The Fruits of Farming

[toofless]

Hey.

I'm part way though making a farmer's map as I feel most of the ones out there are too awkward.

So I've made already the crop system. You must use a hero skill to plow a part of land to be able to plant some seeds. The seeds grow with or without water but will grow faster with water and increases its chance of replanting and/or producing a seed. So from 1 plant you can get max 1 seed back and a free plant. I did this so in the end when you have upgraded you can leave your fields and all should be well while still retaining some requirements and chance.

Now I am starting to think about breeding animals and subsequently about food control. This is where you guys come in.

Which from these options would you prefer? (please vote in Poll)

A. Food is standard in w3 and requires buildings. More buildings = more population

B. Food is equal to current amount of crops + animals you own. If you slaughter an animal for gold of sell a crop you will lose food population

C. Food is manually increased by using the crops/animals someway

D. There are certain times of day when you will get taxed on how many units you own. Your max food will go down by # of units u have.

E. Much like option D except you have a warehouse with some stored crops/animals and it will take these instead of our food. If there are no items you will lose max food


I believe to make a farmer map it's essential not to lose the automation of resource gaining while keeping it a challenge to maintain resource efficiency but this is why I ask here to get some opinions. I'm in favor of E but what do you think?

I hope you guys like and all please vote in poll!!!!!

 

[willydawiller]

i vote option c and my idea is, that food goes
down every ex 2 minutes acording to the amount
of animals you own+you and your family, to
increase it you must slaughter an animal
or pick some edible stuff from the ground
ex crops or apples or dead animals etc...
and a warehouse so that you can store ur food
longer( dunno how that will work, maybe warehouse
makes that your food level sinks slower, or
increases max food level)

you choose

 

[toofless]

Ah that's a good idea! Only thing about that is maybe mixing animal and people into population might get messy but I like that idea because it's a good way feed you animals :> hmm

And also you made me have another idea.... how about every second the life of items decrease so if you don't pick your food from the field in time they will die? If you put in warehouse they will not die.
Thanks keep it coming xD

 

[FriXionX]

C... I was just thinking exactly what willydawiller said, when looking at C.

 

[The_wand_mirror]

Well actually i thought about it that was C, but that your food would decrease overtime so you will have to produce more again in order to keep everything running.

 

[willydawiller]

Ah that's a good idea! Only thing about that is maybe mixing animal and people into population might get messy but I like that idea because it's a good way feed you animals :> hmm

And also you made me have another idea.... how about every second the life of items decrease so if you don't pick your food from the field in time they will die? If you put in warehouse they will not die.
Thanks keep it coming xD

another idea from me, the life of the crops increases while they grow, then
when they are fullgrown it will start decreasing and the less healthpoints
it has when you pick it, the less food it produces for you. And ex
if you pick them Waaay too late you might get a food poisoning but
would still increase your food amount a lil and they might
make the rest of your crops, ex in the warehouse start rotting faster
or something i dunno .

 

[toofless]

Well, how I got it now is that crops automaticly change into items (sellable/usable). This means if you upgrade your crop strain you essential won't have to buy more seeds. That's where the profit comes from but it's not realistic I guess.

You think it's better idea to keep crops in field and manually harvest them? It would mean changing the system from crops planting themselves to the player having to buy more seeds after every harvest.

 

[willydawiller]

Well, how I got it now is that crops automaticly change into items (sellable/usable). This means if you upgrade your crop strain you essential won't have to buy more seeds. That's where the profit comes from but it's not realistic I guess.

You think it's better idea to keep crops in field and manually harvest them? It would mean changing the system from crops planting themselves to the player having to buy more seeds after every harvest.

okay, how about using mana instead and
an edited mana well spell?

 

[toofless]

I've got a mana system already. Player must build Wells to gain mana and also Irrigators which has mana regen aura but takes mana from Wells. So if you build too many Irrigators and not enough Wells you will run out of mana.

Would you prefer manual harvest or plants that replant themselves?

I love how C is most popular yet it is the most vague option XD

 

[willydawiller]

I've got a mana system already. Player must build Wells to gain mana and also Irrigators which has mana regen aura but takes mana from Wells. So if you build too many Irrigators and not enough Wells you will run out of mana.

if this is going to be for tft then, make another replenish spell,
and the mana/hp that is added from that spell is autoremoved with
triggers, there is nothing wrong in using mana many times

--==edit==-- you could also make another mana regen spell,
ex some "hydrator" that supplies the plants with water and
increases growth rate

 

[toofless]

if this is going to be for tft then, make another replenish spell,
and the mana/hp that is added from that spell is autoremoved with
triggers, there is nothing wrong in using mana many times

What do you mean?

 

[Just_Spectating]

you should combine A and D

 

[willydawiller]

What do you mean?

pffff, i mean you ex take a mana well and turn its model into a plant
or something, then you edit its mana limit to be 100 or something
and make mana regen to be something like 1 per second.
then you edit its spell replenish mana and life, only to work for
your farmer, then make a trigger, Or make that it doesn't add
any healthpoints or mana and that it works on day too

then make trigger spell is cast, casted spell equal to replenish
mana and health, action. add 1 to food limit or something

You dont have to choose this if you dont want to

 

[Zack1996]

I'm going for Option E, but I have an idea that I find more interesting.
Maybe you have to harvest crops and it will be added into your current food or something. You can have an unlimited amount of animals but if you do not have enough food, they will lose health over time until they die. The food should be equally distributed between the animals. A quick example:
Lets say you have a horse that needs 10 food a day and 5 pigs that need 2 food a day. You would need 20 food a day. However, lets say you only have a food production of 12 food a day. That would mean each animal gets 12/6=2 food a day. The pigs would have enough food but the horse will have 3 less food than required. It would lose 3 health a second (or something) until it dies or your food production is high enough.

