[Dev-Blog] Improved Farm Creation

[TacoFarmer]

WTF are sand squares??

Well.. squares of.. sand?

I dont like sand.
What else you got?

[Questionnaire]

But why sand squares? Are there no sand circles or road rectangles? Why no bushy Balbis? You need to expand!!

[Ritchie]

I'm now hoping there'll be a "Hype Train" mod in FS19, sounds awesome

[bigcrazewolf]

WTF are sand squares??

Well.. squares of.. sand?

I dont like sand.
What else you got?

The burger slider equivalent for sandwiches

[farmer_bell]

I think the new system will help create better maps, and will certainly be a huge benefit to players. As has been said already, mappers can and will still be able to create exact farm replicas, the only difference will be that the buildings will hopefully all be placables, so it will give the player scope to then grow the farm as they wish. You could start off with an exact replica of a dairy farm, but as your save goes on, perhaps you now want to concentrate on crops, rather than having a cow shed and pasture on the farm that is taking up valuable space, you will now hopefully be able to sell the cow barn and buid a bigger crop shed, all without having to edit in GE first. If we can do this then it will make the whoe game so much more dynamic. It will be brilliant.
For those that are interested, I have written below the rough story of the farm I grew up on, to try and demonstrate how a farm can evolve over its lifetime. (its a bit long.. Sorry!!)
The farm was founded in the 1700's. It is located is Scotland, UK. It was originally a cattle, sheep and crops farm. Obviously in the beginning, it everything was horse powered. The farm had its own stables, its own blacksmith shop for the horses and equipment repair. It employed around 30 farmhands. It had small sheds for cattle and sheep and crop storage was minimal. As time went on, it was the first farm in the area to get a steam traction engine, this was run alongside the horses. In the 1950's and 60's tractors were coming in, so the farm moved away from having horses and moved onto tractor power. At this time, some of the stables were pulled down and made into tractor sheds, the cattle sheds were also made bigger to allow for more cattle. Roll on the 1970's The farm had reduced its workforce down to just 8 men and half a dozen tractors. Some more of the old stables were pulled down and a grain dryer was installed to dry the farms grain and some of the neighbouring farms grain. During the 70's, the sheep dissapeared and the whole farm yard was concreted over. This included the diversion of a stream that ran by the side of the yard, so that the tractors had more space to manuver around the yard. In the late 70's/early 80's the cattle were also done away with and the farm concentrated on crops. The vehicle fleet at the time consisted of small MF tractors and a couple of Zetors. In the early 80's the vehicle fleet was replaced with 2 Fiat tractors, of a huge 80HP and we had 2 Claas combines. This was all we had to run a 400 acre farm. Most of the equipment was 3m stuff. During this transition period it was found that the new tractors were too big to fit in the small sheds, so the farm was again pulled apart and sheds were combined together to make bigger sheds. The two big cattle sheds were pulled down and one very big machinery shed/grain store was built in their place. A much bigger grain dryer was also installed on the farm at the same time, as the grain drying business had taken off. The 12 smaller fields were combined to make only 4 large fields and all remenants of animal farming were gone. The farm was sold to new owners in the 1990's, who again have expanded the grain drying business and added a further 2 new, even bigger sheds on the site of what used to be the old sheep paddock and sheep dip. The farm yard is currently almost 3 times the size it was when the farm was started and has moved away from animal husbandry altogether.

I am hoping that the new placable system in the game will be able to emulate this sort of expansion. As I would love to be able to change my FS farm to suit the needs of how I am playing. I am hoping that it will be possible to make sections of fields into sheds etc.

One question for GIANTS (If anyone has made it this far!!!) If it is a placeable system, does this mean that the Tip Anywhere function can now be used on shed floors, or does it still have to be direct on the ground? If someone makes a shed with a raised floor, can we tip on the raised floor area?

[elevenfourteen]

I dont like sand.
What else you got?

I think this was just an example. I t would only be logic to have every surface placeable, that's also in the vanilla game.

[RODHA]

RODHA, you really are overthinking things.

Never had any trouble with overthinking. Infact that saved me from tons of unexpected troubles in my life. So, I think overthinking is not a problem of mine but not thinking more than 5 mins ahead is peoples problem really.

