Lucerne

[Tamasin]

It feels unrewarding throwing my cereal ears at haystacks given the poor returns, and no way am I spending my time growing or collecting grass. I'll be pretty unhappy when I run out of stolen wild oats again. When I'd run out after the wild oat spawn rate was lessened, I found it sucked to get enough hay even when I was using t2 cereal ears. And I do not want to grow extra t2 cereal just to make hay from. It's not sooo bad, and I'm grateful we have hay bales at all, but it doesn't feel balanced to me. I think that ears of oatmeal should be less crap.

[Procne]

Buy you guys know that 1 grass = 1 hay with a haystack? I usually drop only 4-6 hay on my fields, so foraging grass is enough for me. And an occasional wild oats giving 30 hay is nice too.
How much hay do you drop?

[troubleis]

I usually put 12 hay on a field that I am tiering up. That gives me 500% influence, which I think 4 harvests is a reasonable amount of time to go from 0 to 100.

[Potjeh]

11 hay + 4 turkey droppings

[RonPaulFTW]

Buy you guys know that 1 grass = 1 hay with a haystack? I usually drop only 4-6 hay on my fields, so foraging grass is enough for me. And an occasional wild oats giving 30 hay is nice too.
How much hay do you drop?

Haystacks when announced were sold as a precursor to animal husbandry. As it currently stands it is going to be painful to fill them if animals eat a lot. So we need an easier way to fill them - and really neither wild oats nor lots of grass foraging are ideal answers.

What about 1 point for oats, 2 for rye and barley, and 4 for wheat? I agree that Corn fields should also drop stocks that feed the haystack. Maybe that is the best solution here.

Another option is to make all grain/corn fields drop one unit of stubble per ear at harvest. This would replace the hay and be a +3 fill point item on haystacks.

[Procne]

Or maybe instead of increasing number of generated items it would make more sense to have fields gain influence faster?
The question is how fast do devs want people to be able to raise t3 crops on a new field. If 4 harvests is fine with them then they could increase influence values on fertilizers or decrease influence bar's length instead of making it easier to produce hundreds of hay.
If they think 4 harvests is too fast then they could make diminishing returns harder on fertilizers.

I'm just against solutions that involve creating hundreds of items when it's possible to make it with less items.

[RonPaulFTW]

Or maybe instead of increasing number of generated items it would make more sense to have fields gain influence faster?
The question is how fast do devs want people to be able to raise t3 crops on a new field. If 4 harvests is fine with them then they could increase influence values on fertilizers or decrease influence bar's length instead of making it easier to produce hundreds of hay.
If they think 4 harvests is too fast then they could make diminishing returns harder on fertilizers.

I'm just against solutions that involve creating hundreds of items when it's possible to make it with less items.

Again - haystacks are about feeding to be released animals. If anything fields should be harder to tier, and hay easier to make. This means we can feed our livestock without extraordinary effort, but prevents fast spamming of t3. Could make t3 food bonuses a little nicer then too.

[Procne]

Or maybe instead of increasing number of generated items it would make more sense to have fields gain influence faster?
The question is how fast do devs want people to be able to raise t3 crops on a new field. If 4 harvests is fine with them then they could increase influence values on fertilizers or decrease influence bar's length instead of making it easier to produce hundreds of hay.
If they think 4 harvests is too fast then they could make diminishing returns harder on fertilizers.

I'm just against solutions that involve creating hundreds of items when it's possible to make it with less items.

Again - haystacks are about feeding to be released animals. If anything fields should be harder to tier, and hay easier to make. This means we can feed our livestock without extraordinary effort, but prevents fast spamming of t3. Could make t3 food bonuses a little nicer then too.

You don't know how much hay will animals need. There is no point to think about it now.

[ImpalerWrG]

When animals are implement they should effectively act AS walking compost bins, put food in, and collect the 'Humus pies' (it's like a little coal clamp of Humus).

If that becomes the norm then perhaps Hay should be de-emphasized as a Ag input in favor of the post-husbandry increasingly available and unavoidable Humus, this would in fact be more consistent with real agriculture, hay generally is not put on fields, though crop residues like straw and corn stover are generally left in a field after harvest it is not common to bring in anything in from off the field other then manure.

I'm all for adding new crops and am glad to hear that new ones are in their are new ones in development, their are currently two reasons to grow any particular crop, 1) Raising Influence for for a future 'main' crop or 2) Getting the high tier product of the main crop. Post Husbandry you might have a third motive, to produce cheap bulk animal feed. Our current crops all follow a format of "Take 2, Give 1" and their are 12 possible combinations in that format. If different formats were used that were more giving then a category of Cover-crops could be created which serve as the main influence raising crops. A "Take 2, Give 2" format has 6 combinations and a "Take 1, Give 3" has 4 combinations. Cover-crops would be a natural place to produce your animal feeds too, Alfalfa is a legume and increases soil nitrogen, are are clover and several other common cover-crops. Turnips and Mustard were also common cover-crops in the colonial period.

Different animal-feed crops should probably have different effect on animals, some might make them grow faster, get fatter, breed more etc etc. Likewise making the Humus from different animals unique in their effects on crops (similar to how turkey droppings are unique now) would tie the whole thing back into farming and making a kind of circle of inputs and outputs.

[DarkNacht]

You don't know how much hay will animals need. There is no point to think about it now.