 

[toofless]

you should combine A and D

Hmm. Like some buildings give a small food bonus that is unchangeable. Yeah I'm feeling this.

I'm going for Option E, but I have an idea that I find more interesting.
Maybe you have to harvest crops and it will be added into your current food or something. You can have an unlimited amount of animals but if you do not have enough food, they will lose health over time until they die. The food should be equally distributed between the animals. A quick example:
Lets say you have a horse that needs 10 food a day and 5 pigs that need 2 food a day. You would need 20 food a day. However, lets say you only have a food production of 12 food a day. That would mean each animal gets 12/6=2 food a day. The pigs would have enough food but the horse will have 3 less food than required. It would lose 3 health a second (or something) until it dies or your food production is high enough.

This is a clever idea. Realistically, most animals simply eat silage (grass) so I will probably not include animals when taxing food but this idea I can do for all other units since there will be some units in my map that are of higher quality thus require more food.
Great idea!

That gives me an idea for feeding animals. Maybe their health degrades constantly and when it reaches a certain point it will fire a trigger that if the tile underneath the animal is grass, replace tile with that 'dirty grass' and heal the animal. Then if you have too many animals in 1 place you will have to move them to a new, more fertile area till the previous grass grows back.

 

[Just_Spectating]

Or make the animals AI so they automatically move to newer greens.

Too many animals == Slaughter house

 

[toofless]

I think we are on the same wavelength.

What I plan to do is give animals that annoying 'wander' ability then if they get hungry remove that ability and order them to move to the nearest green part. This way players should build fenced areas so animals don't wander everywhere (realistic).
Or possible set an area maybe around the water trough, or something, if they move out of it, order them back in.

And yes, there will be slaughter houses xD
Partly to make it less easy to breed animals (farmers must take their animals to town to make them into a sellable product).

Because you got me excited, I'm going to give a sneak preview into some of the other features:

Specialy Hired Heroes
-Some sneaky spy's/saboteurs with abilities such as poison water supply, enter building (you will lose the unit but have vision of the building and it's contents, dunno how I'm gonna trigger this)
-Trappers to set some evil traps.
-Horsewhisperes, can steal your animals from under your nose!

Armies
-Large range of aggressive units ranging from Guard Dogs to Fortified Tractors!

Ultimate Heroes
As in life, the true aim is to settle down and create some evil offspring. Once you find a wife (probably by just buying them xD) you can try for offspring. If you are lucky you may get a Son/Daughter who will grow into a powerful Hero. If you were stingy and bought a cheap wife you may get a drooling idiot for a son
1 son and 1 daughter MAX and NO REFUNDS. So be careful deciding if you want a hero quickly or you want to maximize your chance of getting a good hero.

Interesting Items
-Molotov Cocktails supah effective vs. crops and leaves land burnt and unusable
-TNT supah destructive (will probably require a miniquest or something to obtain it)
-Will have to think on this section.

Full Automation
-Expensive units designed for end-game to automate many of the tasks you would normally have to do manually, such as auto-harvesters to sell ready crops.

Global Disasters
-Drought, effects all mana using buildings and will reduce their effective mana regen.
-Locust swarms! How are you goiing to protect your valuable crops from thousands of insects?
-Pestilence. Dammit, some disease was brought from some foreign country and has infected your animals!

 

[willydawiller]

dont forget that you can have an rehydrating system for the grass too

 

[HappyCockroach]

b sounds good.

 

[toofless]

dont forget that you can have an rehydrating system for the grass too

Lol. I can also make the pigs fly but I don't think it's necessary
Probably there will be some item like Miracle Grow! Useable on crops or grass.

Thank you all again for input.

 

[willydawiller]

will winter be included? cause in that case you would need
to gather stuff into warehouses ex "the next mission is allways
to survive the next winter" gather like...dryed meat, fodder
for animals... and stuff. then maybe you need to dig a well
in some part of the game and go to it with a bucket every
once in a while

 

[Discipline]

I think you should have two buildings, a granary for the crops and a slaughterhouse for the meat. Give both buildings inventories and allow the player to pick up crops and meat with their farmer and place them in the buildings. Once buildings acquire the items they are automatically removed and converted to a certain amount of mana points, depending on what food item is obtained.

From there the buildings mana will represent the available stock to feed your animals and will periodically decrease by the amount of animals you have, how much food they require and what type of food they require (ie. certain animals are carnivorous and others are herbivores). When the stock is entirely depleted, decrease the affected units hp over time until they die. This way the player will be able to micromanage what kind of stock they need to keep compared to what amount of crops and livestock they want to sell, and depending on what you set the animal's stock requirements to it shouldn't be awfully hard to manage. It's also more realistic (with requiring the player to actually collect and deposit) without going overboard.

You could also code random shit to happen when the food stocks are low.... like say when a cattle dog is low on hp and within a certain range of livestock it'll kill the livestock to replenish its hp (so effectively you lose an animal to keep one alive) or when the livestock is near death it can do something like attack the fence and break it's way out to freedom.