I've got orange trees planted densely together:
The ground is protected, but the trees are not, so players can freely grab the oranges and wood, and replant.
Plenty of light in case they show up at night:
The heart of the farm operation is this shop area using simple_amm shops, so the prices will automatically adjust up and down with demand as people buy and sell.
When players bring up the AMM shops, they can both buy and sell the items produced in the tree farm:
Hopefully this results in a very usable farm:
- Somebody who needs oranges can just grab them
- Someone who needs wood can cut down a tree
- Someone might need leaves for mulch or whatever
- Someone who needs to earn a little money can farm wood, oranges, saplings, and/or leaves and sell them to the AMM's
- Someone who needs any of these items but doesn't want to spend time farming them can just buy the items directly
- Players who are farming to get wood or oranges, or to earn money, will probably want to replant so they can keep going
- Somebody who doesn't feel like replanting will have a bunch of saplings lying around, and an AMM nearby offering to buy them! They'll have an incentive to pick those up and sell them for a little gold, and then someone else can replant
- In the worst case scenario where nobody replants, the saplings will be for sale and somebody in need can buy at least one sapling to replant the farm and start over
- If a lot of saplings are sold to the machine (i.e., not many people replanting) the prices will go down and be cheap, making it easier for that poor guy in need to start the farm over
- if not many saplings are sold to the machine (i.e., people aren't picking up the saplings) then the price stays high, or gets higher as people buy them. If absolutely nobody wants to sell saplings but people are buying them, there will be a higher and higher incentive to pick up those saplings and sell them back
- the AMM's attempt to buy low and sell high, so they are earning a little bit of profit for the farm owner, me. I'll probably just leave it in there, though.