Board Thread:Suggestions/@comment-25370207-20140907133403/@comment-24108228-20140908162444

Actually, the mistake was made when I worked it out in the wrong order (expanded the brackets before dividing the two figures), and the same mistake was made in the original post. The multiplication was done just fine. Anyway, let's compare the two formulas, and we'll see which we like most. I'll use berries as an example, with a multiplier of 2 (current iron). New formula on the left, old one on the right. And no, the second row isn't a typo. 2*10/1*(10-1) 2*10*9 20*9 180 Having clearly established the superior of the two formulae, I wish to move onto other matters, namely the multipliers. I view the sickle as a way to harvest crops with less effort on the farmer's part. It shouldn't be a way of harvesting 10x10 fields of wheat in less than a minute. Whenever possible, times should be closely associated with how long it would take to actually harvest it manually, and 3 seconds isn't particularly accurate for a beginner farmer. Let's say that we want the iron sickle to be the "Base" figure, corresponding to how long it would take to harvest.

A berry bush would take roughly 7-8 seconds to harvest as a complete newbie farmer, assuming you're careful not to make any mistakes. This would mean for a multiplier of 3 for iron, giving you a convenient answer of 7.4, exactly what we wanted. We can work off this figure. A steel or bluesteel sickle could halve the time (we just stick it all in brackets and divide it by two at the end), and a mithril sickle could divide by three instead of two. This is nothing compared to what a little levelling up can do, but it helps in the long run. Lastly, the stone sickle. I'm rather adamant about this, a lot of farmers never access metals. What we could do for this one is multiply the final answer by two, making it much worse than any other sickle, or even foraging near the start, but if you're truly dedicated (or really hate foraging your compost), this one still works.