Seed Farming - Point?

[Morkaen]

Is it just me or is it pointless farming seeds?, so Combustion Fraction as an example, I have everything maxed for favourable conditions and the best I get is 110% for seeds. To put this into perspective after 20 plants were ready to be harvested, I received 21 seeds back...... so basically for 19 plants I just received the seed back that I had planted in the first place! This to me seems to be a monumental waste of time and totally pointless. Or am I missing something?

[mittekemuis]

There is a way to max crops outcome and another set-up to maximise seed set-up. I personally make two different patches appose to balance it out in one

maybe visit https://forum.playboundless.com/ or look for jivita yt tutorials

[Morkaen]

I know this and if you read what I said above I have maximised seed set-up, and that maximum is 110%. My point was that its pointless doing a seed set-up as at 110% at maximum you are obtaining 11 seeds for every 10 you plant and not obtaining any combustion fraction as they are at 0%, however the plants at maximum are giving 200-220% combustion fraction and 30-50% seed return. It is essentially pointless farming seeds in this instance as your seed farms would need to be at minimum a factor of 10x larger than your crop farms. Which seems to me to be pointless and not worthwhile.

[mittekemuis]

I am sorry for being courteous in asking your question. If I misunderstood my bad.
If you don't see the point of it don't farm.

[Morkaen]

The question and the discussion point was to make seed farming more worthwhile. I see the point in farming crops, just not seeds at the % return we get at the moment. I dont know if all seeds are the same as I've only tried the combustion fraction, which to me is pointless farming seeds and I've stopped farming them. If no-one farms them because there is no point though then this is a fault of the game which needs to be adjusted.

[Xyberviri]

Originally posted by Morkaen:

I dont know if all seeds are the same as I've only tried the combustion fraction

Just in case anyone is wondering that's literally one of the hardest things to farm seeds for.

Seed farming for food routinely returns between 30-100% and > 100% on seeds with the correct setup, With a different setup you can grow >100% crop and 100% seed.

You basically can get 3 configurations Max Seeds, Max Yield and Max Sustainable, some crops only have max seed and sustainable configuration.

Earthyams for example are 208/100 for max crop with max seed setting producing 88% crop and 110% seeds.

You can go visit farm school on alder and see in person the configurations you need to get the different setups.

https://forum.playboundless.com/t/farming-guide-in-game-farm-school/34027

important thing to remember is crops are affected by blocks up to 4 away from it so you need a 2 block gap between stuff that affects soil negatively and the soil itself.

[Qinji]

Originally posted by Morkaen:

The question and the discussion point was to make seed farming more worthwhile. I see the point in farming crops, just not seeds at the % return we get at the moment. I dont know if all seeds are the same as I've only tried the combustion fraction, which to me is pointless farming seeds and I've stopped farming them. If no-one farms them because there is no point though then this is a fault of the game which needs to be adjusted.

This is the way I see it for something like combustion fraction, kindling, or goo:

The game WANTS you to go and forage for these seeds. They are the highest tier crop possible. If one were to be able to farm seeds endlessly at no cost, eventually no-one would go forage for them anymore and there'd be no point in spawning them on planets/exo-planets (for kindling/goo).

What one needs to do is to strike a balance between how much a player wants to go and forage for wild crops. You can:

a.) maximise crop > seed
this means you must forage your seeds often but you have a great return on crop.

b.) reasonably maximise seed > crop
this mean you don't need to go and forage seeds as often but you have a lesser return on crop.

personally, I play in the b.) category because I'm more or less a solo player and as such I do not defer jobs to other guild mates. This means I need to spend time on other things rather than foraging for seeds. My combustion fraction grows at 100% seed/80% crop...occasionally I lose a plant every once in a while but I have a few fields at 110% seed/0 crop making up for that loss.

This allows me to almost...ALMOST...NEVER forage for combustion seeds but still have a steady output of combustion crop, slow, but better than nothing.