Serious Balancing required!

[icoombs]

Hi All

Having now played since release I have had time to check out some of the economy issues, which I feel need some serious rebalancing.

Firstly the cost of hiring AI, by my reckoning the AI are paid between £3,000.00 and £4,600.00 per hour. and are completely non viable for use either to help out with contracts or work my fields. On a test I hired an AI to work a contract field and ended up paying the AI over £1,500.00 more than I got from the contract. I would like to know why the AI are paid so much and Why when we do a contract are we not paid in same same ballpark? I myself did a contract yesterday that paid 2,600.00 and took just shy of three hours, which an AI would have been paid in the region of £9,000.00.

This brings me to my second point, the contracts seem to be really underpaid. in my tests with the AI I did not factor in costs for machinery maintenance and fuel so I did a test. On a contract paying £2,659 regardless of who did the work Player or AI, the resulting costs for repairs and fuel was £1,725 meaning income from the contract was £934 and not really worth doing for 2.5 Hours plus work.

Also why such high costs for repainting machinery, A tractor that has done 5 hours work in 4 months required £14,226.00 to repaint. I don't know if a vehicle with a bad paint costs extra to maintain or anything else but if 5 hours work causes this much damage to a tractors pain job I'm not surprised most farmers drive around in rust buckets. Repainting should be an option that can either be adjusted and or turned off as at these costs I am never going to repaint a vehicle.

Basically starting a new game is a nightmare of either working for peanuts or sitting around waiting for the 3 fields you start with to mature so you can harvest and replant then you can start the waiting game again. based on my test contracts don't pay anywhere near enough to make them actually worth doing as all you are doing is wasting time as you will make little or no money from them. AI are a waste of money and of no benefit to the game at all as they can't even help out by doing the odd contract.

All tests were carried out in real time on normal economy which is how I play, I don't use fast time to skip days and play on a dedicated server that runs 24/7 and is basically synced to real time. The only time I fast forward is to catch up the few minutes each day that get lost through saving. Even playing multiplayer is not viable with the repair and repaint costs as you get so little return from the contracts you are just flogging a dead horse as your bank balance will not increase enough to justify the hours put in. To be able to increase land holding would require doing hundreds of contracts and even buying new equipment from contract income will take days if not weeks.

The entire economy needs to be re-balanced to make this game playable or we need some good modders to rewrite the whole economy side of the game.

[george.earlslight]

I think the economy is now based on using the production chains.
Contracts and direct selling produce is not going to get you very far and I've learnt that the hard way on Start from scratch.

[thumbwiz]

Sounds like playing as a simple farmer is not as fun as it used to be.

[masterplan]

Economy always... Wasn't as I would expect to be in all FS games I ever played.

[TobiHH]

Balancing needs to be done by modders. That was always the case, Giants don`t take care for that.

[vhd]

I was so hoping that the new version would balance of the economy, but no such luck.
As in FS19, here, on easy and normal economy you still can resell stuff directly from store. Wheat, oats, silage, sugarcane - just pure profit.
What's the point to me as a player to use just harvested crops or silage for animal husbandry? It's more logical to sell that stuff at a selling station and then just buy required products for animals at store.
On hard economy there is no point to do anything beside fertilizing contracts. At least in FS19, since now we have greenhouses.
I know - it's a sandbox game, but sandbox game at least should have some rules.
I think it's not fun if game requires players to set their own goals, their own rules, their own challenges, and only gives them some basic tools!

[SimpleFarmer]

I saw this after I posted in another thread. I've been just struggling to make any money since I started playing and I am not going to use any mods or to go to easy mode this initial playthrough. Just yesterday I did two medium sized fields of corn for silage and made $250,000* Where I was normally just making like you were saying $1,000 for an in-game hour. On my first month in game I planted 60 saplings and I'm going to see but I bet they're going to pay really well compared to everything else too.

*Sale: 250k
Leased equip: 46k
Helper: 9k
Purchased property: 240k

I refuse to play Farming Silageator 22.