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Farms relocation

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Post  Brendanan Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:26 pm

I was hoping to delay mentioning this on the forums, for risk of taking attention off the current tasks at hand, however, I believe that it's probably best I ask opinions now. There were others I had discussed this with too, so it's not just me pulling stuff out of my ass. 

So, the farms. So far, extremely productive (almost over productive), and great for our needs. But, one thing. It doesn't fit in with our city. We've probably gotten used to it by now, because we've walked the path so many times before. It's become just a way of life for us, Just how it is. 

Now, take a step back for a second, and just evaluate. We've got a grand city (still in the making), build of stone and shiny stuff, an awe inspiring sight. Then we walk into the farms, and we are greeted with a nice little pathway of grass, slotted into the stone. Little doors off the side of these pathways leading to some wheat, or some sheep. 

Does it seem right going from stone, and precious jewels to grass. 

Sure, we could just change the grass in the hallway to another material, since the purpose of the grass is no longer needed. But, should we?

For as long as I can remember with this project, there has been that forever looming idea for the farms. A giant underground lake, with an island, situated away from the shore. Above this island, the cavern has a small opening out into the sky, filtering some natural light down to reflect off the surface of the water. 

Upon this island is a small hut, where farms are maintained, the hermit living on the island maintaining them as needed. There is a small dock, which is used to travel back to the main city, on those occasions when it is required. 

Great, I got a little off track with over-the-top descriptions again -.- Anyway, you get the picture :p we all know the idea. 

Now, these small farms on the surface of an island may not be enough to keep us sustained, however, if we all dedicatedly harvest the farms for a while beforehand, we can fill up a few chests, and have our bellies full for years to come. We can have one or two lone trees growing on the island, so it gives us a place to gather emergency wood, but I can see us being able to gather a chest or two of wood within 24 hours, so that'll fill us for wood for a while, and the trees will be essentially for decoration, and aesthetics. 

The one thing we won't have is animals. We can perhaps make an underground area, accessible through the hut (underground underground), which we can keep much smaller stocks of animals. For example, a small egg/chicken farm (which comes first, chicken or egg? I have the answer), maybe two cows, two pigs, and a one or two of each sheep (we've got so much wool we should be fine with just one of each, as we can breed more if needed). 

So, we completely move the farms, what happens with the space? Now we have a great spot for barracks and archery range, as well as our forge. I can see how it'll fit in, can you? 

You see how we've got the tunnel to the housing? Well, we have the room to make another of those tunnels. Guess where that can lead? You guessed it, the new underground lake farms. 

Just remember, this is a long way away. This only came up because there was a post about the archway into the farms intersecting with the chickens. And of course, this was also originally what brought up the topic again with another player (sorry, I forgot who). Remember, none of this will be started until housing has been completed, so it'll be quite a while before we need to worry, it's just a suggestion/idea to implement something that had been thought of since the beginning. 
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Post  3rdi Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:52 pm

Think it was me that you had the talk with, I was trying to do the last of the gates and hit the chicken farm, i've since left it and I think someone else found my problem. I'm still for the lake, but I think it would be sensible to try and make a farm that can actually sustain us, although we wouldn't need it to produce an excess.

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Post  Brendanan Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:30 pm

Well, sustaining is fine if we start with a ton of food and wood. Melons grow fast, and produce lots. A small far would sustain.
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Post  spectrumwars Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:54 pm

With the Atrium, we've already got a huge hole in the roof, and an area below it. We've even already got grass to grow at the bottom. You want your little island and decorative farm? There's a place to do it. Consider how much work that hole was to dig, and then contemplate how much more it would be to make an even larger skylight hole for a complete farm somewhere else.

The hallways in the farms were designed to utilitarian, and to be dug quickly. It was always planned to pretty them up at a later date, but we always had other things to do. We can indeed rip up the grass in the central hallway, and decorate the walls of the hallway however we like. The Chicken Coop was always rather awkward there, we can relocate it to be closer to the tree farms if we wish.

