Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

FarmerJimbob
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by FarmerJimbob »

Dexzilla wrote: Sun Feb 18, 2018 9:51 pm I am just uploading the start of a play through to test exactly this out. It looks tight but possible.
Would be very interested in your findings.

I think people that just come out and say it is profitable are offsetting or ignoring a lot of costs because they have the tractors and equipment for working the land anyway but for pigs to be truly profitable (ignoring the opportunity cost of selling the crops) they would need to cover the cost of all this plus buying up half the map to have enough fields to work to keep them going through the year. My original question considered the opportunity cost as why would you make an end product when you can make more money selling the raw ingredients - that economy doesn't make any sense. It is just a game so its perfectly fine that pigs just give another area of gameplay and don't stack up financially, I was merely querying whether that was the reality rather than just my perception.
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reallogger
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by reallogger »

I'm also interested in seeing the results of these tests. :)

We never had time to do that type of testing. As I wrote previously, the profitability of pigs will be significantly improved in the next version. To the extent where you can buy pigfood in bulk and get a decent earning. Whether making your own pigfood is more profitable than buying it directly in bulk is not something I've had time to test as there are so many variables with equipment setup. It also depends whether you use those machines to grow crops that are sold directly, which means that the machine cost should not be carried by only the pig operation.
IseOlen
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by IseOlen »

I'll do the pigs economy test tonight (starting 17:00UTC).
Plan:
1. Create new savegame (suggest a map where free water is near pigs or free water mod).
2. Mod 1 million into it (so I can have anything I need).
3. Put a mod silo near the feeding area (so I would spend less time carting food). Should be one that can hold everything pigs need.
4. Fill the silo with food (barley, canola, corn, sugarbeet) and straw for pigs (remove anything else).
5. Buy a mid-sized tractor (suggestions?), front loader+bucket (for cleaning), tipper, water tank. Everything from standard game.
5.1 Mod the sum again to be exactly 1M.
---Save game + copy folder to another slot (see below).
6. At exactly 9AM first day will buy 100 pigs (should be enough to minimize rounding errors).
7. Will speed-run through the year while:
7.1 Cleaning daily at 8AM and 8PM.
7.2 Fill food + water (from free source) so nothing runs out.
7.3 Daily at 9AM will mark down sell prices for all the used food, straw, slurry, manure, pigs. Amount of foods, straw, fertilizer, manure and pigs. Amount of money.
8. At 9AM 1st day of second year will be last checkpoint.

The copied save could be used for easy vs normal vs hard or other such additional comparisons

I have actually already done the "how many pigs you'll have in a year if you start with 100". I got to 150. So basically it comes down to "how much food was used in a year" vs "price of 50 pigs+created slurry and manure".
The price of slurry and manure is debatable - in an ordinary game you'll probably use it to fertilize fields. So selling price probably does not show actual value for player. On another hand - this also means you have to buy additional equipment (costs).

Any suggestions are welcomed.
FarmerJimbob
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by FarmerJimbob »

I'm pretty sure that if you make it profitable to keep pigs by just buying pig feed it will be very much less profitable (or still not profitable at all) to keep them by producing your own feed through growing crops. All you will need equipment-wise is a means to get the feed and water into the troughs and you're sorted.

There's nothing strictly wrong with that as we're talking about a video game and that may be the way some people want to play, like having the money cheat mod, but its not the way Giants intended pig husbandry to function and it doesn't really sit well for me with a fantastic mod that intended to add realism and complexity to the base game. Giants certainly didn't get everything about the economic model perfect in the base game but making pig feed available but highly expensive was spot on as it encouraged players to play the farming part of the game in order to keep pigs and make a decent income from them.

Don't get me wrong, I sympathise with the seasons team trying to make the imperfect pig model function in their fantastic mod which really makes you think and plan ahead and I wouldn't expect them necessarily to fix it given the complexities which are exacerbated by the mechanics of seasons (like reproduction rates) but please don't paper over the cracks with a pig feed purchasing exploit.
FarmerJimbob
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by FarmerJimbob »

IseOlen wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:31 pm Any suggestions are welcomed.
I would probably wait until the new version of Seasons is out, your proposed experiment was pretty much covered for the current version in this reddit...

https://www.reddit.com/r/farmingsimulat ... h=b9a36772
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Dexzilla
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by Dexzilla »

It's up! LOL 7 hours to upload from the shire! https://youtu.be/OP6RzxjwQIA
All my games get a spreadsheet so I will be able to keep and show the pigs 'accounts' and the secondary income separately.
The hardest thing to decide is whether with cost of the beasts, interest on the loan to get them and their overheads factored in if selling the crops isn't just by far the best option since prices vary so much. Their 'economy' is not needing much time or investment in addition equipment.

