Topic: Enhanced farms
einstein13 Topic Opener |
Posted at: 2017-12-09, 11:16
Hi all, I was considering SirVer's wish list (point 3 from here), that farms should have also terrain affinity for growing crops. So for example blackroot will grow much slower on barren steppe tan on green land. I have prepared some solutions for that: First, from my perspective, the best solution for affinity of growing should be equal to the best affinity of any tree on this land. That will solve all the problems with playing on different types of land (ice, desert, ...).
So main idea is to bring some water and put it on the crops. It can be made on site (by enhanced farms) or external (by special job and building). Of course it will cause huge deficit of water, so I propose another thing: very deep well. It should bring water with 100% (or 90%) probability, regardless of water supply on that terrain. Now it is 30%? or something like that. I like first solution for enhanced farms the most, but considering Atlanteans, it would be hard for them, since almost all of their buildings are fully done and they are supposed to be full technology developed. What do you think? Is the idea good for you? einstein13 |
Nordfriese |
Posted at: 2017-12-09, 19:23
I agree that crops etc should have terrain affinity.
Good idea, but might look strange in the outcome. How about instead giving the crops a "simplified terrain affinity" which has only pickiness and one of the three other factors (preferred humidity/temperature/fertility), rather than all of them? If e.g. a field considered only preferred_fertility=0.9, it could grow well on any fertile terrain, no matter how cold/hot and wet/dry.
+1 The normal farm remains as it is and only the enhanced farm can use water, right? What should happen when the enhanced farm has no water – will it plant a normal crop or fail to plant anything?
This would be expensive unless it had a huge influence radius… So I don´t like this one as much… And no, please not for trees. If you could improve tree growth by watering, you´d be able to grow trees e.g. on a river´s edge, where they grow badly now…
Wells have 65% chance, I think. How about not giving atlanteans farms that use water, and instead letting the farmer gain experience; when he is a master farmer, he plants crops that survive with a higher chance. Atl wouldn´t need a deep well then. A deep well would be a nice idea for barbarians and empire, provided the normal wells get only a ~30% chance to produce when empty. Top Quote |
WorldSavior |
Posted at: 2017-12-09, 19:42
I don't think so. It would change the game a lot and I think that the tree growth model is much too complicated, anyway. If one has to inform oneself in the map editor about the plant survival probabilities, it is not really funny. This is the case for trees. And then it becomes even worse: If you have mixed terrain, it's almost impossible to know how well a plant can grow there. And consider that it would become almost impossible to play well at maps like the Nile. So, I'm against making plant growth more complicated, and I'm for simplifying the tree growth model. For example one could choose always the best of six triangles for tree growth instead of using the arithmetic average of the six triangles...
This would be a big change, too... Too big, I'd say.
65% are correct. So probably it's not necessary to invent deep wells?
That's also an argument against your idea Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked Top Quote |
GunChleoc |
Posted at: 2017-12-09, 20:05
An engine patch is already in code review. Once this is in, it can be played with in Lua without the need to recompile. It implements terrain affinity the same way that trees do, and Nordfriese is using it for making berry bushes more varied. Busy indexing nil values Top Quote |
kaputtnik |
Posted at: 2017-12-09, 20:44
I am also not a fan of this idea... but on the other site it's disturbing if crops can grow on barren terrains, eg. desert terrains. Looking at the trees affinities, we have already some problems, which will be also valid when implementing crop-affinities:
I think there should be something which shows terrain affinities to the player. E.g showing it in the workarea preview when one wants to place a forester by red and green marked circles. Red shows areas where trees do not grow well, green where they do grow well. For beginners this could be very simple to understand and after some time he may associate terrains with possibility of tree growing. Same could maybe implemented when introducing affinities for crops. But before crop affinities get implemented, we need a good solution for the usability of tree affinities, imho. Fight simulator for Widelands: |
GunChleoc |
Posted at: 2017-12-10, 06:01
In the editor, 2. could be helped by adding the info to the terrain and the info tools. The icing on the cake would be to display it next to the mouse cursor when hovering with the place immovable tool. The improved work area overlay also sounds like a good idea Busy indexing nil values Top Quote |
einstein13 Topic Opener |
Posted at: 2017-12-10, 13:12
With my idea that will use exactly the same function & results. Probably all your doubts has to be solved first. @WorldSavior: for atlanteans it is possible to "think" that their farms can be enhanced like tower -> big tower. And if you don't want to expand the farm, you can build enhanced farm at once (like outpost and barrier in Empire). einstein13 |
teppo |
Posted at: 2017-12-10, 13:29
I like the current model: At the terrain boundaries, the affinity mixes. This causes other types of trees to make it to the top-six that have odds of getting planted. This, in turn, makes the scenary prettier. The map-makers should become aware of the land properties. I like that suggestion a lot. One easy way to do this is to have a hotkey change the color of all the triangles to display the fertility (and back). Is it safe to assume that everybody has a keyboard at hand? Top Quote |
GunChleoc |
Posted at: 2017-12-10, 14:04
Displaying he fertility won't do much - it is 4 values, and the plain numbers are too complicated. What we need it to replicate what we currently have in the editor help closer to the editing process. We can add tooltips. Busy indexing nil values Top Quote |
teppo |
Posted at: 2017-12-10, 15:02
Of course, the editor does not want to see these numbers. Maybe the odds of growth for the most suitable tree would be more useful? Or even the weighted mean of all the six? I guess that the editor would not become too heavy even after that addition. EDIT: The four numbers are used to choose a tree suitable for this terrain type. The only drawback of this proposal I can think of is that done like this, the map editor does not know what kind of trees will pop up. Edited: 2017-12-10, 15:07
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