No offense intended, but I really dislike the idea of incorporating Hugo's "Growable Trees".
As someone who has experience in clearing off trees and brush, I know how much work this entails. And I grew up on a farm. So the very idea of treating a tree as a typical ground crop like wheat or turnips seems
silly to me.
If I understand correctly: After "harvesting" (i.e., pulling it up by the
roots instead of chopping with an axe), dwarves must drag the
whole tree and haul to a stockpile in your fort. Or maybe they would use a wheelbarrow to haul it? It could even be stored inside a
barrel or
bin...
Depending on the maturity and size of a tree, in real life sometimes even a modern tractor can't drag it. And there's absolutely no way you could stuff a tree, even a sizable
sapling, inside a barrel or haul it in a wheelbarrow.
Instead, having a woodcutter use an axe to chop a tree up into firewood-size pieces and hauling
that inside is 1,000 times more believable.
Also, trees just don't grow very fast - not even in jungles. Around here the fastest growing tree is
sassafras and even
that requires
much more than 2 years to get a trunk big enough to turn into a small stick of firewood.
Don't get me wrong: I would
love to see a reasonable implementation of fruit and nut trees. However, I'm pretty sure that Toady will get to this eventually. But in doing it
this way, trees are not treated as trees. Even if it means harvesting nuts and fruit, my feeling is that it doesn't offset the silliness.
All that aside:I do appreciate the efforts to rebalance farming and make it more realistic. And I generally like to increase overall plant diversity. I also appreciate the clear installation instructions and efforts to ensure compatibility.
I can see some interesting ideas here, like splitting the plants in cavern layers. (If I understand correctly, vanilla plants are exclusive to the 1st layer and modded plants are only found deeper?)
Anyway, I'm looking forward to see what this develops into.