A new farm meta

gamatron332 · 2020-09-10 02:37:35

In the recent updates we have received some amazing tools to help in our agriculture and late game advancements. However. The current common infrastructure is not suitable for these advancements thus making it harder to implement them. What we need is a new farm layout that makes it as simple as building the new tools and using them rather than having to tear up the center of our towns. This layout should be used as early as possible to make it a 2-3 generation process of teching up rather than a 5 or so project.

This however has some restrictions. First of all the most limiting factor is that to make proper use of the tools the farm has to be west-east orientated. The second is the sprinkler system needs to be planned long before it is ever implemented or we will have the same problem as before about the whole revamp situation. Finally there is a minimum length to make this setup actually better than before. (Thank miskas and the others for their contribution!!) the current rough estimate is 13-14 minimum farm tile for better resource management(which is a lot for people without zoom) and 3-4 minimum for sprinkler to be better.

Now crops. It’s true. The amount that would be grown per lane would be too much. But separating the crops requires a certain amount of coordination that we can’t muster (currently) so we have a problem of conflicting parameters and a bad option B. Currently the only option I see is option B and... yeah. Hope the community can help with that one. With the produced amount of food we will need better and larger storage solutions(like a warehouse) to combat this

Finally the actual physical(lol) layout. I’m guessing that some where between 15 and 18 spaces as multiples of 3 are pretty. With spacing for pipes. The question of pipe layout comes to mind. Should we connect the entire system for maximum water efficiency? Or separate for more storage space. I’ll leave that to the community.

Tl:dr
Looking for help from the community as to the current crisis of late game farm layout and overall farm meta

Last edited by gamatron332 (2020-09-10 02:40:06)

Matbat · 2020-09-10 03:50:56

gamatron332 wrote:

Now crops. It’s true. The amount that would be grown per lane would be too much. But separating the crops requires a certain amount of coordination that we can’t muster (currently) so we have a problem of conflicting parameters and a bad option B. Currently the only option I see is option B and... yeah. Hope the community can help with that one. With the produced amount of food we will need better and larger storage solutions(like a warehouse) to combat this

Comment 1 that doesn't add much to discussion: if we had a better and cheaper (than bowls in boxes) way to store seeds. Right now you have your seeds next to the small 3x3 farm plot, what gets planted there? whatever seed is nearby or whatever is growing.

Farm lanes we may have seeds off to a side or corner or in a box nearby but keeping the amount of seeds to produce a whole lane of crops (of one particular plant) other than corn and wheat is helplessly difficult, if we could mass produce seeds and conveniently store them without using useful bowls and evermore useful boxes all without stuffing all of it (in bowls, that is) out of sight where vanilla players can't see them.

Extra opinion that doesn't add much to discussion: The sprinkler (and plow) system is technology we don't exactly -need- right now, as a small player base we consume the kero we get right now at well.. I guess you'd have to call it average.. pace.
if the player base was double of what we have on average (doubling population in each town, not doubling amount of towns) we'd see emergence of more efficient farming such to save kero, as getting more and more will cost more and more time and eventually people may give up on a town due to ineffectiveness of tapping far away oil.

Cogito · 2020-09-10 05:49:35

I enjoy all the ins and outs of plough and sprinkler farming.

Once set up an individual can farm an inordinate amount of food for pretty much no marginal cost.

In terms of spacing, the sprinkler head should be placed close to the kitchen. There is a minimum required vertical space of 7 tiles - more is better. This is made up of 1 tile for the sprinklers, 1 row either side for crops, and 2 rows either side of that for harvesting. If there is extra space on only one side that is still useful, as that side will be used for crops like wheat. Allocate and occupy more space than you think you will need, but at least 7 vertical tiles.

The sprinkler system will run to the west, and should be one long line. There is no value it turning the rows around, as it makes ground preparation and harvesting much more difficult.

Starting with 3-6 sprinklers is fine, and worth doing. Aim for space for at least 15, but even more is better.

Make sure a lot more space is allocated and occupied early on, by laying flooring in long horizontal rows. My preference is for fast stone roads directly above and below the crops, however this does make interacting with the farm difficult for some people. An option I have not tried yet, but would like to, is to fast stone road down the centre where the sprinklers are, with cut stone paths above and below the 2 lines of crops.

