Print

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

[praguepride]

Dude, "Tongue-In-Cheek"

Lol (don't take it personally G-flex. You remind me of a buddy of mine who would always no-sell a joke over the internet. He spawned so many *facepalm* moments that we had the picard picture on standby at all times.

Anyway, I think if farming triggered more labors it might be harder to keep running. I brought up weeding. Perhaps vermin would infest the plants and ruin crops so you have to put traps around them or encourage cats to patrol your fields, or build scarecrows.

So weeds, vermin...

Perhaps eventually soil gets tapped out and you have to move your farm. There should be a warning and it should be fixable, but again another issue. For example, you flood your cave floor for a farm, but eventually you'll have to either move the farm or re-flood the area. For outdoor tiles, you'll have to water them occasionally or else they'll become "dried out sandy loam" or whatever and be unable to support crops.

So watering isn't a constant part of farming, but of field maintenance. That way your initial farms aren't permanent, more maintenance (not so much micromanagement like constantly watering farms...) would be an ongoing process.

[NW_Kohaku]

So weeds, vermin...

Perhaps eventually soil gets tapped out and you have to move your farm. There should be a warning and it should be fixable, but again another issue. For example, you flood your cave floor for a farm, but eventually you'll have to either move the farm or re-flood the area. For outdoor tiles, you'll have to water them occasionally or else they'll become "dried out sandy loam" or whatever and be unable to support crops.

So watering isn't a constant part of farming, but of field maintenance. That way your initial farms aren't permanent, more maintenance (not so much micromanagement like constantly watering farms...) would be an ongoing process.

Well, how is that different from a (relatively simple) method of soil depletion that would require crop rotation, and making dwarf farmers tend crops by ensuring they stayed watered?  I mean, alot of this sounds like just putting different labels over something that effectively amounts to the same actions.

[praguepride]

Keeping vermin out of the fields is definitely different. Several different methods. Scarecrows for automated approach, could use traps & cats etc.

Very different then using water and plus, doesn't screw you completely on waterless maps, as I don't think there are vermin-less maps (and if there are (i.e. glaciers) it's hard enough without harder farming)

[NW_Kohaku]

Hmm... weren't you the one who said something about disliking redundancies when I said something about being able to dwarf-make sand on sandless maps as a "redundancy", which wasn't an improvement?

Now you want to ensure there will always be farming, even on completely waterless maps?

Actually, there could be methods of getting around this... we are dealing with magic crops, after all, so there could just be some desert crops that can (somehow/magically) live without any water at all, even if they are lower quality/less productive/slower growing, and then make serious farming take actual water.



With regards to pests, I'm not saying it's not different from watering crops, I'm saying that it is a solution to the same stated problem: that dwarves are not spending enough time in the fields watching their crops.  Get a little Harvest Moon on, and practice your watering can moves.

[G-Flex]

Vermin are also a relatively volatile/unreliable thing (depending on circumstances), meaning it can lead to unforeseen Bad Situations if you aren't careful, which is good, although it shouldn't be so harsh that it screws you over like crazy.

Personally, I'm not sure why it's a good thing to assume that dwarves should be able to live on maps with no water; it's reasonable to assume that dwarves need water, even if they currently don't. Of course, there should be more methods for obtaining it than exist currently; perhaps some research into how real-life desert cultures do things would be helpful.

[NW_Kohaku]

Personally, I'm not sure why it's a good thing to assume that dwarves should be able to live on maps with no water; it's reasonable to assume that dwarves need water, even if they currently don't. Of course, there should be more methods for obtaining it than exist currently; perhaps some research into how real-life desert cultures do things would be helpful.

In real-life deserts, it rains, eventually.  Cacti just store up water for very long periods of time, after all. 

Even if it doesn't rain directly in a desert, dry river beds can get flash-flooded, and certain kinds of grasses have super-speed lifecycles where they germinate, grow, pollenate, spread seeds, and die all in the space of a day or so, with their seeds laying dormant until they are watered again.

There's also that place in South America, where it basically never rains thanks to the rainshadow of the Andes, but where some mist does manage to rise up off the Pacific, and cacti and desert animals can live off the dew.

In DF, it would be nice to just set out some rain barrels to catch some rain.  Rain currently does nothing but attach "wet" tags to body parts, and only adds actual water to murky pool tiles, that are a stop-gap implimentation.

