Vehicle depot and farming

[Fred_Shoehorn]

Hello all,

I've been trying to learn the ropes of this game little by little but ran into a bump I can't seem to work out. I noticed in the vehicle depot that you can purchase farm equipment and thought that would be a great use as my agro farm was having trouble keeping up with my demand. What I noticed is that the only option available on the tractor is to load or unload. My immediate thought is that the equipment purchased at the depot can't be utilized like the agro farm, is this correct or am I missing something?

[gusgblaw]

Depot aren't workspaces, like a farm or lumberyard, only a place to buy/park vehicles.
If you need more vehicles for your farming you need another farm, but as-is, fields can only be assigned to one farm anyway.
Alternatively, you can get better vehicles maybe or check the farm closely to see if you have too many seeders or whatnot, the optimal ratio for farm vehicle isn't 1/1/1 necessarily.

[Fred_Shoehorn]

Thanks for your reply gusgblaw,

I'm starting in the earliest year and noticed my distillery absolutely decimating my crops. I'll tinker around a bit with it and try to work it out. I would like the agro farms to work like the construction depots, having the ability to have multiple agro farms working together on the same farms. To me it feels as if there is not enough vehicle space but that may just be my inexperience talking.

[gusgblaw]

One vanilla agro farm cannot supply a fully staffed distillery and food factory, you can use a direct connection to the food and supply the distillery with a distribution office ( Which you can filter to not take ALL the crops). There are larger version of the farm on the workshop with more storage and parking and also improved machinery which can handle more fields..

[OffTheRailsGaming]

There are different ways to use the farms. The traditional way from earlier in the release was to have a mix of each vehicle type, so say 4 tractors, 4 harvesters, 4 trucks or whatever combination. Since the introduction of distribution office this opened up a new opportunity. You can now put trucks in the distribution office instead and have them collect direct from the fields and to a warehouse of your choosing, not having to go directly back to the farm. This means you can have more tractors or harvesters at the farm instead. This works really well. With the new Winter mechanic on the test branch I've found that having a road depot next to the farm and having all tractors in spring, when they've stopped sowing then swap them with harvesters stored in the depot. This means you can cover a lot more fields, just needs a little micromanaging twice per year

[TheAmishStig]

Depending on how you lay out your fields, what size, and what equipment you're using, one farm can service up to 75-ish hectares worth of field, so don't be afraid to go big. Once the second round of hardware comes available in the mid-60s, it's not uncommon for me (in a no-seasons game) to be running 15+ fields off a single agro-farm, and with the really good stuff available late-game you should be able to go even bigger.

It's all in how you set up your vehicle rotation...if your timing is perfect, your tractors and harvesters will only be in the barn long enough to get assigned to a field, and the field will only be waiting for a machine long enough for it to make the round trip to the farm building and back.

Last I studied it, Harvesting takes 2.5 times as much work as Sowing, so you can get a baseline vehicle split with:

[number of tractors] * ["work speed" of tractor] * 2.5 / ["work speed" of harvester"] = number of harvesters.

You'll have to tweak and tune a bit to be able to deal with Generally early game (1960) I run 2 tractors, 5 harvesters, and 5 trucks. Rounding issues, travel time, and slow tractors mean it's not perfect, but I would rather not be short on trucks. [though manually assigning trucks, rather than having them work at the farm, will allow you to run more farm equipment].

And yeah, being self-sufficient on crops takes a TON of farmland.

-----

Mucking everything up soon is that 'Seasons' are in public beta and will be releasing soon...which limits when your crops will grow! They may also be seeing an output change.

As of 0.8.0 (no Seasons, no change in output), with a good road layout and farms serviced only by vehicles (servicing them with workers is faster but less efficient, working out to a slightly worse tons-per-day average) you can expect a Large Field to be able to sustain 1 to 1.2 "tons of crops per day" of factory consumption; 0.25 to 0.4 for a Medium Field, and 0.08 to 0.13 for a Small.

[TheAmishStig]

OffTheRailsGaming a écrit :

There are different ways to use the farms. The traditional way from earlier in the release was to have a mix of each vehicle type, so say 4 tractors, 4 harvesters, 4 trucks or whatever combination. Since the introduction of distribution office this opened up a new opportunity. You can now put trucks in the distribution office instead and have them collect direct from the fields and to a warehouse of your choosing, not having to go directly back to the farm. This means you can have more tractors or harvesters at the farm instead. This works really well. With the new Winter mechanic on the test branch I've found that having a road depot next to the farm and having all tractors in spring, when they've stopped sowing then swap them with harvesters stored in the depot. This means you can cover a lot more fields, just needs a little micromanaging twice per year

How well do the DOs work in that role? When I tested them right after introduction it was a bit naff, but they've gotten some big overhauls lately and I haven't been able to circle back to it. Especially the interplay between farms and seasons...

[Fred_Shoehorn]

I should also add that I am on the hardest difficulty with having to fuel up my farm equipment so that does eat up a good chunk of time with the tractors going back and forth. That is why I thought having the ability to have the depot provide more farm equipment would mitigate the time for refueling. I'll just have to work it out another way. Thank you all for the advice, I appreciate it.

[gusgblaw]

OffTheRailsGaming a écrit :

You can now put trucks in the distribution office instead and have them collect direct from the fields and to a warehouse of your choosing, not having to go directly back to the farm.

Damn! I just keep finding more uses for these DOs, truly a game changing addition.

[wokandr]

OffTheRailsGaming a écrit :

You can now put trucks in the distribution office instead and have them collect direct from the fields and to a warehouse of your choosing, not having to go directly back to the farm.

I tried using DO with farm (assign load on field, unload at farm - not to warehouse) but they did not do anything.
However i managed to use Road Vehicle Depo - assigned a truck per field and marked "wait until loaded" - they parked on the field till it was sown and grown but did not consume any fuel.
Then i could have 5 tractors and 5 harvesters per farm.

[noxylophone]

>assigned a truck per field and marked "wait until loaded"

That’s not a terrible idea, actually. Removes the need for a DO altogether.

[OffTheRailsGaming]

DO's won't unload at a farm, they need to be assigned to drop off at a storage place. Also if you assign trucks to your fields and set wait till full then the harvesters won't be able to enter the field when it comes time to harvest

[BareJag]

Just assign the fields to the distribution offices and make no changes. Also remember there's a limit of 20 destinations per office. Traffic at the silo might also give you some troubles.

In my current setup I've two farms dirrectly connected to a big silo with tracks, and a truck cargo station. 80 fields means you need 5 distribution offices. 16 fields per DO and the last 4 connections for the silo and other needs in case you need the trucks elsewhere outside the harvesting season, or use them for some other kinds of trucks at the same time. I use modded distribution offices with space for 4 trucks.

[aantono]

Is there a good updated guide on how to do efficient farming with the seasons winter update enabled?

[OffTheRailsGaming]

aantono a écrit :

Is there a good updated guide on how to do efficient farming with the seasons winter update enabled?

I did some testing when the update came out https://steamcommunity.com/app/784150/discussions/0/2567564692467935310/

[aantono]

Thanks OTR!!!