[A16] Rainbeau's Fertile Fields

[Juntahmol]

I see now that I've started playing with it a bit that digging up tiles is the only way to get piles of dirt.  Is there ever going to be another method for providing piles of dirt?  What if I wanted to remove all lakes from my map?

[dburgdorf]

Is there ever going to be another method for providing piles of dirt?

I am open to suggestions. I don't want dirt to be an infinite resource, but at the same time, I recognize that the need to remove dirt from one location before it can be used at another does make terraforming difficult on maps that don't have a lot of soil to begin with.

I could look at figuring out how to make it more readily available from traders, but I'm not sure I want to, as the idea of traders just hauling around huge stores of dirt just seems a bit silly. A second colony could be used as a source of dirt for your primary base, but that might not always be practical.

So if you have ideas, let me know. 

[SpaceDorf]

I am thinking of ways to create soil.

For once your process of creating fertilizer is a bit off .. but I guess you know that ..or maybe you care to comment on your knowledge about gardening.

A way I could think of would be to mix different stonetypes together .. first crushing them than mixing them and then enrich them with organic material.
This seems partly unlimited, but would be dependent on the availability of the stone types.

[PetWolverine]

I've gotten quite a bit of dirt from bulk traders, enough that I'm planning on turning some areas that I previously harvested dirt from back into soil once I'm done with my current terraforming project. Seems pretty unlimited, since you can call traders from friendly factions, although they won't always have dirt.

I'm not sure if this is intended balance-wise, but the possibilities this mod opens up for killboxes are amazing. I have a checkerboard of marshy soil and deep water in my killbox, with deadfall traps on the marshy soil. The difficult terrain slows down invaders, and the deep water encourages them to walk on the traps while still allowing my pawns to safely reset them. I've had huge raids that haven't gotten more than a few tiles in, and only thrumbos get anywhere near the turrets. It's evil.

[dburgdorf]

For once your process of creating fertilizer is a bit off .. but I guess you know that ..or maybe you care to comment on your knowledge about gardening.

My knowledge of gardening is largely limited to "occasionally water the plants my wife puts into dirt in pots." That said, other than the fact that composting in real life takes a lot longer than three days, I thought I had the basic idea correct. But if there's something that you think should be tweaked, please let me know.

(I thought incorrectly until last week that plowing and tilling were essentially the same thing, which is why the soil I describe as having plow lines is named "tilled soil." So, yeah, my knowledge of gardening and farming is rather limited. What can I say? I'm a city guy.)

A way I could think of would be to mix different stonetypes together ....

Adding an ability to "craft" stone chunks into dirt piles is an interesting idea. I'll definitely give it some thought.

I've gotten quite a bit of dirt from bulk traders....

It's good to know that that's a real possibility. I was assuming it was, but....  Well, one of the problems with having gone down the modding rabbit hole is that I spend so much of my free time working on mods that I don't really have much left to actually *play* the damned game.

I'm not sure if this is intended balance-wise, but the possibilities this mod opens up for killboxes are amazing.

It's not so much "intended" as it is an inevitable side effect. I could create a mod that did nothing but add decorative balloons, and I suspect that some gamer, somewhere, would figure out a way to use them to trash raiders. 

[AngleWyrm]

Well, one of the problems with having gone down the modding rabbit hole is that I spend so much of my free time working on mods that I don't really have much left to actually *play* the damned game.

This comes up rather a lot and I speculate its a detrimental effect that comes from long game load times creating an upper tolerance limit on the number of iterations a programmer can do. It also encourages a split between developer and player that engenders expressing animosity between sides rather than enjoyment of playing the game.

A lot of hidden costs in the convenience features that create long load times.

[SpaceDorf]

I have my Kids over, so I have less time at the moment, but I could write up something that I learned from my gardening times with my father .. wo is a gardener.

[dburgdorf]

Update:

- Allowed for compatibility with non-vanilla stone types (when breaking up stone to create rocky dirt) from the "Minerals and Materials" and "Kura's Extra Minerals" mods.

- Added a "Getting Started" text file to the mod's "About" folder, for the benefit of those wanting a "how to" guide to using "Fertile Fields" for the first time.