Use the plough! The plough turns a hardened row into a deep tilled row!!!! With the plough the only crop that needs soil is milkweed.

Plant and harvest a lot of wheat initially. Turn all the straw into baskets - let people take some for compost if needed, but you don't need soil to farm when you have a plough.

Harvest all produce into baskets. Fill baskets with tomatoes, corn, pickles, peppers, onions, carrots - anything and everything that will fit. Harvested wheat goes into buckets.

Until we have better harvesting and storage options, get those baskets into carts and take them to the kitchen and feast halls.

Make more baskets.

----

Individually I was able to do 4+ harvests on a 12 long sprinkler system in one life. This is a lot of food. I did not make enough baskets, so was harvesting onto piles on the ground. This slowed me down a bit, but was faster than moving all the produce away. I would have had to move the produce if I continued, so what I've written above is more about long term sustainability.

There were a lot of seeds around from the 'traditional' farms (ie people letting carrots go to seed) and corn and wheat are very easy to mass farm. I did need to start managing seeds a bit better, especially for peppers and the like. This was one of the more annoying aspects of farming, but still fairly quick.

Set up the infrastructure, and there will be food!

Rookwood · 2020-09-10 14:26:42

I tried to make sprinklers a thing about a month ago and pretty much every veteran player has too. I have had perfect setups of 15+ sprinklers only to come back the next day and it was all gone. These were large mature towns as well.

The thing is that the average player doesn't know how to use them and doesn't see their value. The average player won't read this thread. The average player, one of the first things they learn is how to farm in 3x3 squares with hoes, so that is what they will do. For every player, this is a huge part of the game's content. Sprinklers and plows eliminate a lot of the game's content as a result. Sprinklers and plows really only provide content for the elite players, typically using zoom mod, who set up the sprinkler for the first time. After that, if the town were to actually use the sprinklers, there would be a lot less to do. Lastly, there are not very many elite players actively playing right now. Those that are have to struggle to keep the town alive from the never-ending tide of munchers and griefers. They don't have time to forge sprinklers all life and then set them up and then have no one to use them after they die.

Perhaps when we get new content that brings back more veteran players, we will see sprinklers used again, but there is another thing to consider. Sprinklers are very much like paved roads, in that, they are long objects that typically extend off screen but very easy to grief. I suspect if sprinklers actually became meta, they would just get constantly griefed and be more headache than they are worth. Not to mention that the sprinkler and plow must both be kept behind a property fence, making them another thing on the leader's plate. It's much easier to keep an eye on and much more difficult to grief the current farm meta.

Last edited by Rookwood (2020-09-10 14:37:45)

DestinyCall · 2020-09-10 15:19:28

Considering that we have yet to adopt living inside buildings as meta, despite the huge temperature benefits, I don't forsee sprinklers and plows becoming meta. They are not as useless as cars and planes, but they are too inaccessible for the average player to learn about and maintain.

The best you could hope for would be to develop a group of dedicated players who run the plows/sprinklers for everyone, like we currently have veterans who pump and distribute oil to all towns. Regular farming is a good job for new players to learn so it is valuable in any town. Very useful skill, hard to mess up, and low barrier to entry. Advanced farming methods are none of those things.

Instead of assuming that advanced farms will REPLACE basic farming at some point, I would think of them as a useful supplemental food source that will likely only get used once in a blue moon. Until the right person comes along, it is about as useful as a wolf farm. Therefore, if I was designing a sprinkler setup, I would do it away from the main farm area, rather than planning to replace it when we reach sprinkler tech. Inactive sprinklers just get in the way of normal farming. And most people won't know how to use (or be able to access) the plow. Just pick a good spot to the north or south of town to create the big fields necessary for plows/sprinklers. Or farm along the paved roads that we should be making meta to connect our towns together.

