A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

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humbe
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A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

The year is 1975.. After Watergate, political tension was high. In a heated political argument I commented, that if capitalism leads to a few rich people owning everything through big corporations and the rest of us slave around to maintain their lavish lifestyles, maybe we should consider options. After that I was branded a socialist, and some nutjob tagged me a Russian spy. With the CIA being reported for abuse, I thought it best to get the hell out of Dodge and get myself a new identity.

I packed the family car, got my two kids and wife with me and drove out west where hopefully no one will recognize my face. My Lincoln Continental would turn too many heads, and would not be very useful out in rural country, so we traded it in for a Ford F100 somewhere in Nebraska.

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As luck would have it, it was only 3 years old and looked pretty much as new. Looks like a useful vehicle out here. Sadly all our assets were frozen back east in the bank, and the little cash we managed to get with us has been wasted in food and gas. After the last stop and filling the gas tank, all is gone. All we have is the truck, a tent, and some clothes and stuff.

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What are we to do?.. It's August, so we can rough it in the forest here, and can likely find food around here. Luckily it's August so the weather is nice. Being out of cash and with our final tank of gas, I guess we'll have to stop and try to make a life for ourselves somehow. We should be far enough into the wilds for no one to recognize us at least.. Down at the last pub I found, someone was talking about there being gold up here. It's a long shot indeed, but with nothing else to do, lets give it a shot..

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Panning the river.. Can I find some gold nuggets in here I wonder..
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

Ok.. Some notes about my new scenario:
  • The game is a start from scratch game. I've bought the Ford F-100 and the tent, and then set the credits to zero. Game settings default for start from scratch game, apart from Trailer Fill Limit being enabled.
  • The game will start in August 1975, and progress as in game time goes.
  • I will try (hard) to not buy anything that wasn't available at the time !! (Sadly, this requires a ton of mods). That is easy for tractors with a ton of useful data at https://www.tractordata.com . However, I've had a hard time tracking down manufacture years of other equipment, and there may not be suitable mods available for any category either, so I can't guarantee about all the equipment.
  • I will also try to pick stuff fitting a US scenario when possible, but as there's few items to pick among, it is not possible for all scenarios (and I know little about what foreign equipment would actually exist in US too)
  • Likewise, I will not be allowed to buy equipment for sale until it is possible. As for instance my Ford, which came in 1972, and I bought it 3 years used, so I could not have bought it before 1975.
  • To make it easier to start of from nothing, and to not only see used sales for stuff that is too new for me to buy, I'm using the FS22_VehicleSaleSystemCustomizer mod to up the number of used sales being created. Other than spawning more used sales, I've altered settings to keep the rest game default though.
  • If I manage to find all the gold nuggets, there's $1.000.000 possible income as starting capital from that. I'll not start looking for all at once, but try to find when needed, and leave rest as a reserve for a later emergency.


Naturally, there will be no contracts and no loans. (Can't dare risk my identity being found by the bank).

I will likely end up using helpers / follow-me / courseplay at times, but I'm roleplaying that it's me (or my family) driving, and the fact that I'm using helpers, is not because I'm hiring people to work for me, but because I'm in real life might want to not do too tedious bits of work all manually to keep the game fun. Thus I've hacked the game to not deducy any wages, as if I wasted enough real time I wouldn't need to pay wages. (Hoping to bring ContractorMod into game, but it's still beta so waiting a bit.)
Last edited by humbe on Fri Mar 22, 2024 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DEERE317
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by DEERE317 »

Very interesting world building/back story!
FS15 & FS19 Platinum Edition PC (and War Thunder, Gaijin is way worse than GIANTS ever has been accused of being)
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Deere, Fendt, Claas, and sometimes the rest of Agco.
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EUROFARMER22
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by EUROFARMER22 »

Hey mate, good luck with your new adventure *thumbsup*
I'll be watching your progress.
John Deere - Nothing runs like a deere !

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humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

*Eureka*.. We struck gold.. And what a nugget it was.. It's so heavy I can't lift it. Took a while before I opened F1 menu, and figured I could just press R to get money for it instead of hauling it somewhere ;)

Immediately thinking we're a billionaire with that huge piece of gold, it turns out the quality of the gold is really shitty, and with the limited opportunities to peddling gold around here, I only managed to get $50.000 for the chunk. After some weeks of digging we found more though, and we have managed to sell gold for $400.000.

After some discussions with the family, we decided to see if we could find a plot of land to work around here and settle down.. Talking to Ken in the local pub, I here the Johnsons are moving away and selling their farm. They want $85.000 for the plot of land, $88.547 for the vehicles and equipment on it, and $223.305 for the buildings. Who can argue with so well thought out, specific prices.. In total that is $396.852... That doesn't leave much money for expenses afterwards.