The farms are indeed a bit overproductive for the half-dozen or so people actually active on the server. They were designed to handle several more people, and if we get more people, they can handle it without need for expansion. Overproduction is not a problem...unlike a real farm, grain can sit unharvested in the fields for weeks in minecraft without spoiling, and will be ready whenever we DO need it. Animals can sit ignored in their pens, and will (mostly) be okay. We've had a few more sheep turn up missing than I was expecting, but we've also had less demand for wool than I was expecting, so it's really not a problem.

But I really don't think we need to get rid of the farms we have entirely, certainly not before we get a fully functional replacement set up elsewhere. We go through enormous amounts of wood for torches, tool handles, chests and doors, and tree farms are an absolute must for any underground city.

If they annoy you that much, we can even build a new hallway above the current second floor, then reach the various farms and animal pens via ladders. It might even cut down on the number of sheep escapes.
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Post  Brendanan Thu Mar 08, 2012 4:01 pm

This is not an instant thing. This is a future development idea. And in the atrium!? Are you crazy?

Of course we would have an alternative set up in the mean time. Over productive is not a bad thing, but neither is overkill on digging. It took a lot of effort to dig the housing area, but it didn't take too much time to get a large portion of it done, did it? This farms thing was planned for after housing was done, to be completed after we started in other civilizations on our server.
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Post  jeffewing997 Thu Mar 08, 2012 5:28 pm

I like this idea, and we'll have a reason to use some bones when we have to collect a chest worth of wood. I can envision this thing being of epic proportions.

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Post  sret Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:59 pm

spectrumwars wrote:With the Atrium, we've already got a huge hole in the roof, and an area below it. We've even already got grass to grow at the bottom. You want your little island and decorative farm? There's a place to do it. Consider how much work that hole was to dig, and then contemplate how much more it would be to make an even larger skylight hole for a complete farm somewhere else.

In the atrium? Are you serious?

Much work to dig? I barely even had the chance to help out before it was done! We take ages fixing places up but when they're being dug out we're very fast, no matter how large the area is. This place would be way bigger than the atrium with the entire lake being dug out aswell. Some of us have been looking forward to this thing since the beginning and it will definitely keep us occupied with digging for a while. It'll bring something to do for people like me who are completely useless in this current decorative phase we've got going.

We have enough stuff stocked from the current farms to last us while finishing the city, except wood. But Jeff has a point, you only need a couple of spots for trees and a bunch of saplings and bones and you can create all the wood you need.
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Post  Brendanan Fri Mar 09, 2012 12:12 am

All we really need is saplings, bonemeal, and a block of dirt. If we get desperate, we can whip up a quick bunch of trees in the throne room, and harvest them to give us more wood
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Post  spectrumwars Fri Mar 09, 2012 5:26 am

The problem with using bonemeal on the same spot over and over again is that you run out of saplings unless you either wait a long time between cutting down single trees, or have to chop all the leaves by hand to get enough saplings to replace the ones you're using up. You can keep growing new trunks under the same clump of undecayed leaves...but while this gets you a lot of wood fast, it tends to consume more saplings than it produces.
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Post  Brendanan Fri Mar 09, 2012 6:09 am

How many do we have right now? Saplings wise... And if we have chests full of wood, the trees won't be needed as much. Especially if we make sure we have plenty of signs made first
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Post  sret Fri Mar 09, 2012 9:47 am

That's why you need a big enough room to fit about 5 dirt blocks. It gives enough time for the leaves from the first tree to decay before you're done with the last one, and you'll get enough saplings back.
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Post  Blackwind Sat Mar 10, 2012 1:58 am

I can imagine a really big cylinder shape being dug out, entire floors dedicated to wheat with mini sky lights (1 block) that allows light down, I will make a picture.
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Post  Brendanan Sat Mar 10, 2012 2:00 am

