Contracts and Farmers Market

[richv68]

Is anyone doing contracts on the asian map where delivery is required at the farmers market? From what I can see, the market only takes pallets. Testing pallets, apparently they cost around $150 or so per pallet, with 2000lb capacity. The harvester provided to borrow on the contracts can't use pallets. Even if it did, from what I can see the pallets are huge, and one would need a flatbed to carry each pallet side by side (i.e. they dont stack), only a few at a time to the farming location due to size. The flatbed is not provided to borrow. However, the contracts include to borrow an extra tractor and a loose material trailer, which wont be accepted at the market.

Even if any of this made sense (which simply doesn't), the economics are terrible. One pallet takes 2000lb and costs about $150. A not too big field yields dozens of pounds of parsnips. The contract pays only a couple thousand, yet the cost of the pallets themselves is more than that, and it's a massive pain to haul dozens of pallets, a few at a time, to the farming location, and unload them there via a tractor with forklift, dump only 2000lb per pallet and move on to the next (while the trailer can carry much more than that), then reload all the pallets to the flatbed and so on, TO END UP LOSING MONEY because of the cost of the pallets, which from my test was not reimbursed (or I missed it but I dont think so because when I delivered a pallet, I only noticed an increase in the percent of contract completed, but I didnt notice the $150 i paid for my pallet being reimbursed).

All because the contract is forcing us to deliver at the market even though it can't take loose material from the tractor included on the contract's borrowed equipment, instead of either allowing loose material or use a different location.

At least this is how I'm understanding this specific type of contract (I saw several of these on the asian map, specifically with parsnips, but i guess other vegetables may have the same issues). Has anyone figured out a proper way to handle these contracts?

[Fragile]

The Farmer's Market can only take pallets? As I recall, I don't think that's the case. Weren't you allowed to sell it to the market directly from the trailer? What happened when you did it?

[Hex:GonGiveItToYa]

The Farmer's market on the Hutan map doesn't have a pour point from what I've found so only packaged stuffs to them. Royal pain in rear for loose veggies to package all of them.

[Fragile]

Originally posted by Hex:GonGiveItToYa:

The Farmer's market on the Hutan map doesn't have a pour point from what I've found so only packaged stuffs to them. Royal pain in rear for loose veggies to package all of them.

sorry, i forgot he was talking about Hutan. I thought it was River.

If that's the case, well it's really a punch in the face.

[dragonsphotoworks]

Bring them there in trailer. Then put them into pallets on farmers marker parking lot?

[richv68]

Originally posted by Hex:GonGiveItToYa:

The Farmer's market on the Hutan map doesn't have a pour point from what I've found so only packaged stuffs to them. Royal pain in rear for loose veggies to package all of them.

This. I did mention that this happened in the Asian market. iI may be because the market was designed by Giants right in the middle of an urban area for this map, I drove and ran through the market many times and could not find a drop point, just one labelled for pallets. I read other posts from people saying the same thing, again, for the Asian market specifically. As i said, i was able to unload my test pallet (pretty easily i must say). but no drop chance for trailers though. I don't know if other maps' markets are like this.

[richv68]

Originally posted by Fragile:

Originally posted by Hex:GonGiveItToYa:

The Farmer's market on the Hutan map doesn't have a pour point from what I've found so only packaged stuffs to them. Royal pain in rear for loose veggies to package all of them.

sorry, i forgot he was talking about Hutan. I thought it was River.

If that's the case, well it's really a punch in the face.

Brother (or sister?), it was a punch and a half. You know how painfully slow the parsnip harvesters are (single row, i think). The contract lets you borrow a small harvester, that needs to be unloaded quite often, but you also borrow a huge trailer. So after quite a lot of unloads into the trailer, it finally gets full. At this point it was when i drove the trailer to the market, and spent 10 minutes driving around it and running,m looking for the normal non-pallet drop point, because in that part of the map you can only drive one way and some streets are single way, so with AI cars going through and you driving a large trailer, well, you can only drive in one way. Then several blocks around the market are blocked by traffic cones, so to come back to the market entrance the drive's pretty long. Then I realized that I can only use pallets, so after all my testing and math i gave up and lost about $20K from two of these contracts (being run simultaneously) for cancellation (plus all the time lost).

If I wasn't so stubborn I'd already would have given up on the Asian map ("hate" is too gentle a word for what I feel about it at this time). Giants is evil with these contracts.

[pwrOff]

I was looking how to do this and I found this thread...

I found a way, you need 180k and a piece of land, you can pop a farmer's market down from the build menu, it will have a drop point.

I haven't tested this because I'm still early in game and don't have the potatoes to buy the market yet.