Otherwise... I mean, really, if you are complaining that a desert (sans river) is a poor place to grow crops...  When people go to places like glaciers or deserts, it's generally because they wanted a challenge, anyway.

[G-Flex]

Right, so it should be a challenge. It's kind of weird when farming in the middle of a desert is the exact same as farming in the middle of forest or grassland or what-have-you.

I'm aware that deserts aren't COMPLETELY devoid of moisture, of course, but it's still definitely harder to get it in significant quantities. For instance, cacti do store a lot of water, but they also tend to take a long time to grow, and for good reason. For instance, saguaros take about a human lifetime to grow to a decent size, so tampering with them is actually illegal in many places.

[praguepride]

Hmm... weren't you the one who said something about disliking redundancies when I said something about being able to dwarf-make sand on sandless maps as a "redundancy", which wasn't an improvement?

Now you want to ensure there will always be farming, even on completely waterless maps?

Actually, there could be methods of getting around this... we are dealing with magic crops, after all, so there could just be some desert crops that can (somehow/magically) live without any water at all, even if they are lower quality/less productive/slower growing, and then make serious farming take actual water.



With regards to pests, I'm not saying it's not different from watering crops, I'm saying that it is a solution to the same stated problem: that dwarves are not spending enough time in the fields watching their crops.  Get a little Harvest Moon on, and practice your watering can moves.

I have no idea what you're talking about, nor do I think makign sand is a bad idea. I fully support being able to grind stones in a machine to produce sand. Not being able to produce a basic resource is a definite gap.

You should check your facts first, missy

[G-Flex]

So should you, because grinding stone into sand doesn't make any sense unless you're grinding relatively good quartz, which is rare (for what it's worth, DF already has this in the form of "crystal glass"). DF is lax enough about this in terms of which sands it allows us to use for glass.

Being able to import sand (or import glass blocks and melt them down) is a much better alternative than something that simply doesn't make a lot of sense.

The fact of the matter is that even high-silica stone, in general, is not good enough to make glass out of, which is why people didn't tend to do this in real life. Well, that and the fact that grinding stone down into particles that small would probably be very labor-intensive.

Oh, and you don't really have to go without in the upcoming version, since trading sand and glass is now possible.

I'm honestly not sure how glass is a "basic resource", anyway. The only time you really, really need it (aside from asshole nobles who will demand absolutely anything they want, which is a problem in itself) is... er, I'd say the alchemy lab, but that's out, so I'm not sure. There are a few rare situations where it's necessary, like if you want to make vials (but without the alchemy lab, I don't know if those are useful) or satisfy mandates, but if you can trade for sand bags then that's not really a big deal anymore.

I definitely agree that lack of sand is terrible when you can't trade for it, though. I never embark without sand, just because of how ridiculous it is that you can never trade for the stuff, or at least trade for glass and then melt it down to make your own items, no matter how much access your civilization presumably has to it.

[lordgeryon]

I have a suggestion about farming. It's of the 'reworking the mechanics' type of suggestion.

Primarily, I think that there should be a step introduced that requires plants to be processed prior to cooking or brewing - all plants, not just cave wheat, quarry bushes, etc which already have their own food prep.

The way it would work would be like this; Urist McFarmer plants and grows a stack of plump helmets. Urist McPreparer comes along, grabs that stack of shrooms and carts it off to the food prep workshop. There, he prepares the food by removing the seeds, and other more general food prep(dicing, chopping, skinning, etc). Then, Urist McHauler comes along, grabs the pile of prepared plump helmets, and takes it to be stored until needed by Urist McBrewer or Urist McCook.

This, in effect, makes it so that producing food requires a bit more labor from the minions. In exchange for requiring more labor, the seeds are not lost when plants are cooked. Also, if I understand reactions correctly, the food prep workshop could consolidate all those stacks of plants into one universal unit of measure(like melting objects adds up partial bars of metal until a whole bar is produced). One that produces the full 25 alcohol per unit, or produces 5 food per unit. Of course, with unskilled growers, it means that the food preparers have to make more trips to get that one unit. It would also require more haulers. I believe a workshop like that could be designed along the lines of a loom, butcher's shop, tannery, etc. in that as crops are harvested, the workshop generates its own order to process the stack of produce.

