Crop breeding strategies for better stats - portable scanner vs. large batches?

MauveCloud · Jul 20th 2015

I've been working on breeding some enderblooms with better stats with the following strategy (I've got other crops that I might eventually breed higher stats for, but currently I'm focusing on this one):
1. I have a diagonal line of 4 "parent" crops with 6 crossbreeding plots around them
2. If a "child" crop starts growing with weak stats (worse than the parents, or equal but not already at the maximum (safe) value), I remove the crop and make it a crossbreeding plot again.
3. When a good "child" crop is full grown, I try to collect the seeds and start or add them to a new diagonal line of crops, clockwise around the central water block (of a 9x9 plot of farmland)
4. Once I have 4 better crops in the new diagonal line (and they've grown sufficiently for breeding), I get rid of the old "parent" crops, and start crossbreeding with the new ones.

However, I've been wondering whether it would be faster to use larger batches (e.g. 40 crops checkerboarded with crossbreeding plots), and discard the worst of each batch at the end instead of stopping weak crops early. Does anybody know which is faster? Or have alternate strategies to suggest?

If there was a way to automate collecting seeds from specified crop locations once the crops there had finished growing, that would make the large-batch strategy a lot more attractive, but I'm not aware of any addon that allows that.

SpwnX · Jul 20th 2015

Lazy me is lazy to compile everything on a proper paragraph, so i'll just spit out everything I know:

Which crop to use:

I recommend using quick growth mid-tier plants to increase stats.
Stickreeds fit perfectly on that category, because they can grow very quick, thus crossbreeding faster. Also they'll eventually mutate into everything due ICish nature of crops.

Stats:

Thus, once you get a 21/31/N (resistance is useless for yield, dont increase it as it slows down growth for no reason) stickreed, you can keep crossbreeding them for mutations, as the mutations will inherit the stats of the parent stickreeds.
Crops will start acting like weeds (spreading weeds to adjacent blocks, but also immune to them) at growth >=24.
Alternatively, you can go for 31/31/N stats, but that may be difficult to spread due the weed spread ability of them. Manual usage (do not use cropmatron) of weed-ex is advised for such crops, but with much caution (you'll need GT scanner to watch weed-ex levels on soil. Do not increase weed-ex level beyond 75 or it will damage your crop stats! [one usage of weed-ex increases it by 50]).
Use GregTech portable scanner for in-world crop scanning as soon crops are bred (those will drop scanned bags on proper harvest aswell). Said scanner will also tell you much more other than the stats of the crop, like soil quality and products used on them.

General tips:

Make several 2x2 "nursery" plots with stickreeds being diagonal (2 breeding spots), keep harvesting them, analyze, substitute low stat ones with higher ones till you get your desired stats.
Increasing nutrient, airquality and hydration stats (of the crop field) will boost the growth of crops planted on them.
To do such:
3 dirt blocks below the farmland (+nutrient)
skylight (+airquality)
height (+airquality) [bonus caps at Y 128]
good biome (+humidity) [forest-ish does +5 and swamp/jungle does +10, bad biomes like desert and ice will actually decrease this stat]
artificial hydration (+humidity) [Usage of cropmatron is advised, especially because water is cheap]
artificial fertilizer (+nutrient) [Usage of cropmatron is advised, given you have plenty of fertilizer]

MauveCloud · Jul 20th 2015

I've already dealt with the height (walking on the farmland has my feet at y 130), skylight (except for redwheat), biome (all above swampland, no rivers interrupting), and dirt below (with partial exceptions for ferru and aurelia), and I was planning on aiming for 21/31/any (resistance is also useless because of http://bt.industrial-craft.net/view.php?id=1608), though I had forgotten the value of improving the stats with a mid-tier crop first. I held off on making crop-matrons because in a previous game I set up a bunch of them with copper fluid pipes and drains to collect rainwater for use with them, and was experiencing severe lag even in single-player, and I don't have fertilizer at the moment. Also, if I'm understanding things correctly, they only speed up the effective growth of existing crops, they don't improve stats or make the crossbred crops appear faster.

