Farming Guest Race with multi-stage Resource production

[Sir Derf]

Visually, this would work best if the game would allow a different graphic for the upgrade-in-progress stage between each level of a given building.



The Portal is a Silo.

You build farm roads to connect to Farm Houses.

Guest Race Sprites are farm carts.

Connected to the Farm Houses, you will be dealing with various Fields of different sizes/shapes, each for a different crop (wheat, corn, cotton, cranberry. etc.). Each field maintains the same shape/size/orientation through upgrades. Different shapes have different farming graphics at each of the different stages.

First you clear a field by building a new Lvl1 Field. The graphic while a Field is being built shows the field partly plowed. When construction is finished, the field is plowed into rows.

Next, you plant your field by upgrading to Lvl2. The graphic while the upgrade is taking place is a farmer sowing seeds. When the construction is finished, the field has greenery in it.

At this point, you have a choice, harvest, or irrigate. To harvest, you start a production. To irrigate, you upgrade to Lvl3. The graphic while the upgrade takes place is a farmer watering the Field. When the construction is finished, the field has more greenery in it.

At this point, you have a choice, harvest or pesticide. To harvest, you start a production. To pesticide, you upgrade to Lvl4. The graphic while the upgrade takes place is a farmer spraying a pesticide. When the construction is finished, the field has more greenery in it.

At this point, you have a choice, harvest or weed. To harvest, you start a production. To weed, you upgrade to Lvl5. The graphic while the upgrade takes place is a farmer with a hoe. When the construction is finished, the field has more greenery in it.

Once you start harvesting from a Field, you are no longer allowed to upgrade Field. The higher your Field level, the more you produce when you harvest. A couple possible thoughts on harvesting.

• A singular harvest from a Field. When production is finished, bouncing production icon appears and the Field automatically becomes Lvl6, with a graphic of an empty field. Afterward, you must sell the Field.
• The higher the level of the Field, the more harvests you can get from the Field. Once the maximum harvest is finished, the Field automatically becomes Lvl6, with a graphic of an empty Field. Afterwards, you must sell the Field.
• The higher the level of the Field, the more you get on the first Harvest, but subsequent Harvests will decrease in amount (possibly with decreasing production time). Once harvests decrease below a threshold, the Field automatically becomes Lvl6, with a graphic of an empty Field. Of course, you may choose to sell the Field before it has been fully emptied.

I'm not sure how much of a wrinkle the automatic Lvl6 thing would be on the existing game mechanic. It would match all previous Chapters if harvesting was enacted by starting a production round, but since no other building changes levels with production, this would be iffy. Alternately, rather than harvesting being started by a production run, you could be presented with choices of two different upgrades, either a Field improvement upgrade, or a Harvest upgrade, which produces auto-starts a 1 sec production when the upgrade is finished.

I'm also not sure how much of a wrinkle having a finite number of harvests would be.

Visually, I'm picturing there being more of a sequential story in the progression of the builds, utilizing multiple levels with different upgrade-in-progress graphics between each build.

Strategically, I'm picturing there being a choice between resources used to build/upgrade vs. resources used to harvest, and the overall time and efficiency of short builds/harvests versus long builds/harvests.


Another possible wrinkle, would be that once you've built your Lvl1 Field, you might have an expiration timer to either upgrade or harvest, else your field becomes unusable; either your Field dries out, or your Field gets eaten by locusts, or your field gets overrun by weeds. If you don't collect your Harvest in a timely manner, maybe it literally decays.

 

[Gargon667]

Too close to the Halflings chapter for my liking, while the mechanics are different everything else just screams halflings

 

[Solanix]

@Sir Derf this is not only very close to the Halflings, it is also very close to a farming game.

 

[Sir Derf]

Oh no. A chapter, 1/18th of this game, which changes in smaller or lesser degrees every chapter, might look similar to a different genre. A game built heavily on a fantasy setting, that nonetheless went Egyptian for a Chapter, and then later brought in the return of an ancient, futuristic race of robots? Oh, no.

Oh, no. it would be both very close to a farming game, and yet very close to the Halflings Chapter, which involved farming, so is it really that bad to do a farming game for a chapter? Oh, no.

Oh no. It would be very close to what was already done in a previous Chapter. We were already doing farming in Chapter 7, with the Fairy Day and Night Farms, before the Haflings in Chapter 11. Later, in Chapter 14, I'm building constructs, but still partly building them in Chapter 15. And then there's Chapter 16, where we have Dwarves and Fairies back for a second time. Oh no, we can't repeat ourselves.

 

[Solanix]

If you count the Garden in from the Constructs chapter you have farming 3 times?

 

[Sir Derf]

Exactly whose side are you on in this argument?

 

[Solanix]

@Sir Derf do you want to farm again? You suggested farming chapter would include a lot of farming.

 

[Sir Derf]

Not particularly. It just gave a storyline that really fit the visual and mechanical system I thought of, where the graphics reflected a progression of activities and improvements, where you had multiple choices to collect early or continue to improve production, and where you had to continue to sell and rebuild.

 

[Gargon667]

Oh no. It would be very close to what was already done in a previous Chapter. We were already doing farming in Chapter 7, with the Fairy Day and Night Farms, before the Haflings in Chapter 11. Later, in Chapter 14, I'm building constructs, but still partly building them in Chapter 15. And then there's Chapter 16, where we have Dwarves and Fairies back for a second time. Oh no, we can't repeat ourselves.

7,11,14,16? Not one of them is a fav though. Well 14 has to awesome AWs but the rest of the chapter, not a fan. And 11 was at least benign/harmless, 15 was a good one though.