) as well as modify the soil value in one direction or another (making crop rotation not only logical, but beneficial).

[Othob Rithol]

I also love the preamble far more than the suggestion, but the suggestion does have merit.

A simple abstraction of soil fertility should be more than adequate, although I'd try to slap in some form of soil depletion from use / rejuvenation from lying fallow just to add a little seasonal or yearly management.

The emphasis of proper irrigation (and the dangers of excess water) are also nicely implemented.

Draco's idea about P/N fertilizer (which has been plugged how many times this thread?) strikes me as needlessly complex, prone to micromanagement headaches, and downright unrealistic given the technology level.

[Fuzzy]

Another thing that might bring this closer to fitting with the medieval model while not making things horribly unfun is making the wither time shorter, especially if there's bad weather. Typically, during harvest time, everyone dropped what they were doing a joined in the harvesting. On some lands, even the nobles did at least some symbolic amount of work in the fields. We have a degree of that with our current state where by default everyone helps with the harvest, but we still tend to have very staggered harvests (in my experience, there's usually only one plant in a plot of 25 that's actually got something to harvest at any given time) and it still doesn't take many people to harvest it.

If we were to have larger plots, especially outdoors, I would suggest adding in a "plow land" designation method that would clear that land of all shrubs, trees, rocks, etc. As it is, it's difficult to designate larger areas on the map. Belowground, it can be a bit easier if you're digging through soil layers. Of course, plowing would be slow and laborious without tools (other than the tilling and removal of rocks, it might just be covered by Plant Gathering and Wood-cutting), but once your blacksmith and put together a plow and some hoes and garden fork...

[Draco18s]

Draco's idea about P/N fertilizer (which has been plugged how many times this thread?) strikes me as needlessly complex, prone to micromanagement headaches, and downright unrealistic given the technology level.

My system leaves room for soil replenishment due to fallow, fertilization (that actually helps, unlike the current system), and crop rotation (which most players do anyway).  It also allows for irrigation to add fertility, etc.

[Othob Rithol]

I wasn't referring to the ancillary concepts (which we all seem to agree upon), but rather using a N/P based fertilizer system. As of yet the dwarves don't seem to grasp enough chemistry to warrant the understanding of nitrogen and phosphorus as specific chemicals needed for plant growth.

Xonara's post, which mirrors concepts presented earlier in the discussion, includes a much more simplified expression of soil fertility.

[Silverionmox]

I wasn't referring to the ancillary concepts (which we all seem to agree upon), but rather using a N/P based fertilizer system. As of yet the dwarves don't seem to grasp enough chemistry to warrant the understanding of nitrogen and phosphorus as specific chemicals needed for plant growth.

You don't need to be a chemist to understand the need for the right soil additions. Be assured that by 1400 every peasant knew how to manure his field.

And the classic elves would be able to just smell what the plants needed, or somesuch.

[Draco18s]

Or crop rotation, which had been around for damn near ever.

Old crop rotation methods were mentioned in Roman literature, and referred to by several civilizations in Asia and Africa. During the Muslim Agricultural Revolution of the Islamic Golden Age, Muslim engineers and farmers introduced a new modern rotation system where land was cropped four times or more in a two-year period...

From the end of the Middle Ages until the 20th century, the three-year rotation was practiced by farmers in Europe was...

[Silverionmox]

It was typically a combination of the two. Not only manure was used, but also ground chalk stone and ashes. Farmers also reported a notable increase in yields on fields where a great battle was fought the year before.

[Neonivek]

Here is something

I am aware that some crops can grow in the winter, however should the crops grow in the exact same quantities all year round? Or in different weather?

The Plumps should probably slow down growth wise during the winter if it is indeed the year round vegetable.

Though I think Plumps are a place holder