Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Solara]

For the record, a few suggestions I like, or at least think are the most reasonable/simple to implement:

1.) Improved stacking - maybe the hardest to actually program, but would make for less headaches in lots of areas, not just farming - ginormous bone and shell pile, I'm looking at you.

2.) Dirt should have to be hauled to farm on stone. (Optional with an IRRIGATION tag: even dirt should be damp before you can build a plot on it, or maybe you can just haul mud where you want it.

3a.) Once improved stacking is implemented, significantly lower yields on crops, especially underground ones. One or two plants per seed should be the norm, even for skilled farmers, unless fertilizer is employed.

3b.) We should be able to turn narrow loincloths and subpar wooden furniture into potash - though this will probably be doable anyway with the moddable workshops in the next release.   
 
3c.) Plants should produce more seeds. This is realistic, let's you enlarge your fields even with the one plant per seed return, and provides an easy source of extra food for people who don't want to mess around with too much.
   
I was going to say take away winter farming for most plants too, but for people who want that it's so easy to do in the raws there's no point in making it official.

[G-Flex]

Wait. Why should leather produce potash? I don't really understand that, and potash isn't the most important thing in the world anyway. Burning old furniture down for ash makes sense, though.


One plant per seed return isn't as bad as you might think, since that one seed then turns into multiple plants. If crops could fail somehow, though, then it would be nice.


Winter farming makes more sense underground than it does above-ground, because there's virtually no weather to speak of and the temperature varies less year-round.

[Solara]

Wait. Why should leather produce potash? I don't really understand that, and potash isn't the most important thing in the world anyway.

If farming is harder, fertilizer might actually be useful. There was discussion about turning organic materials into fertilizer - leather and cloth are organic. Not really the kind of organic thing that's useful for fertilizer, but let's not be too picky here.

I know it's not realistic that it would become actual potash, but I'd love to be able to burn all that goblin crap, and since anything you burn would become ash, until the game actually tracks what it came from (which it probably will one day along with everything else at a molecular level) you could use that ash to make potash and improve your farms, if you wanted to go through the trouble.

[Shades]

I'd prefer a larger number of seeds gained from single plant when seeds are harvested. That way, even if you need 10 seeds to get one plant, you would still get even by seeding that plant.

I can live with that too, as long as there running out of seeds without the player actively doing something wrong is very unlikely. Actually I prefer your idea if you can balance it nicely

[G-Flex]

Wait. Why should leather produce potash? I don't really understand that, and potash isn't the most important thing in the world anyway.

If farming is harder, fertilizer might actually be useful. There was discussion about turning organic materials into fertilizer - leather and cloth are organic. Not really the kind of organic thing that's useful for fertilizer, but let's not be too picky here.

I know it's not realistic that it would become actual potash, but I'd love to be able to burn all that goblin crap, and since anything you burn would become ash, until the game actually tracks what it came from (which it probably will one day along with everything else at a molecular level) you could use that ash to make potash and improve your farms, if you wanted to go through the trouble.

You're essentially trying to justify turning lead into gold here. Well, not those specifically, but close enough.

If the game requires you to have more fertilizer, then it should require you to have more than potash. There's a lot more to soil than just nitrogen; saying that you can grow mushrooms in potash is like saying that a person can live off of Vitamin C tablets. It just doesn't make any sense.


Allowing dwarves to fertilize fields by composting arbitrary organic matter is great, but the purpose of doing this is very, very distinct from the purpose of potash. They're not remotely the same thing. The only reason it seems that way right now is because potash is the only way to improve your farming output.

[zagibu]

Let's not forget that DF is not a farming simulator. It's cool when farming becomes a bit more of a challenge and needs some more involvement to set up, but let's not get it so far that players have to consult lookup tables for soil and fertilizer and dew points etc.

[G-Flex]

That's a good point, but why should farming be less complex than the rest of the game?

After all, all the metals have different melting points, materials have different densities, and the qualities of materials in general are getting much more complex in the next version.

So the issue (to me) isn't that plants or farming shouldn't be complex, just that it should be complex in a way that's reasonable, presented to the player well, and that doesn't require insane amounts of micromanagement just to get off the ground.

[Shades]

DF is not a farming simulator.

Doesn't fantasy world simulator include farming?

[Footkerchief]

DF is not a farming simulator.

Doesn't fantasy world simulator include farming?

That, and "farming simulator" doesn't mean you have to look things up.

[Draco18s]

DF is not a farming simulator.

Doesn't fantasy world simulator include farming?

That, and "farming simulator" doesn't mean you have to look things up.

I was able to play SimFarm quite effectively known jack sheet about farming.

[CobaltKobold]

Without a tutorial or manual?

[Nikov]

Without a tutorial or manual?

Without a wiki.

