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Realities of Composting


d4m1ty

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Love the game.  When I made it past the 1 month mark in my first survival I was very happy though I am a bit confused as to the whole composting thing since this is something I've been doing near 20 years now.  Composting has barely been touched in that you can only compost rotting food and it takes months for it to work which in reality isn't the case.

 

First off, we got more than 1 type of composting, but the two most frequently used are just plain composting and vericomposting which utilizes earth worms.

 

Plain composting, you can compost nearly anything that is low in protein or is low in protein per capita to the compost, I've composted entire carcasses of 4' iguanas in my compost pile and they were gone in a week.

Ideally in the game you should be able to compost any fruit or vegetable item regardless of its quality or freshness.  In reality. the more fresh the item into the compost is, the more fuel the compost gets from it.  You get more power from green grass clippings and green leaves than you get from brown leaves or dead grass.  Other things drive a compost.  Moisture.  You need a dampness to it, but not wet.  Wet causes rot, so something well draining that won't pool is ideal, i.e.,  never compost in a hole, you will just a pool of anaerobic muck.  Other things you can compost, or should be able to compost in the game include, coffee, unusable wood, paper items, books, newspaper, twigs and any cotton based clothing.  Clearing grass could give grass clippings to throw in there as well.  Another driving factor is temperature.  The hotter is is the faster the compost goes.  The larger the compost is, the more internal heat the bacteria eating away at everything will generate driving the process even in winter if you have a large enough pile.  You can dig into one in winter and watch steam rise out of them they maintain such an internal temp when fueled enough.   Also, once the pile is going, its always making compost.  Its not like you throw in stuff then wait and get stuff.  Once the compost pile is mature its a compost making machine as long as you don't use up all your compost.  Maybe the initial drive to make compost would be 2 months, but at long as you were to keep 1/2 your pile, you got the machine to keep it going.  It just needs to be fed and once in this state it needs to be cared for, you may need to water it from time to time as well as taking a shovel and turning it to make sure everything gets into the center at some point to get broken down.  The adding of wood, papers, cotton, twigs would lower moisture content if its getting too wet.

 

Vericomposting takes more work as the worms are making casings for you.  They love to eat newspaper and other paper products as well as anything vegetable or fruit you stick into a normal compost, they just do it faster.  Once you got an established earthworm colony in there they will go through stuff ridiculously fast compared to a normal composter as they just constantly burrow and eat and make babies, but they are much more susceptible to temp changes and moisture changes.  Gets flooded, the worms die.  Too hot and dry, they die.  When they die the process stops until you fix the conditions, the current set of eggs hatch or you get new worms if its been dormant for too long and the eggs perished as well.

 

The idea that a compost is a make it and forget it this isn't true.  A good composting setup requires maintenance.  A shovel to turn it every few days, some water or dry material to keep the moisture in a median range then you use a sock full of composts in some kind of bucket like thing with water to make a compost tea to pour on your plants and then the contents of the sock go back into the compost.  You usually never put the compost directly on your plant area as you don't want to introduce some of the bugs that live in it into your real garden.

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soon well have grass experts chiming in to write up an essay about how the developers are doing the grass blades and colors incorrectly and how they dont sway to the wind enough and dont have proper sounds and how we need an indepth grass growing system in this game because it doesnt look right as is, and dont forget the quite lacking wall paint drying mechanics that totally dont function how they do in real life

 

t o t a l l y k i l l s i m m e r s i o n a n d g a m e p l a y  r i g h t :)

 

(no feel-hurting intentions though because you put a lot of effort into the post and have good intentions so have a like)

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I don't think he's asking for something that is too complex. The level of care we give to crops would be enough, but then again it is a personal preference, some people like it the way it is now. Maybe it is something that would better fit in a mod so players have the option to use a different system.

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1 hour ago, Soul Filcher said:

I don't think he's asking for something that is too complex. The level of care we give to crops would be enough, but then again it is a personal preference, some people like it the way it is now. Maybe it is something that would better fit in a mod so players have the option to use a different system.

i think it is considering what we already got to take care of and have to take care of in the future and some of the stuff other people who are experts in lesser popular things are suggesting to add in the game

13 hours ago, xXSly_WolfyXx said:

Sometimes simplicity can be a good thing.

