Fix that agriculture tip implies hand planting is impossible.

[Hurkyl]

TL;DR

Rewrite the Agriculture (or Gleba) tips & tricks entry so that it doesn't imply the Agricultural Tower is the only way to plant seeds.

What?

I posit the Agriculture Tips & Tricks entry be rewritten to achieve the two following goals

• The phrasing of the Agricultural Tower description doesn't imply it's required for planting
• Suggest, in some way, that hand planting of seeds is possible

Possibly, the first line should be changed to something like

Code: Select all

Seeds planted into seedable soil grow into trees that can be harvested. [Entity: Agricultural Tower] automates planting seeds

Why?

The current phrasing is

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[Entity: Agricultural Tower] allows planting seeds into seedable soil. Planted seeds grow into trees that can be harvested.

This phrasing lightly implies that you cannot plant seeds without the Agricultural Tower. It can mislead the player into thinking that you cannot hand-plant seeds.

Knowledge of hand-planting seeds is, in my opinion, fairly useful for starting out on Gleba, particularly when your nearest seedable soil patch is very small and you prefer to play the planet without dropping a suite of building/crafting supplies. Or when you're just learning the planet.

Additionally, I've heard one anecdote of a player who didn't realize the agricultural tower could plant seeds until after the Tree Seeding research, and had a bad experience from having to harvest distant trees to continue fueling research. If this player was aware of hand-planting, even if they made this mistake, their experience would have been less bad since they could have continued using the nearest seedable soil.

Additionally, players who wish to plant trees on Nauvis for the sake of aesthetics may prefer to hand-plant if they are aware it's a possibility, since it can be done conveniently in tight spaces, or maybe allows a nicer arrangement than the grid pattern coming from the tower.

So fixing the wording can leave a player better informed.

A possible drawback is that this may lead some players to hand-plant even if it turns out they would enjoy things better if they were quicker to set up automation. I do not know how seriously to take such a possibility.

[Kyralessa]

Wait...you can hand-plant seeds?