Farming Simulator 2013 Farming Simulator: The Guide

Please Read Work In Progress

This guide is a work in progress. I hope to add a bit more content each day, so be sure to check back soon to see what is new! I really enjoy farming simulator and hope to spread my knowledge and know-how so that someone who is just starting out will be able to more easily understand how the game works, as well as have a road map to success, as well as some tips for the veteran farmer. Any comments, advice, and pointers are greatly appreciated!

Changelog:

1/12/2014 Changelog Created!

Difficulty, Workers, And Time

Before we get into gameplay, I'd like to stress how I play this game. First off I play the game on easy. Why? Because playing on normal or hard just ensures a slower paced game taking more manual labor to get your farm running. What is fun for myself is managing a large farming enterprise, not spending all day actually plowing and seeding fields by hand because the difficulty setting makes it more worthwhile to do it myself instead of pay a worker. I highly reccomend that in order to accelerate what is already a slow paced game, you do yourself a favor and set your difficulty setting to easy and not arbitrarily restrict your potential enjoyment.

That being said I rely heavily on automated workers. Your workers, although incredibly stupid, act as a great multiplier, and the goal is to spend time positioning your vehicles, get workers in them, and then drive a tractor and trailer collecting grain... and that's it. Leave the actual farming to the digital serfs, you have better things to do.

Finally, time management. You can control the flow of time at will, with a number of effects and considerations. First off you will have maintenance fees, and (if you plan well) passive income, which when you accelerate time will appropriately increase or decrease your bank account. Second consideration is crop growth. I usually plant all of my fields all at once, at real time speed and slow crop growth rate, that way even if I've bought every plot on the map, everything matures at close to the same time. Then I speed it up to fast growth and 120x speed, and spend a few minutes waiting for everything to grow. There are some more advanced things to consider with time, but those will be looked at later.

Basic Equipment Rundown - Tractors, Fertilizers, And Harvesters

Tractors

Tractors are your workhorse on the farm. Other than harvesters, and a few pieces of self-propelled equipment, you will be hooking up just about every piece of equipment to a tractor. All tractors have rear hitches to connect equipment, and most have a front hitch as well. For the most part because of how physics works in this game, you will want to stay way from tractors without front hitches, as the inability to add front weights means that a smaller (and therefore cheaper) tractor will be able to perform just as well, if not better. Also of note is the speed presets, 1, 2, 3, 4, triggered by pressing the corresponding key on your keyboard. 1 is mostly useless, speed 2 is the highest speed that you can drive with most equipment, and 3 is not quite top speed and is also mostly useless. Speed 4 is very useful, as all harvesters move at the same speed, and toggling this speed matches this speed, which is very useful for unloading harvesters while they are still harvesting.

The Deutz Agrotron x 720 (foreground) and the smaller Deutz 7250 Agrotron TTV. The 7250 is the single fastest tractor in the game, topping out at 38 mph, and has more than enough power to get any job done (when equipped with shown barrel weight).

Recommendations

I play in a very binary way, skipping over all of the mid-level tractors and only investing somewhat in the cheaper tractors early on, and then going straight for the highest quality ones to replace them and expand. The SAME Argon3 75 is an excellent early choice. When equipped with a barrel weight it can move virtually all equipment in the game... albeit more slowly than the more powerful tractors. In addition this tractor is difficult to control when equipped with only a barrel weight or only a heavy rear hitch item, so it may be a good idea to go with a Bührer 6135 A, which has similiar characteristics, but with better control under load for easier hitching, and is not significantly more expensive. After that, the single best tractor in the game is the Deutz 7250 Agrotron TTV, as it is the fastest and has enough power to pull virtually anything when equipped with a barrel weight. It also important to remember that you don't need one tractor for every piece of equipment, they are multifunctional, and you often can invest your money better elsewhere rather than buying a new tractor that may spend most of its time idle.

Fertilizers

Fertilizing is an easily overlooked, but incredibly important part of farming simulator. In fact your first purchase in game should be one of these critical pieces of equipment. Fertilizing is so crucial because for a mere investement of $9,800 (and the cost of fertilizer), you can double your yield. Fertilizing is easy, just attach the piece of equipment, fill it up with plant food, drive over your field and turn it on, and you've just doubled the yield wherever the dirt has turned a dark brown. You can fertilize at any point before your new crop has completely matured, but after you've harvested the last crop. This flexibility opens up some advanced farming techniques later in the game, but early on you're just going to strap it on your tractor and start fertilizing!

