Ouch: Quite a game balance breaking exploit!

[Aholz89]

Please read this in a non-hostile way. But I find the thread title a bit clickbait with the "ouch" and words like "game balance breaking". And then expecting some sort of response by GIANTS.

1. This is not the Bug report section.
2. Have you read some of the other bug reports?
3. Why make a big deal out of this? There has been "cheats" in all sorts of games for decades, no need to use them.

But thats my opinion.
Take care, fellow virtual farmers.

[Alagos]

Agree with the above, this game is exploitable like no other, to the people that dare to google a bit. This doesnt change much, if anything, in the big picture.

[SJ_Sathanas]

I wonder if land state dictating land value could be implemented in a mod?

[Frag]

What if you could buy a trailer for 10k and sell it for 12k. You could simply buy/sell in loops to get rich and obtain all the high end machinery with no effort. Would you consider it a bug? This is the exact

You could do just that in FS15 (can't remember if FS17 was the same way). Buy equipment/tractors/harvestors when they come up on sale and then drive them 10 feet to the store sell spot and get almost full price for them. Rinse repeat over and over.

I do understand what you're getting at though. Perhaps it could be fixed instead of adding amounts for field stage at sale which adds a lot of complexity, to simply subtracting a fair percentage when you sale a field from it's bought price (no matter the field stage).

Another way to fix it would be to simply reset any field you buy removing all crops, but I suspect many people would not like fixing it this way.

Maybe a mod will come along that does one or the other. After all, there are mods for fuel consumption, grain weight, etc.

I like it. You actually bring a solution that would make sense. You buy a field, it comes empty ... the owner harvested it before giving it to you. You are buying the land ...not the crop. Good call.

[PrincessJessi84]

its not a "bug".. at least not in the traditions sense.. its not a feature either.. its.... new.. selling fields was new to fs19.. bet by fs21 there r some nice tweaks and polish put on the field selling part of things.. until then.. put the brakes on it.. it really isn't a huge deal.. I know u r a new player but its cool I promise.. besides.. there r so much more "game breaking" and "emersion breaking" things going on.. y don't u go on about how u cant run tractors out of gas in this "simulator" or some of the other bits that really put people off

[adammac5858]

its not a "bug".. at least not in the traditions sense.. its not a feature either.. its.... new.. selling fields was new to fs19.. bet by fs21 there r some nice tweaks and polish put on the field selling part of things.. until then.. put the brakes on it.. it really isn't a huge deal.. I know u r a new player but its cool I promise.. besides.. there r so much more "game breaking" and "emersion breaking" things going on.. y don't u go on about how u cant run tractors out of gas in this "simulator" or some of the other bits that really put people off

Come on Princess, we went like 4 days without mentioning that fuel mod hahahaha .And I thought they could run out of gas, on Xbox atleast. Could've sworn someone shared a video of that. I never get that far, takes days lol. Don't combines use like 5-6 gallons an hour when actually harvesting? I am no farmer, btw!

[Frag]

its not a "bug".. at least not in the traditions sense.. its not a feature either.. its.... new.. selling fields was new to fs19.. bet by fs21 there r some nice tweaks and polish put on the field selling part of things.. until then.. put the brakes on it.. it really isn't a huge deal.. I know u r a new player but its cool I promise.. besides.. there r so much more "game breaking" and "emersion breaking" things going on.. y don't u go on about how u cant run tractors out of gas in this "simulator" or some of the other bits that really put people off

loll yeah indeed I found many smaller things we can easily live with. However for this one, I consider it quite big since the game can be played in multiplayer.

First let's forget about mods ... we are talking about the basic plane vanilla game. With that specific issue in mind, you could not create an online competition for the virtual farmers where they would need to generate the most profit in ...let's say ... 5 years of game time. If you would try to do this, the game would be a click and harvest fest of who will harvest which field. It would be absolutely pointless to buy land and cultivate it yourself. Doing the full loop of work would generate expense that could never compete with other players that use that exploit.