While it's true this suggestion does nothing for the amount produced(that's roughly the same, just tends to be neater). One could even make it so that no plants may be eaten raw, only cooked. Which adds yet another required step to get food.

Planting, waiting til harvest, preparation, cooking & brewing. Allowing for time off and hauling, that's roughly a minimum of 6 dwarves to generate food and alcohol. And starting out, that's probably all that your initial 7 would be doing unless they brought plenty of food and booze with them. Also, at higher populations, it would require more food preparers to keep up with demand for food and booze, plus keeping up with more farmers, thus scaling the labor required with your fortress population.

[NW_Kohaku]

I have no idea what you're talking about, nor do I think makign sand is a bad idea. I fully support being able to grind stones in a machine to produce sand. Not being able to produce a basic resource is a definite gap.

You should check your facts first, missy

I tried to check that first, but when I went back to check the likely threads it would have been posted in, I couldn't find the discussion that "redundancy = bad" line came up in, so I figured I should just ask.

So should you, because grinding stone into sand doesn't make any sense unless you're grinding relatively good quartz, which is rare (for what it's worth, DF already has this in the form of "crystal glass"). DF is lax enough about this in terms of which sands it allows us to use for glass.

*Concatonated for brevity*

You know, this isn't the thread it was proposed in, and it isn't as simple as "rock ---workshop--> sand", either.  If you're going to chide someone to check facts, you should at least attempt to do so yourself...

I have a suggestion about farming. It's of the 'reworking the mechanics' type of suggestion.

etc.

Thing is, unless we do more to mess with seed production, cooking destroying seeds means... pretty much nothing - we already get far more than enough seeds, and easily hit the cap on seeds.

As for preventing eating things raw, well, that really only has an impact on very early game, where it would essentially punish the easy-to-farm plump helmet, and likely send more experienced players directly into quarry bushes or sweet pods, that they tend to dive towards by the second season, anyway.

Having a "all prepared food must have the same amount of items in the stack" certainly makes some sense... however, what we REALLY need is an overhaul of the way food is valued, because of insane BS like 47 million DB roasts, and even my current dwarven syrup roasts easily outpace my artifacts in value.  (I can buy entire dwarven caravans for the price of one roast, which I often have plenty of 30k DB roasts, and sometimes get 50k DB roasts without even meddling in the process at all.)

Doing something like this, in a system where every individual item in a stack will have its own multiplier to the value of a roast, would make it theoretically possible to have a 25-ingredient roast if everything was divided into stacks of 1.  Each one of those ingrediants would have a multiplier of up to 12 for preperation, times 10 for being a food/decoration of food, all being added together...

[praguepride]

Aha a pun.

"Hit the cap on seeds..."

the mushroom cap?

...nevermind...

[lucusLoC]

i would like to make some additions to my original post, as well as address some issues that were discussed. i am going to quote myself for clarity, so if you read that already just skip over the quoted sections.

i am also going to be shamelessly stealing ideas, and i will attribute them if i can easily find the originator. otherwise just know that most of these ideas are not my own, but have merely been adapted to suit my own tastes.

assumption: dorfs only eat 8 times a year and drink 18 times a year. any farming considerations will have to take this into account. toady has already stated that he does not wish to increase this, so end numbers will have to reflect this.

EVERYONE NEEDS OT KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN MAKING SUGGESTIONS! if you make a suggestion that in any way modifies the amount of food output by a farm you need to check it against the amount of food consumed. otherwise you may just wind up with people making one big farm, running it for a year and then letting it sit fallow for the next few years (and have their farmers doe something else) since it made enough food in the one run to feed everyone.

