Farming for Profit

[kgwrigh]

Way back when playing the original release of NMS collecting and selling mineral resources or crafting rarer mineral substances was the way to go. Then came the plants, bases and crafting of lubricant from Mordite or avoiding crafting by growing pearls.

I'm still growing and crafting however I believe I 've improved the process somewhat;

1. Find a water planet with a desert biom. This will give you access to Rigogen and a base where you can plant Spadonium in the ground minimising build limit issues in normal mode.

2. Construct the usual cube based farming room with planting boxes and plant Puff Balls for Termium. Add a trading terminal on one wall.

3. Set up your freighter farm again, with Puff Balls.

You can now craft high volumes of Insulating Gel typically selling for 44,000 units each.
The dual Puff Ball setup allows for continuous farming/ crafting cycles. The Spadonium grows so quickly you shouldn't need to pause for growing cycles.

I have a total of 177 Puff Balls which at 44,000 units per unit gives me 7,788,000 units per growing cycle. (both Cacrasula and Puff Balls yield about 20 units each of Termium / Spadonium each)

[aggressor27]

That's much more efficient than what I was doing. Thanks for sharing.

[jonnin]

the thing about efficency is the combined equation.

how much is this plant yield worth per min?

gel is worth a ton but you have to grow 2 plants to get it, and they are off cycle to each other in time (by a factor of 2 I think). AND you have to craft it. AND it takes multiple plants per unit of gel. It feels like a lot when you sell it, but the total per hour is not there.

it also matters if you afk farm and harvest on the pop or if you go away and come back to your harvest. If you go away and come back, time to grow issue is normalized.

puffball is 16 min per. Nip is 12 per. I think each puff is 1/2 a gel.
so for 10 plants, every 16 min, you get 5 gels, 5x44 /16 is 13.75

nip is 12 min, 22k I think, roughly. 10 plants is 10 units. 10x22 is the same as 5x44 but its faster, so its 10x22 / 12 which is 18.33

Im not 100% sure on the 2 plants per unit, someone can correct me if the ratio is significantly different

[kgwrigh]

Jonnin,
Correct, two plants per unit of Insulating Gel However:
I get 44,000 units for each unit of Gel, 4,000 units more then the equivalent two pearl plants.

I have more than enough plants split between my freighter and my home base to avoid "off cycle" issues. By the time I 'reap' each Puffball plantation, the Cucrassula has re-grown.
By the time I craft and sell the gell, the Puffballs have regrown

I grow the Cucrasulla in the ground without hydroponic trays as my base is in a desert biom.

I find I'm making units quicker than with Pearls.

I'll take a look at your Nip suggestion but may have to nip it in the bud!

[jonnin]

pearls got nerfed. They take a very long time to grow, making nip more profitable, AND nip takes less rigo, so you get more done with less sunk into it.

from what you said, youll get 177 plants, 22k each every 12 min. If you can even harvest and sell that fast. ~3.9M every 12 min on a normal planet and double that if you can find a 2x gold star buyer. That is compared to whatever you are getting now every 18 min and time to produce the gel etc. At the very least, its nearly the same $$ while bypassing the crafting step. I think its a little more money, but in those quantities, I am not sure how the grab/sell/repeat cycles work. I only have a modest farm. Its obviously better if you can find that 2x buyer, they are rare though.

[kgwrigh]

Originally posted by jonnin:

pearls got nerfed. They take a very long time to grow, making nip more profitable, AND nip takes less rigo, so you get more done with less sunk into it.

from what you said, youll get 177 plants, 22k each every 12 min.
....snip....

It's actually 44K per PuffBall / Spadonium pair
177 PuffBalls which go together with Spadonium. The Spadonium grows quicker than the PuffBalls so between harvesting / crafting I never run out of Spadonium.

Best thing I can do is start a cycle that includes all phases and time it for you from a zero base.
This will include the following :

1. Harvest Spadonium on my base - 135 plants.
2. Fly my ship to my freighter and harvest 129 Puff Balls.
3. Return to planetary base and harvest 48 Puff Balls.
4. Start crafting / selling gel. (Spadonium will have regrown by now for top up)

[jonnin]

Those were the "if you swapped to nip" expectation values.

[kgwrigh]

Hi jonnin

I've run a test to see what timings were returned as I mentioned previously starting from my freighter base. Times in minutes:seconds

1. Start Time= ) 0:0 minutes

1. Harvest freighter Puff Balls ( completed at 5:26 minutes from start)

2. Fly to planet base (completed at 7:28 minutes from start)

3. Harvest base Puff Balls (completed at 10:07 minutes from start)

4. Harvest base Spadonium (completed at 17:42 from start)

5. Craft / Sell Insulating Gel at 44,136 per gel (completed at 32:27 from start)

6. Total Earned 7,812,000 units.

NipNip: I planted nip and harvested the bud produced and saw it was worth 17,000 per unit not the 22,000 you indicated.

Geknip does sell for 20,000 but as far as I'm aware there is no blueprint available for converting nipnip buds to Geknip which sells for 20,000 a unit.. If you're aware of a blueprint for Geknip I'd be interested to know where I can get it.

[jonnin]

That is the default price; you can find systems etc that pay more. That is probably true for gel too.

Ok so you got 7.8 in in 32.
If I did the math right, nip is ~9M in 36 at 17k each.

effectively 1m more per half hour, rounding it all off, and the effort to grow 177 nip plants would be astronomical. I would think swapping to be not worth it, but if starting fresh, consider nip?

[kgwrigh]

I think nip would be the way to go if it could be grown in a biom vs hydroponic containers.
I grow all my Cucrasula (Spadonium) in the 'dirt' outside the base building with Pufff Balls inside.

The main issue with large scale hydroponic based farming is the big cube rooms and planter boxes required which eats into base limits on normal mode.

With the next update coming soon I'll keep the current set up and start grinding as I'm sure there'll be expensive stuff to buy. (My last upgrade to a 48 A class hauler cost me 135M units!)

Take care.