The FrankU and Nexis CO-OP

[FrankU]

So I did some testing.

The good news is: The Stage 0 Farm Lots are finsihed and ready to be uploaded.
The bad news is: they hardly ever grow in your cities.

Let me explain.
First of all: the Stage 0 lots are in fact simple 1 tile large Stage 1 lots. It is my aim that they grow about twice as often as the normal Stage 1 lots. So I did some testing....
I have in an otherwise empty region a city tile with about 100 areas of zoned AG. These zones are about 8x8 tiles. There is some population (1841 pop) and some demand for AG in the city. There is Power and there is Water. Taxes are default, money is cheated about 1x10⁹ When I press Cheetah mode I get these results:

1. When I let my Stage 0 farms be the only ones, using the Maxis farm blocker, My lots grow like weeds wherever you zone.

2. When I take the blocker out and hence mix my Stage 0 with all Maxis farms they grow about 5% of the time, the rest is Maxis. Hardly worth the effort, isn't it?

3. When I add my Stage 1, 2 and 3 lots (no CAM!) the Stage 0 hardly ever show up. Maybe 2%? Hard to say. The Stage 1,2,3 do mix quite good with the Maxis farms though. So there is some light in this darkness.

4. When I then add CAM to the plugins I find that mostly Stage 3 FrankU and Maxis farms grow. Later, whne demad goes down, also Stage 2 and 1 pop up. Stage 0..... Not in sight.

So what can I do about this? I read in a thread somewhere (yesterday I found it, today I forgot where... this site really is too large!) that Lowkee33 said the "Building value", which is soemthing different than "worth" (although I do not understand whatever both mean) is an important factor in the amount that a farm lot is picked by the game to grow. So I raised the building value of some of my Stage 0 lots. No effect visible. Maybe I should raise the value more? But what does this do to other properties of the farm lots? I don't know anything about this.

I hope someone is able to help me?

[APSMS]

From my experience as an amateur using BATs that were not designed for CAM usage (and thus have highly unrealistic Stage 8 stats), typically having higher occupancy(/demand satisfaction?) causes the BAT to be used more by the simulator as being appropriate for the given zone size and type.

Now, of course, I don't know what size and type may have to do with farms, but it seems like if you want stage 0 to grow, you need to effectively make it not Stage 0.

That is, make it more appealing by making it over capacity for less needs. Which, unfortunately, seems to defeat the purpose of having a zero stage.

I'm also not really sure what constitutes a Stage 0 farm. Would it be equivalent to the stage 1 SPAM farms that can exist w/o power and water? or something different?

[gn_leugim]

If I recall SPAM, it uses a technique that is if the field is only 16tiles big, the farm lot can only be 1x1. don't know it is like this or not, but, I do remmeber reading something like this. about the B.value. if it works or not, I don't know, but is rather ease to test I think.

[FrankU]

All right, guys,

After some experimenting I found out that making the 1x1 lots into 2x1 lots everything worked like I had in mind all these months. So I changed all 35 lots (with Reader, where would we be without it?).
Then I finished the Read Me. Please indeed read it!
I wrapped it up.
And I uploaded it to LEX and STEX.

So, I'd say: check it out and have fun with it. Any comments? Please let me know.

Thank you for your patience.

And now for the Stages 1 up to 7! A long way to go  .

[w_swietwoot]

Great work, building up to the grand finale.

I at least am very anxious to get my hands on those stage 1-7 farms...can't wait anymore...but I will have to.

[Terring7]

You made a great job. I think I'll play with them a bit

[gn_leugim]

nice nice nice I know what I will be doing this xmas vacations

[FrankU]

Thanks!

Now for a question...
Tariel on Simpeg noticed that my farms and fields are not too slope friendly in her opinion, that is.. I must admit that I did not really test that property.
I just copied the values from Simgoober's tulip lots.
Now I am curious: does anyone of you think the lots are too slope unfriendly? If there is an opinion about that I can make some changes. I can make an overwrite file, so that if you place that in your plugins the slopefriendlyness increases. This means that your already grown dutch farm lots can stay in place, but that new growing farms will also grow on steeper terrain. Sounds good or what?

Frank

[gn_leugim]

honestly, I think they should not be too slope friendly for realism sake. farms have being and are most effective in shallow soils, not in high grade hills, for a huge amount of reasons I think I don't have to name here, and, history proves me right in most circumstances. 

I can give you the example of Douro region, known for its vineyards and typical landscape, where the vineyards are planted on step hills (even in clifs) and they are however plane or mostly plane due to platforms carved and built into the slopes.





