PC Idea to fix A20 farming

[Diragor]

You like a20 farming as is? Is that with perk investment or without? Because without investment crafting seeds will generally lose you food whereas with lotl it's just the same as A19 with infinite food and nothing actually changed

I have lotl fully upgraded and yeah I have more than enough food, but still need to invest something to get that said food and thats nice as it is. You just can't balance out farming without food spoilage, cause no matter how hard they make it to get seeds or crops, just build more farm pots and you're fine again. Thats why I'm fine with it and you should too. this game isn't about super realistic farming, it's about fighting zombie hordes.

 

[bloodmoth13]

I have lotl fully upgraded and yeah I have more than enough food, but still need to invest something to get that said food and thats nice as it is. You just can't balance out farming without food spoilage, cause no matter how hard they make it to get seeds or crops, just build more farm pots and you're fine again. Thats why I'm fine with it and you should too. this game isn't about super realistic farming, it's about fighting zombie hordes.

I dont think food spoilage would fix all the issues, but it sure as hell would make things super clunky and likely force really bad gaming habits where the game decides when you play it instead of the other way around. 

Having to build a fridge and a canning station though would thematically feel like good milestones for the game, and being able to craft tinned food would be cool. 

I think i like the concept of it far more than i would like the reality of it.

The only problem with farming imo is that there is simply no cost for producing large quantities of food, the only cost is set up costs and meager perk investment and you have pretty much infinite food. With fertilizer as a secondary cost you need to balance how much fertilizer you have with seeds, so turning your 100 corn into 20 seeds if you can only craft 10 fertilizer would be wasteful, and it would also put pressure on only focusing on the most needed crops rather than everything and you would be trading resources from glue and gunpowder and whatever recipes use rotten meat.

 

[Diragor]

Okay how about that? Screamers spawn thanks to the heatmap. How about Vultures spawn sometimes randomely when seeds are planted. So you can loose your crops. Also make rabbits and chickens able to steal your crops let people suffer.

 

[POCKET951]

Farming is fine the way it is.

I was hesitant about it at first but it's fine 

 

[meganoth]

Food scarcity is not an issue at all in this game. You don´t need farming. It´s basically a nice to have. Not a must have. There is more animals than ever before now. More farm POI`s than in any other alpha. That´s why i have no issues at all with a cost of skillpoints for a guaranteed net gain.

Also one point isn´t enough, you need lots of luck to get a self sustaining farm with one point in Lotl. 2 points is what you need for that. And 3 points can give you enough food to get rich with selling it at the trader. 

Not really. 1 point in LotL and finding only 1 seed for the whole game would involve lots of luck and time, 2 seeds a moderate amount of luck and time, 3 seeds some luck and time, ... Mostly it is more time the less seeds you have to experiment with.

And the snow biome is always full of meat, you can go hunting there pretty early if you are cautios enough, no need to tough, there is enough in the other biomes.  

And again, they changed the system because you could get infinite food with no skill point. And you suggest a new method that doesn´t need skillpoints either. No matter what you think it costs in ressources changes that fact (that ressources are basically "free" not really but it´s not really an effort to get them, you don´t need to do any extra work for it). The whole point TFP wanted to achieve is gating it behind a perk.

 

[meganoth]

I dont think food spoilage would fix all the issues, but it sure as hell would make things super clunky and likely force really bad gaming habits where the game decides when you play it instead of the other way around. 

Having to build a fridge and a canning station though would thematically feel like good milestones for the game, and being able to craft tinned food would be cool. 

I think i like the concept of it far more than i would like the reality of it.

The only problem with farming imo is that there is simply no cost for producing large quantities of food, the only cost is set up costs and meager perk investment and you have pretty much infinite food. With fertilizer as a secondary cost you need to balance how much fertilizer you have with seeds, so turning your 100 corn into 20 seeds if you can only craft 10 fertilizer would be wasteful, and it would also put pressure on only focusing on the most needed crops rather than everything and you would be trading resources from glue and gunpowder and whatever recipes use rotten meat.

