Why is soil compaction only bad?

[DarcReaver]

Hello,

I just wanted to point something out/start a discussion about the game mechanics:
Note that this is not meant as direct criticism, it's more about starting a discussion for possible improvements. I really love the idea behind this - to make soil working more interesting and unique.

One thing I'd like to point out first is:

Soil compaction isn't bad in general. To prepare the soil for seeding it's important to compact the top soil. Plants require a certain soil humidity - and compacting the top soil, with a packer roller for example, helps the soil to keep water for the plants to grow. Without proper compacting before seeding it's significantly harder for plants to start growing. And its much harder to keep fertilizer/nutrients in the ground.

Also, uncompacted soil can be washed away easily by stronger showers of rain. Which is problematic of course.

On the other hand, sub soil compaction doesn't really affect yields in a direct manner (but it's still bad of course). Because it keeps water from oozing, which leaves fields as mud holes that do not dry properly and keep plans from growing. This ultimately leads to problems with cultivating the field - more slipping for tractors and harvesters etc. - and of course this lowers the soil quality/yields in the long run.

To simulate this, the mechanics of this mod would need to be tweaked slightly:

• compaction of soil affects ground humidity (higher compaction = more water on the field)
• when above a certain level of compaction the fertilizer disappears from the field/yield is reduced (due to plants dying from being in mud/water all the time.
  (- Maybe it's possible to make yield dependant on the total soil humidity? so between 10-20% humidity you get reduced yields due to dryness, 30-60% "good-perfect" yield and 60-100% = reduced yield by ~30%)
• ploughing/deep soil cultivation always resets compaction to 0
• soil compaction level 0 automatically removes all kinds of fertilizers (erosion of non-compacted top soil) over time, similar to how slurry vanishes when not worked into the ground
  edit: if it's technically possible it would be cool to make this feature dependant on weather - if there is a longer shower of rain coming, the fertilizer levels are washed out. Like every 1 hour of rain removes 1 layer of fertilizer when the soil is not compacted at least once. And when the ground is heavily compacted the rain also removes fertilizer levels, too.
• soil compaction level 1 enables the ground to keep fertilizer levels
• catch crops could put the soil into "optimal" region, adding humidity and a fertilizer level and remove deep soil compaction
• To make the system more flexible 2 or 3 additional compaction levels (at least if technically possible)
• edit2: after playing a bit more, it would be sweet to add support for a "wetness" layer for soil, that puts a "mud" texture onto the ground. With a wetness of like 100% you'd get mud textures all over the field, that "dries" over time. This would allow players to easily see if a field is ready to be ploughed/cultivated or not, and also give proper response to slipping issues etc. Right now it's really hard to understand why a tractor is slipping on the field, because it looks the same - no matter if it's wet or not. Simply because there is no optical indicator on the ground humidity.

Just my thoughts so far. Please feel free to share your opinions with me :)

[stijnwop]

Hey,

I hope we can keep this discussion on the mod mechanics and not the game. 😄

Anyway..

Yes, we know that soil compaction isn't bad in every case. The preparation of soil differs so much depending on the country/weather/soil type. And yes for some crops it's "important" to compact the top soil to improve contact between the soil and seed which improves emergence. Perhaps you noticed that we started on a roller?

The thing you stated with that sub soil compaction doesn't really affect yields directly.. the problem we are facing is that we have to simulate it in a way that there's still a balance in realism and gameplay. There's simply no way to simulate that without making it to complex for the players.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.. we will discuss them and come back to you.

[DarcReaver]

Thanks for the reply! I actually haven't seen that you started working on a roller, probably a great addition.

I also added another aspect to my original post regarding game optics. I hope you can manage to pull something off like this - this would dramatically improve soilcompaction, MR mod and ground response.

about "confusing/being too complex for players" - actually, I doubt that "regular" players would use soil compaction anyways, they're happy with having the fields the way they are. Since this mod's audience is probably similar to the ones playing with MR mod I don't think this is that much of an issue.

If the system is intuitive and explained well it's going to be fine. If you can explain a game feature in only a couple of sentences it's easy to learn.

1. don't use fertilizer if you're not going to work it into the ground
2. prepare the fields with seedbed cultivators before sowing
3. plow the fields if you notice that they stack water (mud layer) when they've dried a bit

The current implementation is more confusing in my opinion, because it only affects the gameplay with negative aspects.

Right now it's more like :

1. don't drive on the fields too much to prevent soil compaction
2. use tyre pressure to affect vehicle compaction effects
3. plough the fields regularely

Apart from point 1) there's not much of a difference to vanilla FS17, because you need to plough the fields regularely aswell.
The pressure system, while logical (lower pressure -> better for compaction) is unrealistic unfortunately, because even with low tyre pressure and wide base tyre, the soil can be compacted massively, depending on the soil type. A soil with high amount of clay will take much compaction even from wide base tyres (especially when using heavy equipment like forage harvesters or sugar beet harvesters - when the soil is wet.

I got a technical information on the whole compaction issue from liebegg agrar centre. It's german but maybe you can translate it with google : http://www.liebegg.ch/upload/cms/user/Merkblatt_Bodenverdichtung_der_Unterboden_macht_dicht_AG.pdf

It explains the whole topic pretty well.