1. a dorf requires roughly 10 squares of land per harvest to be feed and boozed. this takes into account crop failures and food loss. (so only 8 tiles if there is no loss)

2. each square of "normal" food takes 1 seed and produces 2 "consumables." this gives you one to eat and one for booze. the consumable is not stacked, but are separate items. this will not be a problem after hauling is revamped, and makes things simpler and more consistent down the production chain. fertilization can increase the yield by 1 consumable per tile, reducing your land use by 1/3rd

a. normal crops take 2 or more seasons to grow, and above ground crops can only be grown in spring and summer, requiring 2 seasons to be fallow. below ground crops are year round, usually taking two seasons or more to grow, but require fertilization with each planting. (this will also benefit from more types of fertilization, but it keeps things balanced, since UG farming will likely require half the space to grow.) with the new partial use system one unit of fertilizer could fertilize 5 plots, or we could just up the output of fertilizer per reaction.

b. to keep farmers busy watering and tending fields will be required, though watering can be automated/eliminated with good farm construction (see suggestions for near water farms and flooding).

it seems that a lot of the discussion is revolving around irrigation and fertilization, and the complexities inherit in the systems, so i will weigh in on the issue.

1. watering and moisture levels

i think i would prefer the proximity to water method, mixed with the bucket/flood method. you have dry, damp, moist and saturated. saturated should probably act like a veeeery slow aquifer.

a ditch would irrigate the water around it, 2 tiles away would be saturated, out to 5 would be damp, and out to 10 would be moist. plants would have a moisture tolerance. flooding a tile would bump it to saturated, and it would dry out slowly. one bucket would raise the water level of a tile by one, and it would dry out as well. perhaps flooding with only 1/7 of water would only move the tile to damp, instead of saturated.

different soil types may dry out faster or slower, and may affect the distance for water levels.

i really do not want a special case "irrigation ditch" unless we actually decide to make dirt in a tile x/7 and can make the ditch that way.

(i discussed the 1/7 deep ditch in my map data overhaul thread, found here: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=50043.0)

this method would mean that new players would have a simple way to do bucket brigade irrigation, while advance players would have a way to save dorf power for other uses.

i also think we can count on the advanced mechanics thread to produce some useful results for water level management, so i do not believe that is going to be an issue in the future.

2. fertilization

i do not think it would be too hard to set up a simple soil quality tag, though i do not believe we need more than 1. if we had a poor, normal and rich tag i think that would be adequate. on a scale of 0 to 7, 0 through 2 are poor, 3 through 5 are normal, and 6 and 7 are rich. fertilization would increase the level by 2 or 3 points. a basic crop would produce 1 unit at poor, 2 units at normal and 3 units at rich.

a crop would deplete the level by 2 and each fallow season would increase the level by 1 unless it is rich. this would ensure that noobs would still be able to produce food even if they have poor soil, but it would probably mean that they would need to import seeds. it would, however, give them at least a few years of decent crops assuming the started in an adequate biome (i don't sea any reason why desert soil should not start at "poor" for example, or why a forest biome should not start at "rich")

this would also not make fertilizer mandatory, those who do not wish to use fertilizer would simply have to make allowances for more farmland in their rotation. i would also like o point out that under the default rotation there would be no net change in soil quality.

there are also a few controls that we should be able to set on a farm, such as telling dorfs to maintain a certain fertility or moisture level automatically. it would be even nicer if this was automatically adjusted to meet the minimum requirements of any crop planted there.

c. certain high value crops should implement the space requirement (cardinal point and 9 square, depending on value), as i think it is a good mechanic that should not go to waste. it just means you need more space to grow it.

as hinted at above, this (along with growth rate) could also be expanded to adjust crop tolerances for moisture and fertility. you could even have things like desert crops that are unhappy at high moisture and fertility levels. this would add some nice flavor and variety to the game.

d. a farmers skill determines failure rate of crops. a regular no prefix farmer should have a failure rate of 2 in 10. a farmer with no skill should have a failure rate of 6 or 7 in 10 (so unsustainable, and thus a cost to train them). legendaries should of course not have a failure (barring outside circumstances of course). as farmers skill up they also work faster, but the speed difference between not farmer and legendary should only be a max of 25% [edit: probably more like 15%]. since the production is not determined on the speed of the farmers anyway this will just mean that a legendary will have more time to work on other stuff, or you will need 25% fewer field laborers if they are all legendary (not unlikely). harvesting and watering are also "hauling" jobs and not give farming xp, only planting and tending do.

i do not think anyone has commented on this. i think it really helps with the mechanic.

3. one consumable makes 2 booze. on booze job requires 5 consumables, for a total of 20 booze per barrel, every time.

4. food processing will always yield a "seed unit" and a processed food unit ("ingredient"). seed units can also be cooked, but require 5 to 20 individual seeds units to make 1 "ingredient" and may require processing before cooking. booze will require 2 units to make one ingredient.

