Jump to content

HurrayItsRaining

Agriculture Gameplay  

94 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you like DU to have forestry, farming, ranching activites?

    • Yes, I would welcome the extra immersion and gameplay opportunities
    • No, I don't want to see farms in DU.
    • Maybe, but it would be low on my feature wishlist.


Recommended Posts

In order to support a varied market/economy, I think the dev should give players the tools to do agriculture as their primary specialty.  The recipes need to be more involved than requiring only what we dig out of the ground.  There are a lot of materials such as textiles, wood, fiber, medicines, oils, not to mention plant and animal based food than can come from this.  

 

Of course in order to make this specialty interesting, it should be as in depth as mining appears to be.  For example, say you come  across a particular plant on some alien planet and it is discovered that this plant can be used to repair genes.  That makes the plant very valuable but maybe it is exceptionally particular as to its growing requirements.  It would take a skilled farmer to figure out how to cultivate it.

 

It has been said that there will be plenty to do for people who arn't aggressors and don't want to engage in combat.  This could be one of those activities.  Anyways, it would make for a more immersive environment for you PVPers to see patchwork farms while you fly over and away from the cities.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In order to support a varied market/economy, I think the dev should give players the tools to do agriculture as their primary specialty.  The recipes need to be more involved than requiring only what we dig out of the ground.  There are a lot of materials such as textiles, wood, fiber, medicines, oils, not to mention plant and animal based food than can come from this.  

 

Of course in order to make this specialty interesting, it should be as in depth as mining appears to be.  For example, say you come  across a particular plant on some alien planet and it is discovered that this plant can be used to repair genes.  That makes the plant very valuable but maybe it is exceptionally particular as to its growing requirements.  It would take a skilled farmer to figure out how to cultivate it.

 

It has been said that there will be plenty to do for people who arn't aggressors and don't want to engage in combat.  This could be one of those activities.  Anyways, it would make for a more immersive environment for you PVPers to see patchwork farms while you fly over and away from the cities.

I'd love to see randomly generated plants with different properties according to its parts. Example:

This plant has a blue tri-pointed smooth leaf. That leaf indicates it has a high copper-content (because: malachite). It has a yellow-tinted octa-pointed flower, which is also makes it an excellent healer.

 

That makes it so floral scientists can somewhat easily identify the plants properties after studying it for about 20 seconds. This could lead to people going in rain forests, hunting for special flowers, this could also make emergent gameplay on specie extinction.

AND having invasive plant species. AND gardens.

So many things possible for something only requiring a bit of RNG.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like this idea and think it should be added, as there is so much content potential here. Of course the basics of the game need to be added first, and then this content should start to be added and expanded on. I can see not only the horticulture, forestry skill tree, but also the genetics features about this implemented. I know they have indicated their will be pets, so there may be a animal husbandry skill tree in the future as well, which may be related to this topic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem is how will they be useful. Cooking recipes for buffs or something, sure.

 

But people will only eat so much food. The price of crops will plummet day one from over supply and little demand.

 

You could make the recipes crazy like, 500 potatoes = 1 thing of french fries. Even if you take a wild approach like that there isn't much demand. It is not as if we will have NPC's that need to eat regularly and keep a baseline price.

 

Growing crops would end up being only for your own amusement and bring minimal overall value. Not that the act of planting seeds and waiting for the finished crop isn't entertaining in some kind of low risk achievement thing. The act of farming just doesn't bring a whole lot to the game of building your own ships and destroying them.

 

I would imagine by this time that synthetic meats are produce-able. the need for grain would go down further if we don't have to funnel it into livestock. Also, it might just be possible to synthesize whatever food from energy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem is how will they be useful. Cooking recipes for buffs or something, sure.

 

But people will only eat so much food. The price of crops will plummet day one from over supply and little demand.

 

You could make the recipes crazy like, 500 potatoes = 1 thing of french fries. Even if you take a wild approach like that there isn't much demand. It is not as if we will have NPC's that need to eat regularly and keep a baseline price.

