User:Numaris/Thistle Notes

This is a work in progress. It may or may not ever be completed. Thistles are a difficult
subject to try to teach, and I am by no means the premier authority on them.

Introduction

Thistles seem to be a common point of frustration these days. They're complex to make, but difficult to buy, which makes Silk a major road block for certain projects. While there are a number of guides out there that describe the mechanics of the system quite well, there's very little practical information on how to actually go about making the thistle you need. I'd love to say that this guide will change all that, but unfortunately I can't make that promise. Since the rules change all the time, so do the strategies. The best I can do is provide some general pointers based on my experiences, which I will lay out below, along with my own description of the mechanics of the process.

A few things I'd like to get out of the way beforehand:

• I do not sell silk, thistles or thistle recipes. It can be a lot of work, and there's just too much else that I would rather be doing.
• Tips/hints/strategies listed below are from my own experience. I would be very happy to hear other folks' experiences, but please use the Discussion page for that, rather than creating long discussion threads on this page.
• This is still going to seem fairly high-level if you've never touched a Thistle Garden before. I would recommend acquiring some seeds and growing a batch or two, playing around with the interface a bit so you are at least exposed to it, even if you don't have a clue what you're doing and end up with all minuses.

How Thistles Work

What Are Thistles?

Thistles are created by planting a Thistle Seed in a Thistle Garden and tending it for a few minutes while it grows. Once finished, you can harvest 5 debens of Thistle with seven specific attributes. These attributes represent the final values of the major nutrients in the thistle, and are what determines whether or not the thistle is appropriate for any given use.

Nutrients

Thistles are identified in your inventory or storage container by a string such as "A-B+C~F+N-P+T-". This represents the levels of the seven nutrients in the thistle. The nutrients are:

• Ascorbin
• Biotin
• Carotene
• Folin
• Niacin
• Pyroxidine
• Thiamine

During the growing process, each nutrient is represented by a value between 0 and 99. When the thistle matures, the nutrients' final values determine their level as displayed:

Descriptor	Symbol	Value
Low	–	< 22
Average	~	>= 22 and < 80
High	+	>= 80

(TODO: I still need to verify these values. I stole them from the T3 thistle guide.)

Inputs and Controls

If you open the Thistle Garden's interface and start growing, you'll see the following:

(FIXME: Need image)

The columns on the right represent the levels of your nutrients as described above. Unfortunately, you can't directly add or remove those nutrients. Instead, you use the buttons atop the columns on the left to set up the appropriate conditions to get what you need.

Nitrogen and Potassium

Nitrogen (Nit) and Potassium (Pot) act as input-only nutrients; that is, they can be turned into other nutrients in the system, but nothing gets turned into Nit or Pot. Nit and Pot levels decay by 10 every tick, regardless of whether or not they are used. Nit can be added using Dung; Pot requires Saltpeter. In both cases, 1 deben of material produces 20 units of the input.

Water and Oxygen

Water (H2O) and Oxygen (Oxy) can be considered catalysts in the system. They are added to the system in the same way as Nit and Pot: 1 deben of Water in Jugs becomes 20 H2O (the Jugs aren't consumed), and 20 Oxy can be added at a time without requiring any materials or tools. They also decay like Nit and Pot, at 10 units per tick. H2O and Oxy are not consumed or produced by any conversions; they simply facilitate them.

Sun

Sun is, as you can imagine, a measure of the amount of sunlight falling on the thistles. The sun level during Egypt nighttime is 0, and progresses quickly at mid-morning to 99 for the daytime. To control the sun, you can toggle the canopy open and closed; while it is closed, the sunlight is cut down to 1/3 of the ambient value. There is no middle ground... the canopy is either open or closed. Like H2O and Oxy, Sun is a catalyst. It facilitates conversions, but is never itself produced or consumed.

Nutrient Conversions

Every batch of thistle starts with the main nutrients set at a value of 0. So how do they get up to the levels that we need?

Each tick behind the scenes, the system steps through a list of nutrient conversions. Each conversion has four parts:

• Input Nutrient. The input nutrient can be any of the main seven nutrients (although Bio is never actually used as an input) as well as Nit or Pot.
• Condition. Each conversion will only be active when a certain condition is met. The condition is tied to the value of either H2O, Oxy, or Sun. Some conversions will require that the level be above a certain value, others will require that it be below.
• Output Nutrient. The output can be any of the seven main nutrients.
• Conversion Ratio. This determines how much of the output nutrient is created per input nutrient.

Each tick, for each conversion, the system will check to see if the condition is met. If it is, it will remove 10 units of the input material. If less than 10 units are available, it will remove them all. Then it will produce an amount of output material determined by the amount of input material taken, and the conversion ratio.