Plantations in Morrowind (Arvel, Arano, Dren) have only the basic assets: farmland and housing.
I know some of them are more about netches (netchs?), others about plants.
Now let's imagine you're the boss of the Dren plantation. Do you chew on netch tentacles to calm your appetite? I don't think so. Means of transportation could be a good idea there. At least suggesting them with stables, troughs, faggots of forage...
Those guys all live near lakes. They could eat fish. Then why not have a few nets, lines, fish traps, or even that kind of stuff.
Those guys grow some plants drink water. I'm personally not fond of drinking it straight from the lake. A well, maybe? With a makeshift shelter nearby, to take breaks, and buckets.
Let's use the well to irrigate those farmlands!
Ok, we have lakes, not rivers. But i want bread. I might need a mill.
Let's say it's a silt strider, or even Almalexia, not an ox. It's more epic.
Now that i have flour, i have to cook my stuff. 
I know, my slaves are better at harvesting netch leather than they are at building ovens...
Oh, by the way. I have netchs. Did I mention that?
Let's say i plan to kill one. Business is business. I might want to tie it to something.
Now that it's dead, my slaves will come, harvest the leather and maybe dry it...
And even dye it. Instead of plotting with the twin lamps.
Eventually, they'd put that in some warehouse
But what about our other slaves?
The food guys.
They could use that:
a plow
With animals pulling it.
Thirsty animals.
Hungry animals
Now it is time for you, contributors, lurkers, bethesda spies (if you have an idea about what netchs eat, feel free) to tell us here, with google pictures and words, what you imagine for this zone. All of the above only consists in leads, nothing final or set in stone.
Time to shine!
Nexos
Mon, 01/18/2016 - 15:16
#1
[ENVIRONMENT CONCEPT] Plantations clutter and small buildings
Edited by: Nexos on 02/12/2016 - 16:04
Hi everyone,
I really like your idea of making the plantations rough and rural.
In my opinion netchs eat plankton, small crustaceans and seawood, like whales or some jellyfish. In Morrowind and Dragonborn, they always roam around the coastal regions and in Dragonborn they also hang their tentacles in the sea (maybe that´s a bug, sure). So netch-herders could have feeding trugs filled with small mudcrabs and kelp on the plantations.
I also like your idea of the harvesting-station. I made a small sketch, because i dunno how to describe my idea correctly and google had no match. Dead netchs get tied into a wooden device, that looks a bit like a ship skeleton. So the body can easily be harvested without floating around the court whole time. ;)
No plow. Shoreline farming with marshmellow and saltrice is way more real to depict.
If you have plow and arable land - you would'nt need slaves.
More primitive thing alike plow is harrow:
it can be used even by elves with their stony barren land.
+1 for Almalexia-driven mill.
What I can suggest is adding some kind of brewing things
and maybe more ancient example of below one
Finally Cyrodiilic Brandy, Flin, Greef, Mazte, Shein, Sujamma, Vintage Brandy somewhere come from. It could be even some mechanism when you can create some examples by these by machinery. We have already done Honningbrew Meadery assets form Skyrim anyway.
Btw. I found this Katixas Beer Brewery, it is complex but it could be some inspiration.
link to mod and movie
Also I remember that some plantation (dren?) has quite a lot of skooma so it could be some cover for illegal production.
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Some small craftsman like pottery would be nice also, there also could be some small basins/other containers for production of some ferment fish sauce or even other fermented things. Yeah I know that MW didn't have this but it is easy to imagine that it could contained.
One more idea which appeared in my head a while ago. I couldn't find better example but if we have plantations with slaves some alarm-bell would be nice. Probably just static object, without npc/player animation, could be added in anytime.
Shoreline farming fits well for the river shores of Ascadian Isles in my opinion. Would be nice, if harvesting slaves wear some sort of backpack to put the plants in. Make them look more like farmers:
When fields are underwater, there could also be pedestrians through them, for the guards and the slavers. Shows hierarchy at first, when we see poor, backpacked slaves cropping fields in knee-deep water and the guards relaxing on the dry stages above them.
For feeding Netch and other animals, and as low-social-level food there can be made sort of small animals alike IRL shrimps.
This must be simplest models from 10-20 polygons based on river betties and other cychlid-like fishes from Skyrim (who made them? seriously?).
Also there can be simple animals in water like leeches (good example you could see in Half-Life 2).
All this animals also can be depicted in mass on markets (as textures on surface of piles in baskets).
Also Nexos offered to depict small_animals/plankton as surface-textures under water.
I think best application for this idea is using it on waves with blue glowing plankton at night.
And with animated textures of mass brown particles of plankton in daytime.
(As this: https://vimeopro.com/biopixel/plankton/video/128947329)
Shrimps look AWESOME!!!
Netches will love em too. I had an idea, how the feeding spots for them could look like: Wooden pillars, where the netch´s food will be hang up high enough for them to be reached comfortable (they should feel fine at all).
May look more interesting than normal feeding trays on ground and increases netch farms unique appearance.
Not sure netch need any feeding stations. Perhaps they merely house algae in their tissues which they feed on, like coral. Maybe they feed on swarms of insects or sift through particulate in the air for organisms. Maybe they're even photosynthetic themselves - using the tentacles for self defense and fighting over mates instead of using them as predatory weapons.