Your fertilizer scheme is a possible method, no question. And by changing the returns of fertilized ground one could even add the feature that LotL 0 does not allow a self-sufficient farm. Which is something the developers seem to want and you desperately don't want as you consider it broken that way. Unless you can convince them that one of their current design goals with farming is wrong you already have lost no matter what your scheme does

One disadvantage may be that fertilizer needs one bit in world blocks reserved for recording the "fertilized" state, a very scarce and expensive resource. This may have been part of the reason to remove fertilizer and the old way of farming and my guess is that that alone is a hard sell (unless there is an easy alternative available).

Another disadvantage from my point is that fertilizer makes farming even more work (producing fertilizer and fertilizing). A point TFP might actually like and that would probably appeal to Roland as well. At the moment more work would make farming so unappealing that most players would not bother anymore. Naturally that can be corrected by balancing meat resources.

 

[Darklegend222]

I had a 20 plot farm and 10 mushrooms, took me not even 2 mins every 2 hours and i had enough food for 3 people at least.

We have a dedicated farmer in our world, never once complained about replanting. We have over 30 of every crop aside from mushrooms and a massive farm.

People are way too whiny about farming for literally no reason. "Oh no, mah food that that i don't have to hunt for, and that i have to do manual labor for!"

 

[Reckis]

Personally, I think that this argument is basically the same as the people complaining about the "insane hunger", etc. etc.

Instead of adapting to the game they want the game to adapt to them.

I will admit, when I first read about the farming changes I was concerned, but after playing with them for a while, I learned to adapt.

 

[PoppaSmirk]

I will admit,  I'm not overly fond of the farming activity now.  The unpredictable nature of it when just at LOTL1 and LOTL2 was frustrating.  I just recently boosted up to LOTL3 because it was totally necessary for Me at least.  At LoTL2 I was able to have an overall positive gain,  but by My 5th or 6th harvest My crops were dwindling again,  as I had tried running 6 plots for Corn,  6 for potatoes,  4 blueberry,  4 pumpkin, 5 Mushroom,  3 Coffee, 3 Aloe vera.  My 6th harvest saw Me having to only have enough pumpkin to replant 2 seeds,  Blueberries down to 3 seeds,  Mushrooms had dwindled to 3 spores replanted and the potatoes actually gave only a single seed back out of 6 plots.  So crafting 5 new seeds left me a yield of only 2 potatoes.    Now,  I can respect the work on the farming system,  but in trying to handle the farming chores for a group of four players,  I wasn't fond of feeling FORCED to place every point earned for my last 3 level ups,  into only FORT and then Farming to get LOTL3.  So, can I handle it?  yes, I can and I did.  Was it frustrating,  yes, and turning farming into less of a desirable use of My play time.  So,  its a mixed bag for Me,  I "get it"  that the previous Infinite farm system was too generous. I am applauding the changes to make LOTL2 at least viable; but just combined with other issues such as not being able to craft a chem station due to 35 days in-game and only finding a grand total of 5 acid between 3-4 people searching (we used two acid to make tires to get a minibike),  Just a lot of smaller frustrations in the game mechanics and I haven't been overly "joyous" to have farming turn into such a headache.  I suppose that I've simply come to expect My "dread to come from wandering hordes"  not from,  "oh lord,  time to harvest again"

 

[Roland]

I will admit,  I'm not overly fond of the farming activity now.  The unpredictable nature of it when just at LOTL1 and LOTL2 was frustrating.  I just recently boosted up to LOTL3 because it was totally necessary for Me at least.  At LoTL2 I was able to have an overall positive gain,  but by My 5th or 6th harvest My crops were dwindling again,  as I had tried running 6 plots for Corn,  6 for potatoes,  4 blueberry,  4 pumpkin, 5 Mushroom,  3 Coffee, 3 Aloe vera.  My 6th harvest saw Me having to only have enough pumpkin to replant 2 seeds,  Blueberries down to 3 seeds,  Mushrooms had dwindled to 3 spores replanted and the potatoes actually gave only a single seed back out of 6 plots.  So crafting 5 new seeds left me a yield of only 2 potatoes.    Now,  I can respect the work on the farming system,  but in trying to handle the farming chores for a group of four players,  I wasn't fond of feeling FORCED to place every point earned for my last 3 level ups,  into only FORT and then Farming to get LOTL3.  So, can I handle it?  yes, I can and I did.  Was it frustrating,  yes, and turning farming into less of a desirable use of My play time.  So,  its a mixed bag for Me,  I "get it"  that the previous Infinite farm system was too generous. I am applauding the changes to make LOTL2 at least viable; but just combined with other issues such as not being able to craft a chem station due to 35 days in-game and only finding a grand total of 5 acid between 3-4 people searching (we used two acid to make tires to get a minibike),  Just a lot of smaller frustrations in the game mechanics and I haven't been overly "joyous" to have farming turn into such a headache.  I suppose that I've simply come to expect My "dread to come from wandering hordes"  not from,  "oh lord,  time to harvest again"

