Lone Oak - I think I did something wrong

[Stryder87]

So I decided to start a new map because I'm kind of a junkie like that. I loaded up Lone Oak because I've never really given it a fair shake before and I've read so much love for it (especially the awesome Taco stand!!).

I checked out the fields you start with (easy mode) and decide to go and harvest the crazy field 42 leaving the straw to collect (I usually just junk it as I don't often have a trailer to pick it up with). I then decided to go mow field 41 for fun because I enjoy mowing. I grabbed a baler (mod) that I like as it makes bales 20k in size and wraps them. It may not be realistic, but it makes it easier to deal with one 20k bale than 5 4k ones. I baled up everything on fields 41 and 42 and had a landscape covered with shiny red bales. I then got a trailer and hauled them all to the sell point.

Well... I'm now sitting on over 4 million dollars. I've only put about 3 hours into the map.
Did I win? Did I break the game?

I think I did something wrong....

Now what? Should I donate the money to charity? Go buy a million tacos?
It seems like the challenge is not there now as I have so much money I can buy all the biggest equipment and everything will be too easy. I don't even need to plant anything as I can just mow grass and sell it and make so much money.

I think I'm still too much stuck in the old RTS game mentality where money is the biggest aim so you can finance your army to win so it's your main drive. You don't 'win' in this game and I need to really change that mindset.

I will admit... running the harvester around that crazy field just going in circles was kinda nice.
Maybe that's the whole point?

[fenixguy]

It may not be realistic, but it makes it easier...

It seems like the challenge is not there now...

You don't say?

[Crazof]

play how you want

[Stryder87]

It may not be realistic, but it makes it easier...

It seems like the challenge is not there now...

You don't say?

I get your point... my reasoning for doing it this way is that, for this specific process, whether it takes me 2 hours to do the modified bales or 5 hours to do the regular bales, it still ends up with the same outcome... a boatload of loot.

I'm thinking I need to really work hard to purge the old money, money, money as much and as fast as possible mentality that the other games I used to play created. This is farming.... it's not a speed game, and there is no other competition to be defeated (except those #^% trees between my fields!!!).

As an example of my progress on this , I really love running around with my little tractor and trailer doing transport missions. Its a start!

[fenixguy]

Honestly, I think you probably did break the game. Probably a weird mod. On my Lone Oak save on easy, silage sells for $600/l at the biogas plant. That's 1,666 bales of silage (stock bales) or 333 of your 20k bales to get to $4,000,000. That would take quite a long time (much longer than 3 hours unless you had a modded trailer that hauls a ridiculous amount of bales or something) and would certainly not be an easy way to make money.

Straw sells for much, much less. Yes, you broke the game.

[Stryder87]

Honestly, I think you probably did break the game. Probably a weird mod. On my Lone Oak save on easy, silage sells for $600/l at the biogas plant. That's 1,666 bales of silage (stock bales) or 333 of your 20k bales to get to $4,000,000. That would take quite a long time (much longer than 3 hours unless you had a modded trailer that hauls a ridiculous amount of bales or something) and would certainly not be an easy way to make money.

Straw sells for much, much less. Yes, you broke the game.

I can't remember the exact name of the baler mod I use, but it does have the word 'fast' in it. It wraps a bale in about 2 seconds, I kick it out, and continue on, never having to really slow down the tractor pulling it.

I didn't sell them at the biogas plant, but the bale sell point (barn) just up the road from the Taco stand. I was getting about 11k per 20k bale. I was on the Easy setting.

Meh... just because I have the money doesn't mean I have to use it. It's just something I now have to restrain myself on on all my maps, mowing, baling/wrapping and then selling the bales. It generates so much money! It's always in my back pocket as something to do when I need money to buy a bigger tractor. Even on Minibrunn, I can grab a baling mission and make so much money on the leftover bales it's ridiculous.
Maybe I should start playing on a harder setting... but it wouldn't change the ability to make lots of money whenever I want by doing this. It would just lower how much I get from it per mowing cycle.

Sounds like I need to cut that right out of my game play. Toooooo tempting!!

Man, if only it was that easy to make money in real life!

[donirving]

if only it was that easy to make money in real life.

[fenixguy]

I didn't sell them at the biogas plant, but the bale sell point (barn) just up the road from the Taco stand. I was getting about 11k per 20k bale. I was on the Easy setting.

That's 550/l for silage which is way more than you should be getting on easy. The most I've seen on Lone Oak for silage not at the BGA is around 150-200/l. Something for sure messed up.

I think you've already found that the point of this game is not really to make the most money as there's really no "end-game" unless you make one up. The players that tend to stick to the game the longest are those that like the monotony of farming. It's boring for most of the video game community. Mods that allow you to wrap 20k bales in two seconds make the game pointless and kinda ruin the long-term playability for most people.

For sure play however you want to, but I think you've already seen how those game-breaking mods can make a person lose interest really fast.

[PrincessJessi84]

do the same field with traditional bales.. I don't think u will have this problem after that

[Stryder87]

That's 550/l for silage which is way more than you should be getting on easy. The most I've seen on Lone Oak for silage not at the BGA is around 150-200/l. Something for sure messed up.

I think you may have found the problem.

I tested it out last night and I was getting the same amount whether the bale was wrapped grass or wrapped straw. I was expecting it to be less for the straw, but they were both 11k/bale. It's the same on every map/save I have, so it must be a mod of some kind, but I have no idea what it could be... unless... maybe it has something to do with the script I have that lets you adjust the crop yield and time it takes a crop to go through it's stages. I just don't remember the name of it off-hand, or it affecting the amount you get for the harvest. I do know that I started a new Pacific Northwest map last night and sold the 8 bales of unwrapped grass/hay you get with the sheep pen. I only got about 6k for all 8 bales, so that seems more accurate.

What else could be affecting every save? Most mods are only equipment. I don't generally use mods/scripts that affect economy directly. Very strange.

[Stryder87]

do the same field with traditional bales.. I don't think u will have this problem after that

I won't give up my autoload trailers tho! I find it far too aggravating to fight with loaders and stuff, and especially loading logs... o..m..g...

[Stryder87]

So I did some testing over the weekend on the prices of grass bales (since I pretty much only do grass) because this price thing was triggering my OCD (optional character development ).

Using my new farm on Pacific Northwest (New Farmer setting), I removed any mod I felt might influence the prices and bought a different baler from the one I usually use in case it was somehow related to the baler. I mowed a field and made a number of 4k square bales. Selling them unwrapped (at the barn), I would get approximately $325/bale. This seemed in line with what had been mentioned.

I then leased the vanilla wrapping machine and wrapped a few bales and sold them. The price for each bale jumped up tremendously to approximately $2300/bale sold at the barn. The difference was staggering for the time invested and I was pretty sure something was screwed up. However, I happened to glance over at one of my reference sheets I had used when I was totally new to the game. It had a chart from a Steam forum that showed prices for the different products (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1573695066). Looking at the entry for Silage (Wrapped Bales), it listed the average price to be $513/1k. This works out to be about $2050/wrapped bale. So the numbers I was seeing, factoring in market fluctuations, were actually in line with the New Farmer setting and wrapped vs unwrapped bales sold at the barn.

Conclusion: my game isn't broken and I'm not crazy (I don't care what my mother says)!

However, it still means it's ridiculously easy to make a boatload of loot. I guess I'll just change the Market setting to hard when I go to sell the bales and then back for everything else.