So, if the farms are not looking good, it is because they haven't done their job in terraforming the landscape for farms

(exception made for tree farms maybe ofc)

EDIT: I found this artcle I think it explains better than me :p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_%28agriculture%29

[mrbisonm]

True that some specific crops may grows easily on sloper while many of them don't or are not favourable to do so. As a farmowner living in the Appalachians, which is quite hilly and mountainous, I can confirm that most grains such as corn, wheat, oats, hops and barleys grow easily on more or less slopey terrains, while most vegetables and fruits need to be on more of a flat ground. The reason for this is mostly the irrigation and machinery we use to cultivate or harvest. Flowers I have no idea, I never grew them, besides one year I had sunflowers and these were grown on a flat riverside field. Other flowers are grown here only on flattened land and mostly inside giant greenhouses. There will be some of those models in the MFP1 Pack6.

I haven't yet had the chance to grow the stage 0 farms in my game, but I think most of them should be ok. Is there a way to totally make the greenhouses grown on flat land ONLY? I don't know much about tweaking the stats of growable fields.

BTW, why would anyone zone agriculture on other than flat land? IRL, we don't see this too often. Mountainous regions use terraces, which are flattened out. All a matter of irrigation, cultivating and harvesting with machinery.

That's my experience, and I have seen (visited) many farms on most of the continents.

Back to my Job!
Ok now, I have started BATting again, mostly silos, and I will have some nice models to show this weekend. Most of the packages are almost finished, five out of six are close to being send to FrankU. The sixth one will not be that big and can probably be done withing a week or so.
At the time (since a week) I have some problems with my gaming computer which I cannot acces at the moment, the screen does not open with the computer, although the computer seems to function correctly, nothing lightens up on the screen. I will send it to the "repair" store tomorrow, see what they can do. It is not the screen itself, because I have tested the computer with all the screens from other house computers and it is all the same.

Anyways, if anything is "kaputt" and I cannot access my files anymore, don't worry, I make back-ups almost every week. Nothing will be lost.
So for now I installed gmax on the "main" housecomputer to be able to continue the BATting........only thing, I don't have access to my 14 Gb's of textures and smaller batparts (such as ladders, steps, tanks, fences etc)........I have to redo all of them, killing unecessary time.

Fred

[FrankU]

Hi Carlos,

You explain exactly why I decided to make the farm lots not so slope friendly. How farmer friendly is a field when the farmer is not able to get there by tractor?
On the other hand: SC4 is just a game and we are supposed to have fun with it. If my lots are so restrictive that the lots hardly grow I did something wrong that should be repaired.
So therefore I am curious what others think of my lots.

And Fred: the greenhouses are slope unfriendly. They only grow when the slope is between 0 and 2. Is it degrees? Is it tangent? I don't know, but in Reader I used 0 and 2 on the minslope and maxslope properties. So no hilly greenhouses.

[gn_leugim]

BTW, why would anyone zone agriculture on other than flat land? IRL, we don't see this too often. Mountainous regions use terraces, which are flattened out. All a matter of irrigation, cultivating and harvesting with machinery.

because this is a game, and you are the mayor and you can do whatever you want?  I guess this goes straight into Frank's thoughts, but I still think that it is good as it is, not (very) slope friendly. one thing is realism, other is gaming and other is having a a plant growing perpendicular to the ground although the ground is at 50º and expect the tractor to go there make a normal harvest

Anyways, if anything is "kaputt" and I cannot access my files anymore, don't worry, I make back-ups almost every week. Nothing will be lost.

thats a good policy! I hope you get your pc up running again!

[jaredh]

You will find very few crops on a "slopes" almost entirely due to the machinery.  Rolling hills are cultivated, but anything above 25-30 degrees is generally too steep for the equipment to handle, especially on an incline that we would consider anything other than "rolling hill". 

This excludes things that are hand harvested (grapes being the thing people intentionally grow on hills the most), but even then, they tend to terrace them if the slope is anything difficult to walk, as has bee mentioned.  Keep in mind the average human can't climb a 45 degree slope with ease, probably most can't do it at all without climbing aids or rocks to grab onto.  Most tractors can't do 35 degree hills without care, if at all.

I grew up in a highly agricultural area.  Everything flat/mostly flat is cultivated.  Anything with any slope that a car can't climb without shifting down isn't cultivated at all.  I suspect this holds true everywhere except where fruits can be profitable....

[mrbisonm]

Most tractors can't do 35 degree hills without care, if at all.

Hmmm.......a hill cultivating with machinery exceeding 15 degrees is not covered by any insurance here in Canada and it is very unwise to do so also, if you follow the angle in a horizontal way it is even worse. I don't know where you get the 35 degrees from, but as a farmer I can tell you that I yet have to see a tractor climbing 35 degrees angle, not even 25 degrees.
Some roads are not even allowed to be used with a 12 degree slope for heavy truckloads.

