Addon request: crop breeding automation

1st Official Post

    I'm annoyed by the wide variations in how long it can take for anything to appear in a crossbreeding spot (from a few seconds to 20 minutes or more from what I've seen), so I would like to have an addon that makes it possible to at least partially automate crop breeding, in terms of one or more of the following steps:
    1. Collecting seedbags from fully-grown crops and re-applying cropsticks to make certain positions crossbreeding plots again (with a supply of cropsticks placed in a machine's inventory), while leaving other positions alone to act as "parent" crops.
    2. Filtering seeds based on type and growth/gain/resistance stats, or even choosing a range of those to allow to grow in the crossbreeding plots (crops that don't meet the criteria would be kicked out and replaced with fresh cropsticks to make the spot a crossbreeding plot again).
    3. Pulling weeds (with a weeding trowel placed in a machine's inventory). I know the crop-matron can apply weed-ex, but apparently that risks damaging crop stats - I thought I'd read somewhere that using weed-ex via the crop-matron used to be safe (because the crop-matron was smart enough to avoid over-usage), so I wonder when that changed.


    I thought about trying to make such an addon myself, but 1. I haven't made any Minecraft mods before, and 2. I have some health issues at the moment that make it hard to concentrate on Java programming.


    I'm also curious whether other IC2 users would be interested in such a mod, and if not, why.

    I wish standing near your crops would make them grow faster, or at least breed faster. I've gave up more than once about waiting on some crops to grow, you can't just stand near them because it takes too long but whenever you go away some weed appears.
    Having them breed in less than a minute would be a plus, but probably only if you're next to it. Nowadays agricraft allows for fast crop breeding, especially if you have bone meal, sprinklers and a watering can. I've tried breeding ferru on a server but I just can't afford the time for it.

    Quote

    Java script, which happens to be the language in which minecraft is coded

    Maybe something like the Gendustry addon for forestry, but for crops instead of bees? Or would that be too OP?

    I partly agree on that. At least on growing speed up (manually)... But something that can not be done infinte times (like say: you can speed up extremly like 100 times and after that you have to break and replace the cropstick) With that it should not be automateable. Even if you use fakeplayers^^"

    I looked at a spotlight for the AgriCraft mod, and I like how it's configurable and more open about the mutations (as opposed to here, where Alblaka put up that hulking large rule about not revealing source information, which might explain why many, including the AgriCraft author in the description for that mod, claim that IC2 crop breeding is completely random), being able to disable weeds is tempting, and I like how it allows spreading a crop with cross-crops adjacent to a single crop. However, it didn't look like it was significantly faster at populating the cross-crops - the spotlight video used jump cuts for that. Also, a few things I don't like about AgriCraft after watching that video:
    1. Crop stats are capped at 10.
    2. Crop stats apparently never decrease when spreading or mutating crops, which seems overpowered even to me.
    3. There was no mention of drawbacks to having certain stats too high (like how IC2 crops with high growth behave like weeds, and crops with high resistance are harder to breed)


    I'm in single-player peaceful with GT5e and PFAA (and default worldgen, not skyblock or anything), so ferru doesn't interest me much, nor do most of the other metal-producing crops: they require ores or metal blocks below them and only produce tiny dusts (or items that have to be put in an extractor to get the tiny dusts), so mining for ores will still be more attractive for quite a while. I'm more interested in crops like blazereed, diareed, slimeplant, oilberries, and redwheat.


    Being able to put IC2 seeds in a Gendustry (Advanced) Mutatron or equivalent machine would be cool (and I had actually thought of that before, even if I hadn't mentioned it). I don't think that would be overpowered, considering the energy and mutagen cost, and further balancing could be done by decreasing the chance of successful mutation.


    I like Speiger's idea too: if I could apply some sort of fertilizer to the cross-crops and get an immediate result, even if that had a higher chance of producing weeds and required me to completely break and replace the cropsticks to be able to try again, that would make crop-farming significantly less frustrating.