5. cooking food will require 2 to 4 ingredients, and will always yield a stack of 2 to 4. (meat will also have to abide by the no stack rules as well) this will also help mitigate the "one job makes a huge stack of super expensive food" issue).

6. animals will need to be fed, but that should only indirectly consume from the farmland, and should not be fed directly from your crops unless their is not other source of food for them (see the many suggestions on grazing and chunk usage). some indirect sources could be stubble (which should also be harvestable and used as fertilizer) and rotted food.

i know food handling issues are not the main topic of this thread, but i do not think it should be overlooked.

and now to head off some of the debate (i may be duplicating effort hear. in that case just take this as a long winded "i concur"). 

i do not think 10 tiles per dorf is unreasonable. the starting 7 will need a 10x7 plot to grow food on. that can easily be done with one designation. a 20x100 plot is not actually a great deal of in game space, and can wind up being only 20 individual fields. this issue can be mitigated even further if you allow the field to be expanded beyond 10x10. people who complain about this just don't want it to mess up their current fort designs. i say there is going to be a lot more coming that will cause a lot more problems with that later on. burrows will probably have a greater impact on fort design than this. you can fit farmland for 230 dorfs on one 48x48 embark tile.

if anyone has objection to the "no stack" issue, it will be entirely moot once the hauling is updated. plus it vastly simplifies food handling.

this suggestion also does not address other types of crops such as orchards, wall climbing vines etc. eventually the plan is to get multi z level trees/plants and orchards and vineyards will have to be handled and balanced with that in mind. this is for "farmplot" only crops.

i am sure this as all been talked about before and i just glossed it over, but i wanted to get my thoughts on the matter spelled out clearly.

i do not know if the tile number issue has been settled, but i think my argument for why it should be increased still stands. it does look like the argument has mainly shifted to the irrigation/fertilization side of things, and i would like to rebuff a few of the claims made:

you are not going to be able to get "more advanced farming" without adding variables, and anything else is just basically going to amount to messing around with grow timers and having farmers "do things" to the crops to keep them busy. this does not mean i am against thing like a "weed plot" job, but it does mean that i think the "weed plot" job needs to have a concrete effect. perhaps weeds reduce soil quality and crop yield. i am not sure how to convey that info (about weeds) to the player, and i do believe that all the info about the health of the plot needs to be communicated to the player, but kept simple enough so that noobs can handle it in much the same way that they do now.

planted crops should automatically set their field maintenance levels for moisture and fertility, though player should be able to change them if they so desire. farmers should automatically do the job necessary to keep them where they need to be.

and i have already seem a few of the "why add it if you are just going to automate it anyway" complaints. let me make it clear: crops can be "fire and forget" for the player if they so desire, but they should never be "fire and forget" for the dorfs. if your crops are outside and you get besieged your farmers will not be able to care for them during their grow cycle, and that should affect their production even if you do manage to beat off the siege before harvest time.

[NW_Kohaku]

Good that you quote yourself, because I'd likely not have found your original post without you linking to it, what with being buried 3/4s of the way through a rant-heavy topic, and having been made over a month ago.

i am also going to be shamelessly stealing ideas, and i will attribute them if i can easily find the originator. otherwise just know that most of these ideas are not my own, but have merely been adapted to suit my own tastes.

I don't think this is called "stealing someone's idea", I think it's called "agreeing with someone", and I think people react to it positively, generally speaking.

assumption: dorfs only eat 8 times a year and drink 18 times a year. any farming considerations will have to take this into account. toady has already stated that he does not wish to increase this, so end numbers will have to reflect this.

EVERYONE NEEDS OT KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN MAKING SUGGESTIONS! if you make a suggestion that in any way modifies the amount of food output by a farm you need to check it against the amount of food consumed. otherwise you may just wind up with people making one big farm, running it for a year and then letting it sit fallow for the next few years (and have their farmers doe something else) since it made enough food in the one run to feed everyone.[/quote]

I think people recognize this, but that they are arguing that current food production is either too easy, too simplified, or too productive.  As it stands, I really think that most players pretty much never have problems with food production.  Even the total newbies to the game are more likely to kill themselves in other manners than simply forgetting that they need to feed their dwarves.  As others have pointed out, with use of quarrey bushes, you can make a single legendary farmer push out enough food from a 25-tile farm for an entire fortress.  Expanding beyond this point if you somehow need more food is pure simplicity - just make a bigger farm, and maybe add more farmers.  In fact, most people are more worried about accidentally producing too much food, so that they have trouble consuming it before it spoils.

