Horse/bull-drawn plows - simple, awesome

[Nitara 0]

Since this is insanely long (it's simple since it uses existing mechanics in new ways, not so simple to explain) I'll start with this:

TL;DR: horse-drawn plows could allow convenient farming that requires less user input than farming with a rake, but requires slightly more planning to take full advantage of, while requiring minimal changes to the current game mechanics and function.   Didja know that's also called a thesis statement?  sod off, internet...

Anyway.  So, it's been suggested before, but was nearly a full year ago, so it bears mentioning.  Wurm would benefit tremendously from adding plows or similar animal-assisted farming implements.  Farming is one of those mundane tasks some find relaxing, but most, I imagine, find simply time-consuming.  While recent changes result in less material usage, I think having a convenient way of tending fields could be balanced in such a way as to make life easier, while not making the results inordinately superior to doing things the hard way.

An important note: I do not advocate any degree of automation, or using the following for tending fields.

As a quick foreword, I'm going to note that we're talking about very general equipment here thrown under a common label of "plow."  Things would rapidly become too complicated if we began talking about throwing in tilling, or combines, or whatever - let's just use our imagination, since it's wurm, so that this is a feasible, practical addition to the game.

Let's start with the tools.  A plow should require an animal to pull, either a horse or bull - hitch that to the plow in order to use it.  I suppose one could make a case for dragging a plow slowly by hand, but that's beside the point.  The plow itself should function similar to a cart, one commander, no passengers.  No inventory (will touch on this later), not lockable.  Made likely from planks, shafts, a yoke, and a (steel, ideally) plow blade.  The blade should be fairly massive.  Perhaps a bridle could be attached as well, just to make the poor bridles feel better by having a purpose.

Now, as for usage... the commander would mount the plow and move forward or steer.  The plow should travel at a speed that results in tending fields just slightly faster than doing so by hand, which at present is 4-5s with timer changes and a decent rake at full stam.  Maybe 3.5-4s to pass over a tile, but with no speed reduction for stamina - this way it'd be impractical for small fields but would save some time and key-spamming for larger fields.  As the plow passes over a tile, it should essentially take the tile from packed dirt or ripe farm to sown field, which takes us to... 

Mechanics.  All this stuff like fertilizer, etc - great ideas. Awesome, but they're just more complicated piles of stuff that server minimal purpose.  Plows can simply serve the purpose of a) harvesting and cultivating, with sowing added in if possible.  The ideal way to do this would be for the plow to have two results of passing over a tile, or nothing at all: if the tile is packed dirt it cultivates it (and sows seeds, again if possible), and if the tile is a field, it harvests the field, regardless of growth stage.  Just as you take drown and thorn damage when crossing a tile border, and just as grass is packed, the plow would change the state of the tile beneath it to cultivated dirt (or freshly sown field). 

Now as far as harvesting, and the whole sowing bit.  An ambitious programmer might find a way to include an inventory (hopper) on the plow for seed to be planted on dirt that the plow passes over.  Essentially any farm or dirt tile that is passed is harvested, then sown with the first seed in inventory (similar to the fashion in which one can use items in a pouch from the toolbelt).  More importantly, I think, would be an inventory where harvested plants would go - perhaps a small cart behind the plow, or something - any crops, ripe or not, that the plow passes over go straight into that container.  The simpler alternative would be for them to fall out on the ground, or go into the player inventory.  I mention that any field, ripe or not, should be harvested since the idea is that one would need to time their harvest properly in order to take advantage of the added convenience - harvesting too soon would result in some fields producing nothing, and waiting too long would cause some fields to go to weed.  The wise farmer would harvest the handful of early crops by hand and leave the dirt for sowing by the plow the next day.. of course, the random nature of crop growth with the fairly narrow span to harvest in similar ratio to growth time could make this rather erratic; a correction could be made by either increasing growth time slightly overall, or by narrowing the amount of deviation from the average growth time to make crop growth and maturation more predictable.

*whew* alright, sorry that was so long, but I feel that fleshing out the full idea and means of implementing will make this straightforward enough that Rolf might find it feasible.  Let me know what you think... if you got this far lol.

OH YEAH.  Almost forgot.  Would be great to hitch horses to catapults in the same way.

[Aetherwalker 1,863]

This needs refining, but I can see it being awesome.

[Dralor 9]

as a whole i like the idea only thing i have trouble with is the amount of time you want it to take.

I think the time should be based on the base time for a new character with 10ql rake to do the same actions, then balanced with farming and animal husbandry skills.

IE packing takes 10 sec, cultivating takes 10sec sowing takes 10sec = 30sec with discount from lvl 10 farming skill 10 animal husbandry 0 = you get maybe 28 second total time

Note: timers are no where near close, just hope you can see my point

[megakaktus 4]

+1

[tmcxba 0]

only problem i see with this would be it harvesting everything you drove it over.  But if we could get crops to always take the same amount of time to go from sown to ripe this would be sweet.

that, or it (magically) only harvests crops that are ripe or weeds (lol)

but, IRL.. you dont see farmers running around their fields everyday harvesting this plant, then the next day that plant.. they do the harvesting all at once so pretty silly that wurm has a 5-7 day span for a crop to reach ripe (not to mention just plain annoying).  I'd rather see it all take 7 days flat personally (then could do all my farming in one go on the weekend and not havta do this silly harvest some tiles this day and some tiles that day)

Also.. would driving the plow give the skills of doing it manually?