PC Suggestion for farming

[ArneK]

I think that it is ridiculous that it takes 5 items to craft one seed. That’s way too many. Nobody is that bad at doing it.

What you developers could do is this:
- Make crafting seeds to cost only 2 items per seed.
- Make wild AND planted to drop only 1 item per harvest (unperked), but planted ones have 50% chance to return the seed as it is now.
- ”Living off the Land” perk would increase yield to twice and thrice (rank 1 and 3 respectively, other bonuses of the perk stays the same).
- Fortitude requirements for ”Living of the Land” perk stays as it is in a20.

So we would have per 10 harvested item:

Unperked (wild) – 10 items or 5 seeds, which is net loss if replanted.

Unperked (planted) – 10 items and 5 seeds on average, which is zero gain/lost if replanted. This is fine for non-farmer builds as seeds are not so rare in loot and non-farmer should be just planting new ones instead of crafting seeds. Starting your farmer career requires only one point in LotL.

LotL rank one (wild) – 20 items, which turn to 10 seeds to start your own farm. This means same amount of new plants as harvested, and thus zero net gain (at this point).

LotL rank one (planted) – 20 items and 5 seeds on average, which is 10 items in addition to replanting those 10 (as 5 new seeds are needed and it means 10 used items). The net gain is 1 item per seed. As it should be, because farms are usually huge, I might add. This is not too much, because of the time invested is still days. And not counting all the micromanagement required in farming. With 1 irl hour per game day setting, it’s quite punishing if you have a big farm or even multiple farms.

LotL rank three (wild) – 30 items, which turn to 10 seeds AND 10 items are still remaining. The net gain is somewhat 1 item per seed, but it turns to even more eventually.

LotL rank three (planted) – 30 items and 5 seeds on average, which is whooping 20 items in addition to replanting those 10. The net gain is 2 items per seed, which is ok.

If you want to make the rank three even more appealing, you could make it quadruple instead, and then the net gain would be 3 items per seed. Currently it's on average 3,5 items gained per seed (for 10 harvests).

And if this turns to be unbalanced, then adjust the numbers.

 

[ArneK]

Or even better: Make it individual for each plant type keeping the same new ratio.

Let's say we take the quadruple option from my previous post as it is more similar to what we have now (3 items gained per seed vs 3,5 it is currently).

Comparing numbers (items picked up) when planted those seeds (let's ignore the wild ones for now):

Item: Unperked / Rank 1 / Rank 3 / Required items per seed

Every type now AFAIK: 2 / 4 / 6 / 5

After changes:

Corn: 1 / 2 / 4 / 2

Mushroom: 1 / 2 / 4 / 2

Potato: 5 / 10 / 20 / 10 (last one is a bit weird though)

Aloe vera: 4 / 8 / 16 / 8 (maybe same weird thing here, I dunno)

Blueberry: 10 / 20 / 40 / 20 (most of those seeds won't grow into bushes I guess, so it's quite okay as it's now 100 % sprout rate)

etc.

Then adjust the cooking/crafting ingredients to match these new numbers. Well "baked potato" for example could be in plural as in "baked potatoes" with the same nutrition values as it is now. Or alternatively a "baked potato" would require only one fifth of the cooking time (which is currently 10 seconds, unperked) and nutrition values would be divided also by five. I guess you get the gist of it.

And one more thing: If A21 is more or less a complete overhaul of the perk/skill system, then you could change LotL perk tree into farming books or something.

edit: Also increase max stack value accordingly to avoid inventory issues with this individual harvesting thing.

 

[meganoth]

A21 is not a complete overhaul of the perk system. Though the magazines for crafting made balance adjustments necessary.

Your reason for wanting to change the seed ratios is only realism it seems, correct?

Well, 5 plants to get 1 seed can easily be rationalized by saying that through all the environmental damage it is very hard to make working seeds out of plants, i.e. most seeds wither away without growing.

And even your change is far from realism. Some posters who claimed to know better have said that you can get thousands of seeds out of only one potato. So realism is unattainable anyway.

Amounts of items in the game are never specified. 1 piece of meat would not be a full steak, one blueberry cake is maybe one slice, maybe two, but surely not a whole cake. 5 potatoes may not be 5 full potatoes but only 5 cutout pieces of a full potato with all the rotten parts already thrown away.

Gameplay reasons were always more important for TFP than realism (they have said something like this in discussions). You will have a hard time convincing them to invest precious dev time into changing this ONLY for realism.