[SpaceDorf]

Okay ..

a hopefully short writeup about soil and its composition.
[ don't believe me .. wall of text incoming .. ]

===== What is dirt, please don't hurt me, for that pun ==============================================

Good Farmland is in its broadest definition a mixture of sand, clay and humus.
Humus is soil which has a lot of rotten plant matter, between the size of tiny pebbles down to molecules, in it.
The bags of soil you can buy for potted plants are basicly this .. humus mixed with a bit of dry peat and woodchips.
The thicker the topsoil is with humus ( 5-15 cm, 2-5 inches ) the better.
Potatoes, Asperagus, .. in general everys root vegetable prefers lighter ground
with a bigger part sand and less clay,because its easier to grow downwards.
Bigger plants with multi-yeared cycles prefer a more loamy ground because it can sustain more weight and holds more water.
Peat is basically water compressed humus, not yet brown coal.

so as a general direction the progress is like this :

Big
=> rock ( cm )
=> gravel ( pebbles and sand mm )
=> sand ( still visible with human eyes until 0.02 mm )
=> silt ( 0.02mm- 0.002 mm )
=> clay ( < 0.002 mm )
=> real tiny stuff .. molecules, antman, ..

This is composed of the different rock types but contains nearly no nutrients
usable by plants.
Thats why there is the need of humus, it is the source of most nutrients and the best binding agent for them.
Marshy Soil ( Peat ) has actually the largest amount of humus of any soil types.
But else, this is where you would tack on the fertility percentage of the game
and I think Tynan got it quite right.

======Come on, lets throw shit on our ungrown food ========================================

Corrosion by Wind and Water and Planting and Harvesting Crops deprives the soil of those nutrients
Following this the fertility value should actually become worse, the longer the player uses it as farmland.
About 5%-10% per growth cycle, depending on the growing time of the crop sounds right.
Because of this Crop Cycles were one of the great agriculctural breakthroughs of the early middle ages.
Different plants need different kinds of nutrients, and some even enrich the soil.
Clover is a good example. This may even be were the superstition of the four leaved clover comes from. Finding something like this on a resting field sounds like a divine blessing ..

The other possible step is giving back nutrients by hand. Thats fertilizer and used since about 3000 B.C.

There are a lot of possible distinctions for fertilizer, I will take the two easiest ones for the game.

Organic and Mineral fertilizer.

Organic is the older form, and is exactly what it sounds like.
Organic Matter thrown on the field. From letting the stalks of the old crop rot on the field, to throwing other rotten plants, compost, meat, wood chips and fecal matter on the field.
The technical term for a compost hive should be "accelerated natural humus generator" .. the chemical processes also produce heat .. nice to know for those sitting on an ice sheet.
Also Gas for Generators and the base for Chemfuel can be produced this way.

Mineral Fertilizer is also just what it sounds like. Minerals, Salts, and all the other chemical nutrients plants need, factory produced and mixed for the exact need of the crop.
Which is also a big cause of water pollution, because its like dropping bags of fast food from a plane on a starving village.
Sure the people get to eat, but a big part will rot, eaten by something else ( other weeds ) and leave big piles of trash.
They contain mostly this chemicals : Nitrate, Potassium, Phosphor, Magnesium, Calcium and Sulfur;
The earliest forms of this where ground chalk, limestone and ash.


=========Ingame or The actual Point of all this =====================

So in game terms, your mod has the basic translations right.
I even take back my earlier complaints about turning compost into fertilizer.
But for my sake call it raw compost, because in my mind compost is always the final product.

So producing soil from rock is basically grind it down to sand, take some out, grind it more, mix the sand back in.

The best uses for the stonetypes ingame :

Granite   -> gravel, to hard for everything else, artwork, outdoor construction, very robust
Limestone -> fertilizer and concrete, construction
Marble    -> maybe fertilizer, artwork, indoor construction, weak against acid.
Slate     -> Clay, roof construction
Sandstone -> Sand, Gravel, construction

So soil could be produced from mixing sandstone with slate in some kind of rock mill.This should use quite some plaststeel, since I hear the word diamond tipped quite often in conjunction with mining, drilling tunnels and drilling for oil.

Producing Fertilizer from Limestone is quite chemically involved .. so from blocks in a drug lab, And ash .. in the crematorium on a lower setting .. I think we just found another use for raiders.

But before you throw them on your crops ..  without and even with the involvement of animals, insects and bacteria rotting bodies release some toxins.
So Sacred Ground is nothing else than a big "DO NOT FARM HERE "-sign .. and since the ground is done for anyway .. lets make it tradition.
You could also call it overly fertilized.

Finally I can't shake the feeling that the recipe for compost should be more involved. Just four organics of anything is a bit too easy.
I think it should at least be half plant matter and half animal matter.
There are some ingredients which are also organic :  wood, leather, wool, cotton and devilstrand.

