Cropmatron: Unecessary Waste?

1st Official Post

    I decided to leave my cropmatron and booze barrels going for a few hours and then come back and do some gardening. What do I find when I come back? My matrons both of them are completely empty. 6 stacks of fert 6 hydration cells all gone. Note: I had not changed anything to the crops before going afk. Now, I put it to you. If we have things like booze barrels which need vast amounts of time to ferment and cropmatrons which just keep pumping resources into plants that are fully grown. Is this massively wasteful?

    "It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." - Life the universe and everything.

    • Official Post

    Cromatron doesn't waste anything, but merely supplys 100% hydration and fertilization coverage. Unless it randomly removes items, it definitely is not wasting any sort of ressources. It's only con is as well ensuring 100% WeedEx coverage, which can be harmful to plants.



    I guess you just didn't realise how much ressources your farm actually drains :P

    So, what you're saying is a fullgrown plant that hasn't been harvested should need hydration and fertilizer endlessly and we need to babysit the cropmatron to make sure its not using up our supply of fert and cells? Also, when a cropmatron is supplying nothing to no plants but is hooked up to a batbox it just drains them anyway. I'd think the cropmatron would help a plant grow to full and then stop pumping things into it and when that spot became harvested or planted it would say aha! a new plant and give it supply from its storage etc. Unless, gains and seed drops are affected by current store of hydration and nutrients I don't see the point of endlessly pumping its storage into everything.

    "It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." - Life the universe and everything.

    Even if nutrition and hydration do affect drops and gains it doesn't mean I want them to be at 100% constantly. I don't ideally always want to harvest the plant so what the current setup means is I need to figure out precisely how much fert and hydration cells I need to grow them fully and even then I never know when the plant's hydration and nutrition levels at even at 100% we have no means of knowing that just the assurance from the cropmatron as it throws resources out.


    Perhaps modes?


    Harvest Mode: maintains 100% of everything until you shut that mode off and shows you somehow on the box when its ideal harvest conditions.
    Fully Grown mode: only supplies resources until the plant is fully grown and then focuses on other growing plants.


    as examples

    "It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." - Life the universe and everything.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Alblaka

    Vice versa, I should probably reduce/nullify the fertilization and nutrient consume for a fully grown plant instead. Concept mistake.

    Please nullify. And add cropmatron option to keep a X % of fertilization/hydration if you know plants minimum requirements.

    I thought cropmatron was introduced by the evil agriculture company that wants to eat our children and makes Alblaka seem like hes on crack half the time unless hes answering serious questions. Wonderful agriculture company that we owe everything *starts to sweat*.

    Quote

    That's a rather cool idea, but a lone tree is suspicious, better plant some more. So really... forget about solar-flowers, solar-trees are the next generation :P

    The cropmatron keeps using EU even if there is no fertilizer, weed-ex or hydration cells inside. 8|
    Because of that, it never seems to reach the powered state (the little flash icon in it's GUI never turns red). Have 2 cropmatrons with 1 solar panel connected to each one.

    Quote from Honeybadga

    The cropmatron keeps using EU even if there is no fertilizer, weed-ex or hydration cells inside. 8|
    Because of that, it never seems to reach the powered state (the little flash icon in it's GUI never turns red). Have 2 cropmatrons with 1 solar panel connected to each one.


    It takes 1 EU/t to power itself... you do the math.

    Whether he means one solar panel for both or two it doesn't matter. The cropmatron does indeed act like an EU sink and just keeps taking EU regardless of what its doing. It doesn't reach a state of "I'm done for now" ever.

    "It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." - Life the universe and everything.