^this

its a zombie survival game, not composting simulator 2017

 

a mod for this would be awesome for those whod love this kinda stuff but not in the main game please, atleast not as a seperate option

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Different players invest their time in different survival strategies. I'm sure that when cars arrive and we have to keep them repaired and with full tank some players won't invest their time on that. Something being in the game does not mean you have to make use of it. I usually go for farming but never bothered using compost.

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1 hour ago, Soul Filcher said:

Different players invest their time in different survival strategies. I'm sure that when cars arrive and we have to keep them repaired and with full tank some players won't invest their time on that. Something being in the game does not mean you have to make use of it. I usually go for farming but never bothered using compost.

you got a point there to be fair i guess

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It doesn't sound any more complicated than what we already do for crops.  Almost analogous really.

Instead of planting seeds, you toss in the first compost items.
Instead of applying fertilizer, you turn your compost or add more material.

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Meh, wouldn't be that hard to implement the suggestions and they wouldn't be that intrusive.  

 

Just like plants, compost pile would have a right-click info menu which would tell you, depending on gardening skill, if it's too dry or needs turned.  Shovel and water can already in game.  

 

 Change the mechanic from "Needs rotten food, then you wait two months" to something where you input food, etc in general.  Each type (wood, fresh food, rotten food, small children)  has a coefficient associated with it for "effective compost mass" , add a dwell time once minimum effective mass is reached, and starting from end of dwell timer, output a percentage of the current mass as "raw compost" every 24 hours.  Socks are already in-game and useless... So "Prepare compost fertilizer" using sock and water source, apply as fertilizer... Done.  Not very intrusive at all. 

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On Saturday, April 29, 2017 at 10:09 AM, zoeyflower said:

its a zombie survival game, not composting simulator 2017

 

The game is too easy right now. Anything that requires you to meaningfully invest more time into your survival strategy is welcome by me.

After your first winter the game very much becomes "composting simulator" or whatever your strategy is. It certainly could become more oriented toward civilization/industry-building after this point, especially when NPCs are in. At some poiny we pass the "adapt to survive" stage and enter the "adapted-start living" stage where we can turn our attention to such things. Embrace it!

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3 hours ago, trombonaught said:

 

The game is too easy right now. Anything that requires you to meaningfully invest more time into your survival strategy is welcome by me.

After your first winter the game very much becomes "composting simulator" or whatever your strategy is. It certainly could become more oriented toward civilization/industry-building after this point, especially when NPCs are in. At some poiny we pass the "adapt to survive" stage and enter the "adapted-start living" stage where we can turn our attention to such things. Embrace it!

thats what npcs are coming in for, hostile survivors with a shotgun can fuck your entire game up at any point there is. for now this idea would be good sure but once npcs are in im sure therell be a giant amount of new things to worry about 

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I think a dedicated modder could integrate the feature into the game through LUA. 

 

I like that current composting removes items from the game and generates worms. 

 

A modding concept could be to add compost health meter (green yellow red) which sets the rate of compost formation. Adding worms to the compost increases health, the item is given farm-like moisture levels,  low health kills worms., high health multiplies them. 

 

An item count ratio oculd be used for ratios of browns to greens that strongly impact health, so that filling it with meat and dairy would give very low base health until you added a shitload of vegetables/twigs/sticks/paper/books/magazines/rags

 

Even at red over a year it should be able to compost everything.

 

I think 100% browns composting is a bad idea because it lets you turn twigs into compost, but then again it doesn't really matter does it

 

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I think that the composting in the game is pretty sad. I only use the composting bin to toss my rotten food in so they aren't in a pile somewhere or in my cupboards and fridges.

 

Time sinks like making your plants grow the best they can is a decent time sink. Sims meets Harvest Moon with Zombies. Plus you know there are going to be farmers out there trying to min/max their crops.

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Quote

its a zombie survival game, not composting simulator 2017

Please remind that not everyone likes to play Zomboid the casual way, and other people like different kinds of gameplay. If someone has a slow run and not much to do in the lategame, its always good to have a certain depth in the details and give the player a chance to find tose out. ;)

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