 

Growing crops would end up being only for your own amusement and bring minimal overall value. Not that the act of planting seeds and waiting for the finished crop isn't entertaining in some kind of low risk achievement thing. The act of farming just doesn't bring a whole lot to the game of building your own ships and destroying them.

 

I would imagine by this time that synthetic meats are produce-able. the need for grain would go down further if we don't have to funnel it into livestock. Also, it might just be possible to synthesize whatever food from energy.

I think a food and water mechanic would make gameplay weird. I think we should stick to having plants having more... industrial use.

Food and water is either you don't worry about it or you have to eat an entire cow every 3 minutes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem is how will they be useful. Cooking recipes for buffs or something, sure.

 

But people will only eat so much food. The price of crops will plummet day one from over supply and little demand.

 

You could make the recipes crazy like, 500 potatoes = 1 thing of french fries. Even if you take a wild approach like that there isn't much demand. It is not as if we will have NPC's that need to eat regularly and keep a baseline price.

 

Growing crops would end up being only for your own amusement and bring minimal overall value. Not that the act of planting seeds and waiting for the finished crop isn't entertaining in some kind of low risk achievement thing. The act of farming just doesn't bring a whole lot to the game of building your own ships and destroying them.

 

I would imagine by this time that synthetic meats are produce-able. the need for grain would go down further if we don't have to funnel it into livestock. Also, it might just be possible to synthesize whatever food from energy.

Well... there's a slight issue with this theory.

 

1) Food, like anything in the game, takes time to be "produced". If we were to assume that crops need watering once a day, for 15 days in a row, in order for tatos to sprout, that means that at least 15 days after launch, a person or a co-op will have enough supply to dominate the market on tatos alone.

 

2) Facilities, take time to build, hence, they take time to train into handling ,hence they take time to be manufactured and deployed. Then add gathering seeds for the crops or buying them from the arkship's marketplace, with potato seeds working under the "copy blueprint" mechanism. Now add materials going into agriculture, like posphorus, nitrogen, calcium and borax (yes, borax is a fertiliser). These kind of minerals, need to be gathered and again, sprayed via a gameplay mechanism over the plantation as a whole, for the "cycles" to keep producing more tatos. This skyrockets to farming, as you might have noticed, to a very risky and INVOLVING, feature.

 

3) the aforementioned facts, increase the value of tatos, that can be cooked, or fried and packaged in a factory in wrappers, that bear the logo "Neopolitan's Crispiest!", that you got researched into, and your chips, are highly nutritiious, restoring stamina AND HP, something that normal food not do, and have a higher calorie yield per volum (since the Devs have said something that the nanoformer works on claories, or something about bodyheat, which calories technically are, but w/e ).

 

Now, soil can be made "Weaker in fertility" within a safezone, but very highly fertile outside the safezone, similar to how refineries work in EVE, in Low-Sec and Null-Sec, they refine materials at a MUCH MUCH higher rate (I guess null-secs minimum wage is very low, I don't know). Same principle, only replace refineries with farms and low-sec / null-sec with areas on the same planet as the safezone, or planets away from the safezones.

 

And that's just for potatoes, being turned into chips, a snack, at best. Imagine people running crops of corn, fruits, or w/e else there is, creating all sorts of food that provide differnt buffs, or heck, even vinyards, for some good ol' drunken rage mode.

 

Agriculture, as you can see, is profitable, ESPECIALLY, if you add sabotage in the mix, with brands competing with each other for dominance on the market by burning each other's crops down, thus said brands associate themselves with an aliance or an org for protection, which also means, tax revenue.

 

As the good ol' EVE trailer narrator said : "In Chaos Theory, there's a concept called Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" AKA, butterfly effect. This agriculture thing, spirals and spills into everything in the game.

 

Why? Because it's a sandbox game. Every aspect of it makes its whole.

