Good starts for money based on time needed for them. These are probably the same from when you played.
Non-crops:
Greenhouses (water every few weeks), you can sell direct or haul pallets to sell
Chicken coop (add grain to the silo input every few weeks), you can sell direct or haul pallets to sell
Sheep (add grass every few weeks), you can sell direct or haul pallets to sell
Crops:
Soybeans require the least work for the pay but are not top pay. Consider them easy mode.
Pasture grass can be profitable but requires dedicated gear, best return is overgrown mowing, three times a year. Wrapped or stored in a mod silage silo gives the best return on grass.
Corn, like grass, has an excellent return on silage. Also like grass it requires dedicated equipment.
Beyond that, @Ginger_Yellow gave me the best advice. Plan out an advanced product and aim your initial growth in that direction: making furniture, making clothing, making cereal or bread, etc. End chain products are very profitable but you spend the work getting to that point.
My advice is if something gets boring, spin up on a new mod map. There are some absolutely fantastic ones and each one changes the game from a small amount to large depending on map features.
Thanks for the tips. I’ll just fool around on the first map on easy a bit, to get reacquainted so to speak, and when I feel I know how everything works again, I’ll dive in deeper. As for mod maps: I never got them to work on FS 19 (that’s the last I played). I’m a noob as far as mods are concerned. But if these are official, they are probably (hopefully) easier to install!
Still very busy with work, so I will not play as much as I’d like, but at least now I have something to go to when I’m done!
Very easy to add the ones in the modstore. It’s part of the game, just click on the Downloadable Content button and have at it if you’re on PC. They are all free, everything from major game changing mods to maps to tons of different tractor/truck/tool mods.
If you’re on a console there are slots taken per mod, so you’ll have to be selective in which mods you want to add.
That said, if you’re on PC there are some very important mods that aren’t on the official modhub, particularly Courseplay and Autodrive, and some of the more ambitious maps, but I wouldn’t worry about those until you’ve got the hang of the base game.
If you want to make your production chains a bit more artisanal, you might want to check out the Interactive Productions mod that the Youtubers have been going big on recently.
It looks a bit too fiddly and non-scalable for my play style, especially if I’m going to be getting a fair amount of that manual labour in Hof Bergmann anyway, but might be a nice change of pace for some.
After fooling around a bit to get reacquainted, I started a new game (on medium) and so far it’s going well! Only two fields, one of which has soybeans that I just harvested but have no clue what to do with as yet. I turned the other to grass, so I could feed my sheep with it, but apparently I can’t just dump grass near the sheep pen. Do I need to bale it first?
The ultimate plan is to build a spinnery to use the wool, then use that money to upgrade to a tailor and see where I will go from there. But first I need to get the sheep to work…
Also: I ran into some sort of game cartridge, which awarded me 50.000 (!) when I picked it up. The pop-up suggests that there are 19 more to find and collect on this map. Anyone know what that is all about?
I had the same issue, @mjgreeny75 . I eventually used my smallest tractor and bought a tiny dump trailer to haul the grass over. For the pen I used, the dump spot was right in the middle of the roof overhang area of the sheep pen.
Where you see that little camera, which is actually a trailer-tip icon. If you’re using a forage wagon to pick up the grass, there still should be a little room to get in there. Or, you can put the grass in a number of cheap hay/grass barns to hold, then use a much smaller trailer to pick up and dump it to the sheep. Since we were talking about mods before, I want to show you one in the modhub:
This is one of the small tip-it trailers I love to use because any small tractor can pull it. It also has something of a cheat to it if you ever need it. You can either purchase it with the option, or upgrade it to, “unrealistic,” capacity.
This lets you haul around 82K liters in that small little trailer. Very nice to have for all-purpose stuff on the farm. There are other things in the modhub that haul more or are larger, but unless you’re playing on a giant map that doesn’t come into play much.
This is an example of where I store grass for sheep. You dump mowed grass over on the left at the tip-it icon. You get grass into a trailer from the middle, where you see the fill icon. Roll under there with a trailer and you’ll have the option to get any of the things you put in the barn (grass, hay, etc.) There are larger barns on the modhub if needed.:
And me showing the position to dump grass in for them. Also notice in the background of this pic a couple of dark silos. Those are silage silos. You can mow grass and dump it into those and within about 90 days it converts it to silage, which you can then fill a trailer with and sell, etc.:
One advantage of baling is that you can just leave excess bales on the trigger point and they automatically top it up, whereas it will prevent you from tipping loose material any more once it’s full. Of course, you can just dump it on the ground nearby, but then you still have to move it across later.
Yeah, the hay barn mods are great. I don’t know if this one does it, but the one I usually use, which looks similar, will output either loose or bales. You can even choose the colour of wrapped bales.
Collectables in a Farm Simulator? That’s… weird, but also kind of neat I suppose. Gives me something to do in between harvests, and makes nice money too!
And thanks for the suggestions @Skipper ! I’m wondering though: is all of what you suggested (including the silage silos) mod-based? Because so far I’m playing without them. I love the idea of having a barn for the grass for the sheep (fits my idea of a farm) but would love to sell the rest as silage, and I remember from FS 19 that I didn’t much like the baling/wrapping procedure…
Silage silos are base game. I’m pretty sure on most maps you need to either build them yourself or buy the (usually) BGA where they are on the map before you can use them.
I think there may be a hay loft in the base game, but if so it’s not as convenient as the mods.
Baling and wrapping is very easy with Courseplay/Autodrive, but those of course are mods.
I think the hay barn that stores hay, grass or silage is a mod, easily found in the mod store though. It just prevents having to dump it somewhere and transport it again later, etc. Silage silos (that convert extra grass to silage) I don’t remember if there is one base game, but again, mods have you covered.
The mods in the modstore are free and also have tons of gameplay features you can add to the game. Once your get the hang of the game a bit, it won’t hurt to add some things.
I’m not joking when I say growing/mowing pasture grass in game is a huge money maker when you take it fully to silage and bulk selling. Depending on the map, if you have extra grass or silage to sell I believe it is usually highest in price in December or January. So I transport all the silage to sell and that funds so much of the farm growth that year that it allows building up to do more, like buying more fields, buying production facilities for other things, upgrading farm gear, etc. As a, '“crop,” though, it’s more involved since you mow multiple times per year.(April, July, October)
Prep: Plow field, plant grass, fertilize field. (Plowing prevents the need to worry about weeds on it.)
Wait until grass on the field is overgrown (3x per year.)
Mow.
Bale or pick up grass, use for feed as needed, store the rest.
Roll or rake the grass down after mowing. (gives fertilizer x2 status)
Repeat from step one.
Once I ‘finish’ this map, I’ll definitely dive into the official mods, but for now, I have plenty to try out! I ended up baling and wrapping the grass because I couldn’t find the silage silo, so I guess that is a mod. Naturally, I bought a fairly cheap baler with limited capacity, so lots of small bales. Will upgrade to a bigger one when I have made a bit more money!
I’m pretty sure all the base game maps have a silo (like I say, it’s usually in the biogas plant somewhere), but even if it’s not, you can definitely build it yourself without a mod. It’ll be under the construction menu (which is part of the garage menu - ‘P’ on PC).