[Draco18s]

Without a tutorial or manual?

Without a wiki.

Manual?  Tutorial?  Wiki?  This was fsking SimFarm.  The manual was about as helpful as Dwarf Fortress's and there was no wiki.  I learned it all over the course of years.

[Silverionmox]

Hell and damnation, I see I've been necro-ninjad. I had some farming stuff in preparation as well. Curse the boss that makes me work weekends. Anyway, at least it motivated me to finish the damn thing and put it here while the thread is hot. Thanks for the recap Dante, it has been useful. I tried to string together a lot of game elements without adding too much complexity or unavoidable micromanagement, while still opening interesting opportunities for synergy. The stuff obviously builds on all the suggestions in this thread and elsewhere.

DF Farming.rtf

Plants need:
1. Air
Assumed to be present anywhere, dissolved or otherwise.

2. Energy
Plants can acquire energy if the circumstances are appropriate to their tag. Depending on the type, something is used up or energy extracted, but usually not.
- [Photosynthesizers]:    light. Green plants. Typically not underground, barring magic. (For the time being, 0 or 1. I suggest standardizing it at a range of 0-7, depending on the light arc.)
- [Saprotrophs]:   decaying matter. Normal fungi. Standard choice underground,       although the decaying matter still needs to come from somewhere.
- [Parasitics]:   other plants. Obviously, that plant does need to get its energy      elsewhere. Parasitic mushrooms on the roots of trees qualify.
- [Carnivores]:   animals. Drosera, venus flytrap etc. Animals obviously include      sapients. Fun, if you tire of guard dogs.
- [Thermosynthesizers]:   heat. AFK, only bacteria. In DF, irrigating with lava       becomes sensible.
Other sources of energy may be considered (motion, magic, specific minerals, ...) or more specific tags may be wanted (eg. plants that grown only on corpses, or parasitize only specific hosts).

3. Water
Plants get a [moisture tolerance: 0-7] tag in which they grow. One level of water is used up by plants to grow a level. I suggest standardizing the level of moisture in the soil at 0-7. This would correspond with the amount of water left if the square was mined out. A moisture of 0 means that the soil is damp, but not wet enough to leave water when mined out. Any mineral/soil type would have a [moisture containment: 0-7] tag. A square next to a body of water would have its maximum allowed quantity as defined in that tag, a square one step further away the maximum-1, two step m-2, etc. This allows irrigation ditches to moisturize seven squares in every direction. (Water should seep out in quantities equal to the moisture level the square would have had if you didn't mine it out.)

4a. Soil Texture
Soil types are few enough to treat them case by case. If a plant has a tag with the soil, it will grow there, otherwise not. Easy modding to add local variety. Loamy sand might qualify for plants requiring either [sand] or [loam], to keep things simple.

4a. Soil pH.
I suggest to standardize it in a range of 0-7, or 0-14 in order to facilitate mimicking real plants, or use whatever rating Toady wants to use for acids.
All plants get a [pH range: n-m] tag. Effect: within the pH range, plants grow normally. Outside it, the pH rating is subtracted from the nutrients available, so plants will grow badly or not in areas that are too basic or too sour for them.
Some plants change soil pH (eg. grain decreases it). Some fertilizers/minerals change it (eg. gypsum or the economic stones used for steel increase soil pH); indicate by tagging them. Standard pH for a place depends on the biome. Reverts to standard if fallow.

5. Temperature
It's unclear how detailed temperature will be kept track of, like light. In any case, like soil pH, plants get a tolerance range, and energy penalties outside it. They also get a preferred range inside that tolerance range, where they get a +1 energy bonus. Thermotropic plants can get more energy out of it.

6. Nutrients
Soil contains nutrients. Typical crops use the nutrients in the floor they're planted in (that has the same nutrient rating as a whole square. That makes sense, because topsoil tends to be the most nutrient-dense.) Plants with significant roots can have access to the squares that contain these roots too, typically the ones below the plant. This makes trees a lot more durable.
Dead organic matter returns the nutrients it contains to the soil; energy is lost. It will be mostly energy that is accumulated and used up. The other nutrients ought to cycle around nicely, from plant to animal to meal to dwarf to sewer to manure to field to plant. N, P and minerals have specific minerals that are more effective to supply them; those minerals can be tagged appropriately.

* Energy:
   -   source: see 2. Energy
   -   storage: in fruit, seeds & wood.
   -   function: Maintains plant. Accumulates in fruit and seeds as sugar, starch,    fat. Wood contains energy by its nature, useful for fire for those who can't eat it.

Range: might get to be large for energy, especially in old wood or magically stimulated fruit, or later on in the production chain in very elaborate meals. The following three could best be standardized at a range of 0 tot 7.

