Bees! v:Unstable/Pre 1.0

• Apiaries now require nearby flowers to function.
• Flower-Power formula listed below. The flower range is 25 blocks from the apiary.
• Giant apiary no longer slides to the side when placed
• Giant apiary roof is now a platform. Happy stacking.
• Stings properly added to both giant and scented apiaries.
• Default flowers, already found on many planets, now drop seeds. They can be planted on any soil, even if you don't till it with a hoe.
  

Flowers will now give a pretty good boost to the apiary speed as well. 1 Flower = 1 drone. Different flower types are more effective when a variety is used.


Formula: Every 1.5ish seconds... Remaining Time - beePower, where beePower = (10 + sqrrt(drones) + sqrrt(redflower) + sqrrt(blueflower) ....etc.



The formula for the apiary, to complicate AND explain things works like this:

100 ticks to go to spawn a honeycomb!
...wait 1.5ish seconds.
100 - beePower ticks to go to spawn a honeycomb! (if beePower = 10, then: 90 ticks to go.)
All the way till 0, when the time resets to 105% of the last amount (to slow afk camping).

At zero: 70% chance of a honey comb. This makes the apiaries vary a little bit on their output, while being a large enough chance that the RNG gods should not really smite anybody.


Okay, so now, say you have an apiary, with 16 drones: beePower is 14, or 10 + 4. (Where 10 is the base power. 4 is the power of 16 drones... its a square root)


Take that same apiary, and place 16 red flowers around it: beePower is now 18.

now place 1 yellow flower near the 16 red flowers: beePower is now 19.

let's now add 4 blue flowers: beePower is now 21.

These bees clearly like a variety of flowers to choose from!


So, to combat the slow-down to early apiaries introduced last patch, you can simply plant more local flowers to speed things up. Seeds drop from the default flowers found on planets. (I patched them in to the default game)


The one drawback.... Apiaries now require at least 1 flower nearby to function. Luckily, they search a very large area for flowers, 25 blocks in any direction.


If you went crazy, and planted 100 yellow flowers above, 100 blue flowers east, 100 red flowers west, and 100 spring flowers underneath an apiary (let's say it's on a platform) - thats 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 50 Bee Power without counting the drones.
For comparison, 1 flower, 1000 drones.. and you have 43 beePower.


Flowers are your friend.



Tldr? Take a big ass apiary, place 9 of each flower type around it. Place 64 drones in it. It now functions as fast as it would with 400 drones.