Do not get me wrong, I love FS19. But considering that it is a really easy fix, I think Giant should consider it in a bug update.

The easiest one proposed so far would be:

- Set an option "Field always sold cultivated [Yes or No]"

So for all the ones who like that exploit, they could simply leave it to No. But for the one who would like to compete and get rid on that thing, they would simply select yes.

For more, Giant already have the methods to reset the field to cultivated (we see the field switching states all the time). So it would be a very easy one ...

[chedly_farms]

There are ways around the "non-payment" for crop if you have an imagination. On Marwell, I needed grass/hay. So I bought a field, and then leased a piece of equipment that I never used, harvested the grass, and sold the field back. I payed around 25,000 for the silage bunker of grass.

[Jeramy]

I don't think this is quite the exploit you think it is.

Let's take field 1 on Ravenport. It is 5.14 acres. If you were to buy it when ready to harvest full of soybeans you would make a profit of $26,000. But if you sell it back you would need to wait for the AI to replant and for the field to be ready for harvest again. If you were to just keep the field it would cost $560 in seed to replant yourself. So why not just keep the field?

I am no game programmer but I am fairly confident the coding for what you are proposing is not quite that simple. Take field contracts for example, when you do a contract the game gives you temporary ownership of the field for the length of the contract, if you had triggered it to reset to cultivated on ownership change this would break contracts. To fix that you need to do even more complex coding for contracts. In most cases the simplest solution is the best one. Yours are overly complex for what is really a non-existent issue. Changing the code to check field state every time you go into the buy land menu would be difficult to code and needlessly memory intensive.

[Frag]

I don't think this is quite the exploit you think it is.

Let's take field 1 on Ravenport. It is 5.14 acres.

Hi Jeramy, you raised my curiosity here. Is there a way to know the field size from the game? If not I guess you are using a mod?

This is an info I always was interested in, but did not find it yet.

[PrincessJessi84]

ok lets just put it like this.. YOU find this to be a game breaking bug.. that's fine.. but most do not.. and whats more is.. it seems very unlikely that giants will change course on this so late in the game.. for now it is what it is.. keep your fingers crossed that giants will, as I predict, finish putting the shine on this new to fs19 feature (selling fields) for fs21.. I don't really care too much about this "bug".. it really is a matter of self control.. and as for those u play with.. if u cant trust them to not do something taboo on the game save u really must ask yourself... is the group of people u play with mature enough for a casual game like farming?!

[Crazof]

Captain, Road Prison 36: What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it; well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.

Cool Hand Luke

[SJ_Sathanas]

There are ways around the "non-payment" for crop if you have an imagination. On Marwell, I needed grass/hay. So I bought a field, and then leased a piece of equipment that I never used, harvested the grass, and sold the field back. I payed around 25,000 for the silage bunker of grass.

You don't even have to lease gear if you really want to exploit the game. Take on a bailing contract, use all the gear, move the grass to one of your own trailers or bunker then buy the land. Buying the land cancels the contract without penalty. Sell the land back and you have all the harvested material for free.

But in a game with no specific final goal what difference does it make?

[Frag]

There are ways around the "non-payment" for crop if you have an imagination. On Marwell, I needed grass/hay. So I bought a field, and then leased a piece of equipment that I never used, harvested the grass, and sold the field back. I payed around 25,000 for the silage bunker of grass.

You don't even have to lease gear if you really want to exploit the game. Take on a bailing contract, use all the gear, move the grass to one of your own trailers or bunker then buy the land. Buying the land cancels the contract without penalty. Sell the land back and you have all the harvested material for free.

But in a game with no specific final goal what difference does it make?

LOLLL!!!! Did not know that one!

[Jeramy]

I don't think this is quite the exploit you think it is.

Let's take field 1 on Ravenport. It is 5.14 acres.

Hi Jeramy, you raised my curiosity here. Is there a way to know the field size from the game? If not I guess you are using a mod?

This is an info I always was interested in, but did not find it yet.

I got these numbers off the internet. On PC you can check the game files. On console the contracts will tell you how big the field is.