Yes, it's a valid point that we shouldn't make farming require impossible amounts of labor... but we can certainly do things that reduce farm output for quite a while before we actually start impacting food production so much that it starts to strain a player's ability to feed his dwarves.

In the quote, however, you take on one of the more extreme suggestions, which I do not believe holds terribly broad support.

I think that, instead of necessarily arguing about solutions, we have to find what problems people percieve with the current farming system.

The person you quoted may see a lack of struggle to feed your dwarves as a problem, and wants to make it more difficult.  Alternately, he is looking at a lack of "realism" (I put quotes, because oftentimes, whenever one speaks of realism, they often focus on one aspect that is unrealistic, while ignoring many other unrealistic things, and people can actually argue over which unrealism is worse than other unrealisms) in terms of farm acreage (that is, angry over the relative size of farms, and percentage of farmers in your labor force).

Personally, I think the problem is that the system is so simplistic that it dissolves differentiation between crop types, but I'll talk about that later, and respond to the rest of your post.

it seems that a lot of the discussion is revolving around irrigation and fertilization, and the complexities inherit in the systems, so i will weigh in on the issue.

1. watering and moisture levels

(i discussed the 1/7 deep ditch in my map data overhaul thread, found here: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=50043.0)

this method would mean that new players would have a simple way to do bucket brigade irrigation, while advance players would have a way to save dorf power for other uses.

i also think we can count on the advanced mechanics thread to produce some useful results for water level management, so i do not believe that is going to be an issue in the future.

... Hmmm... I suppose I can be content with a 1/7 ditch. 

However, you should realize that if there's a labor-free, completely static, and no-maintainance needed method of irrigation, then nobody will EVER use the bucket-brigade method, at least, except as a stop-gap while they dig the ditches. 

A lack of a reward is as bad as a punishment. 

The thing about a "wetness radius" irrigation system is that you can simply dig a hole in regular intervals, declare it a pond, have dwarves bucket it full, and it would never, ever need further maintainance.  In fact, such a system would look almost exactly like the bucket-brigade method, but, for the cost of just digging a couple holes, would water far more plants.

(That is, unless plants actually were capable of "drinking" the water the way that dwarves draw water from wells, which would mean those irrigation ditches would need regular refilling, which would require either player micromanagement, which I don't think any of the advocates of this system wanted, or would require farmer scripting that would ensure refilling...

In fact, I think such a method of plants "drinking" water is the only thing that makes sense if we are going to be using a ditch irrigation system.  It would also make different crop demands for water actually mean something.)

2. fertilization

i do not think it would be too hard to set up a simple soil quality tag, though i do not believe we need more than 1. if we had a poor, normal and rich tag i think that would be adequate. on a scale of 0 to 7, 0 through 2 are poor, 3 through 5 are normal, and 6 and 7 are rich. fertilization would increase the level by 2 or 3 points. a basic crop would produce 1 unit at poor, 2 units at normal and 3 units at rich.

Here's where I want to interject about why I have a problem with crops as they are, now.

Current crops are few in number, and there is a significant degree of overlap in what we already have.

A prickle berry, for example, is just a wild strawberry that has less value with virtually every other aspect of it being the same.  Hide Roots are one of only four colors of dye, and their use is heavily discouraged because they're simply lower-valued blade weeds.  Unless an important dwarf really favors one type of crop, there is no reason but to repeatedly farm the same high-value sun berries, quarrey bushes, sweet pods, pig tails, and blade weeds over and over.

What if we had multiple facets of soil quality, however?  What if hide roots only took a little of soil quality A, but fixed the soil with soil quality C, and did nothing with quality B?  What if we had a high-value crop, but which heavily depleted C and B, and took only a little of A, while improving soil quality in no degree.