I'm a bit confused by your suggestion of several 2x2 plots with 2 breeding spots each though - how is that better than my diagonal line of 4 crops with 6 breeding spots?

SpwnX · Jul 20th 2015

I can't say it is better than your diagonal line of 4 with 6 spots, but I'm used to the 2x2 batches myself, just that ^^.

Crops only drops seeds as they are mature, so it does increase your overall speed of stat bumping.

You might have better luck by using water from RC water tanks maybe?
Also, you can use wooden pipes, those are very cheap and works perfectly for low profile water transport.

MauveCloud · Jul 20th 2015

I'm not using Railcraft, and I'm not sure you understand the scale I'm talking about - I had 48 crop-matrons, each above the center of a 9x9 field designated for a specific crop, and I think a total of over 800 meters each of tin cables (connected to RTGs along the west wall) and tiny copper fluid pipes (connected to medium copper fluid pipes and drains above the walkways between fields).

SpwnX · Jul 20th 2015

Talk about overkill hm...

Well, you don't really need that much cropmatrons, at least not for the low tier crops. I'll recommend it for diareeds, enderblooms and such tier 10+ crops.

MauveCloud · Jul 20th 2015

Seems like a good idea. Once I've bred my stickreeds up to high stats, I should have a good supply of reeds and weeds for making biogas and fertilizer.

Chocohead · Jul 20th 2015

Quote from MauveCloud

resistance is also useless because of http://bt.industrial-craft.net/view.php?id=1608)

Not necessarily, I've been having them with some of my higher tier crops.

SpwnX · Jul 20th 2015

Also beware of venomillias, since those act like weeds on stage 5 if their growth stat is >= 9

Nexey · Jul 20th 2015

Am I the only one surprised that ic2 doest have it's own tools to check the stats of a crop? Like hydration, level of weedex..

Chocohead · Jul 20th 2015

You were never meant to know, brewing is the same. Like Botania mana, but actually unmeasurable.

Nexey · Jul 21st 2015

Am I the only one surprised we were never meant to know those stats? (unless by checking the code)

Chocohead · Jul 21st 2015

It was like that to encourage experimentation and tell people what you found. Why do you think it had it's own forum section?

MauveCloud · Sep 12th 2015

New semi-related question: If I have some "Eerie" biome (Thaumcraft 4) that was originally swampland, how does that affect crop growth?

Nexey · Sep 12th 2015

You can turn the Eerie back into swamp with the ethereal bloom.
Eerie is one of the worse biome to put crops in, whereas magical forests act like swamp if I recall correctly

MauveCloud · Sep 12th 2015

Thanks. I was aware of the existence of the ethereal bloom, which indicates the original biome is remembered somewhere, so I figured there might be a chance that IC2 crops would go by that, but apparently not. The swampland I found only has a few sinister nodes, so I might just build my farm around the Eerie biomes. Either that or install Mystcraft but disable the ore-block and liquid symbols (other than water and lava) in the config and make a cave world single-biome swampland age.

SpwnX · Sep 12th 2015

Just a reminder that caves arent the best for crops (blocked sunlight).

MauveCloud · Sep 12th 2015

Heh. That's not quite what I had in mind. IIRC, Mystcraft cave worlds don't have a top layer of bedrock, so I'd be able to use the swampland above the caves, which would already be at layer 128 or above. Perhaps that would be overpowered though, especially if I used symbols to make it always daytime in that age.

SpwnX · Sep 12th 2015

Crops don't really care about actual daylight though. They just want to see the sky.
If that condition is met, you can even grow them in full darkness (with the exception of flowers that require light >= 12 and redwheat that requires light between 5 and 10)

Swampy biome, height 128+, 3 blocks of dirt below the farmland and sky vision is all you need heh. Maybe a cropmatron there with water... after the bug gets fixed.

MauveCloud · Sep 12th 2015

Yeah, redwheat is the tricky one. If I let it see the sky, then it won't grow during the daytime. I don't think I'll bother growing flowers via IC2 crops, though - I've already got more flowers from Forestry bee breeding than I know what to do with.

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