Irrigated Fields Are Irrelevant. And They Shouldn't Be.

[jbradhicks]

The problem: irrigated fields (theoretically) help keep you from starving during Heat Waves (and only Heat Waves) by letting you continue to grow crops during the Heat Wave. Note that they draw water whether there's a Heat Wave or not! If this is what they're for, then they should only draw water during a Heat Wave, just as a radiator only draws power during a Nuclear Winter. But that's not my real problem with them:

My real problem with them is that Heat Waves are roughly half the duration of Nuclear Winters. Which means that if you produce enough crops between disasters to survive a Nuclear Winter, you don't need irrigated fields. If you need irrigated fields, you'll never survive your next Nuclear Winter.

Nor do irrigated fields grow any more crops than, or grow crops faster than, un-upgraded fields. Hence ...

The solution: irrigated fields shouldn't have anything to do with Heat Waves. Upgrading a field from regular to irrigated should boost the productivity of the yellow fertility zones to green, and the red fertility zones to yellow. That would justify them drawing water continuously. (Although water draw should then shut down during Nuclear Winter and Radioactive Fallout, obviously. Which I'm pretty sure it already does.)

[Eventide]

I agree that they are too good; it seems wrong that soil quality becomes irrelevant - only a greenhouse (expensive!) should be "perfect." So I like the idea of limiting the % fertility bonus.

I'd like to see the same for wells (anything tied to soil quality); upgrading on a bad location should improve it, but not make it "perfect."

[iceflake_joanna]

Originally posted by jbradhicks:

The solution: irrigated fields shouldn't have anything to do with Heat Waves. Upgrading a field from regular to irrigated should boost the productivity of the yellow fertility zones to green, and the red fertility zones to yellow. That would justify them drawing water continuously. (Although water draw should then shut down during Nuclear Winter and Radioactive Fallout, obviously. Which I'm pretty sure it already does.)

Heya! So they actually already do this - if you place a regular field anywhere at all in the colony, upgrading it will make it's effectiveness jump up to 100%. The Heat Wave thing is actually more of an extra thing - we originally had them so that they would suffer from Heat Wave just like regular open fields but decided to give them a small boost since it made more sense that the water supply would keep the crops alive during a Heat Wave.

And the fields indeed should become paused automatically during Fallout and Winter and thus not use water during them :)

But so the irrigation can really help you use your available spaces in colony a bit better. Yes, you will still need to build a water supply close of course, but especially if playing on Hard, where there is very little fertile soil around, they can really help! :)


@basic.syntax - I'll pass on this feedback - not sure if we can implement it, but hey, no hurt in asking :)

[jbradhicks]

Ah! Okay, I didn't test them enough on non-fertile soil to catch that. Could you put that in the description of the tech, on the tech tree? And maybe on the upgrade button's building tooltip?

[iceflake_joanna]

At the moment the individual field upgrades do say "can grow on barren soil when fertile soil is scarce" - but this could be a bit more clear - I'll pass on the request to clarify these as well as the tech description :)

The upgrade button shows the description that is also visible in the Tech Tree for each individual field, so shouldn't be too difficult to update - no promises or guarantees though! :)