I don't see the point of trying to intentionally design the early farms to accommodate late-game farming methods. They do not belong together.

antking:]# · 2020-09-10 16:36:38

In a prefect world we would have a few mega farms that would be in the center of a ring of villages and towns, this mega farm would produce the basics:
Wheat
Corn
Squash
Beans
Carrots
&
Berries

in the towns surrounding the mega farm is where they would produce more specialized crops in the traditional 3*3 fields some examples being
cucumbers
tomatoes
Dill
Garlic
mutton
EX
but this is not a prefect world and organizing this type of system would be to demanding on vets, and
Their will always be some Berry Priest claiming that "the lord Jason needs more Berries!!!" and proceed to flood the town

Last edited by antking:]# (2020-09-10 16:37:51)

Villas · 2020-09-10 19:24:50

Your idea is good, but I also don't see it becoming meta.
It might be better than usual farm in terms of water and soilwise, although we can easily live with the usual farming system, so people won't make an effort to change it. Principally because the farm would be ugly and too wide to take care of until we get the tech enough to make it "automatic".

The only way I see it being essential is if we get thousands of players online, mega-cities and whatnot, so industrial production of food, clothes and whatnot would be useful. Currently it is like an wolf pen as Destiny said, too much work to make way more than we need.

Don't get me wrong, having much more than we need is still good, but it's more a thing two bored veterans would do than a thing that would naturally be done in any town.

I hope one day it becomes widely used, I love new top tech stuff and have fun building/using it.

Erudaru · 2020-09-10 19:43:14

I think storage and space are the keywords here. The most common problem with those farms I saw was that they either were in the outskirts of the town so most newish players didn't even discover it, or they are surrounded by buildings and stuff which makes harvesting a nightmare.

I used to see people make track cart storages but for a long time I didn't see any, maybe they are too complicated or expensive?

Spoonwood · 2020-09-10 20:00:16

Villas wrote:

The only way I see it being essential is if we get thousands of players online, mega-cities and whatnot, so industrial production of food, clothes and whatnot would be useful. Currently it is like an wolf pen as Destiny said, too much work to make way more than we need.

The server limit for bs2 is under 150 people at present if I recall correctly. And no server has had more than 600 people maximum for as long as I know, which was like February of 2019. So, not even close to thousands of people on a server in priniciple.

gamatron332 · 2020-09-11 14:32:41

What I am seeing a lot of is people saying that the learning curve would be too much or that the current method “gets it done“. To explain why I think this is faulty reasoning I have prepared a illustration.

Imagine for a moment that you are cutting down trees (irl) with a axe. The axe is doing fine at cutting down the trees and is the best way you have to do so. You are content with the axe. Then a comes up to you and says “ you have done well! Here is a chainsaw to help you. It is faster, more efficient , and produces more wood. The only problem is that it is harder to learn than your axe. Take it if you want it.”

Would you then say “ no thanks. It is too hard to learn” or “ the axe does the same job I’ll stick with it”? No! Of course not. You would take the chainsaw as fast as you could because in light of the chainsaw the axe is worth much less and is far less useful.

We the community are the tree cutter. The axe is the current farm meta, and the chainsaw is the proposed one. Would we really pass over the new tools because they are harder to learn? Or the current way gets it done? of course not. This is why I have come to the community for help designing, perfecting, and implementing our new tools.

If you think that you would rather not that is fine. But I wish to use these tools to the fullest and will do so as possible.

Come wield this chainsaw together and leave the axe for the geese.

-Gama

Rookwood · 2020-09-11 14:40:45

You're going to have to be the change you want to see then. Like I said, I've tried this before and people just don't use sprinklers.

I would if I saw one set up, but I've wasted my time enough setting them up only for them to be dismantled a few hours later.

gamatron332 · 2020-09-11 14:47:00

It may be a one man band then but I’m gonna try. If you ever see a eve chewing out her kids because they didn’t plant the berrys in a line... that’s gonna Be me

Rookwood · 2020-09-11 14:50:04

Lol, if I'm your kid, I'll do my best.

DestinyCall · 2020-09-11 15:41:39

As someone that actually owns multiple chainsaws, axes, handsaws, and loppers (and I know how to use them), I can say with confidence that just because you have a big chainsaw, that doesn't mean it is the best tool for the job.

I will reach for the loppers or handsaw for most small jobs. The electric chainsaw for medium sized jobs and small trees. The big gas-powered chainsaw only comes out to play when I am looking at a really big tree. I rarely use it. But when I need it, I am glad that I have one and know how to operate it safely. It has saved my butt after a wind or ice storm on more than one occasion.

That being said, I would never throw away my hand tools, just because I own a power tool. And I don't think it makes any sense to stop using basic farming methods completely.

