PC My issue(s) with Farm Plots

So I took your guys' advice and had little trouble finding the nitrate but the bottle neck for my whole server is the rotting flesh. Not only do you have to kill wild animals to get it (or magically find these gore piles that someone else hasn't already harvested), but there just aren't that many animals. I had to kill 2 whole zombie bears to get enough meat to make 1 farm plot. So from a game design perspective that's severely limiting since farming typically requires more than a few plots to be effective. Some may say there are hunter perks to increase yield, but it seems silly to have to boost hunter and living off the land to farm. With dirt everywhere it just seems silly to gatekeep this. Farm plots, rotting flesh etc should all add extra yield but regular soil SHOULD be able to host plant life. I think that'd be the best compromise in my mind.
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Long running servers need to reset chunks or spawn cars and other limited resources regularily, so I heard. So why not gore piles too?

Animal hunting was always a long-term side activity in the game. You never could say "I go hunting now" and be sure to come back with a bag full of meat. Take no hunter perks and you need to accept a low return from hunting.

I find the balance in SP and co-op private MP quite good at the moment. In my SP game I have about 14 farm plots at day ~25 (60 minute days). I already have a generous stack of ingredients and cooked food now. If I desperately needed more rotten meat I probably would hit one of the small military bases, they have body bags lying around by the dozen.

Kudos to Orclover for a nice theory :cocksure:

 
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Gotcha, I wasn't speaking to whether or not it made sense.... you mentioned rotten flesh was a bottleneck, I was just trying to help out.
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Well, another use for rotten flesh....

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And that result in a food with 0% of food poisoning btw..

Logical? :deadhorse:

 
Ya, busy servers are kinda screwed. It is still possible but could be a huge pain. I never understood the point of busy PVE servers though. For PvE might as well play just co-op with friends, or solo play. Only played one once when I first started. Tons of PVP though.

To be fair tho, they are designing the game for at most 8 man servers. Higher is not recommended.

I suggest a recipe to turn fresh meat into rotten meat 1:1, and/or add rotten meat to traders. (If not both of these would be a pretty ez mod to do, no?)

(I dont see a problem for PVP, more reason to raid/ take over bases with farms)

 
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I suggest a recipe to turn fresh meat into rotten meat 1:1, and/or add rotten meat to traders. (If not both of these would be a pretty ez mod to do, no?)
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To make fresh meat actually useful? Good idea.

 
To make fresh meat actually useful? Good idea.
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I dont agree that meat is not already useful, It's not the be all and end all of food now, but still useful.

Higher tier foods are still worth it, especially if you dont want to be hitting up vending machines every freaking day.

 
Rotten meat is definitely not 'super abundant.' It's one of the more annoying resources to gather, and I gather from ALL those mentioned sources. It's like gold now, which makes no sense at all.

I understand the gameplay reasons behind making zombies unharvestable (though that is a good idea for a mod, FilthyCasual), but why isn't there a recipe to turn regular meat into rotten meat? There ought to be a garbage can workstation that slowly turns meat into rotten meat, rotten meat into nitrate, and cornbread into moldy bread. I would love that.

 
I agree. Rotten meat is only "abundant" if you think a 5x5 farm is enough. Since I started playing in A15, I always loved farming, and I'd go industrial scale. Hundreds of plants. 10x10 of each crop. Now on day 22 (120 minute days), I have 36 farm plots. I've resigned to the fact that I will only be able to do 10 plants of each type, and even that is going to take ages. I have collected every scrap of rotten meat I've seen. Carcasses, body bags vultures, dogs, even hunted zombie bears in the bear den.

Nitrate is not a problem. Rotten flesh is. Either make it more abundant somehow, or lower the cost of the recipe by half. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to be able to have ~70 plots (up from 36 for me) on day 22 if you've gone out of your way to gather all the rotten flesh you see since day 1.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, I even went and got a couple points in Huntsman to increase yield. It's not helping much with the rotten flesh.

 
I agree. Rotten meat is only "abundant" if you think a 5x5 farm is enough. Since I started playing in A15, I always loved farming, and I'd go industrial scale. Hundreds of plants. 10x10 of each crop. Now on day 22 (120 minute days), I have 36 farm plots. I've resigned to the fact that I will only be able to do 10 plants of each type, and even that is going to take ages. I have collected every scrap of rotten meat I've seen. Carcasses, body bags vultures, dogs, even hunted zombie bears in the bear den.
Nitrate is not a problem. Rotten flesh is. Either make it more abundant somehow, or lower the cost of the recipe by half. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to be able to have ~70 plots (up from 36 for me) on day 22 if you've gone out of your way to gather all the rotten flesh you see since day 1.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, I even went and got a couple points in Huntsman to increase yield. It's not helping much with the rotten flesh.
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You have the right to love creating large farms. But if TFP allow it, it removes the survival aspect of the game. It's like saying "I like having all the weapons of every color and all the statistics, so it should be easier to get hold of weapons. " It may be good for a collector, but not so good for the gameplay.