* N:   -   source: comes from the soil, or free from the air for N-fixing plants.
   -   function & storage: seeds, fruit, leaves.

* P:   -   source: comes from the soil / fertilizer: specific rocks, eg. apatite
   -   function & storage: blooming, roots.

* Minerals  (K, S, Ca, Mg and the rest of Mendelev's table, chair & cutlery):
   -   source: comes from the soil / fertilizer: any rock
   -   storage: everywhere in the plant
   -   function: increase quality of wood, fruit, etc. Those quality levels would    determine disease resistance of the plant.

Normal land in a biome (on the map or off-map) is considered stable, and will need no calculations. The nutrient values will be the biome's standard. The nutrients of fallow and untended land will revert towards the biome standard in steps of 1 per season (or year), until they're almost there (leaving some farming history in the form of less/more nutrients locally: nice for reclaiming).

7. Growing plants.
Growth levels:
Energy is used to maintain the plant during each growth step, and additionally to add energy to wood, seeds and fruit. Lack of energy means the plant loses a growth level.
When available, other nutrients are extracted from the soil in order to form the corresponding tissues for the growth level. If they lack, nothing grows.
The order in which plants try to grow is determined per plant in the raws. For example: [Grow:LLLBLSD] (Leaves, Bloom, Seed, Die) or [Grow:LLWLBLFLSLWLL] (Wood).

Growth speed: Three options to choose from:
- environment-based: The game checks often and makes the plant grow whenever nutrients and conditions are good. CPU-expensive.
- plant-based: Tries to grow a plant every n frames, depending on the plant: allows to differentiate plants with growing speed. The middle ground.
- time-based: Tries to grow all plants at certain times in a year. Constraining, but CPU-cheaper.
Conceivably, there could be differentiation between plant zones and other places.

8. Managing plant growth.
Plant zones:
Plant zones are defined using a combination of room flow/zoning tools. In them, a variety of plant-related tasks can be scheduled either in a yearly schedule or on an as-needed basis: that means dwarves with the appropriate skill go do a job as soon as needed (eg. watering: maintain moisture level x, weeding: yes/no, woodcutting: some/lots/all, fertilizing: maintain nutrients level x,...) with the distinction that more highly skilled ones will react faster.
It would be convenient to combine these with animal zones (for fishing, herding animals -> fertilizer & grazing pastures, that need clearcutting). Even a combination with stockpiles is possible (so you can stockpile meat chunks in the wolf pit, or farm saprofytic mushrooms on the refuse pile).

This allows to give orders for a group of squares, but they can still be separately affected by cave-ins, goblin trampling, flooding, etc. Weeds/unwanted plants grow normally.

9. Tracking food value[/u]
If nutrients and energy are tracked throughout the production chain, we only need to adjust the base productivity of the plants to adjust game balance. This is very useful for modders who want to adjust productivity with a few broad strokes. It's still possible to adjust  reactions later in the production chain.
Therefore, every organic item should track its nutrient and energy content, for example potash, which contains all the nutrients of the wood that was burnt to make it.
(Rough correspondences plant vs. animal: (to give an idea, no conversion happens)
- Energy: sugar, starches and fat.
- N : proteins.
- P: bones
- Minerals: everything else, general healthiness.)

Rotting organics add their nutrients to the soil. If that's not possible, the adjacent soil. If that's not possible (rock floor, too much nutrients, for example), it turns into compost (except the bones, of course), containing all the nutrients and usable as fertilizer by a farmer.

10. Balancing
- Balance: This is an alpha. We can't, nor should we try to, finetune the game balance. The best we can do is to identify the levers that will allow the modders to find their balance later on.

- Mining efficacy, trade opportunities, trade value of cooked meals, stacking, pathfinding, skill efficacy, % of world suitable for agriculture, racial abilities,  etc. don't belong in a farming discussion. Let's identify where eg. skill ought to play a role, but not how much yet.
- All given numbers are naturally subject to change.
- As a benchmark (based on historical observation), I suggest that farming with totally unskilled farmers, using a basic crop, leaving the land fallow half the time, using no fertilizer but not exhausting the land either, ought to require 50% of the population.
- This is intended as maximum complexity. Init options might set any of the discussed variables to an average standard, reducing the maximum yield possible, but making the supply more steady.
- The true nutritional value can be adjusted a lot through the food preparation reaction raws. I expect at least distillation for example to add energy.
- The first step will be to set up plants. Everything flows from that.
- The big hidden lever is: the energy requirements per creature per action. I'd like to see those rawed.

[Draco18s]

Way too detailed, I like that you have pH, Nitrogen, phosphates, and other minerals, but that produces a 3 or 4 dimensional zone of "good" which is hard for the player to keep track of.  Personally I think it just needs two of those: pH and N or P and N.