Imagine cultivation of crops. Btw, a 25 degree or more is extremely hard on your anckels and leg muscles and therefore not recommended to do so for a long period of time, such as farming and harvesting without machinery.

Back to the slopes, I think only very few of Frank's fields (trees and grains) could/should be used on slopes more than 10 degrees.



Fred

[APSMS]

Realism is always key; I just hope that the in-game lots are more tuned to SC4 realism rather than actual realism, since in a number of cases this would just be excessive headache. Not 100% sure what a 25^o slope looks like in game, but my guess is that it appears more "rolling" than it ought to.

Just trying to remind all that as a game there are practical limitations to the amount of realism that we should expect/impose on the players. I also think maybe greenhouses should be more like a 4 or 5 deg limit, rather than 2? That low can be awfully restrictive for those of us not emulating the Netherlands.

That said, these are your creations, so I don't want to impose (I try to play for realism anyways). I definitely appreciate the work you've done here, and what you do with it is entirely up to you. Just some of my $0.02.

[jaredh]

I grew up on a farm 

I've personally driven a (smaller) tractor on 20-25 degree slopes plenty.  I've never tried beyond that, and to be fair, never would as 20 degrees was unstable enough for me.

I've seen farmers on bigger slopes...that's where I had the 35 degree number....which is about what my memory is telling me the specific hill in question is. 

The old WPA river bridge over the White River in Arkansas near my home was at least a 20 degree incline up/down and I dare say thousands of farm tractors drove over that thing over the 70 years it was there.  Granted, that was pavement, but good equipment can handle that type of incline without much trouble if you go at a proper speed.

Based upon your comments, I suspect Canada is far more strict then the US is.  I can think of plenty of 35 degree slopes on some mountains I've been on (yeah, they have runaway truck ramps at the bottom for a reason...). 

I suspect a good percentage of bridges in the US have at least 20 degree inclines...certainly all the ones built by the WPA in the 1930s do....granted those are scary bridges...especially on a tractor.

I tend to agree with you though, most crops are low-slope affairs. 

[FrankU]

An interesting discussion. Thanks to all of you. I guess my lots are quite accurate then.

An interesting question in this respect is what does the number mean that we give in at the properties "LotConfigMainSlopeAllowed", "LotConfigMaxSlopeAllowed" and "LotConfigMaxSlopeBeforeLotFoundation", because we can give in numbers up to + or - 10.000.000. So many degrees would make my lots spin several thousands times.... So is it degrees, or is it the tangens of the angle, meaning 10.000/000 is almost vertical? On the other hand, 1 would mean 45 degrees.... Does anybody know?

[gn_leugim]

I have always assumed it was in degrees, but, not quite sure. also, I would stay way from the "LotConfigMaxSlopeBeforeLotFoundation" (keep it in a angle where it cannot grow) as seeing farm plots in small square terraces just looks bad as hell IMO 

[mrbisonm]

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years.....

...a little late, but here is why I have been away from the Internet for so long.
We, my family and I, have had one of the worst Christmas season ever yet.

It all started on December 21 st with one of the most terrible Icestorms we had here in Quebec/Canada. Powerlines went down to the ground, trees and branches were broken off, roofs of sheds, houses and barns have caved in and electricity, water, communication systems etc went out for more than 10 days.

We only have power back since 2 days. Temperatures of an average of -25 to -35C have caused the water to freeze on top of that. Since I own a farm and a little over 100 cattleheads, the frozen waterlines became a serious problem since one cow needs 5 gallons of water minimum a day to barely stay alive.

All this gave us headaches, backaches and a very busy christmas that we actually spent either in the barn, cutting all the broken trees, clearing the area and access to the buildings, transporting water and connecting every hour the generator/Tractor from one building to another.
We had to go to town to eat a good meal, take a shower and simply use a toilet with running water.
35,000 homes were without electricity for more than a week in this area only and almost 10,000 for 10 days. What a mess it was and still is.

The two pictures are a sample of what it looked like around here. I guess, we will be "logging" for the next two weeks without even entering the forest, which are sadly in the same shape.

That is why I haven't been around for the last two weeks. So, this project will be back by the end of the next week, finishing it before the end of the month.

Meanwhile have a nice New Year....

Fred

Viewed from my gallery.....front of the house.





A look through our kitchen window....

[FrankU]

Oh man,

That is bad news!
Meanwhile we had 11 degrees plus today! I could go out without a coat, almost.

I hope all will be well soon! Pity I can't help you now. 

Gives me some more time to go on with the rewards set....

Frank