I think your bigger problem is playing with 3 other mates who aren't helping you with farming. As the perked player it should be you harvesting and crafting seeds but then you should just stick the seeds in a container and let them do all the planting.

It might also be better for you to stay at LOTL 2 and have one or more of them spend a point to get to LOTL 1 and have everyone contribute by creating farms and sharing surplus. Then it isn't one person farming to feed four but two or three people farming to feed four. 

As a team you guys have to talk about the fact that you don't necessarily want to go that deep into Fort so farming isn't going to all be piled on you-- it's going to be shared.

So farming will look like this:

Build a farming plot that will cost 10 wood and 50 clay, craft a seed for 5 crops, plant seed into plot.

Without fertilizer the seed will provide 3 total harvests that will only yield 2 crop per harvest for a total of 6 crops for a net gain of 1 crop

With fertilizer added after planting the seed, you will add +1 per harvest, increasing the yield to 9 crops total over 3 harvests for 1 seed for a net gain of 4 crops 

Living off the land will increase the harvest for fertilized crops by 1/2/3, and will also reduce the cost of fertilizer 10%/20%/40%.

I don't have a problem with this model. If TFP were to switch to this I wouldn't be mad. If a mod was made that changed farming to this I would definitely check it out.

I also think the current model is fine. I'd have to actually play both to decide which I like better and would prefer.

As far as spoilage, I think an ongoing spoilage mechanic that is a timer would be too hard to implement. I've been thinking a lot about an idea that on the bloodmoon all uncanned food has a chance to change to spoil. I was even thinking maybe a 30% chance to spoil and a 1% chance to change into some kind of super sludge with cool benefits when used in a recipe...

 

[Orclover]

I suppose that I've simply come to expect My "dread to come from wandering hordes"  not from,  "oh lord,  time to harvest again

Thats why we ended up editing the xml file to keep the seed in the ground.  I had fully perked out LoTL and we were all contributing to scavaging farm plot materials (that I would craft), and we were barely keeping our food supplies up enough to not starve for our group.  It just took too much to keep seeds going into the ground to keep a group fed.  We were spreading task around and even just the farming portion was too much for one skilled person to do to feed 5 -6 people, along with somebody else harvesting animals constantly and everybody trying to sustain off of their own found food as well.  The vending machines turned into argument makers as starving people would try to rush the traders every morning to keep their food meters out of the red.  Animals on the map had a life expectancy measured in seconds.  Recipe drops were the most important loot item in the game for 2 weeks.

The group hated the changes the devs made to hunger/farming, not fans at all.   Some almost quit playing over it.  But a quick XML file edit to just keep the seeds in the ground after harvest like A19 (thats it) and feeding all of us with a 3 people doing the farming/hunting/cooking became possible without it being a full time job.  No other changes needed to be made to the xml for hunger/growing or anything else for this issue and nobody else had to take skills in perks not related to their preferred stat.

We hated it, and it was an easy fix.  Now in single player it probably would have been a non-issue.  Even if we had half the players, it might have been manageable.  But get more than a handful of people playing several hours a day and tearing apart the landscape looking for food, and it becomes a headache.  If those players were not cooperating though, man oh nelly,  yea that's not a game any more, its a job.  Everybody would just be starving constantly.  Nobody would care about the zeds since they can't be eaten.

 

[Boidster]

The effect of "just keep the seed in the ground" is the equivalent of +5 crops per harvest, since you didn't change the base plant reward, nor the doubling bonus of LotL, nor the chance to get a seed back. Makes sense that it's easier to feed a group like that. Back to zero-risk farming with significantly increased A20 crop reward levels. Much easier than it was in A19.