Hmmm.... That's a completely different idea. The original idea was a massive lake cavern
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Post  Blackwind Sat Mar 10, 2012 2:48 am

Maybe it could be like a farm version of the atrium apartments. Put everything inside and just have that cylinder in the middle.
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Post  Brendanan Sat Mar 10, 2012 5:44 am

And how would that look? We need something that would look hugely epic, rather than just a cylinder
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Post  Blackwind Sat Mar 10, 2012 6:43 am

Or maybe just in the middle, I'll find the picture someone else put up here.
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Post  Blackwind Sat Mar 10, 2012 6:45 am

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Post  spectrumwars Sat Mar 10, 2012 8:54 am

Brendanan wrote:And how would that look? We need something that would look hugely epic, rather than just a cylinder

The hugely epic original plan is gonna be a pain in the neck, not because we'd have to move so much dirt, but because the chances of us finding a suitable location that is even vaguely light on caverns underneath is sadly remote. At least, for the sizes you seem to be suggesting. Quarries are hard enough with a few caves underneath. We lucked out on the Atrium and it only nicked a few caves. It just seems like a lot of work to go through...for something that in the end, is planned to be woefully inefficient and impractical, with far less productivity than the existing system.

This cylinder idea, however, I find intriguing. Imagine a twin of the Atrium in scale, but with enormous 10-high floors with glass-pane walls lining the atrium, and crops and animal pens visible within. Perhaps even a corkscrew floor design, with multiple levels of wheat farm all auto-harvested with a single water source at the top that flows down dozens of terraces one after another...double-height floors for tree farms...a small Giant Mushroom terrace with silk-touched-in Mycelium and a couple of Mooshrooms...or maybe flat floors, but with auto-harvesting systems that wash the produce to the central shaft, where it can rain foodstuffs on command?

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Post  Brendanan Sat Mar 10, 2012 9:17 am

Ok, I'll add my opinion later. I'm all for the huge lake, and I'll argue the point, but in the end, it's up to what the people want to do.
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Post  Brendanan Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:16 am

Think it as a friendly debate :p
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Post  sret Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:28 am

And yet again this somehow turns into a matter of efficiency, neglecting the original idea of an epic-looking city. :/
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Post  Brendanan Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:29 am

Sret, don't steal my arguments before I'm home and can actually write a full thing :p
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Post  Dr. Steel Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:57 am

Brendanan wrote:Ok, I'll add my opinion later. I'm all for the huge lake, and I'll argue the point, but in the end, it's up to what the people want to do.

Same here, I'd like to go for the big, the massive and the good-looking. Why do we want to complete this ASAP? There's enough time and I'm sure people like to work on this project a whole lot longer. Plus, not much people have done this before so I think it would look really nice.

You've seen my sketches and although those look insanely big, what's the problem with that? Gives us more time to plan and mine, and then end up with awesome caverns... You could even get everyone to work on this thing at once!

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Post  3rdi Sat Mar 10, 2012 1:13 pm

I'm also for the idea of the cavern, my main issue with this cylinder idea is that it will end up looking like a large scale version of our current farm area, which throws up several problems.

-the current farms are overproductive, and they're pretty small, what would we do with whole floors of wheat, cows, and chickens? One of the aims of the new cavern idea was to downsize the farms
-it sounds like it will be pretty glass intensive, while I have nothing against glass in minecraft, it does tend to make things look very modern, which is why I've been trying to keep it's use to a minimum so far, I really don't feel it looks good in our city, I'm still a bit undecided about the chandeliers in the throne room tbh.
-It won't look as good, it will change our city from a great spanning dwarven city into a selection of hubs, one for housing, one for farming, and so on, very Logans Run Razz

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Post  Dr. Steel Sat Mar 10, 2012 1:24 pm

Well, originally I imagined this cavern as a place the dwarves stumbled upon while carving the city and then decided to make use of the islands in the subterranean lakes. Smile

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