[A16] Rainbeau's Fertile Fields

[dburgdorf]

Update (including some, but not nearly all of the items recently discussed here):

- Compost has been renamed raw compost, and now requires both animal and vegetable matter for its creation. Required quantities are higher than before, equivalent to the amount used to make one and a half meals, and are now based on nutrition value rather than simple item count.

- Rottable organic material now eventually becomes "rotted meat" or "rotted mush" instead of just disappearing. Rotted material can be used in the creation of raw compost.

- Added a secondary raw compost recipe which uses only rotted material, for those who want to be able to set up a "forever" compost creation bill at the butcher's table that won't use up their supplies of actual food.

- Compost barrels can no longer be built until electricity has been researched, since they require power.

- Tilled soil has been renamed plowed soil. (The name of the tillage research hasn't been changed, though, as "tillage" is a general term which can refer to many sorts of soil agitation.)

- Both topsoil and fertilized topsoil, when removed with the "remove floor" command, now leave behind dirt, so you no longer lose the dirt originally used to lay the topsoil just because you choose to fertilize it. But neither leaves behind fertilizer that could be reused.

[SpaceDorf]

Just in time for my new Playthrough.

Thank you very much.

[AngleWyrm]

Without researching anything, "Fertile Fields" allows you to dig up piles of dirt from soil, and also to create raw compost and turn it into fertilizer.
...
Pile of Dirt: Dirt is used in a variety of terrain improvements. Dirt piles can be dug up from fertile soil, leaving less fertile terrain behind.

Is Pile of Dirt a finite resource limited by the amount of fertile soil on the starting map, or an infinite resource that can be dug up in trade for work?

It looks like it takes dirt to make rich soil to make fertile soil to then get dirt. Is that a zero-sum, or does all that research and processing produce more dirt?

[SpaceDorf]

Pile of Dirt is a semi-restricted resource.
But even on a desert map, I found enough to get a decent farm zone up.

The research allows you to dig up dirt from different sources
( swamp, water .. )
And turn more ground tiles into fertile soil.

On a tile base it is a near zero sum game. ( turning stone and sand will cost you more, than you get back )

@dburgdorf - I noticed a "bug" the turning soil into sand gives no dirt back ..
I don't know if this intended.

[dburgdorf]

Is Pile of Dirt a finite resource...?

As SpaceDorf already noted, dirt is a "semi-finite" resource. You can get it by digging up a variety of different terrain types, but as a general rule, you only get as much as it would take to put back the tile type you dug up. So within the confines of a single map, dirt movement is (approximately) a zero-sum game. But you can also buy dirt from traders, and of course there are ways to access secondary maps from which you could dig up additional dirt, so with a little work, it's not really a finite resource.

I noticed a "bug" the turning soil into sand gives no dirt back .. I don't know if this intended.

As I recall - I'm at work right now - converting sand to soil requires fertilizer (and, conceptually, water) but not dirt, which is why you don't get dirt back when you convert the other way. So it's not a "bug," though it may not be the most logical conversion. Making dirt part of the transition in both directions wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

(But I have an image in my head now of some poor pawn out in the wild with a hand sifter, diligently working to remove all the larger "dirt" chunks from several square feet of land, in order to leave behind just sand.) 

[SpaceDorf]

Could be .. it was in the previous version of the Mod, so maybe you changed the recipe ..

[dburgdorf]

Could be .. it was in the previous version of the Mod, so maybe you changed the recipe ..

I just went back and checked the "intro guide" I posted a few pages back on this thread, and sure enough, converting sand to gravel - which is the only thing you can do with sand - does actually cost dirt, so converting soil to sand probably should give some dirt back.

(What, you expect me to actually *remember* everything I've done in this mod? I need cheat sheets, too!) 

Actually, since sand -> gravel requires a pile of dirt, and gravel -> soil requires a pile of dirt, if I want to stick with the zero-sum concept, soil -> sand should probably give you TWO piles of dirt.

[PetWolverine]

Is the latest update safe for existing saves that have the old version? I didn't think to check for mod updates before starting a new colony yesterday, and already tilled some soil. (Or did I plow it?)

[dburgdorf]

Is the latest update safe for existing saves that have the old version?

You shouldn't have any problems. With the notorious exception of the Jan 29 update, I try to make sure I don't break saves with new versions.

[GlitchKs]

Started using this a couple weeks. Just wanted to say thank you. i feel like I am actually working to get better fields now instead of just having them handed to me with my old mod.

[Fumble]

@dburgdorf

Any chance you're going to put your mods on github? I'd like to suggest some compatibility changes and don't want to detour a lot of your code for that, instead I'd rather send a PR which would make the compatibility easier.

Thanks!

[t3ff13]

What am I supposed to do with wet soil? I figured out the rest of the mod and it's great, but I'm not sure how you are supposed to process wet soil.

[dburgdorf]

What am I supposed to do with wet soil?

I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're referring to, as there's no "wet soil" in the mod.

[t3ff13]

That's my point. Some areas you can't transition to fertile fields.

[dburgdorf]

That's my point. Some areas you can't transition to fertile fields.

Some terrain conversions require multiple steps; some of those steps require research. But there isn't any type of terrain (well, except for ice, which the mod doesn't do anything with) that can't be converted to something else. If you can be more specific with your question, I could be more specific with my answer.

All the essential info about using the mod is in the "how to get started" document in the mod's "About" folder, by the way, if you haven't already read through it.