As far as asset creation, we can go easy on ourselves and do 'nothing'. If people ask about it, we can have answers ready.
@ FDT I think the harvesting station is great, especially if we can show one dead netch in it. On the other hand, the netch food trough is not really feasible:
Everyone seems to have his own ideas about what netchs eat. This leads to a big problem. The food through you've drawn is cool, but you can only understand what it is when there are netchs around.
More idle animations for netchs is not something that'll happen. So it means it'll just be a pole with wrapped nets, and that'll only look weird.
The alarm idea is good, but what would it look like ?
This
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa35je8LuuA ?
Or a giant horn, Boromir style.
Even if the plancton idea is cool, there's not need to justify glowing things by plancton. We already have kollops?. But i have to admit the photo reference looks stunning.
The brewery might be overkill, but i dont deny it's a great idea. Comberry is used to make liquors, and pretty common in this area. VIneyards could be something, as long as the landscapers agree to do that. The brewery shouldnt be huge, though. More something home-made.
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/presse-de-raisin-de-cru-pour-...
http://www.mousikesebeeries.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/%C...
Nothing more ambitious than that. Otherwise, people wouldnt recognise it.
I'd go with something more like the last image you posted. Small-scale operations with a primitive process.
https://isiopolis.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/egyptien.jpg
A sort of crushing vat that could be filled with comberries with a spout for the juice, and various urns to store the wine while it ferments before being bottled in shein bottles. Perhaps a primitive distillery for greef production. http://www.alcoforchina.com/images/spirits_h/medieval_manu.jpg
That'd be enough, I think. And just have these around the Ascadian isles. Other drinks like Sujamma or Mazte could be implied as being made from fermented marshmerrow (like rum from sugar cane) or saltrice (like sake from rice), but wouldn't necessarily need to be shown in production - maybe these are mostly produced on the mainland.
Thanks a lot for feedback!
Raisin press and distillery look cool, could even be used in taverns. Maybe it would be nice to have also an unfilled version of bottle models for sujamma, matze and all the funny stuff. Then player could refill them at the brewery objects. Also empty bottles lying around e.g. in town alleys give a lot of immersion (like empty nuka bottles from Fallout 4).
Now I think about how netches are eating, Dragonborn addon reminds me of something: Puking netch tavern in Ravenholm. Tavern host explains the name by a drunken netch, which was pelted with a sujamma-bottle. Netch swallowed up the drink and puked. So they them to absorb their food from air/ water, what else. Maybe with the weak, shining belly. Just to have a first answer. ;)
Hey folks! ;D
Here's some drawings and stuff! Taking my initial pass at it to get a feel; I'm working on another sheet like the last one for idea generation for props/exploring the concepts initially laid out by some of you guys. -I can do multiple ideation on the same idea to flesh out the design and full renders for modler's passes. Lemme know what you guys think!
There was, ostensibly, an occasion of Vivec toiling at the fields of Kummu as a beast of burden for a "farmer" whose guar has died.
However, the book - "The Pilgrim's Path" - mentions that the "farmer" was actually harvesting muck from sponges. Muck does not seem to be in high enough demand to cultivate it, so the "farmer" was presumably harvesting it from naturally occurring sponges, which is why a beast of burden - either Vivec or a guar - was required.
So for farms it's probably a good idea to add guar tethers (possibly even guar stables) as well as feed racks and other facilities. The land might be impossible to plow, but you still need guars to move heavy stuff around, especially for long distances - like delivering processed goods to markets, etc.
Ohhh *o* that´s amazing! If I could give Karma points, I´ld spill you with them! Great work so far, you go in the perfect way imo and I like your fast but representive style of sketching btw. Go on, I know, you will produce more awesome stuff ;)
Nice concepts. It would use some readable commentary though (and even short descriptions).
It's unreadable in case of {slave outhouse?}
I wonder if firewood stoking/moving animation could be used with salt-rice or some panzerfish.
These look pretty sweet. Will need some more detail on some of these sketches, particularly Heliux's last two images and I can block out some basic models this weekend.
Here is a model Ravanna asked me to do about a month ago, This was modelled and textured in a day so yeah its pretty basic.
Been looking at the plough posted further up the thread and I might consider doing it if there is need for another plough. The little slave pen looks pretty neat, I've a few ideas about that;
Scarcity in wood would (especially for slaves) would mean it could be the very basic. I was thinking some old metal cobbled together to form a basic frame and then mud over the metal to act as a render with some of the metal frame exposed sort of like what I done with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKPWRqXbT8I
Something to consider: the Elder Scrolls Wikia page for Netches says that they are "sustained by internal sacks of magic vapors."
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Netch
I don't know if this includes their source of food and drink or if this was written because of a general lack of concrete knowledge on what Netches eat and drink. Just something to consider. Otherwise, I really like the route you are going, expanding on the whole farming system.
Apologies for not being active. Was juggling a few jobs but I'm now a stay at home dad so have a lot more free time on my hands.
This is an improved version of the fish "stand" will be messaging Rav soon about the fish models. And hopding to try some ideas about hanging the fish using physics properties so they look better.