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[Draco18s]

256 points per crop != 256 points per measurement.

Could you go into some detail on this point?
I'm not quite getting what "256 points per crop" means.

If we accept the seven-degree measure of soil as (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, pH, Water, BioMass) and use a simple 5-point rating system as {'very low', 'low', 'medium', 'high', 'very high'} then there will be 5^7 = 78 125 possible soil conditions, which ought to be more than sufficient variety for creating ecosystems.

Those numbers are meant to be very fluid, and I think we need something like 256 points of data for each crop to have any meaningful ability to measure this changing over time.

[AngleWyrm]

You realize what I'm talking about, here, correct?  Why I've talked about changing soil over time, especially nutrients like K, which change only very slightly over time?  The number of iterations of possible values is completely irrelevant.  And maybe you don't care how many inches wide the United States may be, but if you are trying to do an accurate computer model of the US, such as something like Google Maps, then you have to use some fairly precise measurements, at the very least.

I have shown the relevance of range of values with respect to the number of crops. Changes over time should be significant, changing the various plant preferences toward the soil. There is no value in merely incrementing an integer; the players will simply start using larger units, such as changes of 25 or 50, because less is insignificant.

As far as measuring the US in inches, the tide changes the width of the US every hour, and the waves change the width every second. It's a false precision.

[NW_Kohaku]

Umm... no.

Look, if I want to have soil that needs to be built up (or depleted) by years of working on it (or neglect), then I need larger values.  Some of those crops have a -2 to the soil's K rating.  That means it takes a dozen or so plantings before notable degradation occurs.  That means I need some way of tracking a half of a "level" of degradation, or a quarter of a "level" of degradation, or a twelth or so on. 

You don't get the ability to just ignore that and dump 25 K back on, either, you have to do it 4 points at a time or something, to make the gradual process of building up soil... well, gradual.

Does there need to be a fairly simple metric for a player to be able to see that the soil is depleted/poor/fair/good/rich in a nutrient?  Yes.  Does this mean we have to reduce the metric this is measured upon down to just 5 numbers?  Of course not.  We need the ability to track a fraction of a change, since those fractions add up, and there's little reason, aside from data storage requirements, not to do so.  (And you're not talking about data storage requirements...)

This is also meant to give a meaningful way of comparing - if all a crop can do is deplete an entire fifth of the soil each time a soil check takes place, then we're talking about a plant that can't deplete the soil and need more fertilization (or watering) as it grows, because it would completely deplete the soil within just a few checks.  Every crop would be measured not on how MUCH it depletes, but whether it depletes at all or not. 

That's completely ignoring the purpose of the system I was talking about, where depletion is a gradual process, and where fighting the depletion takes time.

[Draco18s]

Exactly.  Its why we don't use 8 bit sound or color anymore.

(8 bits is good enough, right?  We can get a whole 256 shades!  Just look at that gradient!  So smooth!)

[AngleWyrm]

Depletion can happen slowly, but not repairs. Watering the soil immediately makes the soil wet, with no delay. Same with adding mulch to bulk it up with biomass, or adding fertilizer, or adding any other modifier. The soil is changed with the act of changing it, not as some slow years-long process.

Plants might make slow changes to the soil, but people can make very fast changes.

Also, 281 trillion colors is too much. The human eye cannot differentiate that many colors. 1000 bits of sound resolution is also too much; the human ear doesn't operate at such high frequencies. In other words, there's such a thing as the right size. Just ask Goldilocks.

[NW_Kohaku]

Of course "repairs" can happen slowly - that's why I talk about setting limits on how much fertilizer you can use at once essentially one in every four posts.  If the most you can add is 10 points of K per year, then the most you can add is 10 points of K a year.

As for "too much", yes, there is some hypothetical limit that goes beyond meaning, but that's arguing the purely hypothetical, so you're making a distinction without a difference, here. 

Look at refresh rates - the human eye "can only detect" images at around 24 hertz, but that doesn't mean that it can't tell the difference between images refreshing at 50 hertz and images refreshing at 200 hertz.  Motion blur is added into those lower-refreshing images to give the illusion of motion when it doesn't exist, while the human eye, even if it doesn't have hte ability to process all the information it sees that fast, has the motion-tracking capabilities to recognize the changes taking place between the frames that it does see.

So if there's a "too much", do you really know what arbitrary, hard-coded variable it is?  Can you provide evidence for where the line for "too much" is that can make a compelling case with weighted pros and cons?  Or will this just be another argument like with time scale, or the value of higher quality items, where people throw out arbitrary numbers, and argue over which one they "feel" is more appropriate?