 

[Roland]

Thats why we ended up editing the xml file to keep the seed in the ground.  I had fully perked out LoTL and we were all contributing to scavaging farm plot materials (that I would craft), and we were barely keeping our food supplies up enough to not starve for our group.  It just took too much to keep seeds going into the ground to keep a group fed.  We were spreading task around and even just the farming portion was too much for one skilled person to do to feed 5 -6 people, along with somebody else harvesting animals constantly and everybody trying to sustain off of their own found food as well.  The vending machines turned into argument makers as starving people would try to rush the traders every morning to keep their food meters out of the red.  Animals on the map had a life expectancy measured in seconds.  Recipe drops were the most important loot item in the game for 2 weeks.

The group hated the changes the devs made to hunger/farming, not fans at all.   Some almost quit playing over it.  But a quick XML file edit to just keep the seeds in the ground after harvest like A19 (thats it) and feeding all of us with a 3 people doing the farming/hunting/cooking became possible without it being a full time job.  No other changes needed to be made to the xml for hunger/growing or anything else for this issue and nobody else had to take skills in perks not related to their preferred stat.

We hated it, and it was an easy fix.  Now in single player it probably would have been a non-issue.  Even if we had half the players, it might have been manageable.  But get more than a handful of people playing several hours a day and tearing apart the landscape looking for food, and it becomes a headache.  If those players were not cooperating though, man oh nelly,  yea that's not a game any more, its a job.  Everybody would just be starving constantly.  Nobody would care about the zeds since they can't be eaten.

Glad you guys were able to change things to work better for you. The three of us left things vanilla and with one person farming at LotL 3 she brought in so many crops that for two weeks of game time she stopped farming because we had plenty to last us for a long while. >shrug<

 

[PoppaSmirk]

Well,  We tend to all come together in one Hosted World,  at least That had been our modus operandi for several years.  With A20 However it seems everyone of Our Friendly group is playing in My Hosted game,  Plus they keep 2-3 other game saves running.   This is in part because one player doesn't enjoy when zombies run at night, and that same player has been tossing hissy fits over not being able to find certain things, so in their  RGW the loot % is set at 300%  But when We all do play in My Hosted World, everyone brings back items and contributes to the "loot box"  and all share.   So if Any find seeds, they all drop them into My box for Farming Supplies.  Just as all food goes into the Foodstuff box.. Myself and one other in Our group do tend to be the ones that enjoyed getting the farming up to speed.  We share the same base,  and work to develop its defenses,  but at some point once We find enough tools ( like augers and chainsaws)  then everyone seems to also land claim a separate poi as their personal base,  but We battle together  at the main base for horde Night.  So far its simply been that things are very scarce.  Such as searching for about 10 days with the goal of setting up a chemistry station.  We had an extra beaker since Day 27,  so 8 days of everyone being on the lookout specifically for acid,  not just for that but to work toward minibikes for all.   Since I had LoTL2,  I was best suited to harvest crops.  The replanting doesn't take a lot of time,  just that Myself or anyone would see the sudden downturn in the harvests.  Of course I thought it was simply a couple of bad harvests,  but thats a bit of the point.  You can do everything right,  and still find food supplies shrinking.

 

[Orclover]

The effect of "just keep the seed in the ground" is the equivalent of +5 crops per harvest, since you didn't change the base plant reward, nor the doubling bonus of LotL, nor the chance to get a seed back. Makes sense that it's easier to feed a group like that. Back to zero-risk farming with significantly increased A20 crop reward levels. Much easier than it was in A19.

The other option for sustainable crop usage for a group is to make about 10 times the number of crops as you normally would have per item.  For our group we have 2 farms with about 80 farm plots covering almost all seed types.  Obviously more corn and potatoes than anything else really.  If we just contineud to grind potassium and rotting meat for several RL weeks we could make 300 farm plots of just potatoes and 300 farm plots of just corn and it would have about the same effect (easily returning the seeds needed to self sustain with LoTl3 and providing needed veggies). Then we could undo the changes to the xml file.

We would also quit playing, nobody in our group wants to do that.   

 Its 7 Days to Die, not 7 Weeks to Get a Sustainable Ecosystem in place for a Small Group.

Easier to just make a simple edit and go back to zed killing for fun, not profit.

