Seasons Mod Thread #2

[Frozen Catalyst]

Pretty sure the amount of food required for the three days changes with season length though.

[RODHA]

Yup. It does. I didn't pay attention to the ratio though.

[Conz]

It is already 3 days in seasons. At least in consoles.

I meant back to 6 days .. typo due to being focussed on the current 3 days.

[parad0x177]

Pretty sure the amount of food required for the three days changes with season length though.

It does, but I’m fairly sure that just emphasizes my point. I have not experimented to verify, but my understanding is that the food (or water or straw) required for a year is fixed per animal (otherwise, the economically “smart” game strategy for raising animals would be to play on the shortest year possible). Therefore, the per day requirement per animal is 1/12th year for 3-day seasons or 1/24th year for 6-day seasons.

In that case, then, 3-day’s of food with 3-day seasons results in a trough capacity of 1/4 year (or 3/12th, if you prefer). Meanwhile, troughs will only hold 1/8th years (or 3/24th) in the case of 6-day seasons. A 24-day year will result in a 1/32 year trough capacity.

Stated another way, 3-day seasons require 4 feedings per year, 6-days require 8, 12-days require 16, and 24-days demand 32. So, while the consumable investment may be amortized equitably, regardless of year length, the labor investment is not. And, in my opinion, that is not in keeping with the overall approach to scaling year length that is applied to other aspects of the mod.

[Hairy Bob]

I get where you're coming from, but taken to it's logical extreme, having troughs which hold 24 days worth of food would make keeping animals a bit over-simplified IMO.

[Alagos]

And shorter seasons mean less time, if you have to feed the animals more often you have less time to spend on your other work.

[parad0x177]

I get where you're coming from, but taken to it's logical extreme, having troughs which hold 24 days worth of food would make keeping animals a bit over-simplified IMO.

As they suggest in the Seasons manual, looking at in-game days strictly as real days isn’t illustrative. To illustrate: As it currently stands, you are putting the equivalent of an entire season, 1/4 of a year (or more than 90 “real” days) in the trough with 3-day seasons! To me, that’s far less realistic than 1/32 of a year (or the equivalent of a little over 11 “real” days) that you get with 24-day seasons.

To me, the easy and equitable solution is to set trough capacity such that three feedings are required per season. That would mean feeding every day with 3-day, every other on 6-day, every fourth on 12, and every eighth day on 24. (i.e. 1, 2, 4, or 8 day capacities).

Essentially, you can’t really fully avoid the unrealistic trough capacity, much like you can’t avoid other unrealistic aspects with the animal husbandry in the game. But, at least, this way you could make things (including labor) scale appropriately, regardless of season length.

[parad0x177]

And shorter seasons mean less time, if you have to feed the animals more often you have less time to spend on your other work.

So, by your logic, why not simply require one feeding per season or per year? That would give you even more time to do other things right? (I’m not trying to be sarcastic, just drawing out your logic to illustrate my point.)

One creates the same problem by buying more fields; more fields = more work in the same time. Likewise, having more animals or additional kinds of animals also requires additional work in the available time. But those are all trade-offs you choose to make depending on what you intend for that play-through. If you don’t have the time or resources to do everything you need to, it doesn’t make sense to expand, just like in real life.

The trough size, on the other hand, is an arbitrary limitation imposed upon you buy the mod, which is fine and necessary, really. My only point is that the trough sizes are the only thing (I can think of) that Seasons changes about the base game that doesn’t seem to scale with year length.

[Maikello]

Forgive me if I missed the answer but is it possible to add a snow mask for standard shelters? As in MoreRealistic where Dural changed some parameters for the for normal machines. this would help playing on the maps without support for seasons, also when the map is prepared for seasons, the objects are useless

[empato]

If I`m not wrong, the snow mask is automatically added on placeables if the map is prepared for seasons.

[theSeb]

scaling the feeding trough capacity is not a bad idea actually. I can’t remember why we left it at 3

Edit: chatted with the other guys and we decided to leave this as is.

[parad0x177]

scaling the feeding trough capacity is not a bad idea actually. I can’t remember why we left it at 3

Edit: chatted with the other guys and we decided to leave this as is.

I’d be curious of the reasoning, but ultimately it’s probably moot. I’ll admit to mild disappointment, but thanks all the same for at least considering it.

[redglasses]

I wish there was an option for 1.5 day, this way you would have to feed everyday but have some flexibility on when you feed them

[parad0x177]

I wish there was an option for 1.5 day, this way you would have to feed everyday but have some flexibility on when you feed them

I hadn’t thought of that... It’s certainly more work, but the flexibility from the extra half day might actually be a good approach.

[RODHA]

scaling the feeding trough capacity is not a bad idea actually. I can’t remember why we left it at 3

If I'm not mistaken, it was to prevent people from getting away with using grass in winter. As the lowest season length is 3 days, any more trough capacity would let people to fill it up with grass and get away with loosing any health on the cows in winter. Basically lowering down the inteded realism factor on seasons.

Not that it has already been by-passed by the use of forage silo mod but still this was the original motive if I'm not just making this whole up