Add Fertilizer Pumps Back

[PotatoMaster]

I want this feature back because hidroponics are garbage they break they catch on fire they are expensive to make and they waste a lot of power that you could save by just growing stuff on dirt.
I never play in any other biome besides ice sheet so having hidroponics as the only source of food is shitty
and if they break or there is a solar flare all my stuff is gone.
Fertilizer Pumps can work on a single tile a long as they are back pls add them back to the game.

[Kegereneku]

Myself I'd trade "Fertilizer Pump" for animals manure to make fertile-soil, even if made hard.

To discuss balance, I propose as a baseline :
4 big animal to produce per year : 20 squares of 70% fertile soil. or 10 squares of 100% fertile soil.

[Cardbo]

How about this?  Planting trees increases the fertility of the soil within one square of where it been planted.  This effect only happens when a tree is 100% grown.

[Mathenaut]

Solutions shouldn't defeat the point implementing them.

Removing fertilizer pumps was about exploiting rich soil (if I remember right). The problem with removing them is that it also removed non-hydroponic options for food. That is not a good thing.

[Vaporisor]

Solutions shouldn't defeat the point implementing them.

Removing fertilizer pumps was about exploiting rich soil (if I remember right). The problem with removing them is that it also removed non-hydroponic options for food. That is not a good thing.

What did it do to rich soil?  They make standard soils rich?

Overall for the topic, I half miss them.  One map had gravel terrain so maybe that is the better thing.  In case of making it "soil" it made it gravel so in a cave, they can grow, but at a less than 100% plus the ground should take preparation.  Perhaps doubling the planting time and an additional maintenance?  Good for things like devilstrand, but not so much for your main crops.

[Kegereneku]

Solutions shouldn't defeat the point implementing them.

Removing fertilizer pumps was about exploiting rich soil (if I remember right). The problem with removing them is that it also removed non-hydroponic options for food. That is not a good thing.

I think the problem is more that Hydroponic are barely worth their investment. Making them their own Solar-Lamp would go a long road.

My current colony is in a cold-desert, I'm farming on gravel and soil with less period of the year to grow. And yet I still prefer to cover all the fertile soil with Solar-lamp rather than use hydroponic.

[thestalkinghead]

maybe a compost bin could be added that would produce compost from food (including rotten) so compost floors could be added and they take 5 (or whatever) compost to make a compost floor tile

[Mathenaut]

What did it do to rich soil?  They make standard soils rich?

If I remember, the use of pumps was so efficient that it standardized the layout of every base in every biome. By removing them, Tynan wanted the environment to dictate how people managed food for their colonies.

Your mileage may vary on that. Mostly it just shifted everything to using hydroponics. A13 doesn't make that as viable anymore until way-late game. So you're kinda just SoL unless you use one of the mods that lets you do actual farming.

[Vaperius]

Someone called ? Eh; not like anyone remembers that thread anymore...does anyone remember that thread?

-sigh- I digress.

Anyway Fertilizer pumps were removed along side originally tree planting for the same reason; Tynan felt it mad the game too easy. He added tree planting back relatively short thereafter but nonetheless Fertilizer pumps stay removed because you can create underground bases that are far superior to outside bases in terms of siege defense.

To that end he has added sappers, and temperature, and all these other wonderful challenges to make a completely sealed and shuttered base less attractive to an open space one. Fertilizer pumps used to make it possible to hollow out a cavern in your base, spread some soil around and harvest as much as you want without having to stick your neck out. Now sappers can obviously cut into your mountain around your defenses making it a lot harder to turtle behind them, but it nonetheless is a fact that Tynan wants to make a game that encourages a varied style of play, with what is best for the map rather than the same thing over and over. I can't speak much more on what he wants for the game since I am not him, but I've seen enough of his design choices and comments in this community to be able to comfortably say that is generally where he leans.

I'd definitely argue we should be able to produce fertilizer so that we can produce a poor quality soil inside our rocky caverns again, so we trade efficiency for availability. I'd even argue that farming underground should attract insects hives more frequently to caverns you build said farms in, to balance the act of it further.

So essentially adding the risk of being over-ran by giant insects more than usual, and requiring a labor and resource cost to do so to only get a poor quality(gravel) soil would perhaps balance the actual cultivation of an underground farm.

[Tynan]

The entire point of the ice sheet biome is that it's stupidly, absurdly hostile and difficult. IRL it's essentially impossible to survive indefinitely in an environment like that, except by nomadic hunting.

There are 5+ other biomes that provide a more balanced, normal level of challenge, if that's what you're after.

[b0rsuk]

And it's not true hydroponics is the only source of food. You can get some from trade ships (especially after alpha 13). Hay is also cheap enough to buy, so you can breed animals for meat.

[Vaporisor]

And it's not true hydroponics is the only source of food. You can get some from trade ships (especially after alpha 13). Hay is also cheap enough to buy, so you can breed animals for meat.

Also in my past plays in the extreme lands (no mountains), land reclaimation works pretty well.  The most difficult part is finding that initial good starting point of dirt.  Once you have that, if you can get it walled off for heater/cooling and start lumber with the foods, you are set.  It goes slow though getting a wood crafting for sales is the tough part and start relying on raiders/slaves/etc to get the higher end resources.  The more difficult part is ensuring you have your colonists set up for efficiency to get the jobs done and patience for the slow going.

High quality shooters are the key for when you get those raids....  Wealth gets a bit high before can be more sustainable I find.  Desert I find usually more difficult than Ice sheet.  The move of geothermal into a tech tree though ups that a bit.  If lucky, can have a geothermal with some farmable ground nearb.  Use the heat from it at least to get growable ground without needing to power heat.  This is an important ice sheet safety measure I find for critical crops.  One solar flare and you can lose your vital crops otherwise due to freezing.

[b0rsuk]

If the desert is not too cold, you can put hydroponic tables... outside. You still get soil and you don't need to provide light and heat.

[Mathenaut]

The entire point of the ice sheet biome is that it's stupidly, absurdly hostile and difficult. IRL it's essentially impossible to survive indefinitely in an environment like that, except by nomadic hunting.

There are 5+ other biomes that provide a more balanced, normal level of challenge, if that's what you're after.

It's not just about it being hard, it's alot about why it is hard. In this case, it isn't about difficulty in adapting to the environment, but removing the tools to do what would normally be done in that environment.

For people that like the low-tech, yeah. Arctic survival is nonsense, I don't think anyone disagrees. For space-age engineers with modern survival skills? Not being able to do things that people would do seems.. arbitrary. This isn't really the crux of the difficulty in cold environments either.

Personally, I prefer one of the mods that allows tilling soil to grow plants on. This is a convenience at best, as greenhouses face their biggest issues with heat and power, which your solar bulbs are eating the vast majority of. It's still a challenge to overcome on alot of fronts (I've yet to make this attempt myself, still practicing in tundra).

[Kegereneku]

I got to admit, I see no way to allow to create "Soil" that cannot/will not be used to create as much farm than a nice biome.
So maybe it's better to keep it for mods. (I'm happy growing food on my gravel oasis surrounded by desert)

Still, I wish Hydroponic had their own solar lamp, it would make their placement much prettier (maybe someone already modded that)