Possible solution to the haybot issue - fallow fields

[MagicManICT]

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

And pigs don't wallow in mud.... Power gamers do what they do. Nobody should be ashamed of it. Now, if there's a declaration that anyone caught botting will be banned and characters/accounts wiped... well, that's a different story. I'd hide that stuff as best as possible if I were to do it. I'm the kind of guy that plays within the rules. If you don't explicitly disallow it, it's fair game.

As far as the main idea here: I'm all for ideas that discourage or make writing bots more complex. Letting fields sit fallow is just a good game mechanic, I think, that if done right, can provide benefits to the player (could harvest the "wild grasses" for hay) as well as add some realism to the farming system.

[staxjax]

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

But then there would be compost/humus bots instead.

[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

But then there would be compost/humus bots instead.

Ah, see with good S/C skills, your fields can produce enough spare seeds that they can self fertilize the compost bins. Furthermore, the absolute best way for a player to get compost is via hunting and dumping the meat in the compost bins. That would have to be some of the more complex bot programming at the very least.

The point isn't to make bots impossible, because that won't happen. The point is to give viable alternatives to players that are either pointless to bot or at least complex to do so. If the return is low enough compared to active alternatives, people won't bother with the complexity required to create the bot. Or at least they're less likely to. A great example is the one I gave: Allow players to trade fields lying fallow (time) in return for not needing botting/active hay gathering. Haybots will still be better under that system, but not nearly as good as they are right now.

[staxjax]

IMO, let people spam their crops with p1 hay via bot program or otherwise. Their crops will always be ******.

[Sevenless]

IMO, let people spam their crops with p1 hay via bot program or otherwise. Their crops will be ****.

Fertilizer effects 10% of purity. The problem is, you don't spam your good crops. You spam waste seeds that are simply being used to tier up the fields. Once the fields are tiered, you stop using Ye Olde p1 hay and switch to the "good stuff" when you put your good seeds on the field.

[sabinati]

since when do fertilizers effect purity?

[staxjax]

since when do fertilizers effect purity?

Forever. I guess loftar once upon a time told people that they had no effect, in which case he was mistaken and corrected himself in IRC a week or two before the wipe.

[staxjax]

IMO, let people spam their crops with p1 hay via bot program or otherwise. Their crops will be ****.

Fertilizer effects 10% of purity. The problem is, you don't spam your good crops. You spam waste seeds that are simply being used to tier up the fields. Once the fields are tiered, you stop using Ye Olde p1 hay and switch to the "good stuff" when you put your good seeds on the field.

And that is why hay spammers have **** purity.

[Sevenless]

IMO, let people spam their crops with p1 hay via bot program or otherwise. Their crops will be ****.

Fertilizer effects 10% of purity. The problem is, you don't spam your good crops. You spam waste seeds that are simply being used to tier up the fields. Once the fields are tiered, you stop using Ye Olde p1 hay and switch to the "good stuff" when you put your good seeds on the field.

And that is why hay spammers have **** purity.

True, but that's mostly because people were planting without understanding the mechanics since they were explained wrong in the first place. I remember wondering why so many players on p5 nodes already had p2+ crops when I was struggling to break p1.4 in early pre-commercial beta.

Anyway: You can still spam field tiers while purity grinding your crops separately now that we know how it works. This makes me wonder if I even want to use coal and wood chips on my high purity crops going forward.

[staxjax]

The reason my crops were high was because I was composting p4 deer and using the humus for fertilizer, leading me to believe that the alchemical composition of the gound had some effect on the purity improvement in the fields. After the purity wipe, I kinda stopped playing much for awhile and didn't fertilize fields. Basically just logged in to stockpile ingredients and replant, then wait a few days to do it again, all the time wondering why all the postnerf players still had ****** p1-p1.1 crops while mine were still mostly going up each generation. I figured it must be from not using any fertilizers or not mixing seeds with seedbags while they were spammming their fields with p1 hay/coal/lime and whatnot. Long behold, I was able to participate in a conversation about farming with mr. loftar and he proved my suspicions about the fertilizers.