Field Test: Stone Damage

[NDDan]

Forgive me if this has been reported already. I did some tests regarding stones and equipment damage. I was curious to see how stones of different sizes would effect the equipment. My findings: Stones do not matter in the end.

Here's what I did. I used my test plots (four identical 1 HA fields). I cultivated, plowed, and subsoiled the different fields to get one with no stones, one with small stones, one with medium stones, and one with large stones. I bought 4 each of the little Massey Ferguson 5 series tractors and the Vaderstad Spirit 3m direct drill. I set them all going at the same time on helper mode. When they all finished, I would change the seed type and set them going again. This way I could run up the hours on these fields without having to advance days. I wanted to learn only about stones, without age being a factor. Here's what I learned:

(1) Stones had no apparent effect on the tractors. At no point during almost 3 hours of testing was there any meaningful difference in the value or damage of the tractors. So it appears that stones only have an affect on implements.

(2) Stones only affected the paint condition of the seeders. The "wearable damage" (see "vehicles.xml"), which you pay for when you repair, was not affected by the stones. The "wearNode amount," which you pay for by repainting, grew fastest on the seeder going through large rocks. Predictably, the medium stones caused the next fastest paint damage, followed by small stones, and followed again by no stones. The drill going through large stones reached max paint damage somewhere around 7,300 seconds (2 hours). Medium stones hit it at about 8,700 seconds (2:25). Small stones hit it around 9,300 seconds (2:35). And no stones hit max paint damage around 10,000 seconds (2:47).

The greatest difference in value I noticed between the seeder in no stones and the seeder in large stones was $1,297 ($30,210 v. $28,913). This was just before the seeder in large stones hit max paint damage. After that point, the values got closer together. In the end, after 2 hours and 50 minutes, all four seeders had reached max paint damage and seeded exactly 10 HA (24.7 ac). The values of each of them was within one dollar, either $28,336 or $28,337.

It has been noted elsewhere that there is no benefit to repainting a vehicle until you sell it. Therefore, assuming you don't care how shiny your discs are, and you're going to use a tool for at least a few hours, there is no point in worrying about stones.

[humbe]

Thanks a lot for testing Saved me some work.. Not surprised by your result but nice to have it confirmed.

I think I still might get rid of stones after plowing just to make it look nice and shiny, but likely only with a roller and stay away from anything giving medium+ stones.

[Eische]

Thanks for testing!
For me it appears to be a bug that only paint is affected. Does not really makes sense for me.

The pure costs for repainting is just one side. But for someone who does not care about paint wear, stones can just be neglected.
All the official explanations made it sound that stones will affect the wear node of your implement so it wears down faster and you have to repair it more often to keep maximum working speed.
In this scenario, picking stones would make sense especially on larger fields.

[AgroDude]

You need to try it with 4 identical harvesters harvesting the same crop. It's the harvesters that are most affected (supposedly) by stones.

[NDDan]

You need to try it with 4 identical harvesters harvesting the same crop. It's the harvesters that are most affected (supposedly) by stones.

I did that too in another test, though I didn’t run it as long. But it’s still just wear on the paint, which doesn’t affect the functionality of the header. You can test it if you want to. I’ve seen enough to satisfy myself for now, at least until the next patch.

[humbe]

You need to try it with 4 identical harvesters harvesting the same crop. It's the harvesters that are most affected (supposedly) by stones.

I did that too in another test, though I didn’t run it as long. But it’s still just wear on the paint, which doesn’t affect the functionality of the header. You can test it if you want to. I’ve seen enough to satisfy myself for now, at least until the next patch.

Sadly the case with playtesting.. Any patch can render it useless.. Would be nice with more details in docs so players wanting to know the rules within their sandbox doesn't need to use hours to test lots of different behaviors...