 

Cheers! :D It's New Year's Eve! :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with Kuritho; adding food and water to the game as a survival mechanic tends to detract from the gameplay for me. I found it really annoying how little I could accomplish when I played ARK because I was almost constantly gathering food just to survive!

 

Granted, ARK is a SURVIVAL game more or less, so it was expected. Dual Universe isn't meant to be based on survival gameplay from a player vs. nature perspective, at least not the way I have read about it.

 

So, for stuff like healing / buffs, (maybe alternative fuel?) it would be neat, but I actually hope they DON'T implement the "survival" aspect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with Kuritho; adding food and water to the game as a survival mechanic tends to detract from the gameplay for me. I found it really annoying how little I could accomplish when I played ARK because I was almost constantly gathering food just to survive!

 

Granted, ARK is a SURVIVAL game more or less, so it was expected. Dual Universe isn't meant to be based on survival gameplay from a player vs. nature perspective, at least not the way I have read about it.

 

So, for stuff like healing / buffs, (maybe alternative fuel?) it would be neat, but I actually hope they DON'T implement the "survival" aspect.

DU is a Sandbox game. Any feature, adds depth and complexity. And food - as I explained above - adds depth to industry, market, meta-gaming and all sorts of stuff. If ships need fuel, so should people, or should ships not have fuel because " I don't want to worry aout  refuelling my ship and going exploring". Oh yeah? Exploration should be difficult and demanding a crew of people who are specialised, as well as having a ship with an interior farm, so the crew can survive -- and if the Devs at atmosphere within a ship, even having said trees / ship farms produce breathable air.

 

Also, there's a differece about ARK and DU, DUAL has some lore mcguffin behind it that people can use body heat to power those nanoformers (digging tool on the left arm). Since body heat is not so potential on its own, t's safe to assume there are some cybernetic means of amplifying the output, thus, calories = fuel for your gear.

 

You won't die from starvation, nobody said that, you would only have to sit down and eat to restore calories to your body -- or to acquire effects, like "Highly Carbonated Diet" where you eat 3 foods one after another that containe carbon, and you get an energy regen boost (since calories = energy in our context). Although an interesting idea, would e to cause damage to yourself, ( ala Hull damage in EVE) by using your gear beyond your calorie "buffer" bar.

 

So, in a way, not eating can kill you, but not passively. You won't die from starvation, just from keep doign things without a source to replenish your calorie count.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DU is a Sandbox game. Any feature, adds depth and complexity. And food - as I explained above - adds depth to industry, market, meta-gaming and all sorts of stuff. If ships need fuel, so should people, or should ships not have fuel because " I don't want to worry aout  refuelling my ship and going exploring". Oh yeah? Exploration should be difficult and demanding a crew of people who are specialised, as well as having a ship with an interior farm, so the crew can survive -- and if the Devs at atmosphere within a ship, even having said trees / ship farms produce breathable air.

 

Also, there's a differece about ARK and DU, DUAL has some lore mcguffin behind it that people can use body heat to power those nanoformers (digging tool on the left arm). Since body heat is not so potential on its own, t's safe to assume there are some cybernetic means of amplifying the output, thus, calories = fuel for your gear.

 

You won't die from starvation, nobody said that, you would only have to sit down and eat to restore calories to your body -- or to acquire effects, like "Highly Carbonated Diet" where you eat 3 foods one after another that containe carbon, and you get an energy regen boost (since calories = energy in our context). Although an interesting idea, would e to cause damage to yourself, ( ala Hull damage in EVE) by using your gear beyond your calorie "buffer" bar.

 

So, in a way, not eating can kill you, but not passively. You won't die from starvation, just from keep doign things without a source to replenish your calorie count.

Hopefully there is a way to stop hunger/thirst on your ship.

Its annoying to go back and grab a snack. Maybe a food-radiator? We do have nano-bots, so they could carry food in a certain radius.