 

[ArneK]

My second post was more towards realism (to make farming AND cooking more realistic) as currently for example a single blueberry pie requires only 5 blueberries. If you multiple that by 10, as in my example, it is now 50 blueberries for one pie, which is more close to what is in real life. And 6 corns from one crop is slightly too much as it is now (I believe 4 can be done irl).

But my OP was more of stating that farming is really punishing in a20:

When unperked (LotL) you get only one item from the wild and two from your own farm. So if you plant 10 seeds on your farm you get 20 items + 5 seeds on average. Turn those into seeds and it's only 9 seeds on average, which is less than you started with. My example was to make it even, because in a20 you are really really discouraged to make seeds as you get 20 items instead of 10 as in my example for less seeds (9 vs 10).

With LotL rank 1 you get 40 items + 5 seeds on average, which is then 15 items in addition to replanting. In my example it only 10 items per seed, which was actually lower than it is currently. With LotL rank 3 it's 3,5 (a20) vs 3 items gained per seed in my example.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure it's that good idea to make farming ratios even lower than it is in a20. I'd like to see getting seeds more easily from plants and harvesting smaller numbers per plant. Maybe by increasing the return rate for seeds we could find the sweet spot.

 

[ArneK]

With my example:

Planted/Unperked/Rank 1/Rank 3/# per seed
1    /    1    /    2    /    4    /    2

Let's say we alter the return rate for seeds to 75 %:

LotL tier / Planted / Harvested / # of seeds / # of new seeds / Items gained / Ratio
Unperked /   10   /    10    /    7,5    /    2,5    /    5     /   0,5 (is now positive!)
Rank 1     /  10    /    20    /    7,5    /    2,5    /    15    /   1,5
Rank 3     /  10    /    40    /    7,5    /    2,5    /    35    /   3,5

Which is just the same what we have now, except as unperked it wouldn't be punishing to farm. Now the ratios are perfect (imo) and you wouldn't get huge amount of items just by planting seeds you find.

There. The sweet spot.

 

[BFT2020]

But my OP was more of stating that farming is really punishing in a20:

When unperked (LotL) you get only one item from the wild and two from your own farm. So if you plant 10 seeds on your farm you get 20 items + 5 seeds on average. Turn those into seeds and it's only 9 seeds on average, which is less than you started with. My example was to make it even, because in a20 you are really really discouraged to make seeds as you get 20 items instead of 10 as in my example for less seeds (9 vs 10).

But that is the whole reason for the changes.  You can't just become a successful farmer without perking into LoTL at all; so it should be punishing to try to be a farmer without the baseline skills in it.  At LoTL 0, you can gather crops and even plant seeds you find, but you are not going to be able to self-sustain a farm off of your initial seed plantings.

 

[ArneK]

Y

But that is the whole reason for the changes.  You can't just become a successful farmer without perking into LoTL at all; so it should be punishing to try to be a farmer without the baseline skills in it.  At LoTL 0, you can gather crops and even plant seeds you find, but you are not going to be able to self-sustain a farm off of your initial seed plantings.

Yeah, but in a20 it is that even the one with the perks is encouraged to just plant seeds they find to get ridiculous amount items (10 seeds turn to 60 plants and it's ridiculously huge amount for only fortitude rank 5 and 3 talent points for the perk). I'd really like to see smaller numbers there, as in my example it is only 10 to 40.

Maybe the unperked could be +/- zero ratio, but that would require seed return rate to be lower than 75 %. As in my example it would be 50 % to get it even for unperked character.

edited: wrong number typo.

 

[meganoth]

I can see a good argument for having LotL0 give back zero instead of less than zero on average. It would allow non-farmers to gamble even though on average it still doesn't make any sense to convert plants to seeds. 

The argument about the pie is again a realism argument or a misunderstanding. The icon may show a full blueberry pie, but what you produce in reality may be any small amount of pie. One blueberry item in the game should also not be seen as exactly 1 blueberry fruit but for example a handful of blueberries. In other words some arbitrary amount of blueberries that is enough to produce 1/5th of a piece of blueberry pie that gives you 45 food.

I don't have any internal info from TFP, so who knows what they will think or say. But I would guess that they would already have used realistic amounts from the start if that had been important to them.

 

[ArneK]

Yeah realism is somewhat subjective thing in this and I get your point.

