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Old 04-13-2016, 03:10 PM   #41
nicebrian
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

Nice! I really like the failing but salvageable setup.

Big thank you again for all of these, they give great insight and background detail for AtE settlements.
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Old 04-16-2016, 01:40 AM   #42
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

Lass' Bend

Assumptions
- 2 generations after
- Some toxic elements to the end
- Climate meltdown end, temperate areas are dry, deserts are wet.
- very dry, rains every few years, but when it does it is fairly heavy.
- Average annual rainfall about 100mm or 4 inches
- Founded by successful denizens of the early end

Resources
The group that founded Lass' Bend had access to a large truck or river boat during the early years and used it to great effect to build up the initial resources
- Large commercial green house
- A survivalist's bunker with computer, post apocalyptic data store, generator
- Market Gardener
- Botanist, chemist, geologist
- A stockpile of fertilizers, including urea and superphosphate

Notes
- The problem of creating a farm in a desert is, if you're are successful you don't have a desert
- Larger community this time
- numerous desert techniques used
- Any desert farming would be by necessity near water or mobile
- Water storage is large, easily 8000 m3 in a huge range of light weight tanks, fibreglass, metal and plastic. A second storage system is a lined storage pond that is used to hold rain catchment. Storage is in excess of 250,000 m3, Pine nut trees are maintained around the pond to reduce water loss.
- Numerous nutrient rich mineral deposits where identified by the geologist and supply the majority of the nutrient needs. Notable exceptions are Nitrogen, Sulphur and Phosphorus
- A town with a 4 figure population
- Vulnerable to long range attack, water tanks and glass are key parts of the system.
- Defenses would exist, depending on the challenges presented by the particular End that occurred.
- Best guess is the food would combine aspects of Mexican, Israeli and Palestinian cuisine.
- A longer period from the end would see more species bred for arid conditions and some dessert plants bred for human consumption.
- The main greenhouse could be used to produce a tropical fodder crop for an animal system.

Geography and conditions
- Very polluted river, water way or swamp. Deep banks.
- Rolling hills and canyons, foot hills of a mountain range.
- The community is on the opposite side of a ridge from the river/swamp
- Hot and dry
- Geologically the area is marine sediment based, limestone, mudstone and sandstones are common.
- The topography is fairly defensible. But Lass' Bend is just too large to be a fortress.

Description
Traveling along the dust road you start to catch glimpses of Lass' bend from a long way off. The huge green house draped over the ridge and the walls and fields scattered around in every sheltered spot. Walking up to the low adobe wall you see the town square with the town's canine name sake immortalized in statue form. The crowds come as a shock after the long weeks with only your own company.

Primary green house system
The main green house at Lass' bend extends down very close to the shallow river bend that gives the community it's name. The warm, slow moving and toxic water is pumped to the top of a huge screen made of dark porous material inside the green house facing south*. The solar energy is amplified by a field of mirrors. The design of the main green house is such that the hot moist air created by the screen flows up into the rest of the structure. The moist air keeps every thing within the main green house extremely humid and condenses on several purpose built collectors that provide clean flowing water. Much of the humid air is lost due to the ventilation and cooling requirements of this system. However there is still enough water condensed to irrigate the next system.
- At least half of the green house is devoid of plant life and only exists to purify/extract water.
- Some gases can build up due to pollution in the river, exact effects are setting specific. Smoking may be a flogging offence.
- This particular system takes the water a long way vertically from the river.
- hot weather and tropical species, probably salvaged from gardens.

Walled gardens

Down hill from the green house is a walled and heavily subdivided garden system. The plants that cannot tolerate the heat of the main green house are grown here. Trees and vines are trained against walls. This area is very intensively planted. A huge number of water conservation techniques are used here. The walls reduce wind, every square inch of soil is covered by something (plant, mulch, flagstone). Some of the smaller gardens in this system are roofed with glass, some are protected by frames covered in vines, some are open to the air. The inhabitants of Lass' bend primarily live around the edge of this garden. Many varieties of plants are grown here, citrus, almonds and grapes are common perennials. Maybe a square kilometer in size

Open gardens
These are fields near the walled gardens that are used for plants that can handle the arid conditions with a little help.
- Aloes
- Agaves
- Cacti

Inner fields
The Walled gardens sometimes have a water surplus, this plus stored water from rain are used to provide moisture for the field crops. Here is where various cereals and hardy plants are grown (300-400mm per year water requirement).
- Amaranth
- Quinoa
- Sorghum
- Cotton
- Drought tolerant Wheat
- Sweet potatoes
- Beans
- Lucerne
- Hemp
- Chickpeas
- Oil rich crops such as sunflower
- Several others
- Buckwheat
- Tef (Teff) is planted when the water levels are low.