However, explorers WILL have to bring food.

Its a win-win

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully there is a way to stop hunger/thirst on your ship.

Its annoying to go back and grab a snack. Maybe a food-radiator? We do have nano-bots, so they could carry food in a certain radius.

However, explorers WILL have to bring food.

Its a win-win

Military grade ration bars. They cost a lot to make. Think of "military grade" as "rare" quality blue items from other games, or Elixirs from WoW, they add a buff that lasts for a while and it is meant for when you do group stuff, like raids or in DU's case,  mass operations in general.

 

Again, hunger is not a part of this. If you were to run to your destination, you consume energy / calories, if you were to walk to it, you would take longer ,but you would also consume FAR less calories / energy You don't lose calories or energy just by standing -- at least, not in the game's logic. That's how I see it being a feature that lazy people won't find it "game-breaking". You won't lose calories if you do nothing at all. You run, jump etc? You lose calories, so, we also tackle things like bunny-hopping people who just can't stop jumping. That's gonna teach them that bunny-hopping is a costly thing, as well as SPRINTING EVERYWHERE. :|

 

Also, I never said anything about thirst. The characters in DU wear Biosuits, which I guess means they can turn pee into water to quench theoir thirst -- as we all know that's how FutureSpace defeats thirst.  Heck, even Bear Grylls agrees with me.

 

However, let's be honest, you can't reprocess poopies into cookies. It's recycling, not alchemy.

 

So yeah, thirst? No problem. Food? Yeah, you kinda need them calories.to keep going. Not in a regular on-the-clock basis, but if you plan on going exploring on a planet, to scan for minerals, you might want to get some food with you, just in case you get lost.. or are attacked by space-wolves and space-bears. Just saying. It would be nice to have simple, "carbon-printed" food, then moving to more elaborate things like agriculture, for those who want to RP farmville in a whole new way (and we all know that's gonna happen if NQ adds agriculture). And heck, said people can be the free-to-play people, who literally farm their way into the gameplay they want and then move up the ladder by buying DACs and starting off their career into another field.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

But people will only eat so much food. The price of crops will plummet day one from over supply and little demand.

 

 

Maybe not.  If the Devs make farming to be a challenging activity where success is something that comes with experience then you may actually have a shortage of food at least until you get some good, professional farmers.  I do understand that new people, with very little resources may wish to start with farming at the beginning but most will want to move to building and/or exploring before they get too good at farming.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think a food and water mechanic would make gameplay weird. I think we should stick to having plants having more... industrial use.

Food and water is either you don't worry about it or you have to eat an entire cow every 3 minutes.

 

I think we can have an intermediate system where eating is a necessity but not an annoyance.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with Kuritho; adding food and water to the game as a survival mechanic tends to detract from the gameplay for me. I found it really annoying how little I could accomplish when I played ARK because I was almost constantly gathering food just to survive!

 

Granted, ARK is a SURVIVAL game more or less, so it was expected. Dual Universe isn't meant to be based on survival gameplay from a player vs. nature perspective, at least not the way I have read about it.

 

So, for stuff like healing / buffs, (maybe alternative fuel?) it would be neat, but I actually hope they DON'T implement the "survival" aspect.

 I have heard this about ARK but as JC has said, it will be very difficult but possible to do things on your own.  You need to rely on the market.  In this game you don't need to waste time with farming/resource gathering if you don't like it.  You just make a grocery run to your nearest/cheapest market and stock up for the month.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I guess I am not so much opposed to the concept of food as the enormous headache I had to deal with in ARK.

Yes, I know DU isn't ARK, but I am still leary of how it would be implemented. Maybe once I see what the plan is, I will be more comfortable with it.

At this point I am hoping it will be a rather minor aspect of the game, like eat once every 6 hours of real-life time or something. I don't think that is unreasonable. Even if that ends up being many more hours of in-game time, you could just say that the meals are extremely high-calorie, and the suit stores the "extra" calories until they are needed.

