I am very new to the FS series and started with FS19 during the free epic giveaway and I am hooked! Finally a game I can sink my teeth or should I rather say plough in!
I generally start a new map as a new farmer (being a new farmer ) and then I feel very restricted. Generally I sell everything and pick a spot I like, but I find this very difficult as there are so many options. I often spend hours just driving around a map looking at places where to start the farm....does anyone else have this problem?
The game is entirely open, so that leaves a lot to decide upon..
With limited assets and wanting to start of working fields, I've been looking for fields that give many acres per dollar. I've played the most on Ravenport, and there field 12 have the most acres per dollar for fields that at that cost or below for instance. But starting of there seems a bit hackish as I then start without any farm buildings or anything. Not that farm buildings seems to be needed for anything to begin with. I have a farm forward mod to skip time when wanted, which is nice anyhow as I play seasons, so I don't need a sleep trigger. The map has a public silo I can use, and all the vehicles and gear seems to live fine without shelter, so haven't found anything I strictly need any farm buildings for.
I recently restarted from scratch picking the suggested farm yard area first anyhow, even though it has very few acres per dollar to get a bit more immersive. But building a farm has challenges of its own. First of all, there's not a lot of buildings to choose from in the default game, few of them has actually uses and they also cost a lot to prioritize early. They are kind of strict about placement, so you are likely to need to cut down trees, remove stumps and landscape the area to make space, and landscaping has no undo button and eats your money and it's hard to know how much you need to landscape in order to place a building.
Not to mention how much space around it you'll need to have vehicle access for various stuff around it.
Make a "test" save file on the same map and place government subsidies to get free money.
Then you can try placing buildings and see how it turns out without ruining your good save file. You can also test equipment on the save too so you don't waste money buying things that are not compatible (e.g. if a trailer is too big for your tractor).
If you're on PC you can just edit savegame directly too as it's plaintext xml. You can disable autosave to test something out and quit without saving if it went bollocks, or you can take a backup of your savegame dir and restore if it went bollocks..
While we're on the topic of save games, I have a quick question. I have a save on spot 9 that ended up turning into a main playthrough of mine, but hate having to scroll to the end of the list. Would it cause any problems to change the name in the FS directory from Savegame 9 to Savegame 2?
It is possible to move your farm later if you don't like the first spot you picked.
I had to do that on Midwest Horizon a few weeks ago. The farm I had originally picked just got to small and crowded so I bought a farm a couple miles down the road and moved everything over, sold most of the land and bought more around the new site. The ability to sell land in 19 has proven to be a very nice feature more than once now.
Former real life farmer of lentils, mustard, and wheat on the Canadian prairies.
Mwal wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2020 2:15 pm
Yup just change the number. When I wanna make test games where I’m established I just copy and change the number and they show right up.
That makes things a lot easier on my end!
Dairy farmer, college student, part-time modder, always looking to drive a tractor
) and then I feel very restricted. Generally I sell everything and pick a spot I like, but I find this very difficult as there are so many options. I often spend hours just driving around a map looking at places where to start the farm....does anyone else have this problem? 
