Author Topic: Plants and beehives extenisvely tested  (Read 3478 times)

Offline dkuhnkc

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Plants and beehives extenisvely tested
« on: January 29, 2021, 05:33:51 AM »
During the recent sale, I upgraded from Sims4 limited to deluxe. I also added seasons. I previously had Get To Work and Outdoor Retreat. I immediately noticed that fertilizers and bees didn’t work like Carls and other guides claimed. I decided to test them.

It takes about 3 1/2 minutes to fertilize a plant so that means that there must be 72 hours 5 minutes between fertilization. If you start fertilization at 10:00 on Sunday, finish on 10:04, you will not be able to fertilize that plant again until 10:05 on Wednesday.

My first test was 33 different normal quality plants and $20 excellent fish, each fertilizing 10 sage plants. There turns out to be NO GOOD OR POOR FERTILIZER. On average, it took 18.9 fertilizations & 60 days to bring a sage plant to perfect quality. The average for 10 sage plants was within 10% for all 34 fertilizers.

First: there is a random factor in fertilizer. For example, fertilizing 10 sage plants with Orchid, One sage leveled up twice to excellent quality with just 4 fertilizations, two required 6 fertilizations, Six required 7 fertilizations, and one needed 8 fertilizations, for an average of 6.6 fertilizations to evolve twice to excellent quality.

I had two groups of control sage plants, 10 that were never harvested, 10 that were harvested daily with the rest of the plants. It took exactly 95 days for all 10 sage plants to become perfect if they were harvested daily, 96 days for the 10 that were never harvested. This indicates that each fertilization, on average increases a plant’s quality by just under two days. (1.85)

It also doesn’t matter the quality of plant, sage of normal quality, mixed quality, and perfect quality were all within range of 18.7-19.8 fertilizations. The one surprise was foul fish only required 16.8 fertilizations, 15% better than the average fertilizer, so IMO if you have foul fish use them, otherwise don’t bother.

For Beehives, having a beehive next to a plant does not change the time to become perfect, the control group that was neither fertilized or had swarms released to pollinate nearby plants remained 85 days.

You do get a quality boost when you release a swarm to pollinate nearby plants. The range of effectiveness of a swarm is a 5 unit/yard/meter radius, not a 5 unit diamond. Each plant has a “””root zone”””. Most root zones are a full unit square, and if any portion of the root zone is within the swarms effectiveness, that plant gets a boost, increasing the effective range from 5 to 5.49 units radius for most plants, 5.24 for grapes, mushrooms and other plants that have the smaller root zone.

The effectiveness of releasing swarms to pollinate nearby plants depends on if fertilizer is also used, and the number of swarms per day. It varied between 12-24 hours reduced per swarm released, making swarms between 1/2-1/4 as effective as fertilizer, but as you can use multiple hives and multiple times per day, you can increase a plant to perfect quality in less than a week.

It doesn’t matter the number of plants in a swarms area of effect, the average number of swarms and fertilizations was within 10% of each other regardless of if there was 10 or 40 plants in a swarms area of effect.

I am running widows 7 on a desktop with 8 gig of ram. Based on when I was playing before I got seasons and digital deluxe, I believe but can't now prove that the fertilizer portion remains true if you don't have seasons.

Edit: I am adding 5 JPEGS of the spreadsheet and other files as the system won't allow a single PDF.
8Beehives.jpg

Offline scoed

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Re: Plants and beehives extenisvely tested
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2021, 06:47:29 AM »
Thanks this is cool.



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Offline Amber Lokisdotter

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Re: Plants and beehives extenisvely tested
« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2021, 12:29:39 AM »
Very scientifically done.

When you say "released a swarm", do you mean the animation where the bees swarm out of the hive, or do you mean where you do the action of taking a swarm from the hive and then doing something with it?  If the former, then how do you force a swarming?  The only way I can think of is to deliberately irritate and then calm down a hive, which is going to cause your active Sim some severe discomfort.

I think they've changed how fertilizer behaves at least twice since the game released.  Bummer about using fish as fertilizer; I was using this site's information that the more expensive the fish (up to a point) the better it would be.  I've a also always thrown away the foul fish that I dig up on occasion; this report indicates that I shouldn't be so hasty.

Offline dkuhnkc

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Re: Plants and beehives extenisvely tested
« Reply #3 on: February 01, 2021, 09:49:47 AM »
sorry for the imprecise language, my goof.

I meant taking a swarm from a hive, then "pollinate nearby plants". it is the pollinate nearby plants action of "releasing a swarm" that was previously taken from a hive that causes the quality increase.

It does not matter where the hive is. If you take the swarm from the hive and immediately pollinate plants without moving, or you wait a few hours and then pollinate plants somewhere else, it is a 5+ unit/meter/yard radius from the center of where your sim is standing that is the area of plants that are included.

Offline izziesimsie

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Re: Plants and beehives extenisvely tested
« Reply #4 on: February 11, 2021, 07:13:06 AM »
Hi everyone,
thank you for this post. I wasnt even aware that you can actually polinate your plants with the beehives in game. I recently bought the 4 seasons expansion pack and just thought, the the bee thingy was a nice little addition, to get honey and such. So it would help the gardening results, if I put the beehive directly next to the plants or is it enough, if the beehive is anywhere on the lot?
I really appreacite your elaborate insight on this matter.

Offline Carl

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Re: Plants and beehives extenisvely tested
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2021, 12:00:22 PM »
Some of the info in here is pretty interesting. Your discovery of it taking the same length of time for a plant to become perfect with/without fertilizer is kind of surprising. It may be there is a cap on fertilization "points" and beehives with even poor make it "best quality" but in combination with there being no difference in poor/good fertilizer, I'm at a loss. I will take a peek at the game code soon to see what is going on in this area.