With 20 farm plots, you are autonomous. Beyond that, it's only for the aesthetics of an industrial farm. Better to mod the game or use creative for that.

 
well, I tend to actually hunt zombears/dogs and vultures (not ripping into anyone) so I don't tend to have an issue with plots so far, doing a Fireman playthrough (A focused RP where my only melee is a fireaxe {stone axe as a weapon until I find a fireaxe} and looking for all Fireman's almanac books) and on day 4 I have 12 plots and the stuff to make I think 3 more (nomad, 90 min days 50% night{12hr day, 12hr night}, zeds sprint at night, vanilla days)

I mean, yeah it is a bit of an issue to find enough quickly if you don't seek it out as your goal, but it also isn't too hard either...but that's my experience and opinion

 
Nitrate is not a problem. Rotten flesh is. Either make it more abundant somehow, or lower the cost of the recipe by half. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to be able to have ~70 plots (up from 36 for me) on day 22 if you've gone out of your way to gather all the rotten flesh you see since day 1..
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I can confirm that. I went on a big grinding tour for 2 days. I harvested every roadkill, looted 2 doggos and killed 5 or 6 vultures. Then I was able to make 20 farming plots.

With normal gameplay I would have needed 2-3 weeks for this amount.

I guess I have to lower my expectations about what farming means. I'll probably plant a maximum of five per crop so I can get a slight surplus of veggie stews.

 
I agree. Rotten meat is only "abundant" if you think a 5x5 farm is enough. Since I started playing in A15, I always loved farming, and I'd go industrial scale. Hundreds of plants. 10x10 of each crop. Now on day 22 (120 minute days), I have 36 farm plots. I've resigned to the fact that I will only be able to do 10 plants of each type, and even that is going to take ages. I have collected every scrap of rotten meat I've seen. Carcasses, body bags vultures, dogs, even hunted zombie bears in the bear den.
Nitrate is not a problem. Rotten flesh is. Either make it more abundant somehow, or lower the cost of the recipe by half. I don't think it'd be unreasonable to be able to have ~70 plots (up from 36 for me) on day 22 if you've gone out of your way to gather all the rotten flesh you see since day 1.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, I even went and got a couple points in Huntsman to increase yield. It's not helping much with the rotten flesh.
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I agree. The fact of the matter is many people are saying "well you will have enough IF you harvest every corpse tile, every dog, every zombie bear AND go into the desert and kill birds all day" but honestly, it's putting a seed in the ground. People don't want to spend all of their time hunting for rotten flesh just to do something that should be as simple as digging a hole and putting in a seed. I get all the other arguments about balance etc, but this is a sandbox game, not a farming simulator. There are other things to do besides hunting for rotten flesh, as there SHOULD be. A person should not have to dedicate all their effort just to build a meager 5 plots when they could just loot houses instead for canned food. It disrupts the sandbox variety of playstyles by implementing too harsh a bottleneck in one avenue.

 
I agree. The fact of the matter is many people are saying "well you will have enough IF you harvest every corpse tile, every dog, every zombie bear AND go into the desert and kill birds all day" but honestly, it's putting a seed in the ground. People don't want to spend all of their time hunting for rotten flesh just to do something that should be as simple as digging a hole and putting in a seed. I get all the other arguments about balance etc, but this is a sandbox game, not a farming simulator. There are other things to do besides hunting for rotten flesh, as there SHOULD be. A person should not have to dedicate all their effort just to build a meager 5 plots when they could just loot houses instead for canned food. It disrupts the sandbox variety of playstyles by implementing too harsh a bottleneck in one avenue.
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For now the best thing to do is mod it the way you want. Hopefully, a more creative friendly /sandbox mode will be implemented at some point. The vanilla game mode is being balanced with a certain progression in mind.

 
I get all the other arguments about balance etc, but this is a sandbox game, not a farming simulator. There are other things to do besides hunting for rotten flesh, as there SHOULD be.
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But it's not a sandbox game, at least not in that traditional sense. It is a survival game. As you say, there are other things to do, and in fact, other things you have to do. That's the point. You have to make choices about what is most important at the moment to work toward.

Honestly, think about the game as if you actually were trying to survive in an apocalypse (zombie or otherwise). You can't just go make a 10x10 garden for 10 different fruits and vegetables. You wouldn't have time to manage all of that on top of repairing your dwelling, hunting and scouting, protecting yourself from threats, etc. You probably would have to start small, and as you had extra time or resources, expand on what you have. It basically is the same here.

