Possible solution to the haybot issue - fallow fields

[Sevenless]

Currently for tier farming, haybots will reign supreme. It's simply the only way to truly pump large numbers of fields up in influence. My suggestion to deal with this problem is a right click option that causes a farming action and turns the field fallow. Turning a field fallow forces the field to go through some form of growth timer, preventing planting on it until the field has been re-tilled. Fallow fields will neither donate to nor take away from influence bars. The benefit being the next crop to be planted will get an influence bonus based on the S/C value (rng based like the plenty bonus of course) of the planter + a base amount. The times and bonuses are obviously a balancing issue I'm not going to meddle with, but 300% is what I consider to be a minimum Influence value in order to rank up the tiers of a crop. This will not of course make haybots worthless, but it gives a semi-competitive option to players who choose not to use script aids to play the game.

Fields left fallow are often colonized by clovers, which are very good at replenishing depleted soil with nitrogen through their symbiotic bacteria. This opens up the possibility for an uncommon curio along the lines of a "Lucky Four Leafed Clover". This is also of course a traditional farming method that fits well with the period.

[sabinati]

tell me more about these "haybots"

[APXEOLOG]

That LISP bot-engine? Srsly?

sabinati odditown have their own client with bots since alpha as i know. Looks like it is time to add bots for everyone

[sabinati]

boshaw made that LISP client for me but uh... I couldn't figure out anything i wanted to bot with it except spamming animations and they took the animations away from mortals

[APXEOLOG]

boshaw made that LISP client for me but uh... I couldn't figure out anything i wanted to bot with it except spamming animations and they took the animations away from mortals

xD

[Sevenless]

tell me more about these "haybots"

I know at least one faction had them running in pre-commercial beta at some point. And as far as I can see it would be a fairly easy bot to set up. The creation of hay is an extremely repetitive and fairly easy task to do. If there are no bots running as of now, I would expect to see them no less than a couple months from now for something that is this mindless and yet crucial to tier farming.

[APXEOLOG]

I would expect to see them no less than a couple months from now

3 days will be fairly enough if gentlemen agreement will be broken

[Potjeh]

More influence fertilizers, invariance penalty for fertilizers. In addition to fallow cycle, of course, since that's a very good idea regardless of haybot issues.

[Sevenless]

More influence fertilizers, invariance penalty for fertilizers. In addition to fallow cycle, of course, since that's a very good idea regardless of haybot issues.

Or buff the influence value of humus I suppose. The problem with hay is that there's no viable competitors. But I'm not sure I want to see invarience penalties in farming, it's already bad enough trying to count out fertilizers for fields

[Zou]

Odditown doesn't have bots. Where did you get this idea?