FrankU's Lottery - Space Center update

[mrbisonm]

May I present to you the Slovenian hayrack? It's a distinct architectural feature that is said not to be found anywhere else in the world. Maybe you could BAT/LOT one. I could probably found a 3D model somewhere on my computer and can send it to you if you wish. These are really nice nad useful. Nearly every slovene farm has one. It's used for storage of hay on the top, where drafts dry it, mostly anything goes underneath, to keep it from bad weather.

Could you supply a picture?

[FrankU]

While you are talking about Haystacks I decided to show some of my not yet finished group of Stage 3 farm lots. I have made 7 pieces so far. As usual: two variations of every farm.

Here I present you:

Marleen's Tuinderij 1 (Marleen's horticultural farm)


Marleen's Tuinderij 2


Willemsen Melkvee 1 (Willemsen Dairy farm)


Willemsen Melkvee 2


Erve Boxbergen 1


Erve Boxbergen 2


Erve Olde Bijvank 1



Do they look like a stage 3 farm or not? The properties are made with Pim-X so in that respect they are stage 3 definitely. But: do they look like stage 3?
My Idea was:
Stage 1 = a meadow or farm field with just some stuff at the entrance, like a small shed, a barn, a cow pen.
Stage 2 = a small farm house with a small shed or animal pen.
Stage 3 = a farm house with a large barn or several smaller sheds.
Stage 4 = a farm house with 2 or 3 large barns and some sheds
Stage 5 = a farm house with a large industrial looking farm: a row of barns, a large area of glasshouses.
Stages 6 and 7 I did not yet consider.

Please comment.

[sim-al2]

They look great and yes, to me at least they fit the look of a stage 3 well.

[mrbisonm]

Darn good looking!

[kwakelaar]

A very interesting project, and you have come a long way. I really like the way you have lotted the farms.
For greenhouses, I know that TagOne has made a nice looking greenhouse model, I don't know if you have found that one yet?

[mrbisonm]

I had a free hour just now and I started some props for the Holland Farm Props Pack. Here is one that I am working on, an opensky silo. I have started 3 different sizes of it, 1 chamber, 2 chambers and one with 5 chambers (xlarge) I still have some more details to add like a roll of plastic beside the walls, some tires here and there and also try to figure out a better way of the tire covered plastic to show. Don't really like those tires on the plastic.
But it's a start. Will this be usefull?

mrb

[FrankU]

Thanks for the comments so far.

@Kwakelaar: yes I know about Tag_One's greenhouses. I am going to use them in the stage 4 and 5 larger greenhouse lots. Thanks for your suggestion anyway. I am sure there are props that I don't know of but that would be useful. If you happen to know about some or other prop that fit into a Dutch farm lot, please inform me.

@mrbisonm: Ha, a new prop! Nice.
Some remarks:
- The concrete is very realistic.
- The 5 chamber is not very useful I think. More useful would be another 1 or 2 chamber that is longer. If I need a larger group I can put some together on one lot.
- The tires... it is that you said there are tires on the plastic. They are very distorted, I did not recognize them. Maybe you make tires as separate small props that you (or I) can out on the plastic?
- The brown stuff, hay packed together, looks very realistic. Maybe you make the heaps a bit larger? Usually they are as high as the concrete walls, with an additional heap on it. In real life the hay is cut off vertically. Sorry to say so, but the model you made looks more like manure thrown in with a wheelbarrow or forklift (or whatever they call the small machines they use on farms). Useful also, by the way, but in a smaller concrete silo.

[supremec]

I love your farms   

[Getron]

@mrbisonm

I like your open sky silo, something missing in SC4 : realy farm props. I love your work as Nexis. 

Keep it up.

Getron

[FrankU]

Yesterday I got a new idea. Well, maybe it's not that new, but I'd like to know your opinion anyway.

It's about farm fields.
The usual SC4 farm grows with a lot, containing some kind of agricultural building or object, which is surrounded by farm fields.
In real life there are many plots of agricultural land that are just farm fields. Maybe you see a tractor in the corner, or there is a fence to the road. No more than that.
In my set I tried to resemble this kind of farm fields with my Stage 1 farms. But now I think it is still too much what I did there.

Some days ago I saw a new MD with large areas of farm fields with no building or object at all. Just plain farm fields. This looked beautiful and realistic.
Take a look at Kromeritz by robercik: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=13116.0
Probably he plopped these fields. That was also my first idea for this kind of fields. But there is a beter way, of course.

I think of making some growable farms that are no more than a 1x1 plot of land that looks exactly like the farm fields that go with them. It is so simple! Maybe just 2 jobs? I'd call them Stage 0 farms.

What do you think?

[jmyers2043]

Sounds ok - You may call them stage 0 but they'll have to be at least stage 1 as there is no stage 0 (zero) ... Most BSC farm field lots have 1 job. there are some exceptions e.g. SimGoober fields sometimes have 2 or 3 jobs. I guess depending on whether he thought at the time that a crop type created more work. I'd recommend that a 1X1 field lot have 1 job.

[FrankU]

Ha yes, sure. They will be Stage 1.

I'd just call them "Stage 0" to make a difference with the normal Stage 1. There is only one thing I worry: will these so called Stage 0 fams overgrow the higher stages, or will they be overgrown? What I would like to see is that in all development stages of the city tile these farms will grow between the higher stages farms with amenities and farm houses. Is there any way I can influence this behaviour?

Jobs: I thought: the "farm" itself contains 2 jobs, the farm fields contain just 1, I hope. I made some farm fields myself (I showed then some weeks ago) and they have standard Pim-X properties, so I guess these are OK.