Gardening and building always have been my favorite parts of this game. I loved getting my tree farm up with my plants because those things meant that I was moving toward self-sufficiency and away from the hard scrabble of scrounging around to survive. That's the thing, though, is I always had to work toward it (sometimes because RNG was a female dog and wouldn't give me a hoe). The same is true now. My garden has been slowly expanding, and I'm proud of it. It has been work, but that is as it should be in a survival game.

If you want a sandbox game, the creative menu is there for you.

 
You have the right to love creating large farms. But if TFP allow it, it removes the survival aspect of the game. It's like saying "I like having all the weapons of every color and all the statistics, so it should be easier to get hold of weapons. " It may be good for a collector, but not so good for the gameplay.
With 20 farm plots, you are autonomous. Beyond that, it's only for the aesthetics of an industrial farm. Better to mod the game or use creative for that.
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I have agree with Hek Harris here.

Industrial scale farming isn't intended, and if you want to do that, mod it in, there's precious little reason to have even a moderately sized farm, let alone a massive one, so the game should be balanced to building that moderate farm only.

 
I have agree with Hek Harris here.
Industrial scale farming isn't intended, and if you want to do that, mod it in, there's precious little reason to have even a moderately sized farm, let alone a massive one, so the game should be balanced to building that moderate farm only.
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This isn't a question about industrial sized farming as it is about initial gatekeeping. People on my server are lvl 50-72 (and there around about 200 players that rotate in and out) and very few people have more than 3 farm plots. That said if industrial farming doesn't have a purpose as you say, then there shouldn't be mechanics in place to discourage building them. Some people just want them for a variety of reasons, and that should be enough to allow them if they don't break the game. That said, farming has never been an unfair advantage. It's something that has added immersion, because honestly any player with a decent gun or even a melee weapon never starves in 72d2. It's something the pimps have discussed at length and have decided that its really the threat of zombies, not starvation that is key. So allowing farms is not what breaks the survival aspect of the game. Instead, farming allows for variety of foods, recipes and even medical care which adds a more immersive and interesting approach to survival. Honestly, no one with the capacity to farm has ever suffered for lack of food--there are far too many other routes.

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But it's not a sandbox game, at least not in that traditional sense. It is a survival game. As you say, there are other things to do, and in fact, other things you have to do. That's the point. You have to make choices about what is most important at the moment to work toward.
Honestly, think about the game as if you actually were trying to survive in an apocalypse (zombie or otherwise). You can't just go make a 10x10 garden for 10 different fruits and vegetables. You wouldn't have time to manage all of that on top of repairing your dwelling, hunting and scouting, protecting yourself from threats, etc. You probably would have to start small, and as you had extra time or resources, expand on what you have. It basically is the same here.

Gardening and building always have been my favorite parts of this game. I loved getting my tree farm up with my plants because those things meant that I was moving toward self-sufficiency and away from the hard scrabble of scrounging around to survive. That's the thing, though, is I always had to work toward it (sometimes because RNG was a female dog and wouldn't give me a hoe). The same is true now. My garden has been slowly expanding, and I'm proud of it. It has been work, but that is as it should be in a survival game.

If you want a sandbox game, the creative menu is there for you.
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I think you are over estimating the intended survival state of the game. And you already do make choices about what you do with farming, such as harvesting, planting, hoeing etc. You cannot break it down to infinite granularity just to make a point because then we'd have to decide whether or not to tie our shoes or shoot a deer. As I mentioned in another comment, farming has never given an unfair advantage since food is basically everywhere on the map. What it does is it allows variety and a different approach to food that some people enjoy over hunting of looting buildings. I presume the difference between where these comments come from are the context of their games. In single player, grind as much as you want, but we have a server of people who despite being high levels cannot make any farm plots. The farming mechanic is essentially removed from the game because of a lack of rotten flesh on the map. If you want to gatekeep it, at least do it with something attainable, but this notion of making something annoying just because it shouldnt be easy is not the right way to approach it.

 
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It is painful to get enough rotten meat for the plots at first, but you can find ones at some POI houses. It would be nice if we could dig them up and use them for ourselves. I would not mind seeing some sold at trader either if it doesn't already. I also assume the perk to get extra resources from animals has a use for rotten meat too. I had a dog horde earlier today and got about 100-120 rotten meat from that without the perk to get more resources.

 
I use a machete and 2 ranks of Huntsman. Not noticing much a difference in rotten meat yield.

We used to be able to dig up POI farm plots, but it was removed as it was "too OP".

 
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