Courseplay, forage harvester not detected

[gentfarmer]

I'm playing Maverick's multifruit map and I'm trying to automate mowing the grass around the fields using Courseplay, a forage harvester and unloading trucks.
I have defined the grass areas as "fields" and created courses for the harvester which it will follow.
I have also set up courses to unload the harvester and transport the grass to storage, these courses start and end in the grass "fields". However if I set the unloader to autodetect the combine it cannot find the harvester, if I manually select the harvester the unloader operates correctly following the harvester and going to storage once full.
It appears that to use multiple unloaders I need them to autodetect the harvester so they will work in sequence.

Courseplay v5.02.00077

What do I need to do to get the unloaders to autodetect the harvester?

[parad0x177]

The only suggestion I have is to try a newer version of Courseplay and see if that helps. Little bugs like that seem to come and go pretty regularly and there tends to be a new version every few days or so, though, admittedly, I haven’t checked in a while.

[iw_shawn]

1. Is the grass planted grass on an actual field that can be cultivated, fertilized, etc?
2. Or just the giants grass around a field?

If it’s 1, when you are standing on the field, with no course loaded, go to the driver controls hud and select “calculate current field edge path” and save it to a new field number. Load the course you want, and for combine selection, select automatic, then there is a tab to select which field to search for the harvester on. (This is needed for any larger field as the harvesters get to far away for the tractor to detect).

If number two, you could plow and create fields on the buffer (leave a small boundary around the edge of the crop field) then use the above point to scan the boundary. The easier solution would be to have 2 (or more) tractors dedicated to each harvester. Each harvesters team of tractors should have a separate wait point so they don’t block the other team.

[BullFarmer]

I have been using AI vehicle extension to control my forage harvester, and using Courseplay to run the trucks and trailers back to the bunker and that works well.

[gentfarmer]

@ iw_shawn Number 2. I have created a "field" by creating a course round the grass border and used that to create a Courseplay path for the forage harvester which the harvester follows faithfully. I have also created a route for the unloading tractors to follow the harvester and then go off and unload when full but they report "no combine in range". However I didn't know about the tab to select which field to search, they are quite large, so I'll try that and report back.
Thanks

@ Bullfarmer I have had problems with the AI vehicle in the past so use Courseplay to control the harvester which is does well in this case.

[gentfarmer]

Because the "field" I created is not a field as recognised by the system the option to select which field is searched is not available.
So I'll just use Courseplay to cut the grass and then manually haul the full tippers.
thanks for the help though guys.

[Hairy Bob]

There's a couple of ways around this. You can use a loading wagon/s to pick up the mowed grass and take it to the silo, just load the fieldwork course followed by the unloading course. The driver should run the fieldwork course until they are full, then go unload, come back and start where they left off.
The alternative is to plough the grass up and sow it with grass, then courseplay will recognise it as a field and auto-detect your harvesters. This has the added bonus of allowing you to fertilise the grass for more yield (even if you don't, mowing gives you the first fert stage so you get a 30% boost after every cut without doing anything).

[gentfarmer]

@Hairy Bob, I'm using a forage harvester not a standard mower, I feel it is more efficient in this case.
Also plough and sow defeats the exercise. This is a 4X map and there's lots of free grass so why would I waste time, effort and money ploughing and sowing. The grass is used to produce various products such as fertilizer, compost, fuel and it can be stored so it's a valuable commodity.
Having said all that, thanks for your input but I'll stick to my current method.

[Hairy Bob]

Obviously you're free to play however you like, but I'd say it's not a waste to plough and reseed wild grass areas, since you can then fertilise them to get double the yield, which should more than offset the wages you pay courseplay to plough/seed/fert the field.
Additionally, this would allow you to use courseplay the way you want to to harvest the grass. As it is, the grass is not defined as a field, so CP can't auto detect your forager. If you plough it (with allow create fields turned on) then you can save the edge path and use it like any other field.