Mechanized Farming - Tractors and Equipment

[BossmanSlim]

Background: I have worked on an actual farm for 6 years while growing up

How I have setup my game (not campaign):

I have gone all in on mainly corn and other grains with all resources being put into those crops for the most part. I run 3 greenhouses which I harvest with temporary workers during the summer and use the equipment operators for harvesting in the winters. I was able to purchase all the equipment needed, buildings and fields and a few wind turbines for under 750K. I have yet to take out a loan.

As of now, I have the large warehouse, 2x mills, 1x large silo, 1x seed production, 4x tractors, 1x of all other needed equipment except sprinklers and plows; which I have 2 or more., 3x greenhouse (tomato), 4x wind turbine and the necessary equipment sheds to store all the equipment. If we look at the starting land area, 1/4 is buildings, 3/4 is fields and I feel that with the setup I can comfortably work the area with 9x permanent employees (6x factories, 3x equipment operators). I recently progressed to 75x75 fields.

Stuff that I think needs some balancing

• Mills can only process about 40K grain in a year. Even with 2 mills, I still end up selling over half of the corn crop as the mills can't go through that much corn. After expanding the farm, I expect to be producing 300K corn per year, so 200K of that will have to be sold unless I build 5 more mills, which to me is excessive. I would like to see the through put on mills increased and/or a large mill implemented.
  
• I don't see any real in game benefits to plant anything other than corn. It is easy to double crop because it only takes 75 days to reach maturity, wheat and rye take 100+ days. It doesn't require any more or less maintenance than the grasses; while in the real world, corn is much more water intensive to grow than the grasses. Corn flour is typically more valuable than wheat or rye flower. The other grains have such poor market prices that they are not worth planting. I would suggest the wheat and rye should be able to be planted in the fall, grown through the winter and harvested in the spring. I would also suggest that wheat, rye, oats and the like take less water than corn and therefore are much less likely to require irrigation. Oats and buckwheat need their associated flours added to the game.
  
• Equipment renovation/maintenance is really bad. I spend all winter repairing my equipment to the max I can and still need an extra tractor to make it through spring planting without having downtime. Next season I am going to explore if selling off the tractors and buying new ones is a better strategy, but in general, equipment degradation is way too fast (I have everything researched). I would like to see a mechanic's shop unit added to the game that cuts the degradation rate in half for all equipment.

Most of my other stuff I have complaints about have been covered in the other threads (queuing tasks, breaking off one person from a task, fall tillage, etc.). With that being said, let's talk equipment.

• I can find no difference in game between the red (not orchard) and blue tractor. They pull all the same equipment and seem to degrade at that same rate. There is a power number, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
  
• I would suggest that there be at least 3 tiers of equipment, just like with cow sheds, that allow the user to scale up their farming without having the buy 20 tractors and field 20 operators. Some stuff already has two tiers; combines, combine headers and harrows. Tractors and plows appear to have two tiers, but I can see no difference. Orchard equipment is a parallel path and not a different tier. I can see now that the game is going to get very tedious as I add more and more land, yet have the same equipment as on the first parcel.
  
• In general, the first tier equipment is fine. All the tier two equipment needs to be about 1 to 2 squares wider and a tier 3, twice the size of tier 2, needs to be implemented. The harrow and plow are the only implement categories that have tier 2 equipment now and both are still a bit narrow over their prior counterpart. Planters, fertilizer applicators, sprayers and mowers have no tier 2 equivalents. Everything needs a tier 3 equivalent and there needs to be a big 4WD tractor to pull those wide pieces of equipment. There also needs to be a larger grain cart.
  
• The hay mower is modeled wrong. It is a bushhog, not a hay mower and should be modeled as the correct piece of equipment.

[lady_whynot]

Very constructive criticism, which I can largely follow. thx

[Ultum]

Originally posted by lady_whynot:

Very constructive criticism, which I can largely follow. thx

+1

[FearTheBearcat]

Very soild points. Id love to see a knock off Cat Challenger pulling some massive equpiment.

