Welcome everyone to another episode of FOUNDRY Fridays!

My name is Michael aka Lxi and I’m the “oldest” member of the team. I joined MrMcDuck roughly six to twelve months after he started this awesome project and it has been a fun ride ever since! It’s exciting to see how the game has developed so far and your feedback has been a crucial part of the journey. Therefore today’s topic is about an often requested feature I’m currently implementing, the possibility to regrow plants and trees.

If you want to design a factory surrounded by nature you won’t have to design it around the existing plants and trees anymore. We’ll provide you with the tools necessary to plant trees and plants wherever you like from seeds.

How does it work in detail?

When you mine a plant or tree there is a possibility that it drops a seed beside the biomass you normally get. Currently it’s planned that each biome has two types of seeds: one for plants and one for trees. 

Once you have obtained a seed you can use it like a building to place a plant/tree from the seed family. Use the radial menu which plant/tree you want to plant. Your plant or tree won’t spawn at its full height once placed, but will need time to grow.  If you mine it shortly after placing it, you will get the seed back, so you don’t waste any seeds by accidentally misplacing it. As it’s growing larger it will yield a percentage of the biomass you would receive when it’s fully grown once mined, depending on the growth percentage.

I don’t want to mine 1000 trees to grow my own forest!

Great! We don’t want you to either! That’s where our new building, the Greenhouse, comes into play. The Greenhouse will be able to duplicate a certain type of seed by inserting a seed alongside with some other items/liquids. However duplicating the seed won’t work every time, there is only a percent chance that the Greenhouse will do so. This way we introduce a new kind of production cycle/gameplay: You will need to build “seed loops” and only extract the overproduced seeds to keep it going. Hint: The balancers provide a great way to help you achieve this by using the output priority setting.

Unfortunately I can’t show images of the Greenhouse yet, since the model isn’t yet finished.

Keep in mind that all of this is work in progress and might change in some ways, but it feels like this is the right amount of depth we currently want for this feature. Looking forward to your feedback!

All the best,

lxi