This Deutz tractor is equipped with a front mounted AMAZONE ZA-X 1402 fertilizer spreader, and a rear mounted AMAZONE Condor 15001. This set-up allows you to fertilize, cultivate, and seed a field all at once, condensing all the stages of planting grains into a single step.

Recommendations

There are only two fertilizing pieces of equipment you'll ever need. The first is the AMAZONE ZA-X 1402 fertilizer spreader, which should be your first purchase at a very reasonable $9,800. This workhorse will be used early on for manual fertilizing, and when paired with the Condor can be used to automate planting grains. The only other fertilizing implement you'll need is the more expensive AMAZONE UX 5200 Super. This beast has a 40m working with, and will be used for fertilizing sugar beets, potatoes, and corn, as a front mounted spreader would end up wasting a lot of fertilizer (the working width of the fertilizer spreader is 18m, while the potato sowing width is only 6m in comparison). This can be used to quickly fertilize even the largest fields.

Grain Harvesters

Harvesters are one of the key pieces of equipment on the farm. They turn your crops into the tubers and grains that you can then sell for money. They are generally the single slowest piece of hardware on your farm, and the greatest limiting factor in terms of how quickly you can take a field from fully grown crops to planted and fertlized seeds for your next harvest. As such it should be your primary goal to get out of your middling Fahr M66 and get into a real harvester.

If you have the titanium edition you're going to want a Case IH Axial-Flow 9230, with a 12330 liter grain capacity and a 13.7 meter cutter, you can't go wrong. The dlc is worth it for this monster alone.

Recommendations

There are two upgrade paths. You can go with the safe method, where you logically progress through harvesters in 2 stages (3 with titanium edition) buying first the Deutz 5465 H, and then the Deutz 7545 RTS (finishing with the Case IH Axial-Flow 9230 with the dlc). The Fahr, although a start, is a terrible harvester, with a 1500 liter hopper (it fills quickly) and a cutter with a width of only 3.5 meters (doesn't get a lot of work done each pass). Therefore after the critical investment of fertilizing equipment, your next priority is to get a better harvester.

The alternative path is a little different. The cutters on these pieces of equipment are interchangeable, therefore you can put an oversized cutter on a smaller harvester. It is entirely possible to put a 13.7 meter cutter on the tiny Fahr harvester for instance, and is how I went straight from the worst harvester to the best. Now there are a number of difficulties with this strategy. First off, your hopper is going to fill more quickly than intended, as the increased width means more harvested grains per second. The biggest problem however is that depending on which cutter you use with which harvester, the arm that dispenses the grain may not be able to reach your tipper for unloading. This makes unloading while the harvester is still harvesting impossible, and requires you to back your tipper underneath the out pipe on your harvester when it has come to a complete stop. This can be tricky, but with practice this can be done quickly and consistently. The final problem is that occasionally the harvester will slow to a crawl on uneven ground. This can usually be solved with a quick love-tap to the rear to get your tractor going again. Although it certainly makes the beginning game a little more complicated, this method will ensure that you can get into the biggest harvester as fast as possible, instead of having to inevitably buy intermediate harvesters that you'll end up selling anyway.

B.E.R. - Cultivating And Sowing

Cultivating

Cultivation is how you clean out the old field stubble in order to make way for your new planting. It is probably the most straightforward task, and with the right sowing machine can actually be ignored.

Recommendations

Cultivators are a relatively linear, straightforward affair. They are fairly heavy but the Bührer 6135 A equipped with a barrel weight can pull even the largest cultivator. Just upgrade as needed, but keep in mind that for grain production, with the right sowing machine you can skip cultivation. Cultiavtors therefore are more important for corn, sugar beet, and potato production.

Sowing

Sowing involves planting your seeds into the ground. Fill up your sower with seed, select the seed type and your ready for planting. Of note are the special sowers that do not require a field to be cultivated first, you should stay away from the other sowers (except the specialty potato, sugar beet, and corn sowers, more on those later).

Recommendations

There are a handful of sowers that don't require a cultivated field to work and can plant directly into stubble. These are the ones you're going to want. The HORSCH Express 3 TD 3-point Seed Drill, is the first one at $26,300 and is a good investment. The other good models are the AMAZONE Cayena 6001, the HORSCH Pronto 9 DC, and the AMAZONE Condor 15001. The condor is the best sower in the game, and when equipped with a front mounted fertilizer spreader, can automate the entire planting process.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=215618986

Farming Simulator: The Guide

***Please Read*** Work In Progress

Difficulty, Workers, And Time

Basic Equipment Rundown - Tractors, Fertilizers, And Harvesters

B.E.R. - Cultivating And Sowing

More Farming Simulator 2013 guilds

Please Read Work In Progress