LOL, Apparently if you post a vid to YT with 'pigs' in the title it cannot be monetised!! That's my retirement plan shot down...
XBOX YouTube:
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Cow Care and Cattle Calculations https://youtu.be/1LE5vF1b5v8
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Basic Forestry: The Wood is Good https://youtu.be/uKG1fEsLujs
Let's Play FS19 XBOX Ravenport HARD Pig Farm Pt:11 BAD MOTHER-TRUCKER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI84FSCccHU&t=89s
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reallogger
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by reallogger »

FarmerJimbob wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:59 pm I'm pretty sure that if you make it profitable to keep pigs by just buying pig feed it will be very much less profitable (or still not profitable at all) to keep them by producing your own feed through growing crops. All you will need equipment-wise is a means to get the feed and water into the troughs and you're sorted.

There's nothing strictly wrong with that as we're talking about a video game and that may be the way some people want to play, like having the money cheat mod, but its not the way Giants intended pig husbandry to function and it doesn't really sit well for me with a fantastic mod that intended to add realism and complexity to the base game. Giants certainly didn't get everything about the economic model perfect in the base game but making pig feed available but highly expensive was spot on as it encouraged players to play the farming part of the game in order to keep pigs and make a decent income from them.

Don't get me wrong, I sympathise with the seasons team trying to make the imperfect pig model function in their fantastic mod which really makes you think and plan ahead and I wouldn't expect them necessarily to fix it given the complexities which are exacerbated by the mechanics of seasons (like reproduction rates) but please don't paper over the cracks with a pig feed purchasing exploit.
Very well written and it pretty well captures it. It is a no win situation :(

Next release will not only make pig food cheaper, but maybe more important is that is also lowers how much pigs eat. So profitability will increase also if you make your own pig food. Naturally the challenge when making own pig food is the purchase costs of equipment that is a quite large cost compared to the running cost. So profitability will be better when running large scale when making your own feed. When buying feed, the profitability is less dependent on the scale of the operation.
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Dexzilla
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by Dexzilla »

Corstaad wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:24 am I don't remember if you said if it represented actual prices or just seasons economy page is inaccurate. In my play through its showing prices 20% higher then what is actually happening for that season period. A goofy thing is I noticed barley as 20% lower then what happened. I just stopped using it and go of historical high periods. Its working out fine for me now.
Take the economy graphs as representative. the numbers will not match. Sale price of pigs varies from about 2200 to 840 (from memory, in normal)
XBOX YouTube:
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Cow Care and Cattle Calculations https://youtu.be/1LE5vF1b5v8
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Basic Forestry: The Wood is Good https://youtu.be/uKG1fEsLujs
Let's Play FS19 XBOX Ravenport HARD Pig Farm Pt:11 BAD MOTHER-TRUCKER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI84FSCccHU&t=89s
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Dexzilla
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by Dexzilla »

FarmerJimbob wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:59 pm I'm pretty sure that if you make it profitable to keep pigs by just buying pig feed it will be very much less profitable (or still not profitable at all) to keep them by producing your own feed through growing crops. All you will need equipment-wise is a means to get the feed and water into the troughs and you're sorted.

There's nothing strictly wrong with that as we're talking about a video game and that may be the way some people want to play, like having the money cheat mod, but its not the way Giants intended pig husbandry to function and it doesn't really sit well for me with a fantastic mod that intended to add realism and complexity to the base game. Giants certainly didn't get everything about the economic model perfect in the base game but making pig feed available but highly expensive was spot on as it encouraged players to play the farming part of the game in order to keep pigs and make a decent income from them.

Don't get me wrong, I sympathise with the seasons team trying to make the imperfect pig model function in their fantastic mod which really makes you think and plan ahead and I wouldn't expect them necessarily to fix it given the complexities which are exacerbated by the mechanics of seasons (like reproduction rates) but please don't paper over the cracks with a pig feed purchasing exploit.
100% agree
XBOX YouTube:
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Cow Care and Cattle Calculations https://youtu.be/1LE5vF1b5v8
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Basic Forestry: The Wood is Good https://youtu.be/uKG1fEsLujs
Let's Play FS19 XBOX Ravenport HARD Pig Farm Pt:11 BAD MOTHER-TRUCKER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI84FSCccHU&t=89s
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Dexzilla
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by Dexzilla »

FarmerJimbob wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 10:42 am
Dexzilla wrote: Sun Feb 18, 2018 9:51 pm I am just uploading the start of a play through to test exactly this out. It looks tight but possible.
Would be very interested in your findings.

