The Next Farming Simulator.

[MrReclusive]

The Next Farming Simulator.

I really enjoy this game, but I when I'm playing I'm always constantly thinking of what could be added/changed to make it more entertaining.
I would like this game to be more "involved".
What I would LOVE! to see would be a MMO, but not just farming, add truck driving, construction, demolition, running a store, etc. Any type
of simulator you could think of combined into one online game. that would be awesome..
but I know that would require years to make, a huge staff, and I don't even know if the technology is to the point where that can be done...
(mostly bandwidth issues)

so instead, here's some things I would like to see in the next game.

----------------Additions needed--------------------
Player Creation/Customization: Doesn't have to be incredibly in depth, but some sort of player customization would be nice.
House/Building Customization: This is explained in more detail below.
Land/World Customization: Again, explained below.
Vehicles: Semi Trucks/Trailers, Pickup Trucks, Basic Construction Vehicles.
Random/Dynamic World Generation.
Disasters: mice, rats, floods, early snow/frost, bugs. etc... (this would require pesticides to be added to the game)

------------House/Building Customization-------------
House's should be enter able, Upgradable, and Needed (sleep, eat, shower, rest)
at the start of the game you have small single story, 2 bed room house, overtime you can spend money to upgrade that house.
and more floors, rooms, garages, etc.
This can be applied to allot of the buildings on the farm, sheds, silos, etc.
You start with a single silo, over time you expand to add more and/or bigger silos.
You start with a small barn, over time expand that till you pretty much have a warehouse.

-------------Starting Conditions---------------------
Players should start with the small house mention above
Players should start with a single wheat field
Players should start with the basic/cheap equipment required to harvest, plow, plant, and transport wheat
Players do not start with any animals, or places to raise animals.

------------------The Farm---------------------------
Everything for the farm should be place able objects.
Fuel, fertilizer, and seed at the farm should need to be restocked. (only wheat seed pre placed/stocked at start)
Silos very in size and can only hold X amount of goods.

----------------Semi Trucks--------------------------
Semi Trucks: Transport and delivery.
Transporting your crops from your silos to sell, or transporting your fuel, seed, fertilizer can be done 2 ways.
Buy the semi and appropriate trailer and haul it yourself.
Use route planing and higher a driver to do it for you when certain conditions are met.
when wheat stock is down to 10% the driver will deliver more.
when silo is 90% full the driver will come pick some up and deliver it for you.
All conditions are set when planing the route.
* Emergency fuel deliver, you can call for a fuel delivery directly out to a field in case your combine ran out of fuel and you have no way
to get fuel to it, at a higher cost of course.

--------------Construction Equipment-----------------
Tree cutters, Dump trucks, plows, cement mixers, etc, etc, etc...(basic construction equipment)
why?
when the game starts the map is not littered with fields.
you have a couple fields to start with but the rest of the land is just open grassy fields, wooded areas, etc.
once you need to expand you will need to...
using a basic in game editor, buy plot(s) of land, then mark out your field.
you will take your plow over there, and plow it out, the game not allowing your plow to "create field" outside our marked area that you made
in the editor. (creating fields is a pain right now, can never keep them straight)
if the area is wooded or has any trees you will either purchase the equipment, cut it down and haul it out yourself, or higher an outside
contractor to do it for you.
if you need roads its kind the same thing, either you buy the equipment and do it yourself, or higher a contractor.
roads available dirt, gravel, cement. (bridges also constructable from wood, steal, cement. *weight limits)
(dirt roads are automatic after repeated driving over the same path)

-------------Random/Dynamic World--------------------
It would be nice to have dynamic worlds that generate each time you play so you pretty much never play the same map twice, maybe have the option
to save a world so you can play it again if you really liked it.

----------------Multiplayer--------------------------
I want a VS mode, each player starts with his own farm and the first one to reach $1 mil wins

[jonnymoran]

If there was one thing id like them to work on it would be animals. There should be more to do with cattle and sheep such as introducing bulls to breed and the option to sell cattle for profit

[Ijustwannafarm2]

I think that it should also be released for a wider variety of consoles. like Xbox or the Kindle fire. As some devices cannot run the program (Android).

[mrsnobber]

What I would LOVE! to see would be a MMO, but not just farming, add truck driving, construction, demolition, running a store, etc. Any type
of simulator you could think of combined into one online game. that would be awesome..
but I know that would require years to make, a huge staff, and I don't even know if the technology is to the point where that can be done..

Im not kidding.
Adding level system and first person gun game (example combine with zombies or whatever rockstar game) would no doubt be a worldselling game.
voluntarily to play with or without "gun mode"

Yeah like that gonna happen <3

[sfy]

it could certainly be interesting. have to close the store to go blow up a 28 story building, then rush home to the farm and keep those darn zombies from trying to drive my Quadra Trac all over the farm while harvesting corn chaff from field 40 and getting it all compressed for sell to the BGA. then i have to get my Volvo F16H from the shop where they just threw in a new 1000HP engine and gave it a fresh paint job, and drive to Aberdeen from Lyon without sleeping.

sounds good to me.

[mrsnobber]

haha

[Tmac24]

I was hoping maybe there could be a miner change in this 2013 game or the next one but that you could store your grain in the areas such as the mill, the inn, port, freight yard, etc.