    Maven Cloud another thing you forgot:
    Agricraft Crops are simply like a Machine (Alloy Smelter from EnderIO), you put 2 things together and you get your result with 90%-100% chance...
    While you can have up to 2 Trillion (or german billion) differend types of Results from IC2 Crops (if aviable). And what you get from these dead set results is random. ^^"

    What do you mean, Speiger? I thought the video (or maybe it was the mod description) said that crossing AgriCraft crops had something like an 80% chance (by default, since it's configurable) of just resulting in one of the parent crops.


    Also, how do you come up with your number of 2 trillion? The stats for IC2 crops (growth, gain, resistance) each range from 0 to 31, so with three of them that's 32768 possible combinations of stats. With IC2exp build 811 and GT 5.09.19, there are now 74 different crop types (not counting weeds), thus I only come up with a total of around 2.4 million distinguishable seed bags. I expect the number of possible results from a specific crossbreeding attempt to be significantly smaller, even when using wildly disparate crops.

    Quote from MauveCloud

    What do you mean, Speiger? I thought the video (or maybe it was the mod description) said that crossing AgriCraft crops had something like an 80% chance (by default, since it's configurable) of just resulting in one of the parent crops.


    Jup i mean that. Either you get the Result or the copy Thats it. IC2 Crops do get differend types of results. (Use my plugin and use the Cropanalyzer Breeding helper to see what results you get from your crop choice)


    Quote from MauveCloud

    Also, how do you come up with your number of 2 trillion


    Well 2 Trillion Combination do not exsist but if someone decideds to add 2 trillion Crops for IC2 You could get almost any of them by simple cross breeding and not checking what you can get from what combo... Simply because you can get more then 1 result from IC2 Crop.
    If you put wheat and wheat together you have a really high chance to get wheat, but also melon, pumpkin, Potato, Carrots, dyes, beer, redwheat and others.


    Thats the difference between IC2 And Agricraft... And i prefer the modular version over the Alloysmelter plant... Or if we compare it to a IC2 Machine, the Recycler Plant...

    That certainly sounds like a good reason to skip AgriCraft, but let's look at this from another perspective: are there any IC2 or GT crops that are really worth the time and effort of breeding them in a single-player peaceful world, instead of getting similar materials from other sources, such as mining, the Peaceful Plus mod, the peaceful table from Extra Utilities, GT Bees/Gendustry custom bees, etc.?

    Yeah. Beer, Coffee, Sticky Reeds, RedWheat (for logic circuits) and if we take now IC2 Classic into account: Tea, Ice Tea and other stuff...


    By the way. When i started talk about IC2 Classic. It will gain a super Fertilizer in the next update which removes the Tick Cap delay for about 5 minutes. So full growth speed/breeding speed and all that stuff.
    After these 5 minutes the Tickrate will be completly Blocked so the cropBlock will be dead (will be not stored in the item)

    Sorry, but I don't feel the same way about those particular crops:


    I'm not particularly interested in making beer or coffee. (or tea, for that matter)


    Stickreed was attractive for a while (since it avoided the need for making treetaps and looking up and down and around trees to find the resin holes), but now I'm thinking a Forestry Rubber Plantation (using rubber trees) is better.


    Redwheat is unimpressive when a GT redstone ore vein can easily contain several hundred (or maybe even a few thousand) redstone ore blocks, which each macerate to 10 crushed redstone ore.

    Quote from MauveCloud

    Sorry, but I don't feel the same way about those particular crops:
    I'm not particularly interested in making beer or coffee. (or tea, for that matter)


    Well Decorative perpus maybe?


    Quote from MauveCloud

    Stickreed was attractive for a while (since it avoided the need for making treetaps and looking up and down and around trees to find the resin holes), but now I'm thinking a Forestry Rubber Plantation (using rubber trees) is better.


    Oh well. But htat got added in the later time.


    Quote from MauveCloud

    Redwheat is unimpressive when a GT redstone ore vein can easily contain several hundred (or maybe even a few thousand) redstone ore blocks, which each macerate to 10 crushed redstone ore.


