Water Retaining Soil should retain or not retain as a group.

[DemiserofD]

I was puzzling through Water Retaining Soil, trying to figure out a way to make it useful once you upgrade your watering can. I was thinking about guaranteed days of water or complex runoff mechanics, when suddenly it struck me that I was ignoring the simplest solution.

What if retaining soil just retained in a group with other crops that had been watered at the same time?

Example: You're watering with a Gold Watering can, doing 3x3 chunks. You have basic retaining soil. The next day, that whole 3x3 chunk is considered as one unit, and 33% of the time the whole chunk stays watered, while 66% of the time, the whole chunk does not stay watered.

Pow, problem solved! Retaining Soil works perfectly in combination with watering cans of all qualities, with no funky mechanics required.

 

[Tom]

Since I consider retaining soil pretty much unusable, I really like this suggestion. The game graphics and mechanics make it impractical to discern and treat each tile individually (mostly due to the way the edges of watered soil are depicted with the pixel art in an effort to avoid a hard edge to "watered soil"). I found when I tried to use retaining soil, it caused me to miss watering things. That was obviously unacceptable. So I stopped using it. If it always worked in 3x3 blocks, I think the problem I had would go away, because

1. I would be able to reliably know what was and was not watered.
2. I would be able to meaningfully alter my farmer's walking patterns in larger blocks.