Biofuel Gen's + Wheat gen 0 bio - Thought to allow/deny crop usage

[Pesky Bee]

I've been playing for a silly amount of time now but there's been one thing I wish we had, which is the ability to toggle certain things to be used, or maybe its only to allow certain types of produce to come out of storage boxes.

The reason I mention it is because I want to feed my farm with the quickest yet cheapest food to get producing fertiliser using a storage container, but my bio-bots take all the wheat and put it in the generators, which produces 0 biofuel, before they can be added to the farms. Maybe this comes with an additional stat to food for animals (which may be in already, we just dont see it) that the lower the quality produce fed to animals, the lower the rate of producing manure, to counter the possible 'cheap/easy' way to get it.

Anyway, I think it's a bit pointless that the biofuel gens take and use wheat as I'd rather them just not at all really for that seeing as it makees 0, but maybe an easier option is to 'lock' storage to only have certain crops to use, like a toggle.

I don't know what's better (if at all, because understand there might be 'balancing' issues') but:
- Is it not allowing a 0 biofuel gen material to be added to the generator
- Or allowing a toggle system with storage that allows you to pick and choose what can be taken *out* of it

Would love to see what people think!

[usuallyafk]

100%, a specific toggle to prevent certain crops from being consumed for feed would go a long way., However, the dev mentioned in a patchnote that feederbots will take your three worst crops as food for your livestock, but I have yet to mess around with my layout to figure out if it is efficient or if it even works.

[Damokles]

Yeah, this really annoys me. I produce what for the animals and the biofuel bots just keep adding it to the biofuel generators where it blocks other things. Depending on the timing the feeder bots then pick a expensive crop because no wheat is present at that time. It also means I've to produce way to much wheat just so that the feeder bot has a high chance of finding what in storage.

[OmegaXesis]

Originally posted by usuallyafk:

100%, a specific toggle to prevent certain crops from being consumed for feed would go a long way., However, the dev mentioned in a patchnote that feederbots will take your three worst crops as food for your livestock, but I have yet to mess around with my layout to figure out if it is efficient or if it even works.

It does take your 3 worst crops. However if your Biofuel bots are wayy too efficient, you'll run out of good crops, and then the biofuel bot will take the worst crops like Wheat etc and use them up.

That's why having a window to toggle off certain things will help with that.

A solution for now is to disable the biofuel bots if they have used up all your primary crops, and let yourself build up a stockpile of crops again before starting them.

[Derriere]

I suppose there's a chance this might be a controversial suggestion but:
have you guys considered making your biofuel bots less efficient?

If your crop output struggles to keep up with how fast your harvested crops get converted to biofuel, the issue isn't that you can't toggle crops on/off, it's probably that you've made your biofuel conversion process TOO efficient, causing friction in the process.
As I upgraded my bots/farm, I found that my biofuel conversion was too strong, I had no food for my animals because it got converted too fast - this problem was COMPLETELY solved by re-assessing my biofuel conversion situation. I had one less converter and one less bot, but still had 100% conversion uptime (the bots had more time to recharge while fuel was converted) AND I always had crops for my animals. I didn't see any drop in how much currency I was getting because my biofuel bots weren't waiting around for crops to be harvested. My animals had food to make fertilizer to make my crops stronger, and berry farming also helped offset this change because beehives generate biofuel without conversion.

It's possible that you can find an elegant solution to this problem on your farm, don't be afraid to take away things as your farm grows to keep things balanced.