Grazing zone
The positive side effect of the moisture lost from the main green house is that the dense moist air flowed down hill creating a “green zone” various hardy plants survive here. There are enough for a small population of goats to flourish.
- Goats
- Hunting(?)

Flood flats
These are areas lower than the rest of Lass' Bend they are typically narrow eroded flood plains with 2-3 meter high banks. They are planted in a plants that can grow from the one surge of moisture. Three sisters planting, four sisters planting and sometimes just Tepary beans with rock mulch are used depending on the exact location and soil type.
- Tepary and other beans
- Watermelon
- Squash
- Corn and maize

Micro gardens
In various nooks and sheltered spots around the perimeter of Lass' Bend you will find odd looking moisture collectors, some are simple like an old air cooled engine block painted white while others are hanging nets of fine woven polypropylene. They all serve the same purpose, to condense any extra moisture out of the air. This is helped by the local conditions as moist air flows from the main green house, the wind sometimes carries some moisture off the river/swamp as well. The cool surface condenses the water out of the air and then it is collected and directed to small gardens or even individual plants that are sheltered and fenced. Perennials are common as are hardy trees, some water is left accessible to encourage animal and insect activity. Each micro garden is a unique example of matching survival skills and technology to the environment. Some are camouflaged for added protection. Possible species are still fairly hardy though, Olives would be an example.

Livestock
- Chickens
- Goats
- Fish (?)
- Bees

Produces
- A wide range of vegetables and cereals
- Some dairy products
- Large enough to support a few specialists
- Fiber crops
- Oil crops
- Bread
- Coffee is possible, as well as other luxury crops.

Requires
- Glass, large sheets of glass are required to repair and enlarge the green house. Also polycarbonate & polyethylene.
- Nitrate fertilizer to supplement the urea stockpile
- Meat
- Leather
- Firewood
- Cement (powder) for building stronger water tanks, defenses etc
- Donkeys would be a valuable addition
- Insecticides and fungicides would boost production

Crunch
Provided there is a steady water supply and readily available fertilizer the walled garden system has the possibility of producing subsistence or better food for up to 4000 people when intensely farmed. Halve that if fertilizer levels are low. Higher production is possible but not sustainable long term in an AtE setting. Assume a 10% boost for Insecticides and for fungicides if a trader supplies some, although the main benefit would be to the robustness of the system. This presumes good food storage techniques are used.

The green house is a trickier case as due to plant species availability it may be almost a mono-culture, how many tropical species are available in a temperate area? For Lass' bend I am leaving it as a location for "supplemental crops" like luxuries and utility plants like sugar cane, oil rich plants, coffee, banana, jute and medicinal plants. If a full range of TL 8+ seeds and chemicals where available then production could be enough to feed more than 500 people per hectare.

The inner fields represent 150 hectares of productive land that require approximately 4000m3 of water to irrigate each hectare per crop (minus rain fall). Farming skill and meteorological guesstimates would be aiming to have the last irrigated crop coming off just before it rained, when ever that is going to be. 62 hectares of crops, representing typically 150 to 360 tonnes of energy rich long lasting cereal, Say enough for 250 more people. The typical annual rainfall will increase the production to 200-480 tonnes (if the farming rolls are successful). Portions of the inner fields will be fallow. A major rain event will see three quarters of the fields sown (some luck needed by the farmers to get the timing right) that will result in 360-720 tonnes with only a little loss from the water reserves.

The flood flats will produce maybe 2-4 tonnes of food per hectare after a flood, over 2-4 months.

While five or six thousand people is possible, a more comfortable number would be closer to three thousand.