[Lowkee33]

I think of making some growable farms that are no more than a 1x1 plot of land that looks exactly like the farm fields that go with them. It is so simple!

I think that is a great idea.  I thought that is what was done with SPAM with the "fields without buildings" attraction.  Could be wrong, though.

What I would like to see is that in all development stages of the city tile these farms will grow between the higher stages farms with amenities and farm houses. Is there any way I can influence this behaviour?

Farms can be controlled with the Ctrl key.  Use Ctrl to zone your building, and then free zone the fields.  I posted about fields larger than 1x1 too.  There are major no-road zot issues, but it seems to follow a pattern (of some sort.. I have a field that never gets it) Link

Using the Ctrl Key to zone may be asking the end user too much, but yeah, you could certainly get your 1x1 building to grow any time you wanted (anywhere too).

[jmyers2043]

There is only one thing I worry: will these so called Stage 0 farms overgrow the higher stages, or will they be overgrown?

The percent chance that a stage 1,2, or 3 farm will growth is a function of the regions industrial capacity. Example: I am able (when tinkering with the SPAM) to grow 244 farms in a large city that are ALL stage 1. Basically my test city had no (zero) industry.

The CAM has different thresholds (see agricultural stage limts paragraph in this thread) http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=3578.0

Will your new stage 1 farm fields take over other stage 1 farms? Depends on how much agricultural demand the city has. The game will usually favor higher job producing farms over lower ones if there is good demand.

Test scenario for you: Start a new region and it's first city - zone some population - don't zone any industry or commercial - the goal is to make the residents work on some farms but if you have some unemployment then zone a few commercials or a couple of factories but not until - Load your normal farms plugin - plus your new farm fields - see what you get.

[mrbisonm]

In real life the hay is cut off vertically. Sorry to say so, but the model you made looks more like manure thrown in with a wheelbarrow or forklift (or whatever they call the small machines they use on farms). Useful also, by the way, but in a smaller concrete silo.

I listened to your advice FrankU to make the tires myself for the plastic covered silage heap and not using a picture as texture....heck of a job to fit them on the pile though. I also changed the plasticcover into blue, what we see here often. (probably use other colors for other silos) Now, the silage heap or pile I will make taller later this weekend, making sure that they fill up the in between wallspace and maybe add a few more tires to the pile with the plastic cover also.

I don't quite understand what you mentioned above about the *hay cutting of vertically*.......This is supposed to be an opensky silo and not a hayloft or barn. No hay here. The brown stuff, as you say, is actually silage, made from grass, plants or cornplants, but gone though the silage harvester which cuts it into smaller pieces and that is what is actually looks like. The texture is from a picture I took from my own silo contents (in case you didn't know, I own a farm) and the color of the silage gets darker with time, almost a brownish green tone sort of. It is green only when freshly cut and only for a week or so.
I will only be making 2 open-sky silos like this, with one and two compartments.
I also started BATting some round manure pits (fosse à purin) and even two barns. Will be showing them once they're advanced.



Fred

[jmyers2043]

I also changed the plasticcover into blue,

Wow! That is a very good plastic cover/tarp ...




- Jim

[peter007]

Great props.
Wonderful tires and plastics!

-Ernst

[FrankU]

Hi Fred,

I see that my explanation was not very clear to you. I feared that already. I will try to find some examples tomorrow and make good pictures of them. Then you will grasp my intentions.

[Jack_wilds]

Conerning the stage three farms sets,  like 'em very well look promising in the variety part, as for looking stage 3... my question is, what is stage 3 suppose to look like? I think they look fine for stage 3 properties, particularly the 'Erve Boxbergen 1' farm

[FrankU]

Hi Fred,

Yesterday my job brought me to the outskirts of Staphorst and the Mastenbroeker polder (the oldest polder there is in the Netherlands, 13th century). I found these images:

A silage plate (is this English?)


Another, larger, one


The tractor they use to cut off the silage


A manure storage "tank"


As you can see: the silage is stored between two concrete walls. Sometimes these walls are hidden with soil and shrubberies. The silage is covered with black (always black in my region) plastic. This plastic is often kept in place with old tires. You can find these kind of storages in a great variety of sizes and amounts. The second image is from a farm with 5 or 6 (forgot to count) large plates, with concrete walls about 2 meters high, almost 30 meters long. Also I found, on small farms, plates without the concrete walls. I could fill this thread with images, but I won't do that. But the first image shows one that might be very nice to be used as an example for your model: not too small, not too large.
On the third image you can see what I meant with cut off vertically: I meant literally. The tractor has a kind of saw which is used to cut off a square piece of the silage. This is carried into the barn where it is fed to the cows.

For the sake of usefulness for our lots I would say:
- Maybe you make two silage plates. Each about 1,5 tile long, not too high walls and one is filled by a large amount, one is filled by a small amount with the silage. If you want to make three: nobody will stop you! The props you make will be used together in repetition or variety on my lots. With two plates I can make already a lot of variations.
- When the modeling of tires is too tiresome, don't do it. I could live with a plastic covering without tires.
- Please make the plastic black!

As a bonus I added an image of a manure storage tank. As you can see it is made of concrete and is covered with black plastic, that is raised in the center. How they do the raising, I don't know. Probably just with some kind of stick. But of course it is to make the rain fall off the cover. This one is an older one. Nowadays these cylinders are made of black plastic that is kept together with some kind of steel fence construction. The only thing you see is the black plastic. And often a farmer throws some soil around these cylinders, or puts them into the ground, so that they don't look too high. They want to hide the thing.

I hope I am clear now?