And If you find a way to stop rotten stuff from disappearing and turn into a compost ingredient by itself .. that would be awesome. Except for whole bodies .. because the graveyard argument .. bones or bonemeal on the other hand ..

yeah .. about keeping it short .. I think I will stop for now.


This ends todays talk about .. stuff I learned because my Dad made me plant potatoes in our way too big garden.

[Tammabanana]

(FYI: I'm going from book-research, not practical experience yet, to expand upon some of what SpaceDorf is describing.)

Corrosion by Wind and Water and Planting and Harvesting Crops deprives the soil of those nutrients
Following this the fertility value should actually become worse, the longer the player uses it as farmland.
About 5%-10% per growth cycle, depending on the growing time of the crop sounds right.
Because of this Crop Cycles were one of the great agriculctural breakthroughs of the early middle ages.
Different plants need different kinds of nutrients, and some even enrich the soil.
Clover is a good example. This may even be were the superstition of the four leaved clover comes from. Finding something like this on a resting field sounds like a divine blessing ..

Crop rotation to maintain fertility would be a nice addition. You'd have to add some more plants, though; vanilla doesn't have nitrogen fixers (beans/peas/clover/other legumes). Crop rotation also reduces pests - when a single plant has been planted in the same spot year after year, the bugs/bacteria that like to eat it build up a nice big population, and then you get sicker and fewer crops. Crops come in families that are eaten by the same pests - so it wouldn't be worthwhile to follow corn with rice, for example. Here's more info on that: http://extension.psu.edu/plants/gardening/fact-sheets/general-gardening/plant-rotation

You're supposed to go on a four-year cycle - it looks like maybe a corn-or-rice/potato/daylily/dandelion rotation would work with vanilla plants for pest reduction, but legumes are pretty important for fertility. Clover's pretty good for animal grazing, and dry beans keep for years; both of those would have bonus worthwhileness beyond soil maintenance.

To get the fertility back into the soil, though, I think you need to dig the remains of the clover/beanstalks/etc. back into the soil. A new gardening chore?

I even take back my earlier complaints about turning compost into fertilizer.
But for my sake call it raw compost, because in my mind compost is always the final product.

Could be interesting to use the two different kinds of fertilizer - raw compost -> finished compost boosts fertility long-term; chemical fertilizers boost it even more in the short-term but have long-term repercussions.

Slate     -> Clay, roof construction
Sandstone -> Sand, Gravel, construction

Clay could also be dug up from Mud tiles, sand from Sand tiles, peat from Marsh and Marshy Soil? (I would love to see that damn marsh become good for something.)

But before you throw them on your crops ..  without and even with the involvement of animals, insects and bacteria rotting bodies release some toxins.
So Sacred Ground is nothing else than a big "DO NOT FARM HERE "-sign .. and since the ground is done for anyway .. lets make it tradition.
You could also call it overly fertilized.

"Hot" compost, like poo and raw compost that hasn't degraded the whole way yet, definitely needs a Do Not Farm Here sign. I've seen notes about digging it in a foot or three away from your crops, between rows, working all right. But also a lot about just preparing a bed well ahead of time - digging in the hot compost/fertilizer, waiting a few months, and voila, super soil.

Finally I can't shake the feeling that the recipe for compost should be more involved. Just four organics of anything is a bit too easy.
I think it should at least be half plant matter and half animal matter.
There are some ingredients which are also organic :  wood, leather, wool, cotton and devilstrand.

And If you find a way to stop rotten stuff from disappearing and turn into a compost ingredient by itself .. that would be awesome. Except for whole bodies .. because the graveyard argument .. bones or bonemeal on the other hand ..

I agree that the four-count ingredients is too little, though I would argue for calling for the amount of ingredients based on Nutrition instead of Count, instead of changing up the allowed ingredients.

Straight wood/sawdust needs to be mixed with something else to make compost - it's way too high in... um... something, and sucks nitrogen right out of the soil. Devilstrand canon claims it's sturdier clothing, so it must not degrade easily, so if that goes compostable it should take longer. I think RL leather has been treated to make it degrade less easily, and in-game skips that skin->leather step. Skin ought to compost well, but leather probably not so quickly.

You could probably make a butchering recipe for corpses-only that gives up raw compost + bonemeal or something. Maybe keep the human-butchering debuff if possible.

