Farms underutilise their space?

[Calan]

I have favourable conditions for my farms, weather, full staff, water and compost and they barely plant any spaces, maybe 2 1/2 tiles out at most. I have to rely on berries to feed my population most of the time as farms just cant keep up. Wheat farms seem to plant more and have a slightly better yield but all other variants just dont plant and harvest for a larger population

[TTV||Cdog_]

I’ve also noticed my farmers do the same regardless of the crop. Only about less than half of the tiles ever get used (full staff)

[Bobywan]

You will need almost half your population on food buildings: farm, berry gatherer, kitchen.
If your population grows, you'll need more farm.
Be careful to select the appropriate crop for the biome or the growth rate will be reduced.
And yes, it's not necessary to use all the space around the farm. Usually half is more than enough but it's sometime nice to have a little more (for instance, you are about to change biome so you switch to a crop with 0% growth in your current biome and 100% on the next so your farmers would run out of space to plant and stay idle after having planted all the available area).

[Markus [Stray Fawn Studio Dev]]

Yes, farms don't use up all their space. I can't speak for our game designer, but I think it was not meant to be 100% filled, but more like you have the option to choose where you want to place your plots.

From the feedback we gathered so far, I think we will rework farming a bit, so this issue might change in the future.

Thank you for your feedback and discussions - very valuable :)

Cheers,
Markus

[Riley⁧⁧⁧2142]

The only time my farmers ever use and run out of space is when the crops they are dealing with cannot grow in the weather conditions. Then once they can, they get completely swamped and I lose a chunk of the harvest.

[Calan]

Originally posted by ssero Stray Fawn Studio Dev:

Yes, farms don't use up all their space. I can't speak for our game designer, but I think it was not meant to be 100% filled, but more like you have the option to choose where you want to place your plots.

From the feedback we gathered so far, I think we will rework farming a bit, so this issue might change in the future.

Thank you for your feedback and discussions - very valuable :)

Cheers,
Markus

Thanks, feels like it needs a little boost to planting and yield. I dont mind them not planting perfect 100% of every possible slot but at the moment the farms barely plant 20% of spaces

[Zedd]

I have no problems with yield and planting, my issues seem to be with the harvesting and collecting. With harvesting enabled, they do lose a lot of time harvesting the crops. With harvesting disabled, they can fill the entire farm quite easily and several worker posts on harvest barely manage to keep up.

I wonder if a minor adjustment to this might solve all issues:

-Harvesting enabled: use current system, perhaps increase harvesting speed slightly
-harvesting disabled: farmers only plant. Add another profession to worker post: farmer- will automatically harvest farm plots.

[TTV||Cdog_]

Originally posted by ssero Stray Fawn Studio Dev:

Yes, farms don't use up all their space. I can't speak for our game designer, but I think it was not meant to be 100% filled, but more like you have the option to choose where you want to place your plots.

From the feedback we gathered so far, I think we will rework farming a bit, so this issue might change in the future.

Thank you for your feedback and discussions - very valuable :)

Cheers,
Markus

if that is the case you could do it anno style and say give us 20 or 25 tiles max to place then it wouldn't seem that theres such a weird production issue going on. I dont think there should be more plots than workers can support IMO for space.

[ShadowTani]

You can utilize a lot more of the farmland if you disable harvesting for the farmers and manually designate the plants for harvesting so that the general workers harvest everything instead. It's a bit microish, but you get significantly more crops out of your farms that way.

[Zedd]

Hm, I disagree TTV¦¦Cdog- I quite like the option of keeping my farm small, or to go all-out and have all my farmers plant while my workers do the harvesting. In the right climate, you can pretty much fill up the entire farm continuously.
Also allows you to fit farms into narrower gaps or conform to terrain.
Options are always nice.

Perhaps the issue here is more, "why are my farms not efficient and only filling 9-ish plots?" in which case, the climate/efficiency indicator might need to be a bit clearer, or better explained in the tutorial.


ShadowTani- exactly- and in current system, you can adjust your farm plot size accordingly.

[shogeki]

I think this is a bug. if you toggle off Harvesting and set to max farmers, they will fill the whole area. However they don't plant what you expect if you set multiple planting areas, they seem to just plant random stuff.

[QAstral]

If you use fertilizer to some farm and all 5 workers , your farm will quickly run out of space. Until then, yes, it seems to be halved.