Why agriculture should be a thing

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    I WARN YOU I HAVEN'T HAD ANY SLEEP SO THIS MAY BE WORDED STRANGE
    So Flora is planned and Fauna is being worked on.
    Forgive me if something along these lines is already being planned but I smell the foundation to interstellar farming.

    As I see it, some sort of consumable nutrients system is inevitable, but it can go a lot further than, kill thing -> get meat -> cook it up -> put it in your face. So that's not exactly what I will be thinking about but it will probably be somewhat necessary.
    Acquiring food through agricultural means can add various game play elements and stuff to do when your not blowing things up.

    So here's what an agricultural system in starmade NEEDS to have:

    A (decently expensive/complex) automation process - the thing with automation is it has to be useful without being so easy to set up and maintain that it takes all of the work out of doing something , certain blocks would have to be added for harvesting and planting seeds and such but they would have to be limited in some way so that while they are useful they don't take all the game play out of it, for instance a harvester could have a area of 10x10, if you wanted to create a farm larger then 10x10 you would need many harvesters, each harvester when harvesting requires power same for a planter harvesters will both produce seeds and plant product that can be made into food so they would need to be sorted etc. So that a decent amount of engineering is required.

    ADD A USE TO PLANETS - now this may be obvious that you only find certain plants/animals on certain planets but it would make since to require them to be on that planet to grow properly! this means people need to keep at least some of their planets for agriculture and use the new cargo system to get food transported to their stations. But people would complain about not having capability to get food to their station Xkm away so you can make it so that plants can grow off-planet but grow much slower and have to be planted in the correct soil and such, so even if people don't use the planet for agriculture they at least have to visit them to get something needed for the survival of their faciton.

    NPC's require food - this could be interesting and also help balance the new npc system there has been talk of. You could add a "Cafeteria" quarter where npc's would travel to when hungry (or at predefined lunch however quarters are going to work) So a ship with large amount of staff would need quite a bit of food storage and to stop at a station orbiting a ag-planet to resupply.

    So lets boil it down

    Pros:
    -Adds new game play elements (that could even engage more passive/casual players since they might rather spend their time building space mc donalds then war-ships)
    -Adds use to planets
    -Helps balance the use of high-level npcs
    -enhanced role play elements (give all those beautiful cafeterias on motherships a use!)

    Cons:
    -might be a big change for players, even requiring servers to reset so that players can find the new food materials on planets

    Change: (good or bad depends how you look at it)
    If a in depth hunger/agriculture system were implemented it would start to shift some of the content, Instead of starmade being just a Sandbox pew-pew game It adds some survival elements. making players have to eat means if they don't have food they will die! and that means they will need to devote time to actually setting this up a system so they can make food, once set up however it shouldn't be to much of a problem so you could always release a similar thing to what you did with cargo to give players time to adjust.

    This also depends on the direction you want starmade to take. In my opinion adding a system that has been described in this suggestion would add more depth to the game.

    Thanks for your consideration! Tah!
     
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    +1 I consider this a setep in the right direction. A STEP TOWARDS CAKE-MADE.

    Also need an option for hydroponics, so that the space vagabonds that don't want to stay in one spot can get their own food. While hydroponics is more effecient than normal land farming (since you completely control all the variables for the plant) it should probably be more end game stuff. So the vagabonds can reach self sufficiency late game while still giving planets a use, as you've expressed you want to have.
     
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    I'm not really for consumables in general but food supply, if it's implemented well, I think would work. There would have to be a pretty large degree of automation to the process of distributing the food between your faction NPCs though.
     
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    Schema has stated specifically, there will be no hunger system. You will not need to eat to survive, no starvation. If food is implemented it will provide bonuses (aka potions).

    The idea of some sort of farming system has been tossed around since the announcement of the flora/fauna system. Flora/fauna is supposed to be procedurally generated, so each planet will have unique specimens. Whether this is limited to appearance or includes meta data (nourishment, growth rate, bonuses) as well is unknown. I am hoping for different quality foods and bonuses. It will make exploring planets important and people who just salvage them will miss out on resources. Not to mention the trade aspects. (I've got {speedboostfood}, willing to trade 3k units for shield comp/mod or Pink.Crys.Armor, pst)

    The idea of NPCs requiring food has been tosses around since the announcement of the NPC updates. I'm unsure if the hunger restriction includes NPCs or not, but it will probably effect morale. If you don't feed them, they may mutiny.

    Again, food has not been confirmed. But it would be awesome.
     

    Lecic

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    I'd like it if food was a necessity for NPCs, but not players, because having to stop every 5 minutes to eat is annoying.

    I'd also like if we avoided potion-like buffs for players. They aren't "optional," they become a necessity. Just look at Minecraft PvP. Everyone just takes the most powerful potions, and it ends up doing basically nothing since it all balances out.
     
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    ADD A USE TO PLANETS - now this may be obvious that you only find certain plants/animals on certain planets but it would make since to require them to be on that planet to grow properly! this means people need to keep at least some of their planets for agriculture and use the new cargo system to get food transported to their stations. But people would complain about not having capability to get food to their station Xkm away so you can make it so that plants can grow off-planet but grow much slower and have to be planted in the correct soil and such, so even if people don't use the planet for agriculture they at least have to visit them to get something needed for the survival of their faciton.

    !
    No.

    I could see having to grow it on terrain from that type of planet, but only being able to grow them on the planet isn't a good idea at all.
     
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    I'd like it if food was a necessity for NPCs, but not players, because having to stop every 5 minutes to eat is annoying.
    Planet Explorers has a hunger system also for NPCs, keeping these fed is even more annoying.

    I like the general idea of having a garden which is actually useful. Plants could be crafted into consumable medicine, which must be put into a medical supplies block or else it can only heal you up to 50% HP. Directly consuming the medicine would also be possible, but less efficient.
     

    NeonSturm

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    I heard you need 7 ton "other fish" to get 1 ton "salmon fish".
    Thus the problem might not be getting your peoples (NPC-crew and you) fed, but providing high-grade food which boosts moral.
    *thinking about a StarTrek-Voyager clip where the crew said they are tired of eating low-grade replicator-rations to save power*

    But if you trade away "salmon fish" -which is considered a delicacy- the station owners may repair your ship for it.
    I think that would be nice - if bio-mass helps you to regenerate your ships indirectly (through friendly NPC-stations).
    And alien outfits which are made of biomass may be a bit less efficient and rely on armour, no shield, but regenerate from food.
     
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    No.

    I could see having to grow it on terrain from that type of planet, but only being able to grow them on the planet isn't a good idea at all.
    Read the whole thing, I put that people would obviously complain about not having the ability to grow food on ships or stations, so they could be grown on the soil they come from but not as well or not as fast.
    [DOUBLEPOST=1453590652,1453590402][/DOUBLEPOST]
    I like the general idea of having a garden which is actually useful. Plants could be crafted into consumable medicine, which must be put into a medical supplies block or else it can only heal you up to 50% HP. Directly consuming the medicine would also be possible, but less efficient.
    This would like this idea, even if food products weren't a necessity requiring them for medical supplies would make since.
     
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    Maybe food as a happiness buff for crew? When they are in relax time they can eat (pull food out of ship storage) for fast refill of happiness
     
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