[Draco18s]

Look at refresh rates - the human eye "can only detect" images at around 24 hertz, but that doesn't mean that it can't tell the difference between images refreshing at 50 hertz and images refreshing at 200 hertz.

Actually, 24 Hz is the minimum refresh rate required for the brain to perceive motion, it's still pretty choppy.
The flicker-fusion point for the human eye/brain is around 30 FPS (or 60 Hz, according to wikipedia, but I am pretty certain that 30 FPS = 30 Hz, as "a frame" is "one cycle" so "X frames per second" would also be "X cycles per second" unless someone can explain otherwise*).

That's why the industry standard for the last, oh, century has been 29.97 frames per second.

*Ah, duh.  30 FPS = 60 Hz when dealing with interlaced film because you draw each frame twice, first the even lines, then the odd.  So yes, the flicker-fusion point is 60 Hz.

[AngleWyrm]

Of course "repairs" can happen slowly - that's why I talk about setting limits on how much fertilizer you can use at once essentially one in every four posts.  If the most you can add is 10 points of K per year, then the most you can add is 10 points of K a year.

That's just silly. Fertilizing half-way (or even less) short changes the crops in the field. It's not a reasonable thing to do. If I had a field of crops, I would set the land to ideal conditions as soon as possible. The things that are likely to slow progress are the actual execution of labor, which might take days, and the availability of fertilizer, which might be a matter of money, processing materials, or seasonal caravans.

I don't like the simulation of time wasted before a goal condition is achieved. There is nothing for a player to do, so it doesn't have the spirit of a game. It's just modelling Sit and Wait, which isn't entertaining.

[NW_Kohaku]

You can't just create a field of perfect soil in real life by simply dumping all the fertilizer you can get your hands on in a giant pile, either.

It's not like this forces you to sit there and watch the grass grow, either.  Farming, by definition, is about waiting for the crops to grow.

The point of this is to force you to pre-plan out what you do with your soil - it's still easy to keep a farm running, so long as you don't neglect it for too long, and do too much damage to the soil.

To say you don't like it simply because it takes time in a way you don't like it taking time, while saying that other ways it can take time is basically just an arbitrary declaration, not a real argument.  It's like saying, "I like vanilla ice cream, so nobody else can like chocolate!"  You have to come up with a reason for why you dislike it, or why something else would be better.  (I really can't even tell what you even want right now...)

[AngleWyrm]

You can't just create a field of perfect soil in real life by simply dumping all the fertilizer you can get your hands on in a giant pile, either.

I don't believe that assertion. If I want soil that matches some setting, I can just dump soil with that setting on my fields. If I want to adjust a setting up/down, I add whatever is missing or needs to be countered. And this brings up an aspect I haven't seen in this thread, the matter of moving soil that matches a criteria for a given crop. Maybe crushed Microcline is especially suited to growing UnderLillies. Transferring the rock to the fields could be one way to do it.

We have a wealth of rock types, and each rock type could have basic soil parameters (could be measured as %(max-min) for resolution needs). How many rock types are there? Quite a few ecological niches. It may be that 'mud' needs to be a type of mud, such as red sand mud, or orthoclase mud. Then it could be transportable.

As far as grasping the dimension/resolution problem, here is a picture of a box within a box. The inside box is less than three quarters of the volume of the outer box:

The inner boxe's dimensions are 9/10 of the outer box in all three directions. That means that the volume of the inner box is 0.9x0.9x0.9 = 72.9% of the outer box. Yet even knowing this to a mathematical certainty does not prevent the illusion that it must surely be more. The human brain is not particularly good at handling high dimensions and their results.

A six dimensional box covering 90% of the range in all directions would occupy only 0.9^6=53% of the total volume. The result is that people generating the game's plants are going to place them all in the middle of a vast space. The dwarve's job will then be to bring soil conditions to the middle of that space.

[NW_Kohaku]

The inner boxe's dimensions are 9/10 of the outer box in all three directions. That means that the volume of the inner box is 0.9x0.9x0.9 = 72.9% of the outer box. Yet even knowing this to a mathematical certainty does not prevent the illusion that it must surely be more. The human brain is not particularly good at handling high dimensions and their results.

A six dimensional box covering 90% of the range in all directions would occupy only 0.9^6=53% of the total volume. The result is that people generating the game's plants are going to place them all in the middle of a vast space. The dwarve's job will then be to bring soil conditions to the middle of that space.

