Garden

[Sho]

[This suggestion was originally in http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6058; moved because it was getting confused with the topic title]

Garden (machinery)

Can only be built outside.
Resources to build: 10000 grams stone, 5000 grams wood
Tools to build: Trowel, shovel
Time to build: 10 days

The garden would have a variety of possible projects. An example is below.

Project (nonscalable): Gardening for carrots
Tools to work: Dung-fork
Maximum workers: 2
Skill used: Farming
Resources used: 10 grams carrots
Project output: 1000 grams carrots
Project length: 2 days

Notes:
Most of these numbers are pulled out of a mixture of thin air, caffeine and essence of stupid.
In particular the materials are completely made up. I was thinking a gardening patch would need some sort of border/fence made with stones and wood. One doesn't get much practical gardening experience in midtown New York.
I'm not sure about soil - it would mean creating another single-purpose resource. (Of course, things like barley, timber and zinc make me think that's not a big issue.) It would either be manufacturable (with another machine) from mud, sand and clay (again, I don't know anything about gardening), or be a common resource, presumably found in plains and hills.
I removed water from the farming project use resources - Cantr farming doesn't seem to need water; why should this? Besides, water's too hard to get (if it's even available any more).
The projects should be small and nonscalable to prevent people from hogging the garden. It's also somewhat more realistic, I think.

Pros:
This would be, I think, an easily programmed alternative to someone-or-other's well-received suggestion that towns could create more resource slots.
Make it possible for foodless towns to survive independently.
Might increase trade in raw resources, as towns would want to collect the most useful "seeds."

Cons:
Would probably eliminate large-scale trade in food, since food could be made anywhere.

Can be argued as either pro or con:
Unless I'm mistaken, it would be possible to build this on a ship. It could be argued that this would be unrealistic or bad for balance; it could also be argued that there is a need for a way for ships to make their own food. It would, I think, be a good incentive for people to build big ships, since you really couldn't make good use of this on, say, a dinghy.

[A Neo Irony]

Neat idea, I like it.

One thing though, how does that help foodless towns? I don't think meat has seeds in it.

[Sho]

Simple. Someone brings in food (carrots, rice, whatever can be grown in a garden) from somewhere else, and they build a garden and grow more.

[A Neo Irony]

Oh, right. Duh.

*Whacks self in head for missing the obvious.*

[formerly known as hf]

Oooh... ooh.. oh...
Can I have gnome please?
Pretty please?
And can I paint all hippy-like colours
No!
I want a rave gnome - I'll give him a flourescent hat and glow sticks instead of a fishing rod!

What was that?
Oh.. the suggestion?

I like it, maybe with the limits on food collection, this would enforce co-operation to get farmers together. Although it does kill that whole 'get off your bum and walk if you want food in busy places' that's been developed...

[Pie]

well.. i think a Garden should be somthing more like a building, and you can get 1000g of carots daily.. since IN MY MIND the only thing that is making us work for carots in cantr is finding them. So 1000g of carrots daily when not using a dung fork is my vote.

[T-shirt]

I like the idea.

A requisite should be a field; and a field should have a maximum that can be harvested from it, depending on the tools used, like 1000 carrots without tools, 2500 with a dung-fork and 10000 with a harvester, or something.

Fields could either be build, but they could also be available in settlements, where the location determines how many fields are available. One or two in mountains, five to ten in grassland.

[Racetyme]

I am opposed to this one, food can be made anywhere already, just not mass produced. If this were implemented every hermit in cantr would soon find him/her self surrounded by people, and frankly it wouldn't be a happy meeting.

[Sho]

Hardly every hermit. There's no point to building a garden where there's no large population and nothing useful. It takes effort comparable to building a building, and isn't as productive as regular farming. Gardens will mostly be built in places where there are already many people, but no food sources or not enough gathering slots (e.g. Karnon Forest or the Polish region).