The concept itself is rather straight forward. A system by which land is allocated to grow a crop.
Uses
A grouping of uses for having a farm system.
Food- Adds additional survival elements to the game
Medical- Allows for new tech branching out toward healing
Fuel- Creates a base product used in the manufacture of bio-fuels
Trees- Wood! (I have seen some mods that do this, but why not include it here as well!)
Game Interaction
Ways this idea would interact with the current game environment.
Pollution- Ensuring that your farm is not being polluted provides a new challenge for planning your operations. Early on a small farm could be kept nearby with little impact and minimal upkeep. Scaling along with the game would require larger farms further away from polluted areas. A step further would be farm automation which might require water from a non-polluted water source.
Tech Tree Expansion- Larger farms could possibly require automation or automated car. Bio-domes or pollution filters to help keep a farm growing while in mild polluted area. Use of farm to create better medical supplies.
survival- Got to eat to stay alive! Took too many hits fighting local wild life? Time to take some medic!
Fuel- Join the wave of the future and turn your crops into bio-fuel. Pretty self explanatory. Adds to the tech tree as well as research.
Danger- Local wild life loves fresh crops! Make sure to defend your farms. Infestation of new monsters. Plants as defense? Why not venus fly trap defensive plants?
Game Mechanics
Ideas as to how the overall mechanic would work.
Planting- Stop by active farm plot and in no time crops will appear. After harvest, plant again!
Seeds- Maybe you have them to start with, maybe the local plants can be chopped up for seeds.
Growth- Some crops grow with little to no interaction, while others at the high end game require unpolluted water and air along with robotic maintenance. Allows for building of food crop early while keeping things interesting later in the game.
Harvesting- Same as with other resources, can be manually gathered or harvested by building a harvest machine.
Final Thoughts
I wanted to keep things on the simpler end so I am sure I missed several other great ideas for farm uses. I have really enjoyed the game wanted to share something I feel would add additional fun to an amazing game. Thank you for taking the time to reading and I would love to hear input from others.