 

[Roland]

The other option for sustainable crop usage for a group is to make about 10 times the number of crops as you normally would have per item.  For our group we have 2 farms with about 80 farm plots covering almost all seed types.  Obviously more corn and potatoes than anything else really.  If we just contineud to grind potassium and rotting meat for several RL weeks we could make 300 farm plots of just potatoes and 300 farm plots of just corn and it would have about the same effect (easily returning the seeds needed to self sustain with LoTl3 and providing needed veggies). Then we could undo the changes to the xml file.

We would also quit playing, nobody in our group wants to do that.   

 Its 7 Days to Die, not 7 Weeks to Get a Sustainable Ecosystem in place for a Small Group.

Easier to just make a simple edit and go back to zed killing for fun, not profit.

You guys must eat a lot of food. Out of curiosity are you eating to keep the food bar above 50% when the first penalty hits or are you eating to keep the food bar constantly filled with overstock calories counting down?

 

[Orclover]

The three of us left things vanilla and with one person farming at LotL 3 she brought in so many crops that for two weeks of game time she stopped farming because we had plenty to last us for a long while. >shrug<

For 3 people how many farm plots did you need?  Were running around 130'ish I think for 6.

 

[bloodmoth13]

I think your bigger problem is playing with 3 other mates who aren't helping you with farming. As the perked player it should be you harvesting and crafting seeds but then you should just stick the seeds in a container and let them do all the planting.

It might also be better for you to stay at LOTL 2 and have one or more of them spend a point to get to LOTL 1 and have everyone contribute by creating farms and sharing surplus. Then it isn't one person farming to feed four but two or three people farming to feed four. 

As a team you guys have to talk about the fact that you don't necessarily want to go that deep into Fort so farming isn't going to all be piled on you-- it's going to be shared.

I don't have a problem with this model. If TFP were to switch to this I wouldn't be mad. If a mod was made that changed farming to this I would definitely check it out.

I also think the current model is fine. I'd have to actually play both to decide which I like better and would prefer.

As far as spoilage, I think an ongoing spoilage mechanic that is a timer would be too hard to implement. I've been thinking a lot about an idea that on the bloodmoon all uncanned food has a chance to change to spoil. I was even thinking maybe a 30% chance to spoil and a 1% chance to change into some kind of super sludge with cool benefits when used in a recipe...

Thanks for taking a look and giving feedback, appreciate that. Might need to look into modding so I don't just go on about ideas that nobody can try.

I like spoilage as a concept but I feel like it would only work on single player, imagine playing on a public server and your food supplies are all destroyed because you couldn't play for a week.

It's a difficult problem to solve because I really like the idea of advancing cooking with working fridges, ovens and tinning stations

 

[Orclover]

You guys must eat a lot of food. Out of curiosity are you eating to keep the food bar above 50% when the first penalty hits or are you eating to keep the food bar constantly filled with overstock calories counting down?

Were each going through a stack and a half of beef stew/veggie stew per play session on average.  Some (like me) go through 3 stacks easily (melee build at pretty high game stage) a night.  Everyone is using vehicles so they are only sprinting around poi's.  Food bars are generally kept replenished whenever the first warning message was popping up.  The first couple weeks everyone was kept in a state of near starving and it was really irritating the players, they assumed we would never get it under control and were going to quit to head to other games if we didnt nerf the hunger system itself.  We made changes to crops instead (which we were already getting up and running but converting all food to seeds).  They still complain about how quickly hunger hits (thirst strangely is never a problem) just going about their days but at least now they can keep eating.  If this was RL we would probably all look like a bunch of sumo-wrestlers.  Days are set to 90 minutes (I know it screws up everything), most of us play 6-9 hours a night.

It was worse on the first server we set up.  We were eating every living critter in 2 bioms and were all still starving with health loss.

 

[Roland]

Ill have to check tonight when I get home. I want to say around 30 but they were all corn and potatoes. But we also had bacon and eggs dishes, fish tacos, chili dogs, and sham chowder in addition to all the meat stews we were able to make. We tend to only eat once we are hungry letting the bar dip down close to 50% before eating a dish that takes us back up to the top so we had plenty of food and the crops kept coming in until we had a huge surplus. She finally stopped farming until our storehouse of food was almost empty.

We struggled a bit at first until she got up to LotL 3 but the fully perked skill has been plenty for our group. We don't make baked potatoes or corn bread. We only make the filling meals.