DeckerMMIV
commented
9 years ago I have, and still am, speculating on what improvements and changes a new major version of SoilMod should contain. - Also due to the feedback and suggestions written in the support topics on FS-UK and here.
Somehow I want to introduce the N, P & K - which I can understand are the real-life nutrient components. I just have not read enough about them (not yet motivated), to get a proper "picture" of how these 3 properties should/would affect the crop's growth and/or harvest yield.
The value-set for each of these N, P & K should probably be no less than 0-7 (3 bits), so 9 bits total.
It could be, that one foliage-multi-layer isn't enough, and two of full width/height size may be "too much" - so I am toying with the idea of either having two half-sized foliage-multi-layers [note 1] to utilize 2*16 bits, or make a custom (very coarse) 2D array to contain the non-visible soil information.
I agree that cultivating straw should not increase the fertilization level so much as it does in current chopped straw mod. Also I've read that a Zunhammer slurry spreader mod when laying down slurry, will increase the fertilization to max level in one pass. - I did not anticipate such a thing to happen. But then again, its due to how the equipment mod are using the cultivator and sprayer script specializations.
Water and crop rotation are concepts I'm also thinking about adding... somehow ;-)
Humus is new to me. Could this be thought of as a kind of soil density (hard/soft), so "low humus" is hard where crops have it difficult to grow in, and "high humus" is soft with good reach for crops to get the nutrients (if the nutrients are there)?
Notes: 1) With all the alignment/edge problems that may appear due to different sized fruit_density and soilmod layers.
webalizer-gt
sootysax
With LS15 on the horizon I think this is the perfect time to consider some changes that would make new versions incompatible. If introduced in the first Version for LS15 however, I think this could be acceptable.
What I personally mostly have in mind is the file structure for fertilizers.
At the very least it would be enormously helpful if the number of stages could be increased. At the moment the smallest unit (one level of organic fertilizer) is equal to the nutrient demand of one harvest. Unfortunately this is way to coarse for "small but measurable effects". The straw mod has no other options than doing nothing (no mod needed) or setting fertilizing to 100% of demand. So if you handle your straw right you will never need to fertilize again. The real effect should be maybe 10-15% of total demand.
Dont get me wrong: I dont want to handle fertilization on the %-scale. But 0,1,2,3 is too coarse. If you could maybe squeeze two more bits of the grle for fertilizing one could handle things much more delicately.
That would make me very happy already. Nevertheless, some further thoughts:
I perfectly understand that you designed gameplay mechanics, not real life simulation when you implemented the distinction between organic&artificial fertilizers.
Here is a different idea, which I think achieves the same ends but is more plausible: Just have one layer for fertilizer. It probably helps if you think of it mostly as N and forget about P,K etc. Doesnt matter that much if you put that in as manure or straight from the chemical factory.
Keep the pH layer. Thats fine. Maybe introduce some effects where organic fertilizer adds some pH buffering capacity (raising/lowering by a small amount if too low/high. Your simple sin-function should work just fine there!). Maybe also add a pH raising effect to one type of inorganic fertilizer (not uncommon). But these are minor things. pH is fine.
And now with artificial fertilizer scrapped you suddenly have one layer free. And that you can use for humus. Which is a very important soil quality parameter. And it allows you to push players in exactly the direction you want to (use more organic fertilizers), but with much more plausible arguments.
What I have in mind should work something like that:
If you like we can have a chat about these ideas, but I put them up here for general discussion as well.