Crop Theft

[LouieH]

What if I take a harvisting mission, store the crops and abandon the mission? Will I keep the crop?

[NiceGuy]

You get charged for the stolen crop. You can use this to "buy" crop you need. For example if you need corn for animals but don't have the equipment to do it your self 😁

[VA gamer]

You can actually divert some crops and not get charged, at least the last time I tried. For most fields, you only have to harvest a certain amount to complete the contract. The remainder pays out in cash. (This can be mean a bunch of bonus money on larger fields).

Once you get the mission completed notification, you can sell the rest of the crop at a higher paying location. Then push the completed mission button for the regular payout.

It might be possible to just store the residual crop in your silo once you reach the mission complete point - have never tried that.

[Cr0V1k1ng]

Originally posted by VA gamer:

You can actually divert some crops and not get charged, at least the last time I tried. For most fields, you only have to harvest a certain amount to complete the contract. The remainder pays out in cash. (This can be mean a bunch of bonus money on larger fields).

Once you get the mission completed notification, you can sell the rest of the crop at a higher paying location. Then push the completed mission button for the regular payout.

It might be possible to just store the residual crop in your silo once you reach the mission complete point - have never tried that.

I did some science on this.

Mission completion is calculated through a combination of the percentage of field liberated from crops (the work) and the percentage of cashed in crops (expected harvest).

Long story short, if you strip clean the field without cashing in any crops you get to 85% mission completion. To get the left-over 15% of mission you need to cash in 75% of expected harvest, the rest is yours to keep.

So while you're harvesting, submit the crops up to the point when you have a notification "75% of the crops for field [xx] returned" or something along those lines and you can safely pull the rest of the harvest into your (or railroad) silo for keeping until the good price opportunity, or you can sell it immediately in any other location that accepts that crop.

[Cr0V1k1ng]

Of course, if you haggle over a single potato, you'll spend ages looking for that potato in the fields, so return somewhere about 76% to be on the safe side, unless of course you return 70% and then finish the harvest, then you keep handing over the goods carefully until you notice your money starts rising followed by the "contract complete" notification.

[SteelFire]

@OP, if you're looking to do that, then flipping the field is the better option. Buy the field, harvest the goods (now legitimately yours), then sell the field. As was first pointed out, you'll get charged for abandoning a contract with missing crops, so you may not end up better off.

Keeping the excess though, can be vary valuable, both in terms of providing animal food, if that's the goal, or selling for a higher price. Sometimes the excess can be worth more than the contract if you've also done the contracts to fertilize and weed the fields; maximizing the end yield. Bailing grass silage contracts can be especially lucrative.