maybe I should've been more clear: When the "dirt" portion of the grow block isn't in the cardinal "up" direction, you can not place a plant there. It really shouldn't matter in zero-g...or really anywhere else honestly -- there are upside-down plant pots right now here on earth that function just fine.
I see a problem here, as a CV has not necessarily 0g allthe time and, moreover, the gravitation must not point in the same direction all the time. What, if you have a gravgenerator onboard and you land on a planet? Solvable, for sure, but it could be a real mess... is it worth it?
Personally, I'd say the heck with gravity altogether and let plants / growing plots function in any direction. If for no other reason than the idea of a wall full of durians amuses me.
I've wanted to make big towers or long roundish shafts with growplots along the walls with the grow lights up the center attached to elevator blocks as the column.... but... cant
I don't see an issue with being able to plant in any direction...as long as the plants grow toward their light source...as they normally do.
Plant growth is not as affected by gravity as you might think. There have been studies on the International Space Station showing that root growth occurs normally with roots growing away from the seed and seeking water and nutrients. The top of the plant grows toward the light source. Gravity for plant growth is unnecessary.
Yes, i completely agree. My concern (in reality) is not the absence, but the presence of gravity, more severe changing the direction of the force. Without gravity everything is ok. But the stimulus of gravity superposes that of phototaxis (experiments on earth with centrifuges show that) in a way, that the green parts are growing towards the light, the roots towards gravity. This could cause problems. In game its of course much more simple: the devs just program as they (we?) want to. Period. I think this is not the right place to insinst in reality. (And i am intrigued by frigids plant tower)
Seems the plants in my house defy gravity if I leave them in the same position too long. They start reaching sideways to the sunlight from the window in the room. I have to keep rotating them to keep them growing more 'up' So, yeah, even in gravity... plants tend to grow toward the light. The only concern with a gravity field for a grow field upside down... is the dirt falling out!!! LOL. But, this touches on my desire to allow custom gravity field placement, where we denote the field of influence from multiple generators, so we can have a station that has four degrees of gravity with the center being weightless.... and NOT have to make the station so gigantic to work with the odd 'bubble' gravity fields (which are invisible) now. Sorry, side topic.
I agree, plants can already grow in a vacuum / hostile atmosphere after all, so just allow them to work in any direction, irrespective of gravity. One could argue that the plots are totally self-contained and generate their own gravity as needed. I'd say no need to over-complicate things by needing multiple grav gens for example. Scoob.
I agree, I'm not sure why we have the restriction we have with respect to the surface orientation of a planter block and the seedling.
I highly doubt its a physics/reality choice by the devs. It is more likely how the plants work in a voxel game. The farming is likely programmed for a static direction, and changing it would add variables to track and program the plant growth, possibly extra animations as well. It could possibly even require reworking the whole plant/farming system in order to implement. For a visually cool, but admittedly frivolous, change request it might just take too many dev cycles to worry about for now.(unless something else that is major pushes them into reworking the plant/farm system anyway) They could put it on the "smaller features" survey next time though, and see what priority the player-base gives it.
Easier said than done, game has a grid system, where everything levels relative to that grid, Im sure the devs could modify code to make it work, but really, the time vs gains for doing so, there just not there. I cant see them wasting that sort of time on grow plots, theres rules in the game, for plants to grow, must be set distance from light etc they need to be completely re-written for this to work. Is it really that important, as a builder of B5 where this would be very handy to have as a feature, I can still live without it knowing what other features there working on.
I actually don't see it as being a complex mechanic to figure out. As was said, everything is simply a block, next to a block. It is quite simply: Grow Plot Block: 1x1x1 block where only 'one side' can touch a Plant Block. Plant Block: 1x1x1 block where only 'one side' must touch that grow plot surface. Grow Light: 1x1x1 block that snaps to a surface of another block, then has a 3x3x2 'invisible zone' centered out on it. --> Grow plot touches plant block touches grow light zone. There is no physics, no gravity, not even ray casting from a lightsource. From how I look at it, it looks like the devs took extra time to be fiddly about forcing the right-side-up-ness of it all, vs just having it work in any direction you plop the blocks down. So, yes, they would need to spend time pulling out all that extra code they jambed in there to force 'up'. But thats about it. Of course in doing so... people would make upside down farms on a planet surface, and that would be silly.
