Livestock (pigs) economics

[Phigo]

On Mercury you can sell the animalpens you don't need.

[Corstaad]

Yup I ended up playing Mercury. I kept all the pens never know what I'll get into. It's a great map to use my plan on as you start with basic starter fields. I just unloaded the equipment and bought starter equipment. Start with to much stuff in the silos but it's not really all that much money anyways.

[NZFarmer1357]

Just throwing in my 2cents here:

- cows will be improved with the upcoming patch 1.3:
--- higher sell price for milk
--- higher milk production
--- lower amount of food needed
--- manure and slurry production increased

May I ask where you got this information from, or is it a hope that it is included? Thanks.

[Eische]

That was the outcome of a bug report in the German forum section. MadMax from Giants stated those new values after long descussion.

I'm currently playing the 1.3 beta on PC and can confirm those values stated by MadMax:
viewtopic.php?f=957&t=140359&start=30#p1089881

[gordon861]

Having a quick browse of that thread (thanks Google Translate) it appears that the DEVs are actually having a conversation with their customers and giving real information.

[NZFarmer1357]

That was the outcome of a bug report in the German forum section. MadMax from Giants stated those new values after long descussion.

I'm currently playing the 1.3 beta on PC and can confirm those values stated by MadMax:
viewtopic.php?f=957&t=140359&start=30#p1089881

Thankyou very much!

[The.EuroFarmer]

To be honest I am waiting for the new fabric script ( Global Company ) where we will have butchers and meat factories, for example hamburger factory.

[Corstaad]

Thanks Eische. That's great news.

[Eische]

That was the outcome of a bug report in the German forum section. MadMax from Giants stated those new values after long descussion.

I'm currently playing the 1.3 beta on PC and can confirm those values stated by MadMax:
viewtopic.php?f=957&t=140359&start=30#p1089881

Thankyou very much!

Thanks Eische. That's great news.

Thank you, no problem.
Unfortunately I just realized I had linked the wrong post. The final values are mentioned a few posts later:
viewtopic.php?f=957&t=140359&start=30#p1090018

Sorry for confusion!

[Corstaad]

TL:DR livestock are not worth the money unless you like them, are playing on new farmer with pens already in place or plan on playing for a long time.

Corstaad did a very good, similar analysis of dairy economics in one of his posts. It showed basically the same thing; a very long payback on the initial capital investment and then a trickle of cashflow-positive income after that. His observations based on this conclusion were basically the same as yours - that the game was not balanced to account for the much higher upfront costs of raising livestock with the new placeable system, and that livestock investment/reward is not balanced against cropping investment/reward.

He also found, as you alluded to, that basing a large part of your dairy revenue stream on the price you receive for slurry at the BGA is a critical source of income if you ever want to pay off your barn. Which is daft.

This is all too bad. It wouldn't have been that tough to balance these things a bit better. They did a pretty good job of it in 17. There is a balance in this game between the zen of a redundant task, and the steady feeling of virtual accomplishment and progression. When you only have one it really nerfs the fun.

The manure/slurry selling at the BGA irks me to no end. I get the point of it being a bio-diversity experiment from Giants but its extremely foreign to anyone that farms. The only thing that kinda relates is individual farms running bio-digestors and without alot of subsidizes it generally is a tough sell. To limit the amount of milk profit and potential money from offspring sales because of the income from a Bioplant that costs 700K to just get into is correctly stated "daft".

[Corstaad]

If you notice none of the released maps have the BGA selling for much. Its simply doesn't make sense to be valued that high. All of this could of been solved early by simple back of napkin analysis then deep dive into them. Somebody working late on a Saturday making wholesale changes to the in game economy shouldn't happen. So for giants they need a metric to quantify balance then justify why they make major swings to more then themselves.

[The.EuroFarmer]

The only animals I recommend for the moment are horses.

What would boost the need for raising animals will be the Global Company script which will allow us to make products from milk,wool,eggs,meat. For example, textiles factory, butchery, cream and butter factory, etc.

For the moment there is no need to invest in animals.

[cwattyeso]

I never understand these people who say there is no need to invest in animals. I have Cows, Pigs & Horses on my maps. Cows produce milk, slurry and manure, all of which I sell, which covers the cost of feeding them easily. Pigs produce manure, slurry and many more pigs very rapidly which I again sell for a very nice profit. Horses obviously make a ton of money when trained up, plus also produce manure which I can sell. Now having sold the Manure & Slurry from these animals at the BGA and been paid very well for it, I then take away the free Digestate from the BGA and use that to fertilise my fields after harvesting them and again after ploughing/cultivating them which means I can then seed with a regular seeder without fertilising because the fields are already at two stage fertilisation, which also means I don't have to fertilise during crop growth. Meaning I never need to buy normal fertiliser so again over the long haul I save a lot more money.

[Corstaad]

Some people play FS different then others. Same can be said for other simulator games. Some want a rollercoaster to look good on a map. Others just want the most efficient roller coaster for profits. I enjoy cows but find them a dog in profits because I played a cow dedicated map for 200 hours on Hard Economy. It went tandem with a crop farm 200 hours on Hard settings never had the same issue. I knew it going into it because I ran numbers which anyone can do. Numbers are important to me because that's how I enjoy simulator games. Looks like they're adjusting things so any sort of rehash of the numbers at the moment is largely irrelevant.

[bossmanslim]

Note to all: my analysis is from 1.3 beta

The only animals I recommend for the moment are horses.

What would boost the need for raising animals will be the Global Company script which will allow us to make products from milk,wool,eggs,meat. For example, textiles factory, butchery, cream and butter factory, etc.

For the moment there is no need to invest in animals.

They just need to do better math on the payback. Technically livestock require very little interaction, do make a slight more profit than just selling the crops and are fairly automated. The main issue is that something like soybeans takes 8 harvest cycles to pay back per acre and only eats up about 4 in game hours with low end equipment and a smallish farm. Once things scale up, players can produce a million+ dollars per cycle with about 8 hours of touch time and efficient use of the helpers.