Clearing the Air About Feeding

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Recently, there has been some confusion about feeding ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ plants.  Let's clear the air...

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There is a tiny bug-let (we're tempted to say "it's not a bug, it's a feature") in the ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ scripts related to feeding. If you click "Feed" in a plant's menu, the banner text over the plant will display "Plant Fed (8 cycles remaining)" even if there is not a Plant Food Spike within the specified 1.5 meter range. This is because plants don't actually scan for food until the reach the next growth cycle (every 90 minutes).  The "Plant Fed" banner will revert to "Not Fed" at the next growth interval if there isn't a Plant Food Spike in range.

We realize this may be confusing, and fixing the banner display is on our to-do list for the next version.

Also, there has been some discussion in group chat about taking Plant Food Spikes back into inventory to "stretch" them beyond the regular 48 hour limit.  This will in fact work, but bear in mind that if a plant has been "fed," it will scan at every growth cycle (90 min) to see if there's a Plant Food Spike within 1.5 meters.  So if you take your plant food back into inventory and forget to put it back out when the plant cycles again, the plant will revert to "Not Fed" status. So if you use the take-back method to make your food spikes last longer, you will need to work a lot harder to keep your plants fed.

As a final note, feeding is optional and sometimes not even necessary.  An unfed plant will grow at a rate of one percent (1%) every 90 minutes.  Feeding allows plants to grow at their genetic rate, which may be up to four percent (4%) per cycle.  Along these lines, bear in mind that plants with Slow growth rates have a genetic potential to grow 1% per cycle anyway, so feeding has no impact on their growth anyway!  (Hey, how many other breedables work just as well without food? We can't help it. We were lit when we wrote the code! Seriously, it's another part of our commitment to making ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ affordable and low maintenance!)

Hope this info is useful.  And again, we'll have that Fed/Not Fed banner bug fixed in the next version! It's always 4:20 somewhere!

- The ḈḁṇṇḁḇḭṦḼ Team