User:Jimbly/AutomaticThistles

Below is the process I would recommend for starting to make thistles:

Prerequisite: Understand the basics

Using the information on the Thistle page and related guides, you should:

1. Understand Thistle types (e.g. A-B-C+F~N~P+T+) and Thistle requirements (e.g. A-C+N~P+)
2. Be able to use ThistleSim.xls to simulate a recipe and see the results
3. Generate a simple recipe (try to make anything other than A-B-C-F-N-P-T-) and run it by hand on a single Thistle Garden
4. Understand what a "void" is (a rule that is not active for an in-game week (~2.5 real days)
5. Be confused as to how anyone makes all of their complicated recipes by hand (optional)

In order to be most productive, I would also expect you to have access to:

1. Multiple Silkworm Farms (I am generally tracking 10-20, only a subset of these have requirements that can be made any given week), though this approach will work even if you have just 1 or 2.
2. Around 20 Thistle Gardens (there are numerous public arrays of Thistle Gardens you can use, you shouldn't need to build these yourself).

Install VeggieTales

Download and install VeggieTales from here. VeggieTales is my macroing program, with some other fun tools (like the Thistle Recipe Generator) built in as well. Currently this is on Windows only, but I can provide almost-portable source code for anyone who is interested in helping port it to Linux/MacOS, just ask.

Determine voids

If someone else has already determined the voids for this week, you can simply jump ahead and enter the voids into the config file. Generally those who determine the thistle voids place the information in their info text. Try /info Jimbly or /info Ephemere to see if we have the voids for this week.

When you are watching your recipe run, compare the results happening in-game with the results you see in ThistleSim. If you don't have two computers side-by-side, you may want to save screenshots every 8 ticks or so. If there is a tick in which the results differ, you need to determine which rule, when voided, would cause that result. The way I do this is to go down the list of rules, and try turning each one off and then back on. Generally, one of 3 things will happen:

1. Nothing will change, or only later ticks will change - we gain no information about this rule
2. One of the earlier ticks will change - we now know this rule must be active, flag it (I just put a comment in the column to the right of the rule), and you know you don't need to test it later
3. The tick which differed will change to be what you see in-game - we now know this rule must be voided.

It's possible that no single rule will get the result you saw in-game, in which case it might be a pair of 2 rules voided, both active on the same tick, causing the result. By looking at what actual vitamins differ, and what rules cause/create them, you should be able to logic out what pair of rules it is, but this is less common.

Repeat this process until the results in ThistleSim look exactly like what happened in game.

If the results were identical, you have found all of the voids (or, at least, the ones which will affect your current recipe), move on to making them in bulk!

Generate recipe(s) again

Chances are, if you found a new void, your recipe did not make the thistles you were looking for. Enter the voids into config_thistle.txt (there should be a 0 next to each rule with is voided, 1 next to each which is active, just like in ThistleSim), and generate recipes again.

Profit

(but not too much, help out your neighbors as well, please)