Excited to have a look at the farm we take a drive..

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The farmhouse looks like a run down old train wagon.. But the barn and the vehicle shed looks great..

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There's quite a bit of machinery here.. We have to take a better look later ;)

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And there's some animal pens here too.. For hens, sheep and cows it looks like... A fairly oversized manure pit given the small cow shed, but there's enough space around here..

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From the map we got of the farmyard and plot, 5 fields were also shown.. They're totally overgrown though. Probably haven't been used in a few years..


The price is what I used to buy used gear and construct buildings. As this is a historic scenario it would be nice to start of with 1975 prices and have inflation happening, but I'm not bothering to manually change prices everywhere to handle that, so prices will just have to be as they were. Some prices for pieces I have used have probably not been adjusted for inflation, and some might just be flat out wrong. I've decided not to care too much about that this time around.

Terrain modifications I've done for free using a mod. Modifying to fit my scenario and not because we are doing work on the farm. Costs related to make map fit my scenario I'm not gonna add to game accounting.

I'm not sure if all the buildings I've built all use pre 1975 tech. Might be details that has come later, but all in all I think they fit in well into the time period. The silo workings might be a bit too fancy, but that also relates to making things playable.
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

With all the overgrown grass around here, I guess the first task will be to clear a bit of grass and make some hay. We've got space for cows and sheep so hay sounds useful. After we've cleared away a bit, maybe we can find and inspect our fields a bit closer ;)

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Gotta have small equipment for this barn to work as an equipment shed.. I guess we might want to invest in an easier to use equipment shed at some point..

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Here we got some of our newly acquired gear ready for some mowing..

We've got a 1972 Massey Ferguson 185 multi-power. Top of the line from Massey-Ferguson here, and it's only 3 years old.. Of course there's the big 1150 at a massive 146 hp, but that's a much bigger and more expensive tractor. This'll do nicely. Being the strongest tractor we have, we're probably going to be using it for our heavy duty work like plowing, so some sort of front weight would be useful, but I can't see any connections for that. We can get a front attacher but it looks like an attacher to hook up a trailer the wrong way around only. I guess if we really need more weight at the front we'll have to get a front loader and use that to weigh it down.

The Massey is pulling an old mower of unknown brand. It's a heavy piece of machinery and require a lot of power to drag around, but I'm hoping the Massey will be up for it, even though the mower spec recommends a tractor of at least 80 horsepowers. Who had that when they created this thing back in the day?

Behind we have a 1973 John Deere 1630 tractor with a cab. 60 horsepowers and we have a front loader for it too. This is also pretty new, especially considering the farm don't seem to have been worked for at least a year. It's towing a tedder with two rotating discs to throw the grass up in the air.

Equipment like mowers and tedders are hard to find data on. Also limited mod availability for older type of gear. Have no idea about the mower origin but it sure does look old enough at least.. Though I am shooting for gear likely to be used in 1975 and not ancient gear. The tedder mod is marked Z525 which looks like a reference to a modern tedder, but I've seen several tedders looking fairly similar in what looks like more time fitting models. The tech doesn't seem to contain anything unrealistic for 1975 as far as I know, and it looks the part, so figured I'd use it.

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Me and Laurie is going out to mow a bit here and test out the tractors and mowing gear..


Oh.. And if any of you have any suggestions for great mods with gear from the 1970-1990 era feel free to suggest. I need a much thicker catalog of possible upgrades to wait for, as I'd like to switch out some of this equipment before I get to the year 2000 ;) Oh.. And as I'm not a farmer, nor an American, I don't know how to make this the most real. Any suggestions are welcome.
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

The old mower is strong at least. It's cutting the bushes too, really cleaning up on our field here.. Looking at the field, a windrower woulda been useful, but we have none. I guess we need to find one at some point. For now, lets hope there's a wide pickup on the forage wagon..

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I tried to add the REA22 mods for more realistic center of gravity, implements and wheels, but with them enabled, the JD was useless operating the tedder in the field. It worked fine outside the field, but on the field, at least parts of it, it switched between 0 and 1 mph. Tried to buy the widest backtires available (it can actually have twin back wheels though the outer one is a narrow one), and weigh it down in front using a full front loader, but even then it was the same story..

For now I've disabled REA22 Wheels. Not sure how it calculates it's "more realistic" mode, but I'm guessing the calculations doesn't fit the low powered stuff I'm using in this scenario.

