Animal Terrain Design

[Snake Man]

Was talking to penalty_box_gaming in twitch about terrains focusing on animals, that there are not very good animal terrains out there as they always are missing some stuff or include something that is not needed.

According to penalty_box "FS22 Animal Maps" that are released are usual just one animal type across the whole terrain, for example cows. He said a proper animal terrain should have all the animal type barns / sheds, but one FARM YARD should still only include one animal type, like pigs.

Animal support logistics are missing from other terrains. One farm yard with dairy / cattle cow barn needs manure heap, slurry pit, silage bunker silo and straw / hay loft building. Chicken coops require big grain bin silo for barley / wheat. Sheep barn needs grass / hay loft and wool storage building. etc etc.

Grass meadows for grass mowing, animals like sheep and cows that use that grass for feed. Sheeps would be the prime candidate to be located next to a big meadow(s).

Small farmland area farm yard, with several bee hives, this would have to be one bigger bee farm yard with the spawner because one terrain can only has one spawner. However later penalty_box said bees could be with sheeps, so umm dunno what he really wants.

PMCTODO research physical 3d building size for large amount of cows, pigs etc, like how big meters x meters dimension barn building you need for 100 cows for example.

Pig farm; root crop storage and small fields for sugar beets and potatoes.

Fields; 2-3 small fields, medium and a large field, associated with a specific farm yard.

New farmer game-mode begins at chicken farm. Equipment; basic cultivator, seeder, fertilizer, sprayer, harvester and grain trailer.

Farm yards; 2-3 cows and pigs, 1-2 chickens and sheeps. This means 3 cows and 3 pigs is OK in one terrain, plus all the other animals.

No farm yards without animal barns / sheds, this is animal terrain not regular grain farming or logging etc.

Empty farmland plots for possible production chain buildings if players want to put down dairy, spinnery etc. Make texture concrete pad, dirt or gravel.

PMCTODO iowa plains view by celobuki has awesome pig barn (says penalty_box), check it out.

PMCTODO FS22 research if you can use buildings from community made terrains on PMC terrains, like referencing iowa plains view pig barn in PMC Super Six 6km for example.

Animal terrain size would be approximately "medium" size, lets say 3-5km or so. Size is how small or large it needs to be, no excess field space just because we can do larger terrains, make it compact just the field etc space that is needed.

Please post feedback to the above list, any ideas or terrain design wishes you might have, any suggestions are welcome.

[penaltyboxgaming]

Small farmland area farm yard, with several bee hives, this would have to be one bigger bee farm yard with the spawner because one terrain can only has one spawner. However later penalty_box said bees could be with sheeps, so umm dunno what he really wants.

What i ment was if you want to do a small bee area i would so it by the sheep for the money aspect of it but if the bees where its own area it would have to be a lot of the large hives

[Snake Man]

Today did first terrain design document for this animal project. It was just a very quick rough sketch. Farm yards are probably way too large relatively speaking, needs in-game test, guess it depends how large the terrain is going to be, if its 1km that looks OK but if its 20.4km then those farm yard rectangles are absolutely huge.

Project Animal 20230906 Design Doc 1.


Also that features in and out railroad tracks instead of looping track inside the terrain edges, not sure which one would be better. Forest tree line patches are not complete, just stamped few lines down along the railroad tracks.

Let me know what needs to be changed, removed, added, etc.

I'll try to get tool pipeline in order so I can edit this design, run a bat file and then just test in-game. Then its easy to do changes according to how things actually look in-game.

[Snake Man]

I'm working on daily studying animal farming operations, got pages and pages worth of newly gained knowledge, but as usual, its easier to spend time in-game studying more than to stop and push this data to the website.

Overall I would summarize it that animals definitely are not as "easy" as grain operations, but there are no problems making money with animal farming. I'll have so much info coming as mentioned, just need to get it online for everyone to consume.

[Snake Man]

Update on animal studies and the terrain. On 2023-09-24 created brand new savegame for latest PMC Super Six 6km terrain, called it "Animal Game-mode #1", it was giants default Farm Manager game-mode so no vehicles, no land, no loan (for me), just 1.5 million in cash. Then I bought land, cheapo vehicles, placeables for bee hives, chicken and sheeps. Then started to farm grain and grass to feed the animals.

Well fast forward for 2023-10-15, I got two tractors, claas lexion 8900 with midwest durus 18.2m header, eight (8) chicken coops, four sheep barns, one 2400 head hogg barn (pig barn) and few more medium size fields. I finished last grass silage bale wrapping and selling operation, budget got to 3.309 million, next big farm upgrade will be to purchase cattle and dairy cow operation equipment to prepare the animal feed and then finally purchase animal barns as well.

I have done 0 contracts and sold 0.0 liters of grain, all I've done is sell eggs, honey, wool, straw, grass and silage. I'm very surprised and proud I managed to get this far without loan, contracts or grain selling.

Overall I would say that there is no problems getting animal only savegame running, sure I still don't have big boy silage bunker and cattle operation running yet, but would be amazed if that someone would ruin what I have going on here now.

I would like to release the savegame from PMC Farm Lab terrain where I did my initial animal studies last month, but first I need to release PMC Farm Lab terrain itself

Have not done any work on this animal terrain, meaning the above GIMP design doc screenshot, all I've done is working hard on the animal game-mode #1 savegame to make progress every day.

Maybe I should halt this animal game-mode #1 savegame and get a prototype of this animal terrain out for testing so we could get some ideas flowing and feedback, more knowledge.

[Snake Man]

Just finished PMC Super Six 6km Animal Game-mode #1 savegame, got feed made for cattle, purchased cattle barn and 120 heads of cattle, put in food and straw for bedding.

That concluded this savegame as the goal was to figure out if animal only savegames are possible, what I found out is that they definitely are, no problems of getting savegame running without doing contracts or selling grain, especially those chicken barns (eggs) and silage bales are huge money makers.

So I wrapped up this savegame, took backup of it and deleted the mods dir and savegame dir itself, who knows maybe in the future just for fun I'll return to this savegame but as I wrote in the last story page I got so many other more important editing tasks and savegames that I doubt it.

This savegame now has 235hrs 25min on it.

Story without screenshots or videos will be published in my usual style... "when I get around to it"