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Old 03-23-2018, 12:10 AM   #1
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Default Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

Ok, after some prodding I've had another look at this subject with an eye for writing up something Gurps related.

The are however issues
- How complex? This is a big issue, word count, GM workload and the shear size of the subject make this important. 25000 years of farming, 2000 odd species farmed and dozens of different issues that effect the outcome.

- Related to that, broad generalisations or specific examples? Every farm is different and has different issues. Every End is different and has different issues.

- How interrelated to make farming with managing a Settlement?

- Just AtE? a lot of what is suitable for an AtE setting is also going to be useful for setting up a colony off world.

- The Ultra tech conundrum, how are things going to develop? I can make a fairly good guess on TL 9, but after that it gets a bit fuzzy.

Anyway I'm keen to hear people's thoughts.
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Old 03-23-2018, 12:29 AM   #2
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

Not just AtE, but since it, and a colony world, are prime examples for bootstrapping food production, they should be well covered.

Start by explaining the very basics of farming, so that readers can understand real-world information, rather doing everything in terms of abstract "food points." That's the general GURPS approach.

Then explain the various kinds of complications. You obviously can't have examples for all possible combinations, but you need to demonstrate some combinations.

I have a bunch of homebrew farm-enhancement magic for OD&D that could be adapted if you liked it. It has too much area and duration to fit into the basic magic system, but it could work as Path/Book magic, I think. PM me an e-mail address if you want to look at it.

I want it to be titled GURPS: Subsistence Farming: Extreme Conditions, after the forthcoming Tactical Shooting supplement, but this would be confusing.
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Old 03-23-2018, 01:10 AM   #3
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

I'm with John, start with the basics and then go into the broad strokes on subsistence farming.

My more direct thoughts:

Quote:
Originally Posted by (E) View Post
- How complex?
Broad strokes. A lot of what sparked my fancy about your AtE farm examples were the farm's footprint, how much yield, and how delicate or robust of a system it was.

Quote:
- Related to that, broad generalisations or specific examples? Every farm is different and has different issues. Every End is different and has different issues.
I say go broad and by climate'/terrain type. Something on indoor and hydroponic growing.

Quote:
- How interrelated to make farming with managing a Settlement?
I wouldn't worry about settlement management at all. If someone else is writing a settlement management (or you have you're own ideas) then leave room for integration maybe, but settlement management isn't a priority for me.

Quote:
- Just AtE? a lot of what is suitable for an AtE setting is also going to be useful for setting up a colony off world.
I'd say cover subsistence and extreme in general and leave End particulars alone. Unless you can wrap all that into one neat little chapter?

Quote:
- The Ultra tech conundrum, how are things going to develop? I can make a fairly good guess on TL 9, but after that it gets a bit fuzzy.
I say hit 8 hard and 9 softly and go no further up the tech line. Maybe a few Pyramid articles down the road if you get some good ideas there...
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Old 03-23-2018, 02:12 AM   #4
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

I'd include the lower TLs as well as TL 6+. A lot of AtE and colony world farming may not have the fancy mechanical contrivances we take for granted, after all. After all, if the motorized tractor breaks down, but you have a few horses or an ox ... or even a pair of large pigs ... you can rig a plow behind them. (Pigs make good draft animals for halflings and other pint-sized sapients, too.)
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Old 03-23-2018, 07:35 AM   #5
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

Sounds interesting. I'm pretty sure you could do it all the way up from late TL 0 if you wanted. For future TLs, I would try to identify the progressions from TL 5 to TL 8 and just extrapolate along the same curve in terms of yields per unit area, man-hours per year per unit area, cost of equipment etc. I think in all this science fiction stuff, it's better to have a wild educated guess than nothing.
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Old 03-23-2018, 09:20 AM   #6
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

If you want to write something short and relatively simple, I'd suggest an article which just adds a bit of high-tech stuff to the existing low-tech farming rules.

If you want to do a full treatment, I say make it long and detailed with lots of specific examples. GURPS is a high-detail system and we've already got simple farming rules. I prefer to have a catalogue of stuff to pick from rather than a formula for generating my own and that means a big word-count (but I suspect it will be no more difficult to write, since in both cases you really want an underlying formula which has been tested by building many examples).
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Old 03-23-2018, 11:15 AM   #7
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

I'd focus on details of subsistence farming for different environments in AtE scenarios, and draw heavily from the work you've already done. Do them for collapses at TL7, TL8 and TL9, which would probably cover 80-90 percent of AtE scenarios.

I'd also put in some historical information, to flesh out options discussed in Low Tech, and to anchor your AtE scenarios. I'd look at hunter-gatherer options; labor-intensive Classical Era Fertile Crescent agriculture and its ubiquitous slavery; east Asian rice cultivation; Dark Ages two-field rotation; and Medieval three-field with horses and deep plows with mould-boards.

I'd spend a fair amount of time on the various four-field rotations that lasted for hundreds of years until the advent of the mechanized petrochemical agriculture. Petrochemical engineering triggered the Green Revolution at TL7, and is what would no longer be viable in any situation that lacked a sophisticated industrial supply chain.

Loss of that supply chain would force a reversion to the earlier models, and four-field rotation schemes were quite successful and sustainable, for centuries. Such rotations would likely act as foundations of successful post-apocalyptic societies, and could serve as the go-to models for early planetary colonies that hadn't yet developed support industries.

If the industrial infrastructure exists to support high tech agriculture, then food isn't something one grows for one's self. One buys food at a supremarket or restaurant, and the descriptions "frontier" or "post-collapse" no longer apply.
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Old 03-23-2018, 12:09 PM   #8
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Start by explaining the very basics of farming, so that readers can understand real-world information, rather doing everything in terms of abstract "food points." That's the general GURPS approach.
I think it does both- e.g. there's Power Points in Spaceships, and Ultra-Tech power cells don't go into counting megajoules.

I understand agronomists and nutrionists measure food output in kilojoules or calories, but I suspect that might be a turn-off for a larger gaming audience.

But if you could indeed use Food Points or Harvest Points, but have them equal to something measurable in the real world, it would be a handy compromise. Perhaps set 1 acre of wheat as your reference unit (at TL 8?, farmed organically?), then you could use multiples of that for improved output, different crops, etc.
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Old 03-23-2018, 12:45 PM   #9
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

Might be just me but I'd be interested in an emergency farming in spaceships example.
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Old 03-23-2018, 01:11 PM   #10
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Default Re: Farming in difficult environments AtE and other worlds

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Originally Posted by TGLS View Post
Might be just me but I'd be interested in an emergency farming in spaceships example.
That's hydroponics though, right?
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