[markfamily]

You make some very good points but i also think when the workshop support is released it will be game game changer for machinery.

[Soylent_Greene]

So, instead of introducing specific buildings what about adding different class of workers? A specialist class that is expensive but could pay for themselves with boosts to productivity or reducing wear & tear on vehicles?

Perhaps a biologist who boosts reproduction in your animals rather than calling out every couple of days? See below about a small office/trailer to work from?

Or the botanist that improves crop yields by supervising field preparations? Maybe having a zone of effect like the Pump? Maybe a small building like the Gazebo where they hang their hat but has no benefit unless you hire them?

Apply the same above to a dedicated Mechanic, who can be assigned to a vehicle shed, again with a zone of effect?

(Side rant:> WHY does the harvester ALWAYS go back to the tractor & trailer combo instead of in reverse? That Harvester should never stop moving in a field until it's cleared. But that tractor & trailer should be right there to offload! I'm sure this isn't the first time this has been mentioned but how do you create a Farming Game with these kinds of bugs?)

[Shukran]

great.

to analyze your post:

- i played my scenario full grass + cows and goats. i think that GRASS worth more than corn early game since u need to spend a lot in specific tractors for corn, while grass just need basic tractor

- i totally agree about renovation and mainteinance

-if u look carefully, BLUE Tractor is faster than RED tractor.

overall great post

[BossmanSlim]

Update time and I think I'm done until they patch the game and the workshop comes out. Here is my current setup:

• I have purchased 5 blocks of land around the starting area and put in 8 fields totaling 7.45 hectares, with 5 of those being 100x100. I grow corn (only able to double crop 2 fields due to the enormous time it takes to prep and plant the fields), wheat and sunflower.
  
• 2x mill, 2x seed production, 2x large pig pen, 2x medium pig pen, 1x large warhouse, 1x large slaughter house, 4x worker house, level 3 farm house, 1x barn, several equipment storage buildings, 5x greenhouse w/ tomatoes, 4x wind turbines
  
• This setup in a year produced about $2,000,000 in profit with the top 3 products being $760,000 in pig meat, $310,000 in corn and $307,000 in corn flour. 2 hectares of sunflour produces $255,000 in money. Wheat is grown mainly as an animal feed. When I saved and closed my game after fall harvest, I had $2,149,326 in the bank and no loans with enough corn, wheat and sunflower in the silos to cover animal feed and production throughout the winter.

The three main reasons I am stopping are:

• No auto inseminator/male animal; enough has been said on this
  
• The game lags whenever I work the sunflower fields which are 100x100 (plowing, cultivating, planting, harvesting). It also lags when I have 4 tractors working 4 different fields. If I put in more fields, then I have to get more equipment, which means the lag will be more frequent.
  
• Fundamentally, the equipment is too small and it takes too long to deal with large farms. For a 100x100 field it takes 9 days to plow it, 6 days to harrow, 6 days to fertilize, 12 days to plant and 13 days to harvest. These numbers were taken with highest level equipment that can be bought. It takes 33 days from the first day you can work the fields until the crop starts growing. On top of that you have to spend another 13 to harvest. This makes double cropping very hard; which I guess leads to the question of if double cropping is intended or not? If 1 ha is really 1 hectare, which is 2.47 acres, then the scale is way, way off on this game. 7.45 ha = 18.4 acres, which is laughable small and should take no longer than a day to accomplish any task. Even if I assume the it should be multiplied by 100, that is still 1804 acres, which most modern farms can work about 300 acres a day, so that 100x100 field would be 100 ha or 247 acres, which still is only 1 day to perform each operation. A tractor moving at 7 mph with a 40 ft implement can work 34 acres per hour, meaning it would take 7.3 hours to work 247 acres or about a day. The speed and equipment width are both conservative.