I also wish I could set a butchering recipe for "chop all this rotten stuff up into compost forever", but vanilla doesn't have a setting for excluding fresh items. I think some mod added one somewhere, but I haven't gone hunting for it since I realized I wanted it for this purpose.

Also, for more reference: http://ccetompkins.org/gardening/composting/compost-resources

[SpaceDorf]

Of course I supplemented with wiki Backup and some rereading of stuff. But I admit I left out some Details which I deemed to extreme for the scope of the game.

[AngleWyrm]

Corrosion by Wind and Water and Planting and Harvesting Crops deprives the soil of those nutrients
Following this the fertility value should actually become worse, the longer the player uses it as farmland.
About 5%-10% per growth cycle, depending on the growing time of the crop sounds right.

A rule of thumb that I remember from long ago is to leave 1/7 of your crop land laying fallow to regenerate nutrients.

[dburgdorf]

Um, OK, well....  I guess I *did* ask for input....

I'm going to try to boil the info down to a short list of actual potential mod updates. Let me know if I'm missing anything important or if I'm just missing the point of something you said.

-- COMPOST AND FERTILIZER:

I should change the name, so that instead of making compost which then becomes fertilizer, you make RAW compost which then becomes fertilizer. That's an easy one.

(And on that note, I should probably rename "tilled soil" to "plowed soil," as well, since that's what it's actually supposed to represent.)

The raw compost recipe, instead of four organics, should require maybe two plant matter and two animal matter, with perhaps a wood/leather/wool/cotton requirement added, as well. Alternately, I could have it require a set nutrition amount rather than a set count of ingredients.

Possibly allow fertilizer to be made from limestone chunks in a drug lab?  (Technically, I suppose this would be a different type of fertilizer than the fertilizer made from raw compost, but for game purposes, I don't see a real advantage to making them different things. Also, I'm not fully sold on the idea, anyway, since it depends on having a particular stone type on the map.)

And allow cremated bodies to produce ash which would be... fertilizer? Or a raw compost or fertilizer component?

As to having rotten stuff turn into compost components instead of disappearing, I have no idea how I'd go about doing it, but I can certainly take a look at the relevant code when I have a chance.

If I added a butchering recipe to turn corpses directly into raw compost and bonemeal, what would the bonemeal be used for?

And maybe I should figure out a way to add a recipe specifically to allow a "turn rotten stuff into raw compost indefinitely" bill....

-- SOIL DEGRADATION AND CROP ROTATION:

I understand the importance of crop rotation in the real world, but I have no idea how I'd go about implementing it in game, as there's no base mechanic for "requiring" that a certain type of crop be grown in a particular field. And honestly, I don't see where the game would benefit from it, anyway, and it goes rather far beyond what I consider the mod's scope.

Allowing for soil to degrade after crops are harvested, though, could be an interesting addition. I don't think I'd want it to be an automatic thing, but perhaps I could add a percentage chance that any particular tile could drop in fertility after plants are harvested from it.

-- MAKING DIRT FROM STONE:

I should add some sort of "rock mill," which I assume would be a work table, probably made using plasteel and components, which would allow stone chunks to be broken down into dirt. I recognize that stone types are not all the same, but from a gameplay perspective, I'm not sure that I'd want to limit what sort of stone can be used, since no map is going to have every type.

Digging up peat from marshes is an interesting idea, and peat could be utilized in the soil-making process. But, again, it would depend on having access to a tile type which won't be on every map, and I would prefer to avoid such dependencies.

[PetWolverine]

For soil degradation, maybe it would make sense for plowed soil to revert to rich soil after harvest? Besides realism, it speaks to balance, since you'd have to keep paying in labor for the OP productivity of plowed soil. But I think growers should do this job rather than builders, if possible. Of course, animals eating the raw plants would count as a harvest. Maybe large animals should trample plowed soil just by walking on it, too.

Then if there's also a chance for rich soil to degrade to normal soil, this would ideally be applied after the reversion of plowed to rich, otherwise if you keep plowing you never have to refertilize.

[SpaceDorf]

Yeah fertilizers only matter when there is soil degredation.
So you need to rebuild the better soil.

Bonemeal would also be a compost component, or chemical component for Calcium extraction. The thing with bones is, that they need a long time to rot otherwise.

The other stuff requirement is more an addition to the possibel options you have for compost.
While Tammabanana had it right, that cured leather and woven cloth is not that good as compost component.

The thing with marshy soil is that it may just give more dirt because of the quality of the soil itself. And I don't know what it leaves now, but it should leave shallow or deep water behind.