Once again, I just have to ask why you think permutations have anything to do with anything?  What, when we introduce alpha masks to a color image, do we have to arbitrarily reduce the number of colors in the regular image, just because otherwise, the number of digits in a mathematically derived formula that has little to do with image quality will not be an "ugly" number of digits?

When arguing for something, you first have to explain what you are arguing for, and then explain why your position is better.  You put up an image of cubes and some mathematical ratios, but then don't explain why they are relevant in any way to the argument.

You can't just create a field of perfect soil in real life by simply dumping all the fertilizer you can get your hands on in a giant pile, either.

I don't believe that assertion. If I want soil that matches some setting, I can just dump soil with that setting on my fields. If I want to adjust a setting up/down, I add whatever is missing or needs to be countered. And this brings up an aspect I haven't seen in this thread, the matter of moving soil that matches a criteria for a given crop. Maybe crushed Microcline is especially suited to growing UnderLillies. Transferring the rock to the fields could be one way to do it.

This isn't a matter of belief or disbelief, it's a matter of finding facts to support your claims.  When people argue beliefs, everything just devolves into screaming matches.  (Yay religion arguments!) I think this, especially the last one helps this point:

5 signs of nitrogen deficiency.
5 signs of phosphorous deficiency.
Potassium: A critical garden nutrient (same site as above two).
Potassium deficiency in plants (wikipedia)
Some general info on the NPK system including signs of too little and too much of each nutrient (except too much phosphorous, as its pretty much impossible).

Plants with too much Nitrogen get "nitrogen burning".  The same goes for potassium.  You can over-water crops, and kill them.  An overabundance of biomass can introduce too many bacteria that can leave plants vulnerable to disease.  Acidity is an obvious balancing act.  So no, you can't just dump a massive load of fertilizer on the soil and make everything fine. 

Here's also a point on soil acidity: http://www.thegardenhelper.com/acidsoil.html  Quoting the most salient part, "

Generally speaking, it is easier to make soils more alkaline than it is to make them more acid. Because different soil types react in different ways to the application of lime you will have to add more lime to clay soils and peaty soils than you will in sandy soils to achieve the same result.
To increase your pH by 1.0 point and make your soil more alkaline:

• Add 4 ounces of hydrated lime per square yard in sandy soils
• Add 8 ounces of hydrated lime per square yard in loamy soils
• Add 12 ounces of hydrated lime per square yard in clay soils
• Add 25 ounces of hydrated lime per square yard in peaty soils

Correction of an overly acid soil should be considered a long term project, rather than trying to accomplish it in one year. It is better to test your soil each year and make your adjustments gradually.

We have a wealth of rock types, and each rock type could have basic soil parameters (could be measured as %(max-min) for resolution needs). How many rock types are there? Quite a few ecological niches. It may be that 'mud' needs to be a type of mud, such as red sand mud, or orthoclase mud. Then it could be transportable.

There are measurements for the density, shear yield, tensile fracture, compressive strain at yield, and basically thirty other properties of every material already in the game. Every material in the game - not just metals, but every stone, type of hair, leather, skin, organ meat, etc.  The thing about it is that the overwhelming majority of this is dummied out data, because it's a simply absurd amount of individual data points for one guy to punch in.  Virtually every type of stone in the game that isn't ore has the same basic shear yield data, and the only things that are really different are the melting points.

So yes, soil types are probably going to have some default mineral values, but I'm expecting the majority of general stone types to, similarly, have a "default stone" value for minerals, with the really notables (like limestone or sulfur) having a few seperate values.  Honestly, though, most stones really don't even matter - they're a different enough mix of certain minerals that you can assume they perform a function similar to most other stones, and stones should be very bad places to farm, generally, because you need soil, not stone to grow anything but the hardiest of plants.  (And I mean lichens, not something you'd really consider eating.)

As for having "different types of mud", then of course there's no way to have a different kind of mud for every possible combination of values - if data on the soil is tracked in the "mud", which is a fine way of doing it (although soil layers will need a "topsoil" or similar "floor covering" for their data recording, although we could simply merge that with mud, and create a "soil" item that sits on the floor of any place that has soil beneath it, or is in a cavern by default, and which gets added to the tile when the tile is flooded,) so what we need is simply a soil item that has several variables attached to it that are kept in a seperate area of memory, the way that contaminants already do. 

[AngleWyrm]

Once again, I just have to ask why you think permutations have anything to do with anything? 

The result is that people generating the game's plants are going to place them all in the middle of a vast space. The dwarve's job will then be to bring soil conditions to the middle of that space.

