Irrigation needs work

It's incredibly difficult to create working farm irrigation systems. The fine line between enough water to irrigate the land and enough to destroy your crops is too small.

Currently, water will only irrigate farmland if it has been poured directly on top of it, and in copious amounts.

I believe farmland should be irrigated if running water is beside it, under it, or on top of it, or one block below the farmland block. Although it would be difficult to code this for running water, it would make farming active, yet with the option to build machinery to ease the work.

Right now, This irrigation system I made is completely useless.

Releasing water will only irrigate the blocks directly over the hatches, and any attempt to wait for water to wet the rest of the land will result in crops being uprooted. Any amount of water on top of soil should wet it, it shouldn't need to be a whole block.

 

You mean automated irrigation right?
You can use water cans,
You can space crops apart (2 square floating islands) (I personally use a shower system myself, it is annoying that too much water can reset crops, but I got it down.)
Or you can have the ground water itself because you can wet the ground from underneath.

 

I'm okay with the current irrigation system as long as some sort of irrigation canal/pipe block system is introduced. Let's be honest, if you're creating an expansive farming, you might as well stick to more advanced tech to maintain your farm.

 

I also wish there was proper piping everything is gravity based ATM, you can make "pipes" but they're just holes dug out. Its not like there aren't pipe blocks though.

 

Water has to be directly on top to wet plants, and about a half-block of it too.

Not just the side or beneath.

 

Ah they patched that, a while ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/3eig3c/new_automatic_irrigation_farm_design_post_patch/
http://gfycat.com/ColossalDisastrousComet

This is the shower system I had in mind, though mine is slightly different.