Greenhouses are not OP

[Joelle]

Bringing this into a new thread for additional visibility.

Alright, for those that say greenhouses are OP, let me share with you a recent test. Details below...

Hard Mode Settings
-Starting Cash $500k with 200k Starting Loan Debt
-Elmcreek Map
-10 Greenhouses
-Autoselling Mode (as it is what everyone is arguing is OP since you don't have to do as much work)

156k - Bought the plot of land containing field 44-46
150k - House to Fast Forward Time
100k - 10 greenhouses placed
130k - Man Truck
68k - Large Water Trailer
1k - Water Hydrant
-----
605k Total Initial Expenses

Have to take out $150k extra loan to afford cost of goods and have enough money for water for greenhouses.

Key Daily Expenses

$3,000 - Loan Interest on 350k Loan
$3,000 - Greenhouse Water Cost Per Day for 10 Greenhouses or 30,000 L ($300 per greenhouse)
$1,000 - Property Maintenance cost on land & 10 greenhouses
-------
7k Total Daily Expenses

Key Income Source
$10,000 - 10 Greenhouses in Auto-Sell Mode for Lettuce ($1k per greenhouse)

Summary
10k Income
7k Expenses
-------------
3k Net Profit Daily

**Important** - It is worth noting that water cost is usually purchased at various intervals, but by aligning all expenses to a daily rate, we can see a more accurate picture of net daily profit.

Ultimately, 3k Net Profit is not what I consider unbalanced.

If you contest that I am auto-selling here, that is the primary argument being made that someone doesn't have to do much work and can gain a lot of cash as a result. If you manually sell, then you are physically having to transport hundreds of pallets and the profit margin is greater due to the work you are doing.

For $3k Net Profit per day, I do not think that is over-powered by any means. The amount of boredom ensued by filling water tanks was enough to make this undesirable on a mass scale. I even started with 20 greenhouses and couldn't tolerate doing 20 at first so I dropped the test to 10 ultimately.

[Beltane]

Ehh, if you auto sell thats on you, just saying ;)
There are bigger fishes to fry though, than greenhouses that grow plants with water only. At the very least it should require seeds - with fertilizer addition as a bonus if one wants more plants grown from the same greenhouse.

[Silky Rough]

Good analysis and test. Kudos.

Originally posted by Beltane:

Ehh, if you auto sell thats on you, just saying ;)

If you're not autoselling then the trade-off is the amount of work you need to do to realise these 'super profits' some claim. I recall one player saying he could do 100 greenhouses. Thing is, even on autosell, that's a LOT of work and you'd be bored in a day.

[Beltane]

Well, if some people think that tons of greenhouses is what makes this game fun to those - all the more power to you. Its not for me to decide and its a game where you can decide to play with whom with anyways.

[Joelle]

Originally posted by Beltane:

Ehh, if you auto sell thats on you, just saying ;)
There are bigger fishes to fry though, than greenhouses that grow plants with water only. At the very least it should require seeds - with fertilizer addition as a bonus if one wants more plants grown from the same greenhouse.

3K Net Profits/day though across 10x Greenhouses total. That's rather small, Why should you need to add seed costs and fertilizer further since the profit is so small?

My stance is they are balanced now. Auto-sell, less money, less work. Direct-sell, more money, more work.

[Aaron]

Originally posted by Joelle:

Hard Mode Settings

What? How dare you bring hard mode settings into this discussion! Don't you know how much money I'm rolling around in on easy? It's disgusting!

Originally posted by Joelle:

The amount of boredom ensued by filling water tanks was enough to make this undesirable on a mass scale. I even started with 20 greenhouses and couldn't tolerate doing 20 at first so I dropped the test to 10 ultimately.

--In all seriousness. It wouldn't matter if it made $10,000 an hour. There's just nothing to do with them outside of fetching water and struggling to put pallets on a trailer. Neither of which are fun or satisfying to me.

[Alpha_Aries88]

only thing I noticed is that you are paying for water when its free to just drive up to the lake on Elm Creek and fill your trailers

[Joelle]

Originally posted by Alpha_Aries88:

only thing I noticed is that you are paying for water when its free to just drive up to the lake on Elm Creek and fill your trailers

I am glad you say that. So then instead of a monetary cost, you then have the time cost that equates to the value going there with a water truck many times to fill up the greenhouses. You are merely trading your time for the money, thus balancing it out still.

[DaddyJokee]

Ok, you do know you can get water for free though, right?