Something like that would allow a player to scavenge up some food if there is no market nearby, without interrupting what they were doing too much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love the idea of being able to grow food, especially good food. A simple genetics system with a few variables. How heathy, how liquidy?, how nourishing, how fast growing, how, much yield would add a ton of interest into the game. It would allow for differences in diets and preference while also creating jobs. Heath regen rate should be determined by both current heath how fed/hydrated are you in addition to long term heath, have you eaten nothing be cheap unhealthy stuff for the past weeks. Therefor finding/growing nutritious crops is a must for orgs. Also in addition to nutrition plants should also serve as buffs. Such as finding a plant with healing properties or plants that increase your running speed, Then you bring that plant home grow it somewhere and make what I guess would be drugs of them to help people do what they are doing. These plants though would be extremely rare and thus very valuable encouraging exploration. These special plants could be specifically added or just a percent chance when a new plant species is created on a plant along with all the other variables it would have attached to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed I was thinking that too but couldn't come up with a good solution for that. I thought maybe you could keep finding better plants to grow ones that healed more, but I don't want after time plants becoming over powered such as you run crazy fast and one leaf heals you completely. Along the lines of your post I think that limiting their growth would really help, so would insane production costs. To solve this one option is to make them rare but not that rare, have them be a commodity that is bought and sold but make them hard to come by, through specially growing/processing requirements so that the market isn't flooded. Another option would be to make them common and treat those plants like all the others. So orgs can mass produce healing plants or boost plants and then sell them like you would food to populations of people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think making them difficult to grow is the better option. Not only difficult to find, but requiring special care to maintain.

In real life, some plants only produce a handful of seeds, and some only reproduce every couple years. So incorporating something like that into the game should work just fine I would think.

 

One problem with making them readily available is that you could end up with "super-soldiers" of a sort, hyped up on every buff under the sun.

Of course, it would be some kind of hangover for them in the morning. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I like this idea and think it should be added, as there is so much content potential here. Of course the basics of the game need to be added first, and then this content should start to be added and expanded on. I can see not only the horticulture, forestry skill tree, but also the genetics features about this implemented. I know they have indicated their will be pets, so there may be a animal husbandry skill tree in the future as well, which may be related to this topic.

depending on how things go maybe crops yield much more valuable things to spacefarers like oxygen?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

depending on how things go maybe crops yield much more valuable things to spacefarers like oxygen?

My suggestion has been presented. EVE's production rules.

 

In EVE, having an industrial compelx set up in high-sec (not many risks) space, yields you far lesss production / refineries out of your complex.

 

The further down the rabbit hole of mobsters you go, down to low-sec and null-sec, the productivity only sky-rockets -- which if I was to guess, is due to Null-Sec being such a bad plac,e minimum wages are very very low or something.

 

 

Same thing can be done for DU.

 

 

You set up a farm within a safe area, like a safezone? Normal yield on a crop.

 

You set up a farm on the same planet with a safe zone but out of it? 110% productivity. The pasture is more fertile because of the lack of radiation from the safe zone's safety bubble. You've earned it mate, you took minor risks to do so and you are rewarded with more crops..

 

You set up a farm on the same star system with a safe zone? 125% productivity.

 

You set up a farm on a ship though? That's the real business. More or less, the longer the ship stays alive, the more yield it produces once away of a system with a safezone, up to 200% efficiency.

 

 

The oxygen part can simple be emulated for the whole  construct, with trees reducing the consumption rate of air inside a ship by a certain margin - if and when air becomes an issue in DU, there's no clear word on this yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Food meters are for survival games, not crafting MMOs. If I have to just once stop what I am doing to go fetch food then the mechanic is nothing more than an annoyance.

 

Fine if it's just buffs and giggles, but is it really worth the effort of implementing a food growing mechanic then?

 

I'd much rather see NQ focus more on immersive mechanics for oxygen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...