Suggested Agriculture: a basic outline

[Zaphord]

This is still a pretty rough outline since I just thought of it on my drive to work, so I hoping for a brainstorming tag to help hash this idea out.

There's already a good assortment of plants in Starmade that could be used as a basis for agriculture, but as it stands they don't really have a use yet and you're little more than foraging for them at the moment. So, my idea is simple; any plants you gather could be put into a basic factory in order to process them into their fruits/veggies, their seeds, and other materials they may yeild.

Fruits & Veggies

Pretty obvious as to what you do with those; sell them as is or process them into foods for more credits. Not all plants will yield fruits or veggies though, fungi could produce yeasts (and subsequently spores instead of seeds) which could be used in other food recipes, like fermenting alcohol.

Seeds & Spores

Putting these in a factory with a dirt block could be uses to produce crop blocks, which continuously produce plants of that type. You could set up farms and plantations this way.

Chaff & other plant waste

There's always going to be some junk left over after processing your crops, maybe we could turn it into a compost or fertilizer to speed up the growing process?

Other ideas

How about an Agribeam? It could water your crops or till dirt blocks into crop blocks.

That's all I got for now, keep those ideas coming.

 

[jayman38]

Salvage Beam -> retrieves plant matter -> stores in linked storage -> linked a factory that pulls the plant matter -> produces x color edibles (fruits and veggies), y color seed, z color organic material, where x, y, and z are server-configured numbers. After all, it's really just a factory recipe.
Other storages can then pull from the factory and organize as needed.
new AI setting: plants only. Then salvaging drones can be plant-gathering drones as needed.
new factory outputs: dishes. Create more effective food by combining fruits and veggies in the factory to create entire, better-tasting meals.
(Think: A meal is a food item that restores more HP, morale, or whatever per stack item than raw fruits/veg items.)
new factory recipes, involving turning multiple organic materials together into a dirt block, alcohol, meal drinks, etc., whatever, depending on the recipe....

 

[Madman198237]

Perhaps allow instead for the creation of generic food items from planets, to reduce the number of materials we actually have to deal with. Let's face it, by this point, everybody in space is presumably living off of some sort of bioengineered generic food growth that can be modified (After "growing" in test tubes and/or sterile incubators) to taste however you want.

That or everything's just processed into a marginally nutritious and usually edible rock-hard consistency (Things that can change shape/density/position disagree with rocket launches and similar processes) that is watered or processed onboard ship into something marginally more edible and slightly less palatable.
Or maybe it's just my sarcasm coming through again.

 

[Zaphord]

Perhaps allow instead for the creation of generic food items from planets, to reduce the number of materials we actually have to deal with. Let's face it, by this point, everybody in space is presumably living off of some sort of bioengineered generic food growth that can be modified (After "growing" in test tubes and/or sterile incubators) to taste however you want.

That or everything's just processed into a marginally nutritious and usually edible rock-hard consistency (Things that can change shape/density/position disagree with rocket launches and similar processes) that is watered or processed onboard ship into something marginally more edible and slightly less palatable.
Or maybe it's just my sarcasm coming through again.

True, but living off MREs isn't very good for morale. Having to eat the same tasteless mush everyday or a block of rock hard protein suplement is going to result in mutiny eventually.

Even if you look at the replicator in Star Trek, those use some sort of biomass to generate the food they produce. Replicator rations aside, real food is still prepared and served to offset their overuse and as a morale booster.

Bottom line is food has to come from somewhere other than protein pills and freeze dried rations. Besides, farming adds another industry other than mining and pirate hunting to the game, which is good for the economy.

 

[Madman198237]

That's basically what I'm talking about. Food-producing plants (Or, more likely, high-density forms of algae/plankton) are grown in a hideously bioengineered way that results in a nutritious biomass that can be converted into something. It's more efficient like that, and efficiency is everything in space, where more size just means that there's more ways to catastrophically kill everyone aboard the vessel.

Yes, I like the idea of a food industry (Also water production), I don't want it to get complicated or all that micromanage-y. Hence the generic "food" item.

 

[HolyCookie]

Sorry to say but this has already been suggested though you have a new and pretty cool approach.
As for your brainstormy needs:
Recognized - My thoughts on Survival Features
Read by Council - Agriculture in starmade
Why agriculture should be a thing
Expansion, farming, food and AI.
Read by Council - Survival Needs

 

[Zaphord]

Sorry to say but this has already been suggested though you have a new and pretty cool approach.
As for your brainstormy needs:
Recognized - My thoughts on Survival Features
Read by Council - Agriculture in starmade
Why agriculture should be a thing
Expansion, farming, food and AI.
Read by Council - Survival Needs

Thanks Cookie, figured it had already been suggested. Just add it to the pile.