[Enorats]

You can make anything look horribly underpowered by using two simple words - "Hard mode". The values for everything in this game are already super low, even on easy mode. On normal mode I was quite nearly barely breaking even after my first harvests, after accounting for seeds, fertilizer, wages, and the interest for a small loan. The fact that you can actually make any profit at all on hard mode really only demonstrates that these things are a pretty decent way to make money, if a rather uninteresting one.

[Joelle]

Originally posted by DaddyJokee:

Ok, you do know you can get water for free though, right?

Yup, and as posted above it has a cost regardless and is balanced by you driving to get it. You are merely trading the dollars for time, which is a trade decision you can make, but time is money in this game too.

[way2co0l_2003]

I'm brand new to the series but playing on hard mode and so far doing reasonably well. You're never going to make a profit from your 3 small starting farms once you look at how much even renting equipment costs, but once you buy a few extra larger plots (I took out loans to do it) and use contracts to supplement your income between harvests and it's not really all that hard to me. 3k seems reasonable to me, though I've personally yet to use them myself. Good to see some math on their productivity though so thanks for that!

[Jarl Thidrandi]

I made a post about a week ago talking about how I decided to research real life prices on lettuce because I felt it was OP. The entire post was about how surprised I was that the prices on hard, were dead on with reality. I still am not sure if a greenhouse that size can produce that much lettuce in a months time, but everything in this game is scaled up, similar to Truck simulator.

My findings were that the price per head of lettuce, with the average weight per head being 300 grams, was $0.35 USD. The price point I sell lettuce at when selling manually is about 1200 per metric ton. 300 grams is 0.3 kg, which goes into 1000 kg, 3334 times. 3334 x .35 equals $1,166.90 per metric ton.

With that said, they do provide a massive return on investment, and if that doesn't fit your playstyle, it's easy enough to just abstain from using them. In fs17 you could buy a mower, a forage wagon, and a tractor, and mow all the grass on the map without owning any land. In fs19 and now fs22 you can field flip too. Anyone complaining about them should just avoid them.

I limited myself to 4 greenhouses on my farm, because I like to use them as a supplemental income to offset monthly expenses. I roleplay in my head that my characters wife and kids tend to the greenhouses, so I set them to autosell and eat the 35% and imagine that as my kids allowances for helping out. I also like to keep a minimum $250,000 loan to simulate taxes, living expenses, and whatnot, so for my playstyle greenhouses are fine. But I play on hard, and try to simulate reality as best as I can.

[Vim Razz]

So... 100k spent on greenhouses (which you could have squeezed onto a $50k property if you'd wanted to) plus equipment for ~120k annual gross revenue on hard mode.

(That's auto-selling, of course, so you could have pulled ~180k if you'd delivered yourself, or $200k+ if you made any effort to sell above average whatsoever, but we'll stick with $120k.)

That's about the same annual gross revenue you'd get farming grain crops on around 12 or 13 hectares if you're sure to mulch, plow, lime, fertilize, roll the seedbed, stay on top of weeds, and sell at 130% over average -- for example fields 30, 31, and 32 combined, about a million in property.

Or you could do it on 6 or 7 hectares with root crops or cotton, though your equipment costs are going to be much higher. Or maybe 3 or 4 hectares of sugar cane, with even higher equipment costs.

Or you could do it with 2 large chicken barns fed by 2.4 hectares of barley, and everyone knows that chickens aren't overpowered in any way whatsoever right now.

Well, I'd been dubious about greenhouses until now, but it looks like you've finally convinced me. They're clearly perfectly balanced and reasonable in relation to the rest of the game.

[BJWyler]

Originally posted by Joelle:

Originally posted by Beltane:

Ehh, if you auto sell thats on you, just saying ;)
There are bigger fishes to fry though, than greenhouses that grow plants with water only. At the very least it should require seeds - with fertilizer addition as a bonus if one wants more plants grown from the same greenhouse.

3K Net Profits/day though across 10x Greenhouses total. That's rather small, Why should you need to add seed costs and fertilizer further since the profit is so small?

My stance is they are balanced now. Auto-sell, less money, less work. Direct-sell, more money, more work.

Nice summation. I would argue that adding seeding and fertilizing to greenhouses would make them more emersive.

[Memtndude]

Here's the problem nobody wants to address if they have an issue with greenhouses. It doesn't effect them. I don't understand the logic in constantly complaining and arguing about something that has absolutely no negative effect on you.

Just like the person that complained in a massive thread about the collectibles being an exploit. Those aren't an exploit, they're just a fun little mini game the devs included that give you cash. 1.1 million in this game is nothing if you're not on easy mode.

I make that in 2 silage harvests and still have to budget wisely to expand my properties.