First game in FS22. Hard on Elm Creek

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humbe
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:33 pm

First game in FS22. Hard on Elm Creek

Post by humbe »

Testing out FS22 here..

As I like the economic handling I figured I'd test out hard mode on Elms Creek. But as I'm testing stuff out, I would like to not skip out on new functionality.

After first cycle i ended up with the following equipment:

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I really would like to avoid having to use a 1.2m working width plow, so went for the AgroMasz one with 2.5m working width, but that means 160+ hp tractor.. Massey Ferguson MF 3670 is cheapest tractor with 160+ HP (Got 170). Cheapest harvester. Not cheapest trailer, but bought it used so ended up cheapest option without a lose first axle so I can manage to reverse with it. Cheapest seeder, weeder, lime wagon, roller, forage wagon. Spent a few dollars extra for cultivator and mulcher for working width, but not much. I guess I shoulda went for cheapest stone picker too, but went for more expensive option to get working width > 2.3m. The middle option needs too much horsepowers.

Bought the middle plot of land where you start on easy, though without farmhouse and silo on hard. Also bought field 48 to get bit more land to work..

Still.. $360.000 in depth, after gotten ~$40.000 in contracts income. Harvest was worth around $12.000 even though I waited until optimal period in year to sell it, but yearly interest of loan is ~$14.000. Repair of tractor alone after the year was $6700, and then another $560 for the trailer that I bought used. Not to mention costs of seed/fertilizer. Numbers deep in red even with no helper use at all.

Farmhouse not an option at $150.000. Currently using mod to sleep anywhere (hammock on first floor in garage will do) to skip time.

Hard economy in hard mode it seems. Contracts seems to be the no-brainer. Taking expenses in mind, even if I had no loan and interest to pay, I'd still earn more money doing a couple of easy contracts with borrowed equipment, than I do from working own fields.

FS22 Likes:
  • I can now quit the game with alt-F4 without it restarting.. And I can quit game to quickly get to main menu.. Minor but good.
  • I love the better looking cows, the deer running around, pedestrians not walking in queue in a circle, cars in more(?) roads. There's still plenty to do to make the landscape more alive like in the real world, but good improvement.
  • Some good functionality from mods now in base game. Seasons, manual gear, multiple contracts (though that seemed to bug for me later), higher speed settings in game. As of now with little mods available, you miss the more advanced bits of mods, but getting stuff in the base game should make issues and mod conflicts be reduced over time.
  • Sadly the GFX card I bought to be ready for FS22 died a few days before FS22 released, so have sadly been playing on low settings as I know have a big ultra-wide screen, so might see more nice visual improvements when I get that card replaced.
  • Production lines. Can't afford any in my test game, so not tested yet, but sounds fun.
  • Used equipment. Though it would be nice to easier see what the repair cost to get those repaired is too ;)
  • Rocks and rolling. Not sure I wanna deal with this long term, but any optional feature trying to bring realism is nice. A bit too much rocks to handle now though. Especially as I suspect the issue want get smaller no matter how many I pick.
  • More crop types. Can't hurt. Haven't gotten around to test it yet, but grapes and greenhouses and such producing new stuff for production lines sounds interesting.
  • Improved landscaping looks good, but haven't tested it much yet. Seems still to miss the critical feature of planning what to do, and then committing and paying or reverting and not do the changes you tried.
  • Better helper system is great, but playing without cheating in money, they're too expensive to use. At least to begin with when you have small fields and tools with small working widths.
Most missed functionalty from FS19 with all the mods I got used to:
  • 3rd person view from mod. Son really likes to see the dude when running around.
  • Peek left/Peek right and automatic turn around when hitting reverse. Provided by VCA, and great to be able to drive around inside the cab without having to use the mouse while driving.
  • The radio had much better set of tunes in FS19 in my personal opinion.
  • Price trends from seasons that actually showed a graph with actual numbers on the axis.
  • Starting at very hard economy, there seems to lack cheap options for quite a few tools. Cheapest options seems to be more expensive than in FS19 at least for some categories, and then there's new stuff to get to handle new functionality on top of that.
  • I used courseplay to automize some bits that just saved me time in game. Improved helper system helps, but would be nice to be able to configure the wages. If wanting to play focus more on economy management, it is nice to be able to automatically do the rest of that field automatically, but let it be "you, the farmer" that does it so you don't need to pay wage for it.
Issues seen:
  • Seeder ridge marker picking up stones. Fixed in 1.2 patch now ;D
  • No sleep trigger in hard mode as farmhouse isn't there. Cheap farmhouse in 1.2 patch and mod (not in modhub) for sleep anywhere resolves it.
  • Contracts stated wrong field numbers. Fixed in 1.2 patch it looks like.
  • Harvest contracts that produced straw had a bug that seemed to assume you could deliver the straw, so the contracts couldn't complete. Might be fixed by 1.2 patch. They stated to have fixed one issue of not being able to complete contracts at least. Not sure if it was this one.
  • All land outside fields needed lime and plowing. Fixed in 1.2 patch.
  • Mulching seems to also count outside field. Just confuses field graphics a little, so not a big issue.
  • Income from own field work doesn't seem to fit maintenance cost and contract income on hard mode. From an economic perspective, it seems you should just do contracting. At least until you can buy a decent sized field and decent gear without loaning from the bank.