Template talk:Bees/Genetics/doc

Pollination Area

I think it would be helpful to include the "Pollination Area" of the species, either in the Area row (as a parenthetical), or in a row to itself. Pollination Area is a relatively little-known stat that, in my experience, confuses a lot of people.

The Pollination Area is equal to three times the Area trait in all directions. So, the standard 9x6x9 Area also describes a Pollination Area measuring 27 x 18 x 27, centered on the Apiary. While the "Area" trait defines the boundary of the bee's Effect and the area in which its favorable flower must be found, the "Pollination Area" describes the region in which the bee will spread its flower, and---most importantly---the region in which it will pollinate leaf blocks for Arboriculture. The Pollination Area explains how your average bee can pollinate the leaves of a Kapok tree despite having an "Area" trait that apparently reaches only three blocks above the Apiary, and why the bright-line border of flowers spread by bees extends far beyond the apparent range of the bee's Area trait.

Indeed, I would argue that the Pollination Area is a more important trait for the budding apiarist/arborist to understand than the Area trait: It governs how large their orchards can be (and how deep a pit they have to dig when they want to cross-breed something with a Sequoia).

I wonder, is there a way for the wiki to automagically calculate the Pollination Area from the Area trait? It would require either some parsing and a bit of multiplication, or a look-up table (given the small number of different Area traits out there). That would greatly simplify incorporating this important stat into the template.

(PS: I would have followed "standard wiki protocol" and just boldly added this in, but given that this is a template page I thought a bit more prudence was called for.)

Eunomiac (talk) 19:06, 11 August 2013 (CEST)