Seasons 19 WIP Updates (PC release 24/07)

[NateS]

The problem here is that the game doesn't differentiate between male/female or adult/young. So just adding 70 more sheep to your flock of 50 each spring is unrealistic.

The base game needs much improvement with regards to animal husbandry.

[frankfarmer]

in real life, the majority of the males would go for slaughter except a select few for breeding, so most farmers only keep females.

[NateS]

Any you would have to care for them in the meantime before sending them for slaughter. They wouldn't just all suddenly appear as productive adult females as the base game currently treats them.

[Patrick73]

My only request for this mod as mentioned on FSUK forum would be to able to harvest sugar beet in winter. We do in the U.K.

[Cardos]

My only request for this mod as mentioned on FSUK forum would be to able to harvest sugar beet in winter. We do in the U.K.

Isn't that something that could be done in a custom GEO? I guess you'd have to keep the ground temp above freezing for a portion of the winter season and extend the harvest window part way into winter perhaps.

[DirectCedar]

Any you would have to care for them in the meantime before sending them for slaughter. They wouldn't just all suddenly appear as productive adult females as the base game currently treats them.

Yes NateS is spot-on here. Just changing the birth rates would completely muck up the game's animal system.

The problem is that the animal systems in-game are a very very cartoonified gamification of real-life animal production. The pricing, the age and gender of the animals, the feed consumption, reproduction rates, are all basically nonsensical compared to real-life. But they all work with each other in a reasonable balance within the "rules" of the game. If you change one of these parameters without rebalancing all the others, everything is thrown off and the system becomes either a bonanza or a money pit.

Of course in real life 50 ewes would produce more than 50 lambs every spring. But lambs are also not immediately at birth worth as much as mature ewes, and none of them are ever worth $3k apiece (or whatever value the game is balanced to; I don't recall it exactly but it is high).

Realismus improved animal production significantly when they made it work with Seasons 17, but I shudder to think how much planning and testing they must have put in to balancing the values they picked to fit the base game "rules" so that the whole system didn't go snakey. They could do lots more with it and probably are doing some more with 19, but it will be a boat load of work and balancing to make it fit the game in a satisfying way. (Which they've done a fantastic job of so far IMO; I'm not criticizing the scope of their implementation, I am applauding it )

I agree all the animal production is goofy and it could all be changed to be a lot more dynamic and more realistic. I have to think it wouldn't even be that crazy difficult to do if it was addressed in the base game from the beginning. John Deere American Farmer did it 15 years ago, and even Sim Farm did it 25 years ago. And both of those games were basically terrible Somehow they both incorporated seasons though too as a core and critical components of base game play.... not very well, but they acknowledged that agriculture is shaped completely by the calendar year.

Anyway TL:DR - yes the animal systems are goofy and not realistic, but they are somewhat balanced in and of themselves, and if only one parameter is changed without adapting the rest they'll just go off the deep end

[Patrick73]

@Cardos. I know nothing about programming at all but couldn’t the same code/ script that is used for poplars be used for sugar beet?

[erict43]

Really looking forward to the release of this mod to make FS19 complete. Thanks for all the hard work, and I appreciate your willingness to consider suggestions from the community. Personally, I would like to see water added to the game, but I think that would require equipment mods too, unless we water crops with a sprayer as we did with Soil Mod. But perhaps that is a job for another mod, we do seem to want to burden you guys with the entire wish list of features.

[frankfarmer]

Sorry to go on about the animal production, but I once had a savegame with 70 cows with 80% productivity, and over a 9 day summer, I gained 4 more cows, which is definitely very unrealistic.

And yes I do live on a beef farm in real life so I do understand.

[theSeb]

My only request for this mod as mentioned on FSUK forum would be to able to harvest sugar beet in winter. We do in the U.K.

Isn't that something that could be done in a custom GEO? I guess you'd have to keep the ground temp above freezing for a portion of the winter season and extend the harvest window part way into winter perhaps.

Yes, it can.

[norfolk farmer]

Now we just need a clever chap to do that GEO as I'd much prefer lifting beet in the winter over forestry.

[NateS]

Sorry to go on about the animal production, but I once had a savegame with 70 cows with 80% productivity, and over a 9 day summer, I gained 4 more cows, which is definitely very unrealistic.

And yes I do live on a beef farm in real life so I do understand.

Yes. The reproduction rate is messed up. But so is the fact that those 4 cows immediately became fully grow, milk producing females.

As stated by others above, simply changing birth rate alone without adjusting everything else that goes into the animals, would effectively break the game.

The way animals are handled in the base game needs to be greatly changed in order to make increased birth rates work properly.

Edit: I'm not at all against the idea or trying to shoot it down. The more realistic we can make it the better. That starts with a conversation.

[mattbrun12]

Among the other points, the animals in the game also have a 100% survival rate. So yes, the reproduction is low, but you never loose any that die. So yes, irl you would get 50 from 50, but how many are males, how many die before maturity, and so on. So you have to compromise with the limits of the game to make the end result balanced.

Forgot to mention, thank you for seasons and for the ability to create the GEO's ourselves so that we can make it our own for our area!

[blue_painted]

Could the days between animal feeding be made switchable? I'd go for "feed every day" because when playing Oakfield I'd make hundreds of hay bales, tonnes of silage and have it left over to sell it to make space for next year's crop. In fact, the more you can make configurable the happier I'd be!

[IceUul]

Could the days between animal feeding be made switchable? I'd go for "feed every day" because when playing Oakfield I'd make hundreds of hay bales, tonnes of silage and have it left over to sell it to make space for next year's crop. In fact, the more you can make configurable the happier I'd be!

I need this too, one simple option in menu to choose. feed every 6 days, 3 days or 1 day.

It should be in same menu where you change seasons length, since seasons length will change how many
times per year animals need to eat, would be nice to have option to adjust it.
Amount of food animals need every year should stay same, would not matter if you change season length or feeding times.