Concept: Vertical Hydroponics

[alphagusta]

Concept: Vertical Hydroponics
It's as the title suggests, an advanced vertical hydroponics table.

It would lead off from the standard hydroponics table.

It would keep the same growth rate as the standard one but since its multiple tables stacked ontop of eachother there would be a higher yield.

The standard hydroponics is on a 4 long grid with 4 planting spaces.
The vertical hydroponics would be a 2x2 square and yield 2 - 3 times the amount as the standard.
It will also provide its own light to the plants
It will also have an internal battery so that if power is stopped you have a window to save the plants before it loses power and they all die.

Something like this can be seen in Overwatch:
https://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/overwatch-horizon-lunar-colony-assault-map-has-lowered-gravity-670x388.jpg

I feel like this would add a nice progression element to the game, as well as make you be able to make a much more compact growing room

[Bolgfred]

I feel like this would add a nice progression element to the game, as well as make you be able to make a much more compact growing room

I dunno if solving all problems in one step gives a feeling of progression. Actually it sounds more like normal hydroponics suck in all situations making you try to skip them completely.
I'd add a big drawback to your Idea, like a worse performance than normal hydroponics.

By now normal basins have one very big drawback themself: you need a sunlamp. This one has a large energy cost if you have 1 hydro or 24. By this the first step into artifical gardening is a harder one.

Your idea could actually fit this gap by better scaling, but worse performance.
Lets say its a 3x3 building with the productivity of one basin. Thats about 50% performance in question of space, so a sunlamp with basins will be still better if fully established.

The big big benefit sounds for me that the vertical doesn't need a sunlamp or a heated room as it provides both things for itself... at horribly high energy costs.
By this the vertical is a gap closer for smaller bases which cannot afford a full sunlamp with 24 basins (Which ist 4580W by day and 1680W by night)

[Granitecosmos]

The standard hydroponics is on a 4 long grid with 4 planting spaces.
The vertical hydroponics would be a 2x2 square and yield 2 - 3 times the amount as the standard.
It will also provide its own light to the plants
It will also have an internal battery so that if power is stopped you have a window to save the plants before it loses power and they all die.

According to Tynan's progression concept for the game, 2-3x yield would likely mean 3-5x construction material cost and 3-5x power upkeep because he's very adamant regarding his "every improvement costs more than the previous" stance on it. This is why legendary guns have 50% better DPS but cost 6x as much (which turns them into raider magnets and ironically not worth using; so much for the "best" quality).

The built-in battery and sunlamp is unacceptable and unnecessary. If you're worried about powerlines being cut, keep your batteries close to the growing area. And in the case of a solar flare it would shut down anyway, whether it has built-in batteries or not. Since everything else could also access these built-in batteries as long as they are part of the same circuit system anyway (because that's how batteries work), this makes the built-in battery concept obsolete. Normal batteries can be hauled without destroying any attached crops, thus making them superior.

As for the sunlamp, its power cost was carefully balanced around the growing zone's size it provides. If what you propose would be implemented, it would be considered an upgrade which means its power consumption would again be further buffed above the normal sunlamp+hydroponics ratio because of the devs' progression concept for the game. While that doesn't make it redundant to implement, it would mean one has to use even more power generators (whether those are solar, wind, chemfuel or anything else). At that point it's questionable whether it's even worth it. Remember, this is a vanilla suggestion so we have to balance it around the vanilla game. No mods or anything added by mods should be considered.

With that being said, I don't see any problems with introducing an upgraded hydroponics basin but do expect it to cost something along the lines of 300 steel and 3 components and requiring 200-250 power for each 2x2 block if it has double yield. Even more if it has a built-in sunlamp (which probably wouldn't be implemented since it'd introduce an additional unnecessary performance hit; the game would be forced to update every one of these buildings when it automatically turns off sunlamps).

[tmo97]

Hydro box.

Compared to 1x4, this one is 3x3. Requires research. Can only be set to 1 plant.
Requires growing and some intellectual capability to be worked.
Without a worker, it will produce at a slower speed than the hydroponics basin.
With a worker, it will produce at a worthwhile-to-work rate.
Requires a pawn to retrieve the plants from its inventory.

When worked:
At well above sufficient intellectual capability, interesting things may happen.
1. Random extra plant is added to hydrobox inventory, sacrificing 1/9th of your yield.
2. Pawn may experience a broadening of medical knowledge.

At sufficient intellectual capability, nothing extraordinary occurs.

At just below sufficient, bad things start happening:

1. Pawn debuffs the plant growth in the hydrobox by 50% until a pawn with sufficient construction can come and fix it. If worked in the meanwhile, has a chance to start fires, destroy the plants inside or empty the inventory and splatter corpse bile around. (for fun)
2. You don't get to know this, but your hydrobox inventory is now worthless because everything in it will give guaranteed food poisoning.
3. Other cool stuff. I got ideas but I want you to like it yourself.

If you heat the room in which the hydrobox is situated to over 100C, there will be an increased production rate. Other factors may matter.
I'll be sincere about it, yes, I'm basically wedging in excuses to do extreme stuff I always wanted to do in RimWorld.

[patoka]

sorry but for me this is all mod area :/ i just cant see a normal ass vanilla game where this would be a good option and at the same time not op. ice sheet and sea ice come to mind, but if this vertical hydroponics basin (how effective it might be) is indeed an upgrade to the normal one, you'd first have to research the first one of course...and in sea ice/ice sheet runs you are under time pressure so you'd immediately have to install those before you starve to death. and if researching it was easy enough to be an option here then they would be op. and if these hydroboxes were kind of weaker versions of the normal hydroponics basins and therefore cost less and be easier to research, wouldnt the lower efficiency be enough of a deterrant to make players of normal games avoid it even more? i mean you're already investing components into building them and every now and then they break down so you need even more...might aswell build the efficient ones, right? and there was no issue until now with the current hydroponics basins for all the different playstyles. people could always rush it if needed.

but in the end i dont really know. maybe a not so weird version of what you guys said could make it into vanilla, but probably not.

imma try and come up with something constructive that tynan might at least consider:
[15 minutes later and after consulting my granny in the graveyard]
alright
i know what to do.
high tech plant pots, that's what
-first make plant pots researchable. medieval, maybe even neolithic.
-then maybe plant food, for when you want your plants to grow a bit quicker for that little extra food before winter sets in. but you dont really need plant food in the game. was just a random ass suggestion that came to my mind while tuning my gran's grave with some sick roses. definitely industrial.
-high tech plant pots. they are different to normal ones in that they are expensive to build and can grow ANY plant (in case of trees only bonsais are possible. they are an addition for later, but they would act similarly to an easy to complete sculpture that needs regular maintenance) plants also grow faster in it. maybe rich soil speed? anyway, hydroponics should definitely be a step up. plants that need more than 50% sunlight still need it, so if you wanna sustain your industrial town with high tech plant pots grown strawberries, you can, but you need sunlamps for that aswell, which according to my knowledge are also industrial products. hydroponics basins should only be available after both high tech plant pots and sun lamps.

how would my idea influence the sea ice/ice sheet mavericks? assuming they all start with the sol survivor i mean the rich explorer, they will have plant pots researched for sure, MAYBE even high tech plant pots. i guess that depends. anyway. high tech plant pots, contrary to their name, are easily researched for an industrial faction and the sun lamp hydroponics basin's research points could be reduced by the same small amount, so that non-rich explorer starts didnt have a debuff in that regard. maybe just leave it. dunno. i cant predict everything. maybe my idea is sillier than all of your ideas combined. maybe i smoked too much weed nust now for the glory of my granny. peace out