Advanced and complex farming - crop rotation and plants interaction, reduce monocropping
I would like to see different crops interact with each other, some for good, some for bad. For example spadercock and cattails would provide a growth bonus to each other (range effects TBD). So this discourages monocropping.
The more complex one is ground crops - most people like to separate trees from crops, and then make nice collections of each crop type. What I would like to see is different plants benefit or detriment each other by adjacency. I’m also using adjacency to prevent having to do crop rotations. So wheat, sunflowers and potatoes would benefit each other from adjacency.
But then you get some more complex adjacency: pine trees tend to try to alter the ground chemistry to be more acidic. And most other plants cannot grow in that environment, expect some berry plants. So pine trees would provide growth benefits to other pine trees and berries (and sometimes dandelions).
I expect there are other tree/plant interactions than the ones I mentioned above.
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05 Oct, '21
FuryoftheStars MergedHighlighted comment
I just use more than one field/split the fields. Easier. -
02 Oct, '21
Ozz MergedInstead of having to delete and re-apply crop fields every time, why not implement a crop rotation feature? EG: Once carrots have been harvested, sew potatoes/wheat next. Feature originally from Rimworld.
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16 Sep, '22
Will MergedBased on the wikipedia page for Monocropping farming techniques: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping
Monocrop farming slowly harms the soil ecology, leading to increase drought, and eventually soil erosion to the point that the soil needs to recover before being able to support more crops.
It would be neat if you added a mechanic where Monocrop farming slowly increases drought length and frequency, as well as degrades the output of crops grown in that area.
And then of course add crop rotation, intercropping, cover cropping, and other soil health boosting techniques to offset or avoid the soil damage from the monocrop farms.
Not only does it fit the theme of being better than our predecessors in working with the land, but also gives the player another interesting choice: Do I boom my food production early and heal the land later? Or do I farm sustainably but less efficiently from the get go? -
19 Sep, '22
Ryvre MergedOstriv has a nice crop rotation system, maybe Timberborn developers could ask if they could use it as-is in exchange for a mention in the changelog and credits. Different crops use different combinations of nutrients and you can set up the rotations you want once and then not worry about it.
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19 Sep, '22
Will MergedThat's a great idea Ryvre!
I definitely don't want to add any extra micromanagement, set it and forget it is the best way to design these new features! -
24 Sep, '22
Gin Fuyou System Merged"Crop rotation" (suggested by Ozz on 2021-10-02), including upvotes (1) and comments (1), was merged into this suggestion.
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18 Jan, '24
Beaverocene MergedOur beavers could collect food waste and wood chips and make compost, with a master composter, each meal and each cut log would yield X quantity of material which would yield Y quantity of compost.
The presence of trees could have a beneficial effect like the beehive.
Iron teeth that are less environmentally friendly could develop mineral fertilizers extracted from the soil. -
13 Aug, '24
Gin Fuyou System"Create the option for polyculture farming, and make monocrop farms slowly damage the soil." (suggested by <Hidden> on 2022-09-16), including upvotes (5) and comments (6), was merged into this suggestion.