Crop Breeding

Despite its age (created in 2011?), IC2 Crop Breeding logic was never fully explained.

Step 0: Regular Cropsticks do not allow for crops to spread or crossbreed. In order to allow for breeding, a second set of Cropsticks must be placed on an existing empty Cropstick, resulting in a set of Cropsticks which extends out to its neighbors.

Step 1: A set of breedable Cropsticks have a 1/3 chance every Crop Tick (256 server ticks) to attempt breeding. If that check succeeds, the 4 adjacent Crops are checked to see if they will join in the breeding. By default, 2 other Crops can participate in breeding, and every harvestable adjacent Crop has a 20% chance to join. (Crops that are not yet harvestable cannot breed.) If only one Crop joins in the breeding, that one Crop copies itself (and its stats) to the breeding Cropsticks. If two or more Crops join in the breeding, additional decisions are required and we move to Step 2.

• Second Step:
  In this step the most important logic Kicks in. The Decider Logic.
  This Logic Decides which crops are actually possible to come out, which will be decided in these steps:
  • 1: It combines all Breeding Crops that are joined in into 1 list.
  • 2: Then it compares all Possible Crops (Weed Exluded) with the Breeding Crops and adds Points to them The points are caluclated like this:
    If the Crop from the Breeding Crop matches the one from the list it gains 500 Points. No further Calculations.
    Else it will start to compare the Crops.
    The First thing it compares are the stats (Chemistry, Consumable, Defensive, Colorful, Weed) of the Crops: If there the compared stat is equal you get 2 points, if there is a 1 point difference in stat you get 1 Point, a 2 point stat difference ignores it and anyhting bigger difference gives -1 Point
    After that is done it compares the Atributes of the 2 crops. For each matching Atribute of the 2 Crops gains 5 Points.
    Then it compares the Tiers of the Crops:
    If the tier of the Breeding Crop is smaller then 1 Point to the possible Crop you lose 2 Times of the Tier Difference in points.
    Also if the Breeding Crop is bigger then 3 Tiers then the Possible Crop you lose the tier difference in Points.
    At the end it makes sure you do not get below 0 points for a crop and it adds it then to the Points for that crop.

To give an Example how much points something would give: Lets Compare what a Pumpkin Crop would give when it would could produce a Rose Crop

First the stats: 
- Chemistry: 1 Point
- Consumable: 2 Points
- Defensive: 2 Points
- Colorful: 0 Points
- Weed: 2 Points      
So we got from that about 7 Points.    
Next the Atributes:    
Sadly none Of the Atributes are matching so 0 Points from that.     
Still at 7 Points.     
Now Lets compare the tiers:    
The tiers are not to differend so you do not lose any points on that one.     
So the Crop Ends with 7 Points.

And that you do with all Possible Crops.

Since Point Calculation is done we now get into the Third Step which is the deciding of the Crops.

• Third Step:
  First thing what is going to happen is that all Points get added together and then a random Number Generator,
  picks a number between 0 and total Points. (Which is refered to as points left)
  Then it goes through all Crops and check if they have more then 0 points.
  • if that is the case then it checks if the Points are bigger then Points left.
    • if that is the case then that crop is going to be the breeded crop and it plants it.
  • else it removes the points of that crops from the Points which are left. Else it skips it

That is how Crop Breeding works in IC2. It has a bit randomness in it. But what you can get is not random at all.
You can predict that really easyly.