I'm also using VCA (Vehicle Control Addon). Primarily to get peek left/right and adaptive steering. In FS19 I remember it also had gearbox functionality that made the vehicles behave worse than default, so not sure if REA + VCA could be making stuff unrealisticly bad.. Not tested REA only and not VCA now, but I haven't seen any such settings in FS22 version of VCA, and given the choice, I'll be using VCA.
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

The forage wagon worked great, and the hay silo blowing the hay into the silo through the cellar makes it easy to dump the contents.

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I failed to find a mod with any old looking American forage wagon. However, this one seems unbranded, and with tech that should exist at the time. It has less than half the space of the Pöttinger Boss Alpin in the base game, and require only 30 hp, which is useful for old, low powered tractor, so it was the most fitting one I could find.

Having a hard time finding manufacturing years for equipment, so fuzzed on when I feel I can upgrade to what though.

I could of course omit the problem and move to bales, where I've seen more mods at least.. Though still hard to figure out when those models were sold. Even when I find manufacturers manuals and so on, they don't list what year the model first came to be, nor even the current date of the manual.
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

Done mowing the front porch at least.. Where did all the flowers go?.. It did look more idyllic before..

25.160 liters of hay in the silo. At least a start. Wonder how much a sheep or a cow eats during a year.. I guess we have to find out at some point. But we'd better be on the safe side and know we have enough before we test it ;)

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I love how I can now see lotsa tracks here, opposed to in FS19 where I used to chase my own tracks from the previous round around the field. I see they are starting to go missing at the edge of the field now though. Might have more to say with my graphics settings now being high on new PC, rather than difference from FS19 though..

And.. NOOOOOOO!!!!.. Norwegian commercial on FM Real Country, and for *ex toys no less.. Talk about breach of immersion.. Have American internet radio channels started to make regional commercials?


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Full screen image from inside the JD cab. We have a good view of the field around us.. It sure does get dirty with all the grass.. Good thing we have a cab on this one ;) Not sure if it's just me being a city slicker, but this double-clutching isn't for me.. I feel like we're stopping to change gear ;) (Which is a bit tedious to start of with, as the automatic gear handling goes through every gear bottom-up, so when we start of, we start/stop lotsa times before we reach a usable gear) I also miss the addon I used in FS19 to adjust the mirrors. The left one looks fairly useful, but the right one seems totally misaligned.
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

There's lots more we can mow, but for now, lets check out the two fields we cleared vegetation from. They look like they both need plowing and lime to get into a good state. Lets start plowing them up.

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This hose was really useful to clean my vehicles. (Separate mod I found. A pressure washer wouldn't really fit in 1975 I think) And as the game now has built in functionality for ignoring proximity, so I don't need build anywhere mod separately, I could position it next to a wall where it looked like it fit.

The big bucket came with the barn, but the hydrant is from a water pack mod, giving me a water source. (Little water on this map, and the river is way too straight. I guess straight roads is an American thing as the country is flat, and there's nothing blocking you from making a straight road, but it looks a bit synthetic to me. Was considering picking up No Mans Land instead, but the gold nugget thing fit my scenario, and I played No Mans Land quite a bit in FS19 so thought I'd try this one.. I might at some point terraform the map a bit to add some features. A bit strange that it's 100% flat too..)
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Spunky_Dogg
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by Spunky_Dogg »

I'm really loving this story and I am happy to see more people doing stories. I need to update my own story (been having too much fun), but I will be reading this one for sure. What's your thought process on harvesters for 1975?
See you up the road!

- Spunky Dogg Logging
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »


Hmm.. Seems I have hit a bug.. I used the western wild addition of terraform to paint plowed state. The game recognize the areas as fields (though it was a bit strange that the bushes and grass was kept as I painted as you saw on images), and I can plow them up without allowing field creation and such.. But when I plow them I get no stones!!!.. If I try to plow next to it with field creation I do create stones with the same plow. Should I bother repainting them and recreating the fields? Or should I just be happy the tiny fields existing to begin with don't need to remove stones.. At least for this first time plowing.

That the painted plowed states affects stones, kinda make me think it can bug with other stuff too.. So I'm leaning towards repainting and plowing.

Spunky_Dogg wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:12 pm I'm really loving this story and I am happy to see more people doing stories. I need to update my own story (been having too much fun), but I will be reading this one for sure. What's your thought process on harvesters for 1975?

Thank! ;) I'm aware of 3 mods for harvesters that seem old enough.. The Vistula KZB-3 (Polish?), the Fahr M66 (German) and I found a "John Deere New Generation Combines" mod, which adds some old JD harvesters, the 4400, 6600 and 7700.