For example, say current prices for corn are significantly higher at the freight yard in Hagenstedt. And say your fields of corn that are around the freight yard are ready to harvest but the market prices just went down and you wanted to wait till the prices went back up. Instead of driving your grain all the way back to your personal storage and then having to reload your tipper later just to take it all the way back to the freight yard again I would like to be able to store it there at the freight yard and then sell it when I'm ready to. If you were to store it at one of those location, after every hour you would be charged a small storage fee of X amount just like it is in the real world. So when you get to the site to unload it should give you the option to sell or store. My family farm only stores what we will use for next years planting then haul the rest to store at the elevator where it sits until the market goes up and we sell. We get charged a small storage fee every month till we sell it off. I think by having this option not only makes it more like the real world but it also allows the player to gamble with your crop because you never know when a great demand will hit but it would be a risk you can take. Well thats my two cents on this topic

[wizard4278]

I was hoping maybe there could be a miner change in this 2013 game or the next one but that you could store your grain in the areas such as the mill, the inn, port, freight yard, etc.

For example, say current prices for corn are significantly higher at the freight yard in Hagenstedt. And say your fields of corn that are around the freight yard are ready to harvest but the market prices just went down and you wanted to wait till the prices went back up. Instead of driving your grain all the way back to your personal storage and then having to reload your tipper later just to take it all the way back to the freight yard again I would like to be able to store it there at the freight yard and then sell it when I'm ready to. If you were to store it at one of those location, after every hour you would be charged a small storage fee of X amount just like it is in the real world. So when you get to the site to unload it should give you the option to sell or store. My family farm only stores what we will use for next years planting then haul the rest to store at the elevator where it sits until the market goes up and we sell. We get charged a small storage fee every month till we sell it off. I think by having this option not only makes it more like the real world but it also allows the player to gamble with your crop because you never know when a great demand will hit but it would be a risk you can take. Well thats my two cents on this topic

Being retired from a grain elevator, I agree. It's called Grain Bank. There is a storage fee applied per bushel, and you basically play the grain market by selling at peak demand. Also before harvest you commit yourself to supply a certain amount of grain, and must meet this amount, or pay a penalty. This would add a new challange to the game.

[nzfarmergeorge]

maybe you should have to take care of amachines damage rust etc to make sheds actually do something

[Bob Tekkit]

I would also like to see vehicle maintenance/damage fees applied to the game, I'm not saying the vehicle should become unusable but if you drive off the edge of a cliff (as I've seen many do!) you should be forced to pay a repair bill for it. I guess the same applies when you run into the ai vehicles, running over pedestrians could bring it's own problems! I would also like to see the terrain/ground surface have some depth to it so, for example, after it has rained the ground can become boggy or muddy and vehicles could get stuck if you're not careful. Perhaps we would have to drop sand/gravel on the field paths to make them accessible again?

Just my thoughts on it.

[wizard4278]

I'd like the ability to pave or stone over grass areas. When I put a placable shed somewhere, it either has to sit on grass or dirt.

[theconabb]

I personally am a farmer and I love you game but I think that you could make this game even better by being able to buy upgrades like spotlights and 2 beacons instead of one and the ability to chip your engine and you should be able to have both the front and back lights on at the same time as I feel that this would make the game a lot more realistic and you should be ables to have the price in £'s instead for us british and you should have low loader trailer so that you can transport your combine with the tractor for long distances as the combine is really slow and you should have massey fergusons because they are just awesome especially 5455's and you should be able to buy front loaders for different tractors as this would also make the game better.

[mrnascar]

A lot of good ideas in this thread, some i'd thought of, others that never occurred to me,

A few of my thoughts:

1 - if you run over a pedestrian, he can sue you for up to 200K (arbitrary number I came up with..) Also there should be a body count screen in the PDA...

2 - The opportunity to buy a field back if you lose an auction - which can easily happen early in the game. I've had to really mess up my expansion strategy when a field goes on auction before I can use it effectively..(ever try to harvest field 7 with the basic combine?). That would obviously be a later in game occurrence when you have more capital. Perhaps the farmer would force you to pay double the nominal cost, but at least you'd have the option. As I see it now, unless you mess with the xml file, that field is lost forever in that savegame.

3 - if there were other farmers off-map you could interact with, you could rent equipment to or from them. or buy forage, etc...

4 - as equipment ages it requires more maintenance. If maintenance went up slightly say 2% a day, there would come a point where it would make sense to sell it and replace it.

5 - I LOVE parking my stuff in neat rows in sheds, (OCD farming?) but there is no material advantage to it. Expanding on point 4, perhaps maintenance costs on vehicles in sheds would be cut in half while they are in shelter. That would likely mean redefining maintenance costs on an hourly basis I suspect..

6 - I've realized that as you get deeper into a game there is no endpoint. I play a lot of Civilization IV (at least I did before getting this game...) and you have until 2050 to win the game, by amassing more points than other AI players on your map. You can continue to play after that, but there is little incentive. Expanding on the career concept, and the idea mentioned earlier of personalizing your farmer persona, how about establishing an endpoint based on your in-game age? My concept is that you start off having inherited the farm at age 25 from your grandfather, and you need to achieve certain levels of land/cash/equipment/critters by age 79, when your grandson is ready to take over the farm (Your son wanted nothing to do with it... he's doing standup routine in LA...). Depending on how much you leave for the grandson, you can be rated - example Jed Clampett or Pa Kettle if you don't do well... Jethro Tull if you do middling, Cyrus McCormick if you do really well (no slight to my Brit cousins intended...). In CIV IV you get rated from Dan Quayle upwards to Winston Churchill etc...

Just a couple thoughts. I love the game as it is as well...

[Voidheartd]

Lost auctions don't prevent you from buying the field later.... I think they can even go up for auction multiple times.

[mrnascar]

Yes - I found that out after I posted the above- shoulda gone back and edited it... thanks!