If you want to integrate sprinkler tech into town design meta, I think you need to reconsider your core assumptions. We are not going to just "throw away our axe". Sprinklers are not a direct replacement for basic farming methods in their current form. They probably never will be.

You can brainstorm ideal sprinkler layout with other vetrans, but when it comes to meta-changes, those don't happen just because it "makes sense" on paper. If that is how it worked, milk would have been the only food in every town before the big food nerf.

Villas · 2020-09-11 18:15:31

Spoonwood wrote:

The server limit for bs2 is under 150 people at present if I recall correctly. And no server has had more than 600 people maximum for as long as I know, which was like February of 2019. So, not even close to thousands of people on a server in priniciple.

Yeah man, I know. I'm not complaining nor suggesting anything, I am happy with the current stage of the game. Just saying that industrial production would be needed if we had thousands of players online. Currently the meta allows us to produce way more than the whole server needs, so we don't need to go meta.

gamatron332 · 2020-09-11 23:05:44

@cogito I am definitely gonna try and use your design.. when I was working on it I entirely forgot workspace and before engine problems.

Cogito · 2020-09-12 02:57:42

gamatron332 wrote:

@cogito I am definitely gonna try and use your design.. when I was working on it I entirely forgot workspace and before engine problems.

It's not too hard to do, main thing is leaving enough space, and ideally having the start of the farm near the bakery (but otherwise on unused land).

gamatron332 wrote:

It may be a one man band then but I’m gonna try. If you ever see a eve chewing out her kids because they didn’t plant the berrys in a line... that’s gonna Be me

I *hate* berries as part of the sprinkler system, as they restrict usage of the plough. Potentially you could have one side as berries and the other as crops - this would certainly reduce water used for berries. The downside is that sprinkler farming other crops becomes twice as slow.

When I've done this farming before I would have an entire row planted and watered, growing, while I prepare the other row - harvest, plough, and plant. It was relatively easy to alternate between the two.

Perhaps there is an end game where you have a lot of sprinklers built, and can devote a section to berries. They certainly use a lot of water if you are trying to make a lot of mash. They just seem so slow.

gamatron332 · 2020-09-12 17:42:03

Cogito wrote:

I *hate* berries as part of the sprinkler system, as they restrict usage of the plough. Potentially you could have one side as berries and the other as crops - this would certainly reduce water used for berries.
Perhaps there is an end game where you have a lot of sprinklers built, and can devote a section to berries. They certainly use a lot of water if you are trying to make a lot of mash. They just seem so slow.

I was thinking 18 long rows For a farm with a single row of berries (that’s 2 3x3 plots which is enough for any civ.) that could be easy to implement.

Cogito · 2020-09-13 08:11:15

gamatron332 wrote:

I was thinking 18 long rows For a farm with a single row of berries (that’s 2 3x3 plots which is enough for any civ.) that could be easy to implement.

Berries are a lot more work than the other crops (beans come close), and don't benefit from the plough.

If you need a lot of berries, and the water is an issue, then having one row of berries may make sense.

For these berries, every 10 minutes, you will need 18 soil and 18 empty bowls. In return you save 17 bowls of water.

This is a good trade, but it comes at the expense of 18 other crops that don't require any soil. You do have to plant these other crops, but that is far easier as long as you have the seeds ready (wheat and corn in particular).

These crops are also faster to grow. Compare 4 minutes for corn and 6.5 minutes for wheat to the 10 minutes for berries.

Staked crops require a bit of work to add the stgakes, and take 5 minutes to grow, still better than berries.

The main drawback to berries is the soil requirement. Once you get rid of the soil requirement (thanks to ploughing hard rows) the other crops are so easy and fast to farm.

gamatron332 · 2020-09-13 15:11:12

All your points are valid. However. There is no point in saying berries are trash(which they are) when they are such a important part of the game. We can’t feed sheep without berries. No sheep no compost, no compost no long lasting civ. While berries may suck we still need them and unfortunately have to take the time and soil loss.

Villas · 2020-09-13 15:22:16

gamatron332 wrote:

All your points are valid. However. There is no point in saying berries are trash(which they are) when they are such a important part of the game. We can’t feed sheep without berries. No sheep no compost, no compost no long lasting civ. While berries may suck we still need them and unfortunately have to take the time and soil loss.

