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[DrakBadgerwaffles]

Simple suggestion -- when a dispenser is activated facing a tilled bit of farmland it plants seeds on it.

Purpose - Possible creation of a fully automated farm.

Pro - Greater possible yield/time efficiency for farms.

Con - Reduced sense of accomplishment.

Balance in obtaining - Required materials for dispensers, Redstone, and room for the joining circuits exceeds starting conditions. Until the ability to create dispensers at mass quantity, the space required planting by hand is much more efficient in producing wheat than the use of only a few dispensers given the same area.

Balance in versatility - Seeds must still be "planted" by placing them in a dispenser. Upkeep would require placing seeds in every dispenser evenly, but compared to planting by hand, what can be done in several dozen planting sessions over time can be done once the dispensers run out of seeds, reducing the overall planting session length.

Unbalances - Obvious advantages versus planting by hand when farming wheat in mass.

Likely bugs - Placement of the wheat from the dispenser is likely to reproduce the "remove bedrock" bug in previous versions, where planting wheat on farmland under a bedrock block would replace the bedrock with planted wheat.

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I'd like to see what everyone thinks.

[bebe33]

DrakBadgerwaffles, on 01 June 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

Simple suggestion -- when a dispenser is activated facing a tilled bit of farmland it plants seeds on it.

Purpose - Possible creation of a fully automated farm.

Pro - Greater possible yield/time efficiency for farms.

Con - Reduced sense of accomplishment.

Balance in obtaining - Required materials for dispensers, Redstone, and room for the joining circuits exceeds starting conditions. Until the ability to create dispensers at mass quantity, the space required planting by hand is much more efficient in producing wheat than the use of only a few dispensers given the same area.

Balance in versatility - Seeds must still be "planted" by placing them in a dispenser. Upkeep would require placing seeds in every dispenser evenly, but compared to planting by hand, what can be done in several dozen planting sessions over time can be done once the dispensers run out of seeds, reducing the overall planting session length.

Unbalances - Obvious advantages versus planting by hand when farming wheat in mass.

Likely bugs - Placement of the wheat from the dispenser is likely to reproduce the "remove bedrock" bug in previous versions, where planting wheat on farmland under a bedrock block would replace the bedrock with planted wheat.

---

I'd like to see what everyone thinks.

I'd prefer a deployer, like from redpower 2. Does a rightclick with what's in it's inventory.
Also a breaker, which picks up the block if possible.

Not that this isn't bad, just a deployer would be more verstaile.

[Tizorna]

its a ok idea but im not really into it.

[Dodget]

i like this idea.

[Clive_Paddington]

bebe33, on 01 June 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

I'd prefer a deployer, like from redpower 2. Does a rightclick with what's in it's inventory.
Also a breaker, which picks up the block if possible.

Not that this isn't bad, just a deployer would be more verstaile.

This is really so much simpler though.

OP: I think this idea is really good. Auto farms would be so much easier to make with this sort of addition. Support from me good sir.

[Carzmoviefan]

Yes, this is a great idea! Wool should also be dyable with dispensers!

[DrakBadgerwaffles]

Carzmoviefan, on 01 June 2012 - 07:11 AM, said:

Yes, this is a great idea! Wool should also be dyable with dispensers!

That's a pretty nifty idea.

Aside from creating wool conveyor belts or processors that convert wool color, which could probably be done faster by hand, I think it would be possible to rig up dispensers next to wool blocks in mass to create a type of "shifting" color screen. Put one dye of a color in each block of the dispenser and it would be possible to create a "collage" of random colors. Not too useful as a utility, but I can see a use in creating large art pieces with shifting colors. It would be impressive enough to build due to the vasts amounts of dyes required.

Edit: I didn't feel the need to suggest their use as indicators in adventure maps, that's pretty obvious of a result. But might as well add that too. By placing a dispenser on either sides of a block of wool, it is possible to have a 3 color indicator. Say, one red, one blue, and one green all coloring the same wool block.

[aspade01]

I was also thinking it would be nice if dispensers could plant on till land.
My suggestion is rather that dispensers could be face downward and if a plantable item dispensed contacts till land, then it plants.

[Kwow]

It would be nice if you could place a sensor block that would destroy wheat when it grew up enough to touch the sensor. Just an idea though.

[zaket22]

I like it but it may be kind of inefficient to have it only plant one seed.

[Zukaro]

I'd really like it if you could replant seeds using dispensers.  It's also be nice if there was a way to place items into chests/dispensers that dropped on the floor (sort of like the pipes in BuildCraft and such).

DrakBadgerwaffles, on 01 June 2012 - 05:15 AM, said:

Con - Reduced sense of accomplishment.

Personally I think there'd be a bigger sense of accomplishment as you'd have had to figure out how to get your farm to be automated and then make it all work.

[aspade01]

Zukaro, on 12 November 2012 - 08:00 AM, said:

Personally I think there'd be a bigger sense of accomplishment as you'd have had to figure out how to get your farm to be automated and then make it all work.

Especially if you had to find the resources to have a dispenser for every block of tilled land

[SnowConez]

I would really like this, it isn't comlicated and it would be a big advancement in automated farms. Piggles supports.

[Zontafer]

One question, would you have to make one dispense for each tilled soil or could you "shoot" out seeds and plant them in rows?

[Benjamin5349]

I don't think that this is OP at all. From what I understand one dispenser would service one block of farmland, correct? By the time you have the resources to set up enough dispensers and wire up the circuit food will be in no shortage anyway. I fully support this being added, because in it's current form it wouldn't totally outdate farming by hand.

[clayxros]

Benjamin5349, on 12 November 2012 - 09:10 AM, said:

I don't think that this is OP at all. From what I understand one dispenser would service one block of farmland, correct? By the time you have the resources to set up enough dispensers and wire up the circuit food will be in no shortage anyway. I fully support this being added, because in it's current form it wouldn't totally outdate farming by hand.

...well that scraps the idea i had where you could add a dispenser to a minecart and have an auto-planting machine roll over rows. As for idea in it's official for, sounds cool. I support.

[Luis]

Pretty good idea, would probably be annoying for them to code though.

[BinaryWolf]

More features are being added to the dispenser because the dropper does everything else now.  I hope they add this one!

[EpicEnderMiner]

I like the idea, but it has been suggested before.  :/

[Mathy]

There's no reason why we don't add more features to the Dispenser considering how close the Dropper is so far.