How to improve soil tiles ?

[VincentJ]

Hello,

I don't know about you, but in my opinion, when I begin a map I always seek the best tiles to begin my crops.
Then, I always look for better tiles. I don't know if the vanilla game includes ways to make better soil, I saw a little "water pump" technology, maybe it transforms mud tiles into normal growable tiles.

There's a thing I like to do, find maps with a lot of mud, and with the mod "land fill" (or "land fill+"), transform muds into super rich soil. You build "super rich soil" with devilstrand and corn. It's very long but very profitable.

Another way to improve your soil, are "vegetable garden" mods, by Dismarezo.
You can let your potatoes rot, turn them into fertilizer, and build fertilized soil with it.
The result is just very ugly I find. Why just display rich soil tiles, not brown/yellow tiles ?
Plus, the research needed is very expansive.

Dubwise tried to add this option with his mod "dub's mad hygiene". There's an irrigation tech I never tried. And a new option to turn sewage into bio fertilizer. I don't understand yet well how it works. Before, you had a lot of sewage out your evacuation pipes, you had to clean.
Now there's nothing. I really don't know how do you create biofertilizer

Obviously, I could do hydroponic things, but I always begin with a beautiful little tribe that I can't imagine under neon tubes.

I read the 1.0 version was nearly out, but I don't think the creators of the game are really interested by these features of the game, players want more guns, more suits, more machines, more animals...

And you ? What do you do to improve your soil ? Have you tried these mods ? Maybe you use other mods I don't know.

[ashaffee]

I saw all those mods and I pray forever they stay mods. Better soil/tilt soil are so broken. You are suppose to be limited on where you can plant crops. You are suppose to be incentivized to go for hydroponics on a great number of maps. Also with tribal villages you can survive for a very long time with just 70% fertile soil and potatoes.

The whole vegetable garden mod is stupid to me as well. Why do I want 10 types of food cluttering space. The current system is perfectly designed to be simple.

Rice = fastest food supply in game but most labor
Strawberries = second fastest with most labor but advantage of being eaten raw.
potatoes = best crop to plant in 70% fertile dirt but worst crop in highly fertile dirt.
Corn = Best crop for the most amount of food for the least amount of labor. Although huge risk involved if you can't support your colony for the long wait time for this crop. Also risky if you loose a harvest.

Why complicate the system by adding more useless food types.  I love using a ton of mods ( had a list of 40+ mods) but things that altered the desire to build current in game systems like hydroponics or things that added complexity for no reason were never things I desired.

[5thHorseman]

Rice = fastest food supply in game but most labor
Strawberries = second fastest with most labor but advantage of being eaten raw.
potatoes = best crop to plant in 70% fertile dirt but worst crop in highly fertile dirt.
Corn = Best crop for the most amount of food for the least amount of labor. Although huge risk involved if you can't support your colony for the long wait time for this crop. Also risky if you loose a harvest.

Why is this text not in the game? Verbatum? Or is it and I've just missed it all this time

I've always just planted equal amounts of all 4 (plus cotton and healroot) and expand when I see my food stores dropping. I knew they were different, but not *how* they were different.

[Canute]

The water pump you mention just turn into swamp/mud (maybe shallow water) into soil, but not rich soil.
At B18 there was no vanilia way to improve anything to rich soil. Not sure if there is some change at 1.0

The water sprinkle from thy hygiene mod enhance the growing of all plant's in range, even hydroponics.

The best mod to increase the terrain are still Fertile Fields, it not only allow you to modify all terrain types into others. And it modify process isn't that cheap and not the horrible cost intesive like some other mods.

I can understand you, special when you want play as tribe/medivial settings it is hard to keep enough grown food.
You need hugh growing zones on regular soil. But they need alot of workpower and is ineffective to put wall around them, but without wall's raider will burn it down.

Why is this text not in the game? Verbatum? Or is it and I've just missed it all this time

And why you didn't watch the info's about the plant's you can access with the "i" ?

[Jibbles]

Yeah, I wished you could make rich soil in vanilla. Of course there would be ways to balance that.    Hydroponics would still not be obsolete (even tho many players rarely use it)

I just don't care for the current system (unstable) and hope it changes at some point. 
You get hit kind of hard for not having decent growers and the whole process feels longer.  But hey, if you do have decent one that will drastically change your progression. Just doesn't feel right to me.

[5thHorseman]

And why you didn't watch the info's about the plant's you can access with the "i" ?

Would you believe I never noticed it? Not on the fields, where I just found it now. Thanks On corn items though it says "Raw corn" which isn't super helpful.

[Ser Kitteh]

@ashafee

You can also just use the soil part of vegetable garden and just does that.

Though like most soil mods, it's still very much unbalanced because you can place dirt anywhere.

[Snafu_RW]

On corn items though it says "Raw corn" which isn't super helpful.

IIRC 'Corn' (AKA RL maize, or 'corn on the cob') can be eaten raw with minimal mood debuff

[Boston]

I dont understand this derision towards soil improvement mods.

You people do realize that most of the work that goes into farming is so-called "soil improvement", right? Done specifically to improvs crop yield and growing ability? And that if said soil improvement wasnt done, the farmer would be extremely lucky to harvest anything?

Plowing, tilling, aerating, mounding, all are necessary.

In my opinion, agriculture in Rim2orld could use a little complexity. As of right now, it is hoth too easy and too effective

[5thHorseman]

You people do realize that most of the work that goes into farming is so-called "soil improvement", right? Done specifically to improvs crop yield and growing ability? And that if said soil improvement wasnt done, the farmer would be extremely lucky to harvest anything?

I just always figured that was all done as part of tending the crops, and the "100%" soil isn't sitting there ready to grow crops on but will - with the time and effort your colonists (but not you because you're busy doing 100 other things) put into it it becomes that.

Likewise 30% soil is just TERRIBLE before your pawns work it up to that 30% state.

[Broken Reality]

I really like Raibeau Flammes farming mod. That was was nicely balanced in that it took a lot of time and work to upgrade things or alter terrain types. I have seen other mods that let you just draw what terrain you want and that's bad. But if you have to get soil and make fertiliser and then you can make the rich soil that seems fine.

[Oblitus]

Hydroponics is awfully implemented. You can't forbid sowing; you have no way to set an area to select what you are sowing, half of the plants are not sowable, several solar flares can kill your plants... In prior versions, I always preferred a mod which allowed to make regular soil over hydroponics, not for productivity, but for convenience.

Also, huge fertility is more of a negative than positive. When growing rice (basically the only plant that you have any reason to use with hydroponics), it quickly becomes a mess, where your grower is spending all their time sowing and harvesting a single plant.

[ashaffee]

Of my list of 40 mods ( I deleted them all now since I only play on 1.0). I did find some QoL for managing hydroponics. I definitely think they should just be 3 x 3 blocks instead of awkward lines that require much more micromanagement. I'll use mods to take out as much micromanagement as possible.


But the reason I don't like any tilt soil mod is because each biome is suppose to give you a certain difficulty. Being in the desert was the first time I ever made potatoes and just dropped them in between 70% fertile dirt. I had to rush hydroponics for steady healroot. 70% of the map is already temperate forest so it is easy to get good farming land maps. Arid offers plenty of good farming land. Tundra is similar to desert. Extreme desert/ice sheet over unique challenge of basically disabling normal farming.


I can see the appeal if you are doing a themed run and want to be in a certain biome for that run but don't want to experience difficulty then sure. But I would hate the idea of them installing that kind of stuff in the base game, which is what the title of this topic implied. Why not just play every map besides desert, tundra, and icesheet if you need more viable soil?

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.

[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.

[ashaffee]

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.