As the map is set in US, I figured I'd go for the JD harvesters. They seem a bit too good though. The 7700 comes with a 9100 liter grain tank and can use a 7.3m wide head. I'm assuming it is authentic, but in this game that works a bit more simplistic, it works pretty comparable to the JD T560 harvester. I assume in the real world, there are good reasons to pick the T560 instead ;D..

So I picked the smallest model.. The 4400 with the smallest header (4.5m), but it still has a grain tank of 6540 liters, and seems to work better in game than the New Holland TX32 that came in 1989 if I have managed to dig up the correct date. It looks the part though, and among all the stuff gear I have, it'll be nice to test out something that works well ;D The mod seems to work well from the little testing I've done, but it's a massive download (~200 MB) and not on modhub.

In FS19 I had this Fahr machine that was a harvester trailer you pulled after a tractor. I would love something like that as an old option too ;)..

But at least tractors and harvesters seems to have multiple options in game, and it's possible to dig up which year they were introduced online. Having bigger issues with equipment.


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> 1972 John Deere 4400 Combine, A nearly 40 year-old workhorse, this John Deere 4400 combine operated by Steve Reh harvests corn in New Lebanon, Illinois.

It somehow doesn't look like it has a bigger grain tank than the TX 32 ;D
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

Seems after repainting grass and plowing new field, I still don't get any stones.. For some reason, having done it once seems to have removed stones.. I guess it's not much we can do.. Let's just revert to the field existing so we don't have to allow create field when plowing for yield and see how it goes. Hopefully stones will reappear again later.

But we get an idea.. Before plowing up, it would be good to lime the field, so we can get the lime into the ground. Not to mention, see where we have plowed and not plowed, as we will now be plowing up a field that is already in plowed state !! We grab the trailer and go to buy some fertilizer and lime..

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Our trailer is actually a manure spreader. Or a manure spreader is one of it's configurations that is. It can be reconfigured to haul other stuff too.
The trailer is unbranded, and I don't know what year it was made, but it seems old at least, and it has a low 3m working width applying manure, so felt like a good starting option. It looks the part as far as I know manure spreaders though that ain't much ;)

Once we get the lime to the farm, Laurie takes the tractor for a lime run..

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And here is our lime wagon in action. Again an unbranded model we don't know when was created, but it looks like a low tech option, and only drops the lime/fertilizer down below it for a low working width. Again, I dunno when this piece of equipment was sold, but hopefully it fits. We're only going to use it to lime I think, as we have another fertilizer spreader.
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Spunky_Dogg
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by Spunky_Dogg »

One suggestion might be to use the Dirtinator mod (makes your machines dirty instead of clean) to try and muddy up some of the equipment to make it appear older. I'm using Holmakra for one of my stories and carving out a homestead in that rugged terrain is proving to be quite a challenge. How are you liking Western Wilds? I've gone back and forth on using it myself.
See you up the road!

- Spunky Dogg Logging
humbe
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Re: A 1975 Golddigging adventure (Western Wilds - Hard economy - 1975 scenario)

Post by humbe »

I limed the second field in front too.. Forgot to measure ahead of starting the second but we used 1192 liters of lime to complete the job here on what looks like around 0.76 acres in total. Will measure field sizes better later.. Brushing up (repairing) the tractor afterwards was only 2 bucks, and 12 liters of diesel, which is around $16. The lime we used cost us $268 so the overhead cost is small for liming with my current setup at least.

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We've got more fields to lime on the back side, but I guess we will plow up the front first, and mow the backyard before starting to work the fields there..
Spunky_Dogg wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 1:41 am One suggestion might be to use the Dirtinator mod (makes your machines dirty instead of clean) to try and muddy up some of the equipment to make it appear older. I'm using Holmakra for one of my stories and carving out a homestead in that rugged terrain is proving to be quite a challenge. How are you liking Western Wilds? I've gone back and forth on using it myself.
Dirt is as far as I know represented as dirtNode's in vehicles.xml. Setting a value between 0 and 1 which decides how much dirt to apply to graphics. I edited that value to 0.7 as a starting point for all the bits I bought used, so they didn't look factory clean when I acquired the farm ;)

Beggars can't be choosers, so with the limited amount of mods, I might at some point opt for a mod of gear that shouldn't be available yet, but which is of similar tech/size to something that was available in another model, and then muddy it up to try and make it less obvious, but I'll try my best to fit the gear to the time. And I'm sure people cleaned their gear in 1975 too, so I don't want to have to hide what I'm doing behind muck ;)
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