As for having "different types of mud", then of course there's no way to have a different kind of mud for every possible combination of values - if data on the soil is tracked in the "mud", which is a fine way of doing it (although soil layers will need a "topsoil" or similar "floor covering" for their data recording, although we could simply merge that with mud, and create a "soil" item that sits on the floor of any place that has soil beneath it, or is in a cavern by default, and which gets added to the tile when the tile is flooded,) so what we need is simply a soil item that has several variables attached to it that are kept in a seperate area of memory, the way that contaminants already do.

Eventually someone's going to create plants. Those plants are going to live in soil/mud that is one of the many types of rock/soil that are already in the game. Making plants will be a process of matching plants to habitats. And in order to do that, the rocks/minerals/soils in the game should have soil metrics. Mud would then be an instance of some soil/mineral/rock.

Also, as you have indicated, it is simply too difficult to understand the consequences of high dimensions. So you shouldn't include them.

[Draco18s]

As you have indicated, it is simply too difficult to understand the consequences of high dimensions. So you shouldn't include them.

Uneducated farmers have been doing it for centuries.

[AngleWyrm]

Those uneducated farmers aren't designing the soil, they are merely using it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Once again, I just have to ask why you think permutations have anything to do with anything? 

The result is that people generating the game's plants are going to place them all in the middle of a vast space. The dwarve's job will then be to bring soil conditions to the middle of that space.

As for having "different types of mud", then of course there's no way to have a different kind of mud for every possible combination of values - if data on the soil is tracked in the "mud", which is a fine way of doing it (although soil layers will need a "topsoil" or similar "floor covering" for their data recording, although we could simply merge that with mud, and create a "soil" item that sits on the floor of any place that has soil beneath it, or is in a cavern by default, and which gets added to the tile when the tile is flooded,) so what we need is simply a soil item that has several variables attached to it that are kept in a seperate area of memory, the way that contaminants already do.

Eventually someone's going to create plants. Those plants are going to live in soil/mud that is one of the many types of rock/soil that are already in the game. Making plants will be a process of matching plants to habitats. And in order to do that, the rocks/minerals/soils in the game should have soil metrics. Mud would then be an instance of some soil/mineral/rock.

I fail to see whatever problem you apparently have with this. 

I'm not saying that soil types shouldn't have default values for their nutrients, it's just that those values are going to change as people farm them.  As people farm the soil, the soil is going to be more a factor of how the player has cared for the soil than its initial value.  I'm saying that odds are, most objects are going to have nutrient values that are simply copied from a template, because I doubt Toady is going to care about the exact mineral values of every single stone.

You will also notice that I very specifically say aboslutely nothing about tying certain plants to certain soil types - that's irrelevant to what I've been talking about, as the point is that you build your own soil as you go.  The only thing that having some mixture of clay/silt/sand in the mix would do is change the intial values of the soil chemistry, and possibly play a large part in dealing with drainage, if we wanted to add in even more variables than we already have.

As for modders adding in new plants... great, so they can just pick values similar to the ones that I put up in that psuedo-code I posted earlier, where they have ranges like [WATER_REQUIREMENT: 160: 205: 130: 225: -140].  Is that a little obtuse when you first look at it?  Yes, sure, but so is every other part of the raws.

So once again, I see absolutely nothing wrong with the things you seem to think have problems with them.

Also, as you have indicated, it is simply too difficult to understand the consequences of high dimensions. So you shouldn't include them.

I'm sorry, what?  Please refer me to the point where I said whatever it is you are claiming I said...

I've pretty consistantly argued that 0-255 on each of these variables is necessary to have gradual degradation over time, and you haven't come up with any reason why we shouldn't have gradual degredation over time, or why we have to marry behind-the-scenes game mechanics to what is displayed directly to the player.

Currently, for example, every plant has a Growdur value, which few players understand anything about, but which doesn't really matter to the player playing the game, because all they see are "empty field", "plants growing" or "plants ready to harvest".  You will notice, however, that in order to track when that "growing" part should end, you had to use a potentially very largish variable that gradually incrimented... the same goes with hunger, which, again, goes into the hundreds of thousands. 

Why is there anything wrong with this?  Once again, I have absolutely no idea what you are complaining about.

Those uneducated farmers aren't designing the soil, they are merely using it.

Those uneducated farmers are caring for the soil - any uneducated farmer who ignores the quality of his soil will soon starve as he depletes it.  There is a reason crop rotations and the use of manure and fertilizer go back to the dawn of civilization.