Harvesters on Worker Post not Harvesting?

[TwoTonTuna]

They just stand around, whether I set farms to 'plant and harvest' or 'harvest only.' Not sure if this is a bug or if I'm missing something.

edit: seems harvesters will only move if i manually harvest stuff with the 'c' command. kinda a bummer for automating farms, especially since general workers can also do the same job. maybe we can get an option to automatically 'tag' a farming plot for harvesting once the crop on it is fully grown?

[Sphinx of Black Quartz]

You're conflating two different game systems here.

• Villagers assigned to a farm (or mycologist, herbalist, et cetera) will harvest any ripe crops on fields belonging to their building, whether the crops are manually tagged for harvesting or not. The Plant and Harvest settings for the building only affects villagers assigned to that building.
  
• Villagers assigned to a worker post, or unemployed villagers, will harvest ANYTHING you tag for harvest, whether it's ripe or not, whether it will yield anything or not.

It sounds like you're trying to do too much micromanagement. If you move some of those villagers from the worker post to the farm, they'll harvest the ripe crops and also plant more crops, thus providing a steady stream of food.

Don't worry too much about having a field full of ripe crops; villagers assigned to the building will prioritize harvesting them before they rot. If you don't want your villagers to keep planting when there are already crops to harvest, try reducing the size of the field.

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by Sphinx of Black Quartz:

Don't worry too much about having a field full of ripe crops; villagers assigned to the building will prioritize harvesting them before they rot. If you don't want your villagers to keep planting when there are already crops to harvest, try reducing the size of the field.

That's basically what I'm doing now: full farms with smaller fields, general workers on worker posts. I just wish that harvester jobs on worker posts could automatically help out farms, allowing farmers to focus more on planting than reaping.

[Sphinx of Black Quartz]

Originally posted by Kodesh:

That's basically what I'm doing now: full farms with smaller fields, general workers on worker posts. I just wish that harvester jobs on worker posts could automatically help out farms, allowing farmers to focus more on planting than reaping.

If you're balancing your labor right, you won't need worker posts to help out with the harvesting. Farmers already prioritize planting over harvesting, until either there's a crop that needs to be harvested now because it's about to rot in the field, or there is no planting available to do (usually because you're out of space or resources). This is efficient, since a farm square with nothing growing in it is a wasted resource.

Trying to override the system with manual harvesters is less efficient; you're working against the system rather than with it.

[Bobywan]

Harvesters only harvest what you manually select.

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by Sphinx of Black Quartz:

If you're balancing your labor right, you won't need worker posts to help out with the harvesting. Farmers already prioritize planting over harvesting, until either there's a crop that needs to be harvested now because it's about to rot in the field, or there is no planting available to do (usually because you're out of space or resources). This is efficient, since a farm square with nothing growing in it is a wasted resource.

Do you have any suggestions or references for the ideal worker-to-plot ratio per crop? Tomatoes grow so fast that I only need like five to eight plots on a five-man farm, while stuff like beets only need like twelve to fifteen plots for a five-man farm.

[Asphe]

Right now it's just one of two, i.e. Wheat at 16/farmer and 'the rest' at 4/farmer - so you might want to dedicate a farm to Wheat and other farms can be general purpose or 'whatever suits the biome' since it's unlikely that you can just set a Farm to Tomatoes and it will be fine in all biomes. Frequently you'd need to change it to Beets, Corn or even Cacti as the situation demands.

e.g. imagine a 12x12 square plot. For Wheat, plop one Farm in the middle. For 'other', you can start with one Farm in the middle (or side), or in the corner and just keep adding Farms until you have four (i.e. 20 plots per Farm)[cdn.discordapp.com]