Suddenly, low-value crops would have value, if only as a means of making use of a farm without demanding constant fertilization.  This would give players a reason to consider crops for some reason other than what their eventual products might be.

d. a farmers skill determines failure rate of crops. a regular no prefix farmer should have a failure rate of 2 in 10. a farmer with no skill should have a failure rate of 6 or 7 in 10 (so unsustainable, and thus a cost to train them). legendaries should of course not have a failure (barring outside circumstances of course). as farmers skill up they also work faster, but the speed difference between not farmer and legendary should only be a max of 25% [edit: probably more like 15%]. since the production is not determined on the speed of the farmers anyway this will just mean that a legendary will have more time to work on other stuff, or you will need 25% fewer field laborers if they are all legendary (not unlikely). harvesting and watering are also "hauling" jobs and not give farming xp, only planting and tending do.

i do not think anyone has commented on this. i think it really helps with the mechanic.

I don't think people have commented on this one because it's one of those extreme "make farms bigger and harder" posts, and relies upon that.

This supposes that what passes for legendary "only" gets crop failures 1 year out of 5.

I'm ultimately not interested in it, because I don't think size is (terribly much of) a problem, I'm more interested in variety.

i do not know if the tile number issue has been settled, but i think my argument for why it should be increased still stands.

Fine, make farms larger.  It's not really my concern, because I don't think the problem is size, but such thorough simplicity that no crop differentiation can take place, except by value, although I think they could stand to be somewhat larger. 

you are not going to be able to get "more advanced farming" without adding variables, and anything else is just basically going to amount to messing around with grow timers and having farmers "do things" to the crops to keep them busy. this does not mean i am against thing like a "weed plot" job, but it does mean that i think the "weed plot" job needs to have a concrete effect. perhaps weeds reduce soil quality and crop yield. i am not sure how to convey that info (about weeds) to the player, and i do believe that all the info about the health of the plot needs to be communicated to the player, but kept simple enough so that noobs can handle it in much the same way that they do now.

planted crops should automatically set their field maintenance levels for moisture and fertility, though player should be able to change them if they so desire. farmers should automatically do the job necessary to keep them where they need to be.

and i have already seem a few of the "why add it if you are just going to automate it anyway" complaints. let me make it clear: crops can be "fire and forget" for the player if they so desire, but they should never be "fire and forget" for the dorfs. if your crops are outside and you get besieged your farmers will not be able to care for them during their grow cycle, and that should affect their production even if you do manage to beat off the siege before harvest time.

Partly preaching to the choir, but differentiating the crops is a definite difference.  That's why I talk about "desert crops" that don't need water, or crops that increase or decrease soil quality.

It's not my suggestion, and I'm fairly ambivalent on the subject, but I would think the "remove pests" suggestion would have actual pests spawn and eat the crops if you didn't have someone getting rid of them... which sounds like a noticable and concrete effect to me.

I also have to ask who, exactly, you are agreeing with, arguing with, or trying to persuade with some of your comments... You seem to be launching out arguments against a myriad amalgamation of arguments from over 5 pages.

[lucusLoC]

I think that, instead of necessarily arguing about solutions, we have to find what problems people percieve with the current farming system.

The person you quoted may see a lack of struggle to feed your dwarves as a problem, and wants to make it more difficult.  Alternately, he is looking at a lack of "realism" (I put quotes, because oftentimes, whenever one speaks of realism, they often focus on one aspect that is unrealistic, while ignoring many other unrealistic things, and people can actually argue over which unrealism is worse than other unrealisms) in terms of farm acreage (that is, angry over the relative size of farms, and percentage of farmers in your labor force).

Personally, I think the problem is that the system is so simplistic that it dissolves differentiation between crop types, but I'll talk about that later, and respond to the rest of your post.

i think you may be right about arguing about different things

lets start with a list shall we?

the way i see it the problems are:
1. farms are too small
2. not enough variety (lack of differentiating variables)
3. not enough input from the dorfs.

However, you should realize that if there's a labor-free, completely static, and no-maintainance needed method of irrigation, then nobody will EVER use the bucket-brigade method, at least, except as a stop-gap while they dig the ditches. 

A lack of a reward is as bad as a punishment. 

The thing about a "wetness radius" irrigation system is that you can simply dig a hole in regular intervals, declare it a pond, have dwarves bucket it full, and it would never, ever need further maintainance.  In fact, such a system would look almost exactly like the bucket-brigade method, but, for the cost of just digging a couple holes, would water far more plants.

