Farming and Seasons

[OffTheRailsGaming]

With the new seasons mechanic I wanted to test out the farms and see what would be the best set up for yield.
I used vanilla vehicles available in 1960, later vehicles will provide quicker sowing and harvest and will be able to cover a few more fields.
In my farms I am only using tractors and harvesters and the roads are all gravel. I have trucks in Distribution Offices assigned to the fields and delivering directly to a large warehouse. 1 Distribution Office with 5 trucks per 2 harvesters. DO's have a limit of 20 orders.

My first test was 2 large fields per tractor and harvester. Large fields take the longest to sow and as a result harvesting didn't begin the end of August, with the the first crops arriving in storage on the 1st of September. They worked right into Winter but only managed to harvest around 1 and 3/4 of a field each before the crops disappeared completely.
4 harvesters - 1360 tonnes
Average yield per harvester - 340 tonnes

The second test I tried a combination of field sizes. Sizewise 4 small = 1 medium and 3 mediums = 1 large, roughly. So I set up 4 small, 2 medium and 1 large field to be sown in that order. Being much quicker to sow, the small fields enabled harvesting to begin around the 19th of July, around 5 weeks sooner than the large field. Harvesting had finished before the snow fall meaning I probably could have done a few more small or 1 more medium field each.
4 harvesters - 1790 tonnes
Average yield per harvester - 447.5 tonnes

The third test I went for all medium fields, 6 per harvester/tractor. The medium fields took only slightly longer to grow with the harvesting starting on the 24th of July and finished just as the snowfall started. Possibly could have had 1 more field per harvester.
4 harvesters - 2223 tonnes
Average yield per harvester - 555.75 tonnes

In conclusion:
Small fields are too inefficient due to the amount of times the harvesters have to move in between them. Large fields take too long to sow and cause the harvesting window to be moved back too much. Medium fields seem by far the most efficient with the seasons.
1 small farm with 2 tractors and 2 harvesters could cover 12 medium fields and gave the best results.
Your results will vary depending on distance from farm to field and location of fuel.
Larger farms will be less efficient due to travelling time so the result won't be scalable but diminishing the larger the farm area is.
Tractors begin sowing on the 3rd of March and will not start sowing a new field beyond the 1st of June. 1 tractor can sow up to 3 large fields, but due to the late finish harvesting will likely go on into Winter and you will probably lose some of the crops.

[Bastardo]

I hope for more types of crops in future updates. With different growing time, so that in case of late start of sowing - more chance for harvest and recovery in autumn. Perhaps a fast-growing raps variety for bio fuel production?

[Marcus Aurelius]

Thanks for your very usefull study. I like your objective approach of the question.

[Novu]

For balance reasons sowing, growing, and harvesting should all be sped up since there is now limited time to grow things.

[Vlad Tepes]

Thanks for putting in the effort to figure this out. I always start out and wonder what the best combination is for a single farm.

[fjorkar]

Off The Rails Gaming
thank you for your analysis

[TheAmishStig]

Those early tractors are going to be killer...sowing is faster than harvesting, but a work speed in the mid-20s is holding them back pretty hard. Almost seems like under Seasons, the old days of tons of large fields for not a lot of mechanisms are over.

I'm kinda wondering what would happen if you went with a different split, like 5/7 or 4/8...getting so much better of a harvest out of Mediums even though it's an equivalent area has me thinking that the second Big spends too much time waiting for its harvester.

[Vimes]

Many thanks for posting this, great information.

For the first time I have bothered about growing my own crops, not having a clue how much fields would yield, nor the effects of having seasons.
I have managed to sow the equivalent of ten large fields and considering the time that has taken, as time passes, I assumed that would be enough to keep a couple of fabric mills running as well as supply enough produce for my bread factory, thanks for that, to feed my 12k or so population...!
Now there are seasons it will not be a continuous cycle of sow, grow and reap.
Looks like I'll have to rethink this, I'll not consider feeding livestock as well with those numbers..!

[JimBarracus]

Maybe the large fields are not suitable for the slow tractors.
Or you need one slow tractor for every large field.

Growing starts when sowing is done, not before.

You can also use more tractors in spring and micromanage them by moving them to a depot, when they are done and use more harvesters later on if the farm building is the limiting factor.

[OffTheRailsGaming]

Even having 1 tractor per large field still won't give you the best results. I also don't know where I said that growing started before sowing was done, because I didn't. I think you need to re read what I wrote.
The fields don't all start growing at the same time, they start growing as soon as the tractor has finished sowing them. Large fields take around a month to sow with the vanilla early tractors. 3 medium fields is about the same area but the first of the three will be sown in around 10 days, meaning that it will start growing and be ready to harvest about 3 weeks before the big field.
Using medium fields over large fields means you will get crops sooner, have a longer harvesting period and therefore get a better yield. The whole point of my tests and the conclusion I wrote in the OP

[Kamil]

Originally posted by Bastardo:

I hope for more types of crops in future updates. With different growing time, so that in case of late start of sowing - more chance for harvest and recovery in autumn. Perhaps a fast-growing raps variety for bio fuel production?

I don't think so. According to developers trello this was denied for some reason.
For feeling of using bio fuel you can use Spiritkombinat from workshop. It produces fuel and alcohol. :)

[Erazor]

Originally posted by Novu:

For balance reasons sowing, growing, and harvesting should all be sped up since there is now limited time to grow things.

Maybe a little, but there is a reason that 80-90% of the populated world is farm fields. We just need a lot of it :-).


I personally wish there weren't standardized sizes of farm fields, but rather that we could custom drag the sizes of them and set corner posts. See this game: for quick example (linked to timestamp) https://youtu.be/dV_R0AH_hpU?t=168

**Edit: seems i can't link timestamp when its embedded. View at 2:50 mark

I think that would also make for a much more beautiful world if we could do that :-D

[Vuyek]

bumping for myself when I start a new game.

all medium fields, 6 per harvester/tractor.

[OffTheRailsGaming]

Originally posted by Vuyek:

bumping for myself when I start a new game.

all medium fields, 6 per harvester/tractor.

Yeah that's what works best for me. You can get away with a few less tractors than harvesters on the bigger farms but I prefer smaller ones so they don't have as far to travel, makes them a lot more efficient