It's going to be great. Hop on board the hype train with the rest of us!

I'm a bit over weighted for hype trains

[fenixguy]

Never had any trouble with overthinking. Infact that saved me from tons of unexpected troubles in my life.

We're talking about a video game here, not a new house or deciding to have children. Although I have laid awake at night debating on which tractor to buy, tires vs. tracks, corn silage vs grass silage, what color to paint a Valtra...

I hope you know, I'm just joking with you. The game is starting to sound awesome to me. This was one of the most requested features besides the green tractors. I was the tiniest bit skeptical but once I hear some definite news about seasons, I'm fully on board.

[Coldlandlord]

This sounds amazing. One of my biggest frustrations with fs17 is the fact that the farms have to suit everyone and every crop type, therefore there's stuff in the yards that is not used and then on the other hand there's inadequate areas. For example I played as a potato farmer on oakfield farm. The majority of the space is animal related and the silos are massive when in the uk.. silos are a very rare sight. I then had a nightmare trying to set up a grader area as none of the sheds are situated how I would like it. The thought of being able to knock down the dairy area an build big grain stores is awesome.

My one concern is the terrain when placing these buildings! I really hope we have the ability to level/raise ground and change the foundation to our desired material. It would be amazing if we could do this with in game machines but that might be asking too much. Whenever I have played games that require placing buildings, it's always a mess so I hope the developer have made it really easy to do and allow us to edit/adjust once placed. It will be a disaster if we get floating buildings or a foundation the has a massive bump in the middle of the concrete floor.

[Questionnaire]

The terrain will auto level within reason according to Giants, not sure how extreme that it but its something!

[Weasle]

I have specifically waited for the comments to pile up before I write this.

Am I the only one who doesn't like this concept? I mean really dislike it.

I'm of course not against it. At the end of the day almost the entire community seems to be trilled by it. But I just don't like it.

Because I really don't have that much imagination for creating things. I'm much of a preset gamer. Like to play on preset ground with preset rules.

What I wonder is if I'm alone?

You are not alone. I wish we had the option to choose to more of the FS17 style of play. While cutting out your own fields or designing the animal pens how you see fit could merit some awesome stuff, what about map modders? Are they just going to plop down an empty map with no fields, and just grass and forests and such and we have to start from scratch and make towns and cities come alive and sell points?

I like having SOME groundwork. While I dig being able to customize to this level, part of me just wants the way FS17 does it.

I love a challenge, but I want to start with more than just an old beat up truck and an apple in my pocket and a dog, in a vast wilderness that I have to define on my own merits.

[Coldlandlord]

This is what concerns me as every game I have played with auto levelling construction has been a nightmare. It might be fine on a flat American map but for a uk/euro map for example it could be a real problem. Dips in the terrain might result in the auto levelling sinking the building down lower than a building you have built next to it rather than matching the level. Another issue may occure if building on a slope. Is it going to level it up with an abrupt edge or cut out into the ground or will it change the angle of the slope to give a more gradual approach to the building. We don't want yards looking like a street in San Francisco.
Im really hoping they are going to give us manual ground modification so we can set a level over a large area otherwise we are going to see maps with random flat areas in an otherwise undulating scenery. Another thing is how flexible is this placeable stuff going to be. Will a stone wall for example only snap together in straight sections with 90 degree joints or will we be able to have bends and falling/climbing levels without it looking like lego.

As long as we still get mod maps such as oakfield with the ability to edit the existing farm then I will be over the moon but I'm worried that this feature may limit us to big flat grid like maps. As much I i like lone oak farm and appreciate the quality of the map, my god did I get bored of that quickly. You just end up buying the biggest kit straight away and then the boredom of going up and down a huge field sets in.

[lefe1]

why does everyone say flat American map I live in ohio and it isn't flat. Does everyone think all America is flat? It's not and we don't have square fields either in Ohio..

An Ohio Farm

[Weasle]

Its because they think of Kansas or Welker Farms when they picture the American heartland I guess.

[garyst]

It's very flat here in central louisiana, and have alot of square fields too, but not all of them. A lot of farmers over here use scrapers and land planes to level their fields as flat as possible, but I understand what you saying lefe everywhere will be different and have different landscapes.