But what bothers me a bit is that even with a stone axe you can get resources like wood, stone, iron, lead, etc. It is slow, but doable and the net gain is always positive. You can even break gun safes with just banging them with a stone axe and repair as needed. The net gain being positive again (excluding stones required in repairs).

With farming the negative gains are slightly odd in that perspective. Considering that farming requires time which is very limited in the game. Even then the unperked one might still hinder himself by farming inefficiently (but with small positive gains) and not doing quests and looting with that time. Plus farming requires eating food you craft with the items you harvest and hindering your progress more. So even that 0,5 ratio is actually a bit less when farming, because of time and food spent while doing it.

But I also understand that farms produces while you are away and then it kinda makes sense that unperked character is penalized as it requires just one perk point to make it unpenalized.

I understand also that this is just a game and they are trying to balance things. I just think that the numbers are not where they should be.

 

[Roland]

The other problem is that you are basing your changes on the A20 version when we are at the end of the A20 life cycle. A21 will be different. One major difference is that seeds and raw crops are more plentiful in loot in A21. Not so plentiful as to render farming irrelevant if you do a ton of looting but definitely providing more materials to players for farming. 
 

You should revisit this feedback once A21 releases and is new. 

 

[Riamus]

If you want realism in farming, it should take months before you can harvest your cross and you should have to water and weed your garden regularly and deal with things like insects and rabbits.  I doubt that is what you want even though you say you want realism.

As meganoth pointed out, it is a matter of perspective. One blueberry in the game may be a handful and even though the blueberry pie shows a full pie, it may be one slice.  If you consider that the numbers and sizes may not be what they seem at first glance, it begins to make more sense.  Also, as I mentioned, farming takes time in real life.  If you were to look at it as if the game let you get early harvests, you may find the numbers closer after a few months to what you expect.  Depending on your time settings, you harvest crops in the game about every 1-3 days or so (maybe more on really short days).  So you are getting anywhere from 30-90 times your harvest by the time you would harvest in real life.  That includes seeds and crops.  Even considering you are spending seeds to replant during that time when that wouldn't be the case in real life, you are still getting a really good harvest in the amount of time a real harvest would take.  Just something to consider.

 

[katarynna]

With farming the negative gains are slightly odd in that perspective. Considering that farming requires time which is very limited in the game. Even then the unperked one might still hinder himself by farming inefficiently (but with small positive gains) and not doing quests and looting with that time. Plus farming requires eating food you craft with the items you harvest and hindering your progress more. So even that 0,5 ratio is actually a bit less when farming, because of time and food spent while doing it.

I farm efficiently with lotl 0.

The thing i keep in mind is that my character knows nothing much about farming, so i never craft seeds at lotl0.

I craft enough farm plots to plant all the seeds i currently have, adding to the amount as needed. I plant every seed i find or buy, and use the crops for food/drinks/etc. I spend very little time on farming doing it that way, and my harvest is always positive because i get usable items from found seeds.

If i want to be a skilled farmer, i put points into lotl and focus on having a larger, more productive farm and crafting seeds as needed.

That actually makes sense to me, and i have no problems with it.

The only change to farming i would love to have is that if you are going to get a seed back, i wish the seed would remain in the farm plot instead of returning to your inventory. To me, getting your seed in your inventory that you then have to replant is just tedium, much like sharp sticks used to be.

 

[ArneK]

I farm efficiently with lotl 0.

The thing i keep in mind is that my character knows nothing much about farming, so i never craft seeds at lotl0.

I guess it is "fine" as it is then. You plant seeds you find and get enough food without ever perking into it (which was the problem in the first place as the initial harvest production is TOO HIGH as I said multiple times).

If you can sustain your foods in day 200 or even 2000 without perking into it, then I sush myself and consider LotL as a useless perk (excluding multiplayer situations where they might come in handy).

 

[katarynna]

If you don't perk into farming, you don't rely on farming for 100% of your food.  It is a supplement only.

If you are perking heavily into intellect, your best food source may come from the trader(both buying their stock and looting quest pois) and vending machines. If you are perking heavily into ranged weapons, hunting animals may be your primary food source.

If you want farming to be your primary food source, you perk into it. If you decide not to make farming your primary food source, you can still use it efficiently and easily to be a supplemental food source. Just as if you want farming to be your primary food source, you supplement it with hunting and looting/buying canned food and eggs.

You can eat high value foods regardless of what activity provides your primary food source.