Kaz, I think your line of reasoning is sound and valid for natural plants, however since players have control over where and how incubators are used, there needs to be a counter. Also, from a PVP perspective, it does give more targets to shoot at (even if they don't shoot back).

Also, while you can't currently target plants, PVP players are able to target other players (or NPCs) and then 'hide' behind plants and destroy them. It wouldn't surprise me to know this type of thing was already happening on a small scale. But in this case, its about making the incubators lockable, and not naturally occuring plants.

Bombs will be much more effcient at clearing plants anyway, time wise, at the cost of additional NIC.

Normal static plants not targetable, player made plants yes. Also they may grow at diferents rates or have diferents stats like max cycles,since is like a wild plant vs an artificial made/sowed plant

there will be no difference between player planted plants or naturall growing ones. You just seed them (at least i hope so)

personally, im not against this feature. knowthing that there is always a path that no plants can grow.
All islands we got atm are manually terraformed and prepared to leave pathes open for roaming spawns, mission locations and static spawns. Why do you think does it take so long to implement missions?...

though - there is one aspect that i really dont like:

with plants beeing something rather rare, and player seeded spots are probably easy to identify, this system is pro-grief. pro destroy someones hour long effort in a few seconds while he is offline.
Long and expensive building process, short time for destruction

I'd rather see plants growing MUCH faster, covering most of the islands with a dense forrest.
The server can track player movements  to create pathes where plants do not grow as fast.

Persistant Player-driven terraforming would be:
- removing plants from an area (bombs?, Aoe Weapons)
- placing walls and concrete groundplates to restrict regrow
- seeding an area wit incubators to get their desired plants there.
-...

griefing would be less easy:
- plants grow back rather fast, so you have to repeat it every day to have a reasonable impact
- persistant removing plants nees you to bring bulldozer equip and concrete.

Anni-- Having heavily travelled areas not allow plant growth is nice but what does that do for miners and npc farmers?

Miners:

Often strip a distant field every couple weeks. This allows the ore to regen. They don't travel that path often so plants will grow and potentially block access to it.

NPCers:

LOS issues with plants will just kill blue and yellow pilots. It is bad enough that a grain of sand gets in the way. All the extra natural plant growth is going to seriously impact all but green pilots.... Less people killing npc=less NIC and less people researching/selling kernels.

Bombs could be the answer but I certainly won't spend millions of NIC to clear an area to shoot npcs for an hour or to get to a mining spot every couple weeks.

The answer is to simply make it so you can shoot plants without having an alt sit behind one and turning on both toon's pvp flag. Boost player grown plant HP a bit so it takes longer to kill them and make the incubators dirt cheap. 

Will shooting plants have some griefing? It sure will. Will there be a few people who walk up to you when you are harvesting and shoot your plants? Yep. Just remember that they already walk up and harvest the plant you are on, strip the tile that you are mining and come and tag the npcs you are already farming. The mechanics are already there and being used for "griefing".

I'm with Scyylla on the griefing aspect.

First, these shouldn't just be 'seeded', they should be incubators, and the incubators can be targeted.

Currently on alpha, plants near outposts get harvested quickly, because transport from further out is more work. Putting incubators down near alpha outposts is basically a gift to the community, some will choose to harvest them, while others will choose to shoot them. Use them in remote areas, or don't use them at all, and just use the naturally occuring plants. Alpha is particularily aggrevating when you get griefed, because you can't do anything about it, except to move onto something else. That's alpha life.

The cost of these incubators... well, they should be player made first of all, that aside incubator should be cheap enough that really only the 'time' factor becomes relevant, and 1U size. Getting 50 cycles of Tiran isn't like getting 50 cycles of Norgalis (on alpha), and if it costs almost as much to shoot it, as it does to buy another one ...

I guess what I'm trying to get at, is these are just 'supplements' to the naturally occuring supplies.

Rapid growth is nice, but not too rapid, or it changes into a 'beacon' type thing, where you have a scarab full of incubators and just keep dropping them without having to move.

You will fight through my jungle befor you destroy my wall!!! get ready snipers...lol

OMG what are all you people talking about?! Specialty plants that incentivize planting them, putting them on pathways and blocking missions, creating hedges and rain forests, drawing a big phat p3n1s?!?!?

Slow down and read this part again...

I read that to mean that we may only be able to plant on pre-designated tiles (or tiles where plants would spread to naturally given time). I doubt the Devs will have pre-designated p3n1s and if they do you'll likely never find it because they are not telling us where they are plantable. We have to figure that out for ourselves probably in the same fashion as is done with Noralgis.

Tile not for harvestable purposes ...damn ...click ...again

Dev's, keep it simple. Designate the tiles. Tell us or don't tell us where. This should not be about creating fabulous garden (yet), it should be about providing a way to replenish harvested gardens. Simple. keep it simple for now.

Answer, YES ...for now.

edit: fixed the grammer, kept the rage