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Theoretical Mass Profit Farm

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by its_yEllow, Mar 20, 2017.

  1. its_yEllow

    its_yEllow Lucky Number 13

    I'm currently building this and I have a solid plan laid out.

    My farm will be under water (ocean planet for infinite water) and my idea is to make multiple rooms that can be used to grow crops. Each room will have:
    -1 Automated sprinkling system
    -1 Chest/storage unit
    -2 Light sources (preferably a hanging light)
    -2 Drains

    The main material will be smooth metal blocks and any type of background

    The way the farm works is that the automated system (wired to a main button) which on the count of 5 seconds, opens up 3 wooden gates for 1.5 seconds which let some water drip into room, onto the crops, and into the drain located at the edge of each room. The trick is to make the gate openings not last so long so that the room overflows. Too many gates, and more water will need to be accounted