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Forestry/Wood Purity

PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 5:23 pm
by anfros
A couple of days ago I found myself in need of wood and, since I was out of logs, therefore went into the forest to cut some trees. While standing there I though about how nice it will be once we are able to plant trees ourselves, and I came up with a proposal for how the system might work. Note that I do not know every mechanic of this game and therefore all of these ideas might not work. I do not know if this has been discussed before but I haven't been able to find a thread on the matter.


So first to the basic forestry part:

Seeds are harvested from trees and have the same spawn rate as maple leaves but instead of 2 up to 10 seeds can be harvested from one tree, the seeds can then be planted (should require a shovel). When you plant a tree in this manner there should be a 1/5 chance that the seed won't grow but nothing to indicate if it worked or not. If successful the seed will sprout after 1-2 days (I think there should be some randomness to the time needed) and grow into a sapling. Trees that are harvested at this stage should drop 4-8 branches. You cannot pick seeds, branches or leaves from trees at this stage. Saplings can be picked up and moved but if they are their growth-timer should be reset.

After about 5-6 more days the tree should grow again, this time it will be a young tree, and will be considerably harder to cut down than at the previous stage. If cut down it will yield a small log, which can be cut into 20 blocks of wood but cannot be made into planks (the log wont be wide enough to make planks from). You can pick seeds, branches and leaves from trees at this stage, but they will only give 1 leaf and 15 branches, respawn-times for the leaves and branches should be the same as the respawn-time of maple leaves we have now.

After another 5-6 days the trees should finally be full grown, and should work exactly as they do now. You can pick seeds from these trees as well.

Growing trees like this take 11-14 days.
If you plant a seed in this manner the purity will be equal to sqrt(SEEDPURITY*3), e.g. if you have a seed with 35% purity the tree's purity will be 10%.


Now here comes the interesting part: Purity

The big difference between this way of growing trees and the one I described above takes place in the first growth stage. Instead of just planting the seed in the ground the seed is planted in a gardening pot, where the seed takes 4-5 days to grow into a sapling. When planting a seed in a pot there should be 1/1 chance of success, i.e. it always succeeds. When you plant a seed in a pot the purity value of the seed is multiplied with a random number between 0.85-1.15, e.g. if you plan a seed with 10% purity in a pot you could for example get the multiplier 1.10 in which case the base purity of the sapling will he 11%. This multiplier won't make much difference for low purity seeds but for high purity seeds the impact will be much bigger.

During the time the seed takes to sprout fertilizers can be added to the pot to raise the purity of the sapling. Some fertilizers should give a flat increase to the purity of the plan and some should increase the purity by a multiplier. E.g. if I have two fertilizers A and B, where A gives a flat bonus to purity and B is a multiplier. These can be added to the pot in two different orders, which, of course, give different results. If I ad A first the resulting purity would be equal to (SEEDPURITY+A)*B. But if I ad B first the purity would be (SEEDPURITY*B)+A. This, in turn, mean that if SEEDPURITY=0 the purity in the first case would end up being A*B but in the second case it would only be A. Like the the fertilizing system for fields the fertilizers would give smaller bonuses if more fertilizers are used. Also the there should be a limit on how many multiplying fertilizers respectively flat bonus fertilizers can be added.

Once the sapling is fully grown it can be picked and planted on the ground where it will grow as any other sapling. Fertilizers can be added to saplings that and trees in the second growth stage, though the the boost they give to purity will be greatly diminished, also fertilizers added at this point counts towards same limits as fertilizers added in the pot.

Growing trees in this manner takes 14-16.

Skills:
These are the skills I think should be relevant to foresting.

Foresting: Allows one to pick seeds from trees and plant them both in the ground and in pots (If you have gardening). Also allows one to fertilize trees (if you have agriculture).
Requires: Colonial Tradesmanship, Lore of The Lumberwoods.

Lumberjacking: Allows one to cut down trees faster and craft a sled (if one has carpentry) onto which up to 2 trees can be lain, the sled can then be drawn at the same pace as you can carry a log. The sled only requires wood and nails to construct. Allows one to asses the purity of saplings and trees.
Requires: Foresting.

