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Vaelir

Farming Enhancements? Sowing/Harvest

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As an engineer I would like to see some level on ingenuity added into the farming system, we have carts and wagons in the game and warmachines, so why not some contraptions which can be pulled by a horse/cow/bull to aid farming? 

 

I'm thinking along the lines of making the mundane activities a little more fun, speeding up things like sowing, but not making Farming become too easy to mass farm or skill gain. 

For example, I some kind of contraption made with 2 ropes, small wheel axle, shafts, planks, maybe add some scythe blades in for fun, and a bucket, which would be used as a "hopper" to add in the seeds to be planted. Then hitch a domestic animal to the newly engineered device and lead or ride the animal through your dirt to either "cultivate" (if passes over grass/packed tiles) or sow (if passes over dirt tiles, and seeds are in the bucket) spreading seeds to the tile the player is on and one either side?

 

I do not want to effect the wurm economy too drastically, nor skill gain, so would not do this for "Tending", but perhaps it could be implemented for "Harvest" with the amount harvested been scooped into the device too into a form of bin (made from the planks). The Harvest amount would be linked to the amount of "Tending" the player had manually done (as they do today), and would provide low skill gain. 

 

Basically, making the sow/harvest operations a bit faster, but low skill gain and very low produce if no tending is done. 

I think this would make it a little more interesting, and fun, whilst speeding up the sowing and harvesting elements which can get quite boring.

 

 

I admit, I haven't thought through the details to a great extent, but I believe crafting a wooden device, hitching, and adding seeds (like in the chicken coops) is all existing functionality so shouldn't be too difficult to implement? (Maybe sowing as we walk over a tile would be trickier for the dev team?).

In terms of being a sandbox I'd already have invented such a device if I could only use my carving knife to make a few cams to add to a shaft! ;) 

 

There would be further room to improve the design, for example having the blades as something we attach like in the new fishing system.

Eg. adding scythe blades or trowel blades to harvest (depending on type of seed), small buckets (with seeds) to sow.

 

Any thoughts or further suggestions?

Apologies if similar has been suggested in the past.

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8 minutes ago, Vaelir said:

 

Basically, making the sow/harvest operations a bit faster, but low skill gain and very low produce if no tending is done. 

I think this would make it a little more interesting, and fun, whilst speeding up the sowing and harvesting elements which can get quite boring.

 

 

Just to build on this point of "very low produce" the intent here being that mass farming/markets shouldn't be affected by people who ONLY use the device to sow and harvest and never tend their fields. (ie. no tending and you get 1 maybe 2 yield)

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I love the idea. Thing is tho, that there are so many toons with very high farming skill, and the market for vegetables is already pretty tough. My first impression to this is that the enchanters will get even more veggies to even better price.

 

Isolated, i think this is a neat improvement. In the big picture it may have a little too big impact.

That is maybe inevitable when improving/changing any of the mechanics of this game tho.

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I like this idea but imo its gonna cause a drop in prices, sowing and harvesting is pretty time consuming now, so "Farmer X" only has a 100x100 field cause he doesnt have the time to maintain a bigger farm. With tools like that he could make a 1000x1000 farm and just get massive amounts of veggies. Even if without tending you'd get a 1-2 yield per tile it still might be worth it since it would be really easy to replant the fields - just hitch 2x5speed hell horses with rare gear to it and plow the fields 30km/h

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1 minute ago, happysad said:

just hitch 2x5speed hell horses with rare gear to it and plow the fields 30km/h 

 

I think a massive speed penalty on the construct would be obvious and appropiate; plowing does require having the metal piece embedded in the ground and dragged through it after all.. Possibly make it have a feature to "deploy" so it's not active, and therefore slow, all the time.

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2 minutes ago, Flubb said:

 

I think a massive speed penalty on the construct would be obvious and appropiate; plowing does require having the metal piece embedded in the ground and dragged through it after all.. Possibly make it have a feature to "deploy" so it's not active, and therefore slow, all the time.


Even if its slow, you could just make a strip farm and just press 'x' to auto-run and go afk. I see a lot of potential to exploit this system.

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1 minute ago, Flubb said:

 

I think a massive speed penalty on the construct would be obvious and appropiate; plowing does require having the metal piece embedded in the ground and dragged through it after all.. Possibly make it have a feature to "deploy" so it's not active, and therefore slow, all the time.

 

 

Like the idea of the "deploy" option, and a speed penalty could work to limit impact on the market, as could other methods such as ensuring that tending was imperitive to getting a good yield - maybe tending increases QL of yield in addition to quantity rather than always being a 100ql harvest? - that way high ql veggies for saccing would require a rake and some level of manual labour to see good returns!

 

(I think raking each field daily to ensure 100QL makes sense, if you leave them and only come back to harvest in reality QL would be poor due to disease, birds etc... crops need attention!) That way you cant just get on a 30km mount, sow and harvest, as you'd get crap QL, maybe as low as 30-40ql with 0 tending?

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In fact ensuring tending is required for maximum yield QL (max based on farming skill) would likely help the veggie market as less 100ql crops would be farmed if people didn't put in the effort required?

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14 hours ago, Vaelir said:

In fact ensuring tending is required for maximum yield QL (max based on farming skill) would likely help the veggie market as less 100ql crops would be farmed if people didn't put in the effort required?

And you don't get 100ql just because you miss to log and tend fields one day in a week just but you tended it every other day because you have real life. No thanks. Tending should only increase yield, and it should increase it significantly compared not tending at all which is ridiculous low difference now. Sowing is the most boring part of farming for me, I would like to see that automated

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15 hours ago, kochinac said:

And you don't get 100ql just because you miss to log and tend fields one day in a week just but you tended it every other day because you have real life. No thanks. Tending should only increase yield, and it should increase it significantly compared not tending at all which is ridiculous low difference now. Sowing is the most boring part of farming for me, I would like to see that automated

 

I can see that reasoning, it's fair not to make missing a day devastating, but perhaps one or two tends per tile is enough just to prevent the whole system being automated?

Also increasing yield for those who go the extra mile and tend more?

 

I have to be honest, it was the sowing part which bores me the most too, I don't mind tending and harvesting. Any suggestion to automate sowing whilst not negatively impacting other aspects of the game would be welcome. - My initial thought was tying small buckets filled with seeds to chickens and scaring them around an enclosed field, but it kind of evolved from that ^-^

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