The Helioptris prices have skyrocketed lately. The problem is that although there are many plants and seeded plants, the total amount of harvestable (i.e. ready to be harvested) plants is very limited. Almost everyone I ask on the Alphas has no clue or whatsoever that - if you leave some cycles - plants might refill after 24h. And even if they do, they still harvest all because if they leave some, others will even take the remaining cycles. And there is no way to kick their butt because they most likely are not in your corp, nor in your alliance. Welcome to the vicious cycle.

As Helioptris is needed for various items, this problem affects all. Although it won't solve the problem, it still might help a bit to shift some Helioptris requirements towards Triandlus. The only thing that really helps is a server restart because the current state of the plants doesn't seem to be persistent (at least some ease from time to time).

What would help is to add planting which would serve as a steady source for organic resources.

# Where to get the seeds from:
In order to plant, you need the corresponding seeds. These could be extracted from the harvested plants using the Refinery. Some amount of plants give you some amount of seeds. It most likely won't be a 1:1 relationship. More likely one that can be improved with the Refining extension.

# How to use the seeds:
Of course you need some module which takes the seeds and puts them into the ground. These seeders should be some new arms just like the miner/harvester arms. New ones because they put something into the ground. Their CPU/Reactor/Acc usage should be similar so you can seed new plants when you are harvesting others. It should also be possible to fit robots solely with seeders. This way you could form squads with one seeder and multiple harvesters if the ripening process is short (minutes). If the ripening process is rather long, it makes no sense to have mixed equipment.
Most likely you will have to lock (no primary lock) a tile on the ground. Then you activate your seeder and the ripening process will start. This means that the seeder shouldn't automatically start a new cycle once the previous cycle is finished (just like the geoscanners). This means that the speed in which you can plant depends on the cycle time of your seeders, your locking time and the number of lockable targets (electronics/Targeting, robot's max number of targets).

# How long should the ripening process take?
I prefer a short period (minutes). The reason is that if it takes hours, or even days, it will be difficult for the players to plan ahead. Say you plant a large field, but then it turns out that you won't have time to harvest them due to problems in RL. Then what? A short period would give a reason to form squads (1 seeder, multiple harvesters) if you want to harvest large amounts. A short period isn't very realistic because non-player plants take much longer. Just assume that you use genetically enhanced seeds.

# Ownership of player seeded plants:
Player seeded plants need to be owned by someone. I could imagine that some players want that even player seeded plants are owned by no one. The answer is the same as the ownership of containers dropped by npcs. Of course, after a certain time has passed, the ownership should be lost. This will limit the size of a planted field.
Should the ownership be visible to others? I say no. There is no such indication for dropped containers although I almost always can deduce it from the players being near by. This is relevant if you choose that player seeded plants should be combat relevant (block the way, keyword harassment).
The only thing you should be able to see is a yes/no answer. I guess some color indication seems to be best: a yellow "Helioptris (50)" for a "yes you can" (ownership lost) and red for "no you can't" (another player still has ownership). So there is no need to change the indication of naturally grown plants.

# Combat relevance - Should player seeded plants block the way?
In my opinion, this shouldn't be a question at all. They should block the way just as naturally grown plants do. If they block the way, then this could be used as a combat tactic. This would open a new possibility for Miners/Harvesters to take part in combat actions. I would very much welcome this possibility. But: Plants would have to be destructible and not just by accident. Currently you can lock the tile under a plant, but you are unable to shoot. This would have to be changed.
An example: The defenders of an outpost could build a wall of plants to block a way. The attackers still have a chance to remove the blockade, but it would seriously hinder them. The amount of life/hp or even surface hit size given to the plants could be used to balance this issue. You could even add some new weapons to counter such measures (chainsaw, microwave emitter, poison for the seeder module, ...).
You could not just block some way, but even some resource fields. You could for example try to sneak some seeders onto your enemie's Beta island. These seeders then only have to seed plants on and around an epriton field to completely block it. Although this might be a valid tactic on the Beta islands, it would seriously hurt the game if it was also be possible on the Alpha islands. So there needs to be a way to restrict on which tiles you can or can't seed plants.

# Counter measures: Poisoned ground
A later expansion could add some poison. Poison would have to bloaded into a seeder and if applied to a tile it should say "Poisoned (1)". The more cycles you run on the same tile, the higher the counter goes. Of course there should be some max amount (e.g. 50). If applied to a tile on which there already is a plant, the plant should die instantly or after some short amount of time. The next cycle should increase the poisoned counter by 1. In order to remove the poison, it should be possible to seed a plant. The plant should grow a bit, but then dies, decreasing the poisoned counter by one. Maybe also add some harvester charges to remove the poison. In that case, the poison could be extracted to a certain degree. This way players have the chance to remove blockades faster and Miners/Harvesters could partition in combat actions even more. Furthermore players would have the chance to say themselves where no plants should be seedable.

# Restricting where plants can be seeded:
I have played another game (I can't remember it's name) where it was possible to seed plants. The problem was that it had small dedicated fields on which you could seed plants. It was always a hassle to find a free spot on these rare fields. Such restriction makes no sense if seeded plants should be combat relevant.
Tiles should get a new number attribute (seedability). A seedability of zero means no plant can be seeded on this tile. A value greater than zero means that plants can be seeded on the tile. Although it is more realistic, it should be simpler and easier to update if all seedable plants shared the same attribute.
The initial value of this attribute should be some value greater than zero. I simply assume that it is a range between 0 and 1, which defines how many cycles the ripe plant will have in relation to naturally grown plants. This has some advantages:
- This way newcomers have the chance to seed plants at locations that others can't reach.
- The max amount of cycles of player seeded plants should be lower than that of natrually grown plants. Thus naturally grown plants have some advantage.
- The max cycle count could be different for Alpha and Beta islands.
It is "easy" to initilize these attributes and even avoid resource fields from being blocked. It gets tricky to ensure that people can still reach certain/important locations such as outposts, terminals, resource fields and even Npc locations. Certain corridors have to be defined. I guess it would be possible to define these corridors manually using some painting tool.

# Possible abuses:
- You will never be able to keep people from seeding epen shaped fields. I don't consider this to be such a big problem. The plants are and must be destructible. And even if such a field insults some player, he can still report such an incident and the (previous) owner can be warned or even banned.
- AFK players could be caught within a field. You would just have to seed plants around him. Well, you shouldn't be AFK on the field for a long time anyways. This shouldn't be much of a problem for combat robots. It would only be annoying for Miners/Harvesters. But then you could still report the problem.
At this point it makes sense to add a timer after which the player seeded plants disappear on their own.

# Detectability of seedable tiles:
The other game I have played didn't provide any means to see where plants can be seeded and where not. Either you had to test it yourself, or you could see it by the fields others have planted.
Now geoscanners could be of some use to harvesters. Add some new charge that analyzes the ground and tells you in it's result where plants can be seeded. Basically the result would be nothing more than a check on the seedability attribute.