I think people that just come out and say it is profitable are offsetting or ignoring a lot of costs because they have the tractors and equipment for working the land anyway but for pigs to be truly profitable (ignoring the opportunity cost of selling the crops) they would need to cover the cost of all this plus buying up half the map to have enough fields to work to keep them going through the year. My original question considered the opportunity cost as why would you make an end product when you can make more money selling the raw ingredients - that economy doesn't make any sense. It is just a game so its perfectly fine that pigs just give another area of gameplay and don't stack up financially, I was merely querying whether that was the reality rather than just my perception.
I like maths, wait for Ep 2!
XBOX YouTube:
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Cow Care and Cattle Calculations https://youtu.be/1LE5vF1b5v8
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Basic Forestry: The Wood is Good https://youtu.be/uKG1fEsLujs
Let's Play FS19 XBOX Ravenport HARD Pig Farm Pt:11 BAD MOTHER-TRUCKER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI84FSCccHU&t=89s
Corstaad
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by Corstaad »

I'm not a pig expert by any means but most pig farmers I've seen don't mix there own ration. The elevator comes out and fills the bin. If anything pig food is more realistic then the current grain ration build.
IseOlen
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by IseOlen »

FarmerJimbob wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:02 pm
IseOlen wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:31 pm Any suggestions are welcomed.
I would probably wait until the new version of Seasons is out, your proposed experiment was pretty much covered for the current version in this reddit...

https://www.reddit.com/r/farmingsimulat ... h=b9a36772
1. using "Animal Table Manners" reduces profitability - lost corn. The more animals you have the bigger the difference (spent time and equipment costs stay the same).
2. "I will assume that food consumption will be at the same rate every season" - I want to be sure about this.
3. "During summer and winter the pigs will only require the bare necessities to survive. I will in this case estimate that I only feed the pigs root crops during Summer and Winter." - Realloger, please confirm that pigs health will not be affected with "only some food components are provided". Otherwise it's even more challenging - you have to weigh "total food price" vs "benefits from higher health".
4. "At the end of the first spring I had made a total of 21 pigs. The same amount was made during Autumn for a grant total of 42 pigs." - this cannot be right (OK, found the correction below). In my test 100->150 was the result (I bought pigs at evening of last winter day and checked again the year later).

One of the most influential factor is probably pigs sell price - selling time has to be right.
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aklein
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by aklein »

I have been using the dev version of seasons and pigs are significantly less 'piggy' with respect to food needs. I found the amount I needed to feed the pigs every 3 days dropped significantly making the amount of land you needed to grow crops for the purpose of feeding the pigs to be much lower. Unless you had some massive number of pigs as in several hundred the amount of root crop needed is in the hundreds of L for a game year.

I feed my pigs just before changing out seasons. I didn't feed them again for 4 or so feeding cycles as they ate down the excess in the food area.

The best way to play pigs IMO is to plan out how many you feel you will purchase and to plant your crops accordingly in spring and summer. Harvest your crops in autumn and also buy your starting number of pigs in autumn when they are cheapest. Pigs with new seasons will reproduce Spring, Summer and Autumn so you will have more pigs at the end of the year than current seasons which only has reproduction in Spring and Autumn. Then sell the pigs at the best price which is early spring or mid winter.
FarmerJimbob
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by FarmerJimbob »

reallogger wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:34 pm Very well written and it pretty well captures it. It is a no win situation :(

Next release will not only make pig food cheaper, but maybe more important is that is also lowers how much pigs eat. So profitability will increase also if you make your own pig food. Naturally the challenge when making own pig food is the purchase costs of equipment that is a quite large cost compared to the running cost. So profitability will be better when running large scale when making your own feed. When buying feed, the profitability is less dependent on the scale of the operation.
Agreed, it is a no-win and I don't think your team's time would be best spent trying to find an answer to the pig conundrum. Reducing the amount of food the pigs need is about the best thing you can do with it as in my quick calculations I found I was going to need half my fields just to feed 200 pigs for the year (a headcount I had in the base game which I felt was fairly modest but allowed a decent regular income). I would prefer to support them through making my own feed and if I can do that and still have enough crop to sell to cover all the farm costs I'll be happy as a pig in you-know-what! Thanks for all your efforts - I'm really enjoying FS17 in season mode!

Corstaad - I agree, most RL farmers probably do buy the feed ready made but the game seems to me to be setup more for self sufficiency, to my mind the rewards should be greater if you take that path.
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Dexzilla
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Re: Pigs Profitable in Seasons mode?

Post by Dexzilla »

aklein wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:11 pm buy your starting number of pigs in autumn when they are cheapest.
I can't do this on Xbox as only the sell pries vary, Pigs are always 3360. Other animals the same. Removes something for me to remember though!
XBOX YouTube:
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Cow Care and Cattle Calculations https://youtu.be/1LE5vF1b5v8
Farming Simulator19 XBOX Basic Forestry: The Wood is Good https://youtu.be/uKG1fEsLujs
Let's Play FS19 XBOX Ravenport HARD Pig Farm Pt:11 BAD MOTHER-TRUCKER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI84FSCccHU&t=89s
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