    As i said: for logic gates and not for the loot... I mean who has a logic gate powered by crops xDDD


    I mean why ever use the direct purpose? Why not looking at a indirect purpose? My example for the Logic Circuits.
    You could combine wheat and cooa Crops to run generators and alll that stuff (food generator from extra utils)
    And gaining some dyes from crops can be usefull too...


    Also a thing that Agricraft can not have (by its own) is the crazy grwoth speed for crops. I have with 9,9,9-12,12,12 Crops about every 3-5 Minutes (based on growth calc) almsot a stack woth of Wheat which is (in classic) the same amount of food... While Agricraft is limited to random blockupdates... xD (that excludes random blockupdate helpers like Watering can or bonemeal of any kind)

    Quote from Speiger

    As i said: for logic gates and not for the loot... I mean who has a logic gate powered by crops xDDD


    iirc, fully grown redwheat emits a redstone signal, so theoretically, it could be done. XD


    Quote from Speiger

    I mean why ever use the direct purpose? Why not looking at a indirect purpose? My example for the Logic Circuits.
    You could combine wheat and cooa Crops to run generators and alll that stuff (food generator from extra utils)
    And gaining some dyes from crops can be usefull too...


    I forgot about the Food Generator from Extra Utils, since I don't have that mod installed at the moment (though now that the bug with anvil sound effects upon opening the inventory with GT installed has apparently finally been fixed, I'm willing to consider it). Dyes, huh? Let's see, besides decorative uses, they can keep cables from connecting by virtue of being different colors, right? Any other uses I might not be aware of?


    Quote from Speiger

    Also a thing that Agricraft can not have (by its own) is the crazy grwoth speed for crops. I have with 9,9,9-12,12,12 Crops about every 3-5 Minutes (based on growth calc) almsot a stack woth of Wheat which is (in classic) the same amount of food... While Agricraft is limited to random blockupdates... xD (that excludes random blockupdate helpers like Watering can or bonemeal of any kind)


    While we're at it, AgriCraft drop rate is limited to what, 4 items for a 10/10/10 "super" crop, right? I think I've seen as many as 8 pumpkins drop from a single high-stat IC2 crop.

    • Official Post
    Quote from MauveCloud

    Dyes, huh? Let's see, besides decorative uses, they can keep cables from connecting by virtue of being different colors, right? Any other uses I might not be aware of?

    Unidye ? :P

    Quote from MauveCloud

    AgriCraft drop rate is limited to what, 4 items for a 10/10/10 "super" crop, right? I think I've seen as many as 8 pumpkins drop from a single high-stat IC2 crop.

    It takes much longer to get an IC2 crop up to a gain stat that could produce that much than to produce an Agricraft one, especially how with Agricraft you can spread 10/10/10 crops very easily with a watering can while IC2 ones are less inclined to spread without changing.

    145 Mods isn't too many. 9 types of copper and 8 types of tin aren't too many. 3 types of coffee though?

    I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you read was not what I meant.


    ---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
    // I just don't know what went wrong :(


    I see this too much.

    Quote from Chocohead

    It takes much longer to get an IC2 crop up to a gain stat that could produce that much than to produce an Agricraft one, especially how with Agricraft you can spread 10/10/10 crops very easily with a watering can while IC2 ones are less inclined to spread without changing.


    Also in Agriccraft you can not have bad effects. Stats do get a buff or not but they do not go down. In IC2 Classic stats can also go down if you are unlucky...
    Well with the next classic update you need maybe a hour with this special Fertilzer.

    Quote from Speiger

    Well with the next classic update you need maybe a hour with this special Fertilzer.


    Any chance you could release the special fertilizer in a mini-mod for IC2exp (sort of like you did with the crop breeding calculator), or does it involve deep changes to the crop system that make it only practical to do in IC2 classic?

    Sadly not because i modified the TileEntity code for it. With ASM it would be easy possible but i am not able to do anything with ASM...
    Ask Estebes if he implements something like that to IC2 Exp...