Yeah, I agree that they aren't completely trash, they are good for yummy foods, feed animals and whatnot.
Imo they aren't good for sprinklers, I may be mistaken, but we would need to deplete them all, then soil them all and only then use te sprinklers to save water, while we could be farming easier crops there and water them soilless every 5 or 7 min.

Bushes are better farming the ordinary way, soiling and manually watering them, so we can reset them individually as they need, otherwise it would take 10 or even more minutes per cycle, since even when we deplete the bushes they take some time to be ready to receive soil.

So, I think they aren't trash, but its more practical to water them manually and save the sprinklers for quick crops, unless we have spare sprinklers or are industrially producing berries (may be one day).

Cogito · 2020-09-14 02:50:01

Villas wrote:

gamatron332 wrote:
All your points are valid. However. There is no point in saying berries are trash(which they are) when they are such a important part of the game. We can’t feed sheep without berries. No sheep no compost, no compost no long lasting civ. While berries may suck we still need them and unfortunately have to take the time and soil loss.
Imo they aren't good for sprinklers, I may be mistaken, but we would need to deplete them all, then soil them all and only then use te sprinklers to save water, while we could be farming easier crops there and water them soilless every 5 or 7 min.
Bushes are better farming the ordinary way, soiling and manually watering them, so we can reset them individually as they need

This is exactly my point.

Unless we have lots of spare food and sprinklers, better to just farm berries normally.

I actually don't mind the idea of having a 'normal' set up and a 'berries only' set up, where you literally pick the pipes up and move them if you want to do intensive berry farming.

Let's say I want to make a lot of wool clothing, and I have 12 sprinklers.

I can first farm ~12x2 plots of carrots for 100 carrots and 28 seeds (4 extra, but all good) at a cost of 2 bowls of water, 4 charges of kerosene (1/6 of a 'use', 1/36 of a tank), and 24 seeds.

I then move the pipes to the berry farm, at a cost of 12 hammer charges (6% of a hammer).

I then farm 12x2 berry bushes 4 times for 112 bowls of berries (12 berry bushes give 14 bowls of berries) for a cost of 8 bowls of water, 8 charges of kerosene (1/3 of a use), and 96 soil (32 soil piles, a bit more than 4.5 composts).

I then move the pipes back to the main farm, at a cost of 12 hammer charges (6% of a hammer).

This will give me 100 bowls of feed mash, almost 17 feed mash buckets. 12 bowls of mash give 1 bolt of wool, so this gives enough for 8 shirts and shorts (with a bit left over).

This is almost certainly worthwhile, as you save 88 water at the cost of 2x6% of a hammer and 1/3 of a kerosene use. A single kero use gives 4x8 = 32 bowls of water, so the water saving is about 77 bowls (minus whatever the water cost of 12/100 of a bar of steel is).

It's a decent chunk of work, but probably achievable in one life if everything was set up ready to go.

Last edited by Cogito (2020-09-14 02:52:54)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-09-10 02:37:35

A new farm meta

#2 2020-09-10 03:50:56

Re: A new farm meta

#3 2020-09-10 05:49:35

Re: A new farm meta

#4 2020-09-10 14:26:42

Re: A new farm meta

#5 2020-09-10 15:19:28

Re: A new farm meta

#6 2020-09-10 16:36:38

Re: A new farm meta

#7 2020-09-10 19:24:50

Re: A new farm meta

#8 2020-09-10 19:43:14

Re: A new farm meta

#9 2020-09-10 20:00:16

Re: A new farm meta

#10 2020-09-11 14:32:41

Re: A new farm meta

#11 2020-09-11 14:40:45

Re: A new farm meta

#12 2020-09-11 14:47:00

Re: A new farm meta

#13 2020-09-11 14:50:04

Re: A new farm meta

#14 2020-09-11 15:41:39

Re: A new farm meta

#15 2020-09-11 18:15:31

Re: A new farm meta

#16 2020-09-11 23:05:44

Re: A new farm meta

#17 2020-09-12 02:57:42

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#18 2020-09-12 17:42:03

Re: A new farm meta

#19 2020-09-13 08:11:15

Re: A new farm meta

#20 2020-09-13 15:11:12

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