(That is, unless plants actually were capable of "drinking" the water the way that dwarves draw water from wells, which would mean those irrigation ditches would need regular refilling, which would require either player micromanagement, which I don't think any of the advocates of this system wanted, or would require farmer scripting that would ensure refilling...

In fact, I think such a method of plants "drinking" water is the only thing that makes sense if we are going to be using a ditch irrigation system.  It would also make different crop demands for water actually mean something.)

i would love it if water slowly leaked out of ponds, and think it should be implemented. also, replenishment of said pond is already implemented. if you order dorfs to fill a pit they will keep it topped off at 7/7 until you order them to stop. i think that would satisfy your requirement?

and the bucket brigade *is* designed to be a stopgap measure, not only for the dorfs, but for the player as well. it is dorf power intensive, but requires zero effort from the player. it is there to help the noobs, and as an emergency measure in case you accidentally drain your irrigation ditches.

 the reward for setting up an irrigation system is that you have more dorfs to do other things, making your fort more efficient.

Here's where I want to interject about why I have a problem with crops as they are, now.

Current crops are few in number, and there is a significant degree of overlap in what we already have.

A prickle berry, for example, is just a wild strawberry that has less value with virtually every other aspect of it being the same.  Hide Roots are one of only four colors of dye, and their use is heavily discouraged because they're simply lower-valued blade weeds.  Unless an important dwarf really favors one type of crop, there is no reason but to repeatedly farm the same high-value sun berries, quarrey bushes, sweet pods, pig tails, and blade weeds over and over.

What if we had multiple facets of soil quality, however?  What if hide roots only took a little of soil quality A, but fixed the soil with soil quality C, and did nothing with quality B?  What if we had a high-value crop, but which heavily depleted C and B, and took only a little of A, while improving soil quality in no degree.

Suddenly, low-value crops would have value, if only as a means of making use of a farm without demanding constant fertilization.  This would give players a reason to consider crops for some reason other than what their eventual products might be.

i agree that crops need to be more diverse, but i don't think it needs 3, or even 2 soil quality tags. i think the combination of grow timers, fertilization and moisture requirements are enough. higher value crops have a tighter tolerances 9like say, only growing in moist fertile soil, and dying if that range is ever not met), longer grow times, and deplete the soil more. i absolutely do not have any issue with cheep crops that boost soil quality, i think it is a great idea.

a multi variable soil quality system would be fun. . . for someone who knows how it works. it would be hell on the noobs. one is simple enough, but adds enough variation in my opinion.

d. a farmers skill determines failure rate of crops. a regular no prefix farmer should have a failure rate of 2 in 10. a farmer with no skill should have a failure rate of 6 or 7 in 10 (so unsustainable, and thus a cost to train them). legendaries should of course not have a failure (barring outside circumstances of course). as farmers skill up they also work faster, but the speed difference between not farmer and legendary should only be a max of 25% [edit: probably more like 15%]. since the production is not determined on the speed of the farmers anyway this will just mean that a legendary will have more time to work on other stuff, or you will need 25% fewer field laborers if they are all legendary (not unlikely). harvesting and watering are also "hauling" jobs and not give farming xp, only planting and tending do.

i do not think anyone has commented on this. i think it really helps with the mechanic.

I don't think people have commented on this one because it's one of those extreme "make farms bigger and harder" posts, and relies upon that.

This supposes that what passes for legendary "only" gets crop failures 1 year out of 5.

I'm ultimately not interested in it, because I don't think size is (terribly much of) a problem, I'm more interested in variety.

i don't think this has anything to do with the size of the farm. it has more to do with the skill of the farmer. there should be a drawback to employing low skill farmers, other than they are just slow. this suggestion makes that happen. if this was implemented it would give some real incentive to bringing a skilled farmer other than just increased yield.

I also have to ask who, exactly, you are agreeing with, arguing with, or trying to persuade with some of your comments... You seem to be launching out arguments against a myriad amalgamation of arguments from over 5 pages.

i am far to apathetic to wade through this entire thread looking for exact quotes, so yes, i am responding to vast generalities and impression i got from reading here. i hope i am clear enough with my post so that it stands on its own, and does not need a lot of context to understand the reasoning behind my suggestions.