How to improve soil tiles ?

[Oblitus]

Rich soil is 100% not needed in any run. Usually leads to people needing the other kinda broken mod the larger stacks, because they are storing enough food to last 10 years.

10x stack mod is pretty much mandatory, but not because of soil mods. For me, it is mostly stone, minerals, and animal products of all sorts.

You are inflating your wealth and making your runs harder than they should be at your currently difficulty setting by doing that. I can see why some people claim that the hardest difficulties are unwinnable now if that is really a thing. I never really made/mined more resources than two obital trade beacon slots could contain.

I won't ever go to the extreme of  microing my wealth down but I definitely won't horde extra weapons, clothing or minerals. I've never had a run where 3 orbital trade beacons weren't enough. 90% of the time it was 1 and 1/2.

It's not like I intentionally gather them. They are just... Happen to appear when I play. And stack mods do nothing for weapons and clothing, only already stacking stuff.

[mcduff]

If you end up with 20 colonists, you need a lot of farmland to get through the winter. The skylights mod has been a massive boon to me, but I still think it would be good to have a better soil fertility game.

In real life you can't just keep farming the same patch of soil, you have to keep replenishing it and rotating your crops. It would be good if fertility went down over time as you harvested and you had to put work in to keep it up. That would be a good "balance" for mods that let you improve fertility.

Also, I have all these muffalo, yet apparently they never give me any dung I can use as fertiliser?

[Oblitus]

Also, I have all these muffalo, yet apparently they never give me any dung I can use as fertiliser?

Actually, they produce "animal filth," but you can't use it.

[Jibbles]

Rich soil is 100% not needed in any run.

So true for most colonies, yet that's one of the main reasons why it seems so whack to me. 
Farming was always too basic. You're concerned about this area being expanded in vanilla, as if it would make things easy.  I would think it'd be more challenging if Tynan decided to add on something like tilled soil cause he would obviously nerf a few things.

[ashaffee]

Well the way I see the game is it could easily be tweaked and modded to be turned into a farming simulator or many other things. But that isn't the game a lot of us payed to obtain so it feels a lot better that option be left for mods than the base game. If I had to move my crop fields ever harvest or add fertilizer and such that would just create more busy micromanagement work in the game and that is the stuff I HATE to death.

I see farming as one of the more balanced parts of the current game and touching it would cause many more hard aches of people crying for balances than it would solve. He probably has a lot more useful things he can invest his time into instead of a role that works well.

For those that want that farming simulator life that is what mods are for.

[Jibbles]

Don't tote the suggestions as a farming simulator. We can simply disagree. The process doesn't have to be tedious.. Unless you just hate basebuilding? Balance is off IMO, was before and still is.  Farming was touched actually; in the least interesting way and added rng progression. It's why I bellyache louder over the subject now.

"Leave it up to modding" is something I'm tired of hearing; cause it's not an alternative solution in most cases beyond QoL content. There are many flaws/challenges with modding this area of the game so it's not as easy as it sounds.

[Snafu_RW]

Certainly I'd like to see a more RL crop/farming sim analog than is currently implemented; crop rotation is the typical 'starter point' for this. However this development shouldn't progress to a full farming sim for gameplay reasons

I'd like to see something like:

• Lack of crop rotation -> increased chance of blight. This applies to farmer colonies that focus upon (veg) food production
  
• Insect infestation (think RL locusts) is pretty much covered by other events, provided bugs actively search for food on the map once the map's food lvl drops below a threshold & hence trigger the event (this may incorporate bugs actively hunting wildlife/pets/pawns depending upon their hunger & range from hive)
  
• Drought: a heatwave may not kill off all crops, but reduce the remaining crop yield by <some factor>. Cold Snap would be the same ofc
  
• Flash Flood: now this is a /really/ interesting idea! Initially it would flood lowest-lvl map tiles, turning them /temporarily/ to mud & destroying farmland & wood buildings (including bridges) & damaging similar non-hardy external structures (eg drills). After (say) 1 quadrum (or until summer passes) the flood recedes, leaving a slightly changed landscape: differently-placed fertile soil patches, perhaps some new boulders, maybe even the course of a river might change? This would only occur in biomes that could support it (so arctic flash floods would be impossible) & it may be seasonally based upon latitude (monsoons nearer equator; spring melt nearer poles etc)

Thoughts?

[ashaffee]

You guys are forgetting a huge problem here. When he gave us something as simple and lovely as the windmill tons of people complained about how it was brokenly op. He had to change it at least 4 times before he got it correct. I bet you anything that took up a ton of man hours that could of been invested on his long list of updates for 1.0.

So since the topic of this thread was if improvements to farming need to be put in 1.0. I think not. Any small change will cause a cascade of work. The big changes like you guys are suggesting would basically be his lone project for the next couple of weeks with the constant rework balances that people will ask for. Also it will upset a lot of the player base that likes it how it is (me included).

Farming system does work well enough that no one really thinks to themselves that it is broken. Can it be improved? Sure but I bet the list of things that can be improved for 1.0 is endless. He has been improving for 5 years I doubt it is worth messing with a system that works to delay 1.0 even further.

Like I said mods cover all the niche needs that aren't covered from the base game that most of us are happy with.

[Snafu_RW]

You are entirely correct & I deliberately came back after my last post to review my msg & ask MODs to move it to /suggestions; MODs please make this so!