This system could also be used for berry bushes and for determining purity of fruits picked from fruit-trees, (if we ever get those).
As to what the benefit of having high purity wood, apart from food and inspirationals, would be I don't know, I haven't gotten that far yet.


I apologize for the wall of text and also for any grammar or spelling mistakes that I have made.
What do you guys think?

Re: Forestry/Wood Purity

PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:49 pm
by MagicManICT
You're jumping the gun with this post a bit. I don't know how long you've been around, but it's helpful doing some research on what is and isn't planned for the game. (Just a friendly suggestion to keep the trolls away.) Someone was complaining about a lack of a cache of proposed ideas and dev comments, but no word if said person was willing to step up and handle the task.

"Forestry" services (replanting trees, tree farming, whatever term you will) is most definitely planned. There's just been a lot of backend stuff that has had to happen before some of these niceties can get added in. Don't hold your breath for these things very soon, but there are quite a few things yet to come.

Re: Forestry/Wood Purity

PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:54 pm
by milonti
Its sort of an interesting take for a Treecrafting system. But my brain is dead at 3pm on a Friday. So i have literally no idea how balanced or broken this would be. The only opinion I can give is interesting.

Re: Forestry/Wood Purity

PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:58 pm
by Sevenless
I don't mind the system, but I think it's a little too long growth wise.

Easy to lop off days here and there though. I have a feeling the devs already have this system fairly worked out in their head.

Re: Forestry/Wood Purity

PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 9:45 pm
by anfros
I am well aware that some sort of system for tree regrowth is planned for the not-to-far-away-future, this was just a idea I had for how a system might work. I am also aware that this post is way over-detailed and this is just because I enjoyed the thinking and writing process that went in behind this post so much.

Re: Forestry/Wood Purity

PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 11:55 pm
by Uberness
Sevenless wrote:I don't mind the system, but I think it's a little too long growth wise.

Easy to lop off days here and there though. I have a feeling the devs already have this system fairly worked out in their head.

my only comparison is the time a tree takes in HnH. depending on type of tree, and type of ground its planted this can vary alot, but the time is similar. since trees take far more work to chop here they are apparently sturdier so the times he gave sound about right for grow times...

the 2 things I see not quite where they should be in this idea are planting trees in an area where they shouldn't be planted, and of course 80% success rate in randomly planting trees seems a little high. coming from HnH where base value is 50% and can be altered to 0% or 100%...(glad we don't have that system here) it just seems that value should be based on something(maybe some proficiency level). I could see it based on frontier and wilderness or stocks and culivars, or maybe both. maybe with both at 5(default) you have a 50% chance of the tree growing but as they raise so does your chances of your planted tree growing(maybe past a certain point that would make 100% it even gives a bonus to the purity?).

Re: Forestry/Wood Purity

PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2012 12:02 am
by anfros
Uberness wrote:
Sevenless wrote:I don't mind the system, but I think it's a little too long growth wise.

Easy to lop off days here and there though. I have a feeling the devs already have this system fairly worked out in their head.

my only comparison is the time a tree takes in HnH. depending on type of tree, and type of ground its planted this can vary alot, but the time is similar. since trees take far more work to chop here they are apparently sturdier so the times he gave sound about right for grow times...

the 2 things I see not quite where they should be in this idea are planting trees in an area where they shouldn't be planted, and of course 80% success rate in randomly planting trees seems a little high. coming from HnH where base value is 50% and can be altered to 0% or 100%...(glad we don't have that system here) it just seems that value should be based on something(maybe some proficiency level). I could see it based on frontier and wilderness or stocks and culivars, or maybe both. maybe with both at 5(default) you have a 50% chance of the tree growing but as they raise so does your chances of your planted tree growing(maybe past a certain point that would make 100% it even gives a bonus to the purity?).


At first I actually wanted to put the success rate for planting trees at about 1/3 base rate, but then I decided that that it would be better to have a higher success rate and instead have no indication if you succeeded or not. But you are right it would probably be better to have a lower initial success rate and add a way to improve that rate.