*North if you are in the southern hemisphere or if the poles have flipped

Edit new system added, mirco gardens
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Old 04-16-2016, 03:56 AM   #43
Polydamas
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Originally Posted by (E) View Post
Northgate Mall

Assumptions
- Mad Max type end, change in local climates, more arid weather.
- Mature TL 8 End
- 2 generations and 40+ years since the End (this is standard for the examples so far)
- 100 shop mall, two storied building, glass roofed atrium with five glass roofed corridors.
- Due to random bureaucratic reasoning the store is quite well built
- No reliable annual rain
- Soil while slightly toxic can support some hardy plants.

Resources

- Health food shop, supermarket, gym, big box store with garden centre, health food store, pet store with aquariums, book stores, big box car parts store, big box hardware store, big box sports store.

Notes
- Northgate is a glass roofed mall that has been partially converted into a huge green house.
- An example of a fortress garden that is not going so well.
- Mirrors on the roof increase the “day” for the plants inside
- Water poor
- Would work as a fortress type structure, possibly taken over by a violent group who are holding the locals as slaves.
- Might work as a Base of operations for the PC's to own and improve.
- Has a high level of infrastructure but not necessarily a high level of education. They did have a book store though. None of the original population of Northgate had any practical experience with farming.
- The use of a wind turbine and solar panels have allowed refrigeration.
- The other resources at Northgate make it a valuable location
- the gardening supplies from the big box store(s) have allowed the community to last this long but they are running out.
Thanks for taking the time to post all of these scenarios! Farming, especially industrial and post-industrial farming, is not one of the areas of my expertise.

Using one of those areas, I would say that Northgate has a contradiction: 22 (or 88) people are not possibly enough to defend such a sprawling building with at least five large doors plus the loading docks and ground-floor windows and rolling doors to the car-part and garden stores. Even if they have three or four machine guns and plenty of ammunition to let half a dozen men cover those empty parking lots, bad guys can sneak up in the night, or find one of the approaches which they can't watch and use that one, or create a distraction on one side while rushing another, or just find something bulletproof and ram a gate; whatever firing positions they chose, there is almost certain to be lots of dead ground on a building which was designed to have lots of display windows and make people spend time walking or driving around where they might think "oh yeah, I should pick up a new bathrobe while I am here." I would think that anyone with a bit of military experience, a biker who had fortified a clubhouse, and many history buffs could give the same report; the residents will probably figure it out if they survive the first few bandit raids without being turned into ablative armour on the bandits' Deathmobiles.
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Old 04-16-2016, 04:35 AM   #44
(E)
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
Thanks for taking the time to post all of these scenarios! Farming, especially industrial and post-industrial farming, is not one of the areas of my expertise.

Using one of those areas, I would say that Northgate has a contradiction: 22 (or 88) people are not possibly enough to defend such a sprawling building with at least five large doors plus the loading docks and ground-floor windows and rolling doors to the car-part and garden stores. Even if they have three or four machine guns and plenty of ammunition to let half a dozen men cover those empty parking lots, bad guys can sneak up in the night, or find one of the approaches which they can't watch and use that one, or create a distraction on one side while rushing another, or just find something bulletproof and ram a gate; whatever firing positions they chose, there is almost certain to be lots of dead ground on a building which was designed to have lots of display windows and make people spend time walking or driving around where they might think "oh yeah, I should pick up a new bathrobe while I am here." I would think that anyone with a bit of military experience, a biker who had fortified a clubhouse, and many history buffs could give the same report; the residents will probably figure it out if they survive the first few bandit raids without being turned into ablative armour on the bandits' Deathmobiles.
I agree that Northgate is basically impossible to defend (though there may be Ends where it works better), I left any fine detail surrounding the defenses out of the description. My own take on it was the residents used all the cars in the car park and surrounds to construct the defenses and/or build a wall. That said I was playing with the idea of writing it up as a location that had traded hands frequently with the residents being basically slaves. In the end I decided to make it as generic as possible, so it would be suitable for a wide range of circumstances. Now you mention it getting Northgate defensible would be a scenario in the making.

I forgot to mention Lass' Bend is fairly bullet vulnerable too.

Edit
Safety is boring ;)
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Old 04-16-2016, 09:42 AM   #45
Polydamas
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Edit
Safety is boring ;)
This thread is so cool that I am trying to think of workarounds.

Historically isolated settlements with a few dozen people survived by being part of a network and being ready to flee into the woods or the caves when riders from another settlement in the network told them trouble was coming; hiding your village in the folds of the hills so that the bad guys can't spot it from a distance can also help. The problem was that they could not protect their outbuildings and bridges and dams and canals and other infrastructure, and dense networks of settlements spoil the wasteland feeling.

One of the basic problems is geometric: the area within the fortifications increases with scale squared, while the length of perimeter increases with scale. So a town with thousands or tens of thousands of residents can have plenty of orchards and gardens and dovecotes and so on within its walls (and with leftovers from TL8+ but a wrecked environment it might be able to produce a larger share of what it needs than historical towns could produce) but a smaller settlement will have trouble defending anything but a strong house or two.

I wish I could help you brainstorm plausible-sounding workarounds for settings where people can't grow many crops in the open but are worried about raiders who don't mind killing the sheep instead of fleecing them, but I am tired and not feeling very creative.
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Old 04-16-2016, 11:15 AM   #46
tshiggins
 
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Lass' Bend

(SNIP)

Any one want crunch on the irrigation numbers? Sizes?
This is a very nice take on a post-apocalyptic oasis. I wasn't sure how a temperate zone oasis would look, but the use of Pinus monophylla (pińon pines), instead of date palms, is quite ingenious. I think those would work well in the United States, as they're native to the Desert Southwest, from southern Idaho to Baja.

A lot of stores sell pine nuts, and restaurants use them, around here. They don't produce nearly as much in the way of calories as date palms, but they can (and do) survive the cold winters.

They're not towering trees, so they couldn't act as shade for fruit orchards beneath them. You handled that nicely with the walled areas, though, and those with fairly high walls and "roofs" lightly trellised with grape vines would do the job nicely. I saw stuff like that in Seville.

You'd definitely have to train the trees to grow out instead of up, though.

Something like this could be directly applicable, in the near future, in my Facets campaign, so I'd like to see the numbers, please.

Thanks!
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Old 04-16-2016, 11:39 AM   #47
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Lass' Bend
I'm actually having trouble envisioning what this place is supposed to look like.

Any chance I could get a visual aid?
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Old 04-16-2016, 08:52 PM   #48
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Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Originally Posted by Minuteman37 View Post
I'm actually having trouble envisioning what this place is supposed to look like.

Any chance I could get a visual aid?
My sketching is sketchy, image search failed to get anything specific. "Saltwater greenhouses" as key words will get you the theory for the start of the water system.
Sundrop farms is an Australian project that plans on using the same technology to grow 15,000 tonnes of tomatoes per year and generate 1.2 megawatts off 20 hectares (from memory).

On a side note there may be more than one species of pine nut used, about a dozen exist.

Description
The main green house is one single building that runs from the south side of the ridge where it encloses a water evaporation system to the upper slopes of the northern side of the ridge. The southern facing is surrounded with mirrors and filled with black porous surfaces that are continually kept wet. This leads to hot moist air rising to the highest parts of the green house where it passes into the cooler northern side containing the tropical plants. Down slope from here would be the main water storage area which includes a field of water tanks and a small number of storage ponds lined with non porous material (options include some types of clay, plastic and concrete). The ponds are surrounded with a bushy species of pine and several smaller species of plant.

Immediately below the water storage area there is a walled community that is filled with small areas surrounded in high and medium walls (Moroccan cities could serve as inspiration) most of these contain gardens. The odd space is fully roofed and is a residence for the some of the inhabitants. The walls are higher around the outer regions, here and there a taller tree stands.

Several fields are below the walled community and are edged with trees and walls to reduce the drying effects of wind.

The path taken by the moist air escaping the main green house leaves an obvious trail of increased plant life. This area is walled and fenced for goats. Here and there small gardens may be visible in areas where the moist air is more concentrated and collectors have been built.

Possible farming location that are easier to defend
- Quarry, heavy machinery and explosives can make some impressive cliffs.
- Stadium
- Island
- tall buildings

Crunch finished, hit character limit too. As a result I'll add here that the green house moves a considerable amount of water and it works better on hotter days when it is needed more. The condensers and reflectors will cover a large area.
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Old 04-17-2016, 05:29 AM   #49
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Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

Grey Island

This is a dream scenario for comparison and to show how well a tiny space may be used.

Assumptions
- Temperate to sub-tropical island
- Reasonably sheltered
- Fresh water readily available
- No real fishing
- Some initial structures
- Easily defended island
- Population has grown
- Late TL 8 / Early TL 9 end
- 3 generations since the end
- Small island
- Easy boat access to other less habitable but useful locations

Resources
- Reasonable selection of plants and crops
- Good salvage opportunities
- Accessible islands include, limestone, bird colonies and volcanic.
- Boats and ships to salvage
- Wharf
- Tidal power generation sufficient to power refrigeration and cooking.

Notes
- Space is the biggest/only restriction
- Loosely based on Urupukapuka island in the bay of islands, NZ. (Urupukapuka is ten times the size, bonus points for finding the obscure link to the name Grey Island). The bay of islands is a good location to look up in google maps for an AtE location.
- Huge fertilizer input required. Nitrogen especially as fast growing crops require more. Also useful for countering the effects of excess salt.
- Terraced
- Just above the high tide line there is a wall, housing and hedges running around the entire island although this is quite low on the southern side.
- This is a hypothetical best case scenario for food production in an open environment, mainly for the purposes of showing the maximum production. Any system this intense is likely to collapse after a short amount of time without outside assistance.

Geography
- Large amounts of coastline
- About 10 hectares productive, 2 hectares rock and coastline.
- Large dam where the only stream on the island joins the water

Description
Every inch of the rolling hills is covered with plants, not one dead plant can be seen. Terraced gardens are dotted with tunnels extending deep into the hills.

Crops
Intensely gardened with crops being planted in layers, Canopy trees are planted along the northern edge of the island as well as against southern facing walls of the taller terraces. The sub canopy trees are planted almost underneath the larger trees to maximise the use of light. Vines and creepers adorn the trees. Shrubs are the next tallest group of plants and while these are scattered about they are not found in clumps so the shadows they cast don't adversely effect the smaller plants. Companion planting abounds as does doubling up species where possible, beans climb corn while potatoes and squash are crammed in beneath. Small greenhouses not much larger than the plants they hold are used to speed up the growth. Hanging from branches are baskets and bags with yet more plants growing in them, such as tomatoes and potatoes.

Tunnel system
Heated by the composting action of the waste material from the gardens the man made caves provide an environment suitable for mushroom production. Cooler tunnels are used for worm farms to provide fish and chicken food.

Livestock

The fish farming system and the irrigation system are one and the same. A multitude of small and medium tanks are distributed around the island, a percentage of the tanks also hold fresh water shellfish. Chickens are kept in tight conditions on the cooler northern facing slopes of the island. A small population of goats is maintained to process any surplus leafy material.


Crunch
As TL 8 or 9 crop yields are hypothetical at best here are some wild guess numbers. They are still less than TL 8 intensive single species production (apple orchards can reach 200 plus tonnes to the hectare, greenhouse tomatoes 750 tonnes per hectare per annum)
Each cave (4mx6m) produces two tonnes of mushrooms per annum. The 9 hectares of genetically engineered crops produce 50 tonnes per hectare every 120 days and are quite resistant to disease. 1350 tonnes per annum plus a maximum of 200 tonnes of mushrooms. Chickens, goats and fish add variety and necessary dietary requirements but only about 50 tonnes more food as a percentage of their diet is food that would of otherwise gone to feed the residents.

1600 tonnes presumes everyone lives under something else. As do the pigs and many other animals. Only 10% of the space is wasted utilities and buildings.

Wasted food accounts for a quarter of production, this could be recycled as pork at a rate of four to one in a high feed conversion animal (TL9) so 400 tonnes of waste becomes 100 tonnes of pork.

Leaving a good diet and 1300 tonnes of food that could theoretically support say 1300 people provided they have no other requirements. Reduce that to 800 once other needs are taken into account. It would still be a breeding ground for disease. (current farming supports something like 35 people per productive hectare (when dealing with calorie rich crops) once industrial, utility and animal related production is excluded) Meat and animal products are eaten about half as much as in a modern diet.
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Old 04-17-2016, 11:13 AM   #50
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

That the island has poor fishing, and that the other nearby islands have even poorer fishing, that's really quite ominous...
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