Farming Improvements, PLA/Oil Uses

[weylint]

We seem to have issues with player retention for Farming. This seems in line with all other servers I have previously played on. I don't have concrete numbers on it, but it seems to be mostly centered around mid game. You have enough to do early game (mostly Gathering) and papers should also keep you busy late game. This cycle we had a doubling of food-related materials cost in place, which apparently didn't have any effect.

Farming currently isn't anchored too well into the economy. Farming in reality is nowadays centered a lot around non-food related usages, which Eco surpsiringly doesn't have any. It feels more like middle ages farming with tractors.

The only non-food work for a farmer is Oil, produced from wheat or corn, and Agriculture Papers. Using 4 Stars for that is asking quite a lot. Especially with the limitations in place for companies: "Your whole company can do farming, but then your skill set is pretty much planned out."

Suggestion: Tie Farming into the economy, thereby creating secondary non-food related markets for farmers.

Easy changes, that should be well within the scope of WT:

• Steam Generators shouldn't care whether they burn Oil, Coal (or even Gasoline). Oil should also work as a more crude, but still effective early substitute for Gasoline. Refinement into Biodiesel with Oil Profession as happens currently.
• Plastic Recipes. In reality PLA is a popular plastic and made from corn. Probably Laboratory.
• Epoxy Recipes. Make wood seeds/pulp into Epoxy. Motivates people to clean up wood pulp, since it creates an interesting use, especially early on, while Epoxy is still expensive.
• Rubber Recipe. For Example tires: Make Wood into less wood + Rubber.
• More realistic Fertilization. This probably won't have much of an impact, but for completeness' sake: Eco so far only has "organic" fertilizers, which is great, but also not very modern. Phosphate Fertilizer is made from Rocks (+Chemical). Eco has a lot of rocks. Potassium Fertilizer is made from Rocks (+Water). Eco has a lot of rocks and water.

These are probably harder to implement:

• Biomass. Cornmeal is an example, also most things a farmer produces. They just differ in biomass with corn being the best candidate in reality. The whole produce gets shredded, dried and fermented, thus creating Gas and/or Eletrical Energy. The "depleted" end product is used as fertilizer.
• Modern Crops. There are only crops that naturally grow. Enable players to build more yield-effective crops, that need (a lot) more fertilizer to properly grow. First variants via Farming Table, Triticale for example, later via Laboratory: GMO crops. Less space, more Yield.

[D3nnis3n]

Harder Ones:

• Modern Crops: There is a suggestion on the games suggestion tracker about this, it would be impossible on WT.
• Biomass: Basically needs added stuff as well, WT doesn't do mods with assets. Could post on the suggestion tracker for the game: https://github.com/StrangeLoopGames/EcoSuggestions/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue

Easy Changes:

• Steam Generators: In consideration
• Plastic made out of corn: Approved
• Epoxy: In consideration
• Rubber recipe: Rejected
• Fertilizer: In consideration

[stucko]

Plastic made out of corn: Approved

ive noticed this formula but wondered did anyone ever used it ? i was tempted to try but didnt because based on rough calculation, seems like its a lot more expensive compared to normal plastics. (even with modules, 36 corns x 0.3 euro = 10.8 euro per plastic, compared to 3 euros (active buy-sell orders) for petroleum plastic.

also would be to consider "Bioplastics are plastic materials produced from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, straw, woodchips, sawdust, recycled food waste" from wikipedia

can we just use "raw food" tag instead of corn ? maybe it will push a variety of farms instead of the main end game crop wheat,corn,beet,huckleberry,rice

[weylint]

A bit of late Feedback on this one (had to pause for a few White-Tiger cycles):

Bio-Plastic Got implemented and it is seeing use this cycle. It's not cheap though, so people prefer to buy from oil drillers, if they have it. White Tiger this cycle we had issues getting our hands on enough Plastic for Fiberglass, so at least one Farmer switched to making Plastic. Transaction log looks like not many sales though. Probably because Cooks/Millers pay better and even though oil drillers are constantly out of stock, they're cheaper by a factor of ~2. Improvement: 75 Corn is high, even with BU4/5 it's still ~37. 33-50% less might do the trick. Charcoal got a similar treatment and has become pretty popular.

Bio-Epoxy Hasn't been implemented yet, but keeps coming up in ingame chat as an idea in various forms. Wooden Logs via resin (as a realistic option) is an additional idea compared to the early Wood Pulp i suggested.

I originally made this issue about a few ideas, but these two seem like the most realistic.