Selective blights

Ironvos · February 08, 2015, 08:39:01 PM

I hate blights, i think i've said it dozens of times already

However i do see their value in making farming and food supplies more of a challenge and to create famines.
But it could use some tweaks.

For example, making blights only affect certain crops at a time, randomly chosen.
Blights could have severity levels that determine how many kinds of crops are affected.
This would make blights less devastating and annoying.
It would also make it so that people would plant all kinds of crops in order to avoid losing all crops in one blight.

Right now i think people just plant potatoes for the most part, and that's pretty much it.
With the addition of extra crops in A9 it would be nice if this could somehow stimulate people to actually plant more than one kind of plant.

An easy and mod friendly way (I think) could be just to give crops a certain blight resistance stat. Then when a blight event happens all crop types need to pass a check, if they fail they are affected.
This also opens a path to genetic altered plants with higher resistance.

Darth Fool · February 09, 2015, 10:27:09 AM

Agreed.

RickyMartini · February 09, 2015, 10:55:23 AM

I agree, it doesn't make sense to me that a blight can kill my strawberries out in the field and in the same second also kill my potatoes deep down in the mountain in hydroponics basin.

Johnny Masters · February 09, 2015, 12:04:20 PM

Pretty much agreed, blight is very bland/repetitive and makes little sense right now. I guess if we could visually see what causes the blight it could make more sense, like seeing a insect cloud or something. Greenhouses should be possible as well (as in glass, plastic? allowing the sun to pass)

Kegereneku · February 09, 2015, 03:41:05 PM

I support this.

I think selectively choosing not only the type of culture infected but the amount would give the story teller a lot more control to create balanced story.
It's all in the nuance.

FridayBiology · February 15, 2015, 03:57:20 AM

+1

Darth Fool · February 15, 2015, 10:10:06 AM

Another aspect of this is that blights could attack non-colonist plants, so a blight on oak trees or bushes or pincushion cactii.

Eleazar · February 15, 2015, 11:03:59 AM

Yep, agree.

BetaSpectre · February 16, 2015, 12:10:23 AM

IMO blights should also only affect plants in close proximity to one another.

Like say a blight affects random spots on the map, and within these spots only certain kinds of plants are affected. If no all of them depending on blight.

Perhaps we could have blights called different things like swarm of alien locusts ate all of your berries, but left the tatters alone.

tommytom · February 16, 2015, 01:59:46 AM

I agree and disagree. The reason for blight is to produce a famine challenge. If you are ill-prepared (not hording food), you could pay dearly. A selective blight has not purpose at all besides annoyance if you always plant every possible plant. At the same time, it doesn't make sense that you can plant one food and one food only (I already plant several kinds out of principle) without penalty.

I would like to see either 2 kinds of blights (or another event that is similar) that wipes all or a certain kind. And they should have roughly the same interval. Like getting a blight that destroys all or near by then when too close and then the selective. In essence, if you plant only one kind, you get constantly wiped out. Or even worse if you plant only one kind in a giant field or adjacent fields, they will all get wiped constantly.

Maybe even "ruin" the soil by event or time where they will no long grow the same kind. "rotating the crops", so to speak. And possible even require "turning the soil" between so many plantings. Either making them grow inefficiently or not at all (the inefficient one could be confusing without a notification and maybe even still).

Edit:
It also seems silly that you can use fertilizer pumps one time and never need them again. I'd like to see them either have to be permanently installed to keep sending nutrients to plants (requiring more power for your more secure/efficient farm), or at least "use up" the soil it places over time (either by harvest, time as in seasons, or just a set/random time since fertilized).

RickyMartini · February 16, 2015, 02:26:19 AM

But if you don't have selective blights, the whole purpose of having different crops is totally irrelevant. Hence we need something in that direction.

BetaSpectre · February 16, 2015, 02:54:00 AM

Blights IMO should have different levels of severity and be common.
With Fertilizer Pumps able to reduce the severity. And yeah they shouldn't just be one time use and done.

If Blights are meant to remove food stocks, then we should just have an event that directly makes food disappear like mass rotting or vermin.

Then again it really is up to the community to see what they want. So IMO we should have more selection of what kind of disasters can inflict our colonies.

skullywag · February 16, 2015, 03:54:32 AM

From a code standpoint bar the def name there isnt a category to target as they all use cultivated. I suppose you could change the incident worker to gather all the defnames out of that category and pick 1 at random....could be a simple little mod.

tommytom · February 16, 2015, 12:48:39 PM

Quote from: Skissor on February 16, 2015, 02:26:19 AM
But if you don't have selective blights, the whole purpose of having different crops is totally irrelevant. Hence we need something in that direction.

True, but my point was that blights have even LESS point to blights for people like me/us who grow several kinds anyways. I don't know the exact amount, but if you make 7 different farms and only one kind gets blight, then you aren't losing much. You would basically have blights just to have them. Currently, they serve a purpose. A selective blight by itself makes sense but only poses a challenge if you plant only one type and even then it just works as it does now.

RickyMartini · February 16, 2015, 01:41:32 PM

Quote from: tommytom on February 16, 2015, 12:48:39 PM
True, but my point was that blights have even LESS point to blights for people like me/us who grow several kinds anyways. I don't know the exact amount, but if you make 7 different farms and only one kind gets blight, then you aren't losing much. You would basically have blights just to have them. Currently, they serve a purpose. A selective blight by itself makes sense but only poses a challenge if you plant only one type and even then it just works as it does now.

But thats exactly what I was saying, at the moment there are players who go all-potato style and It has no effect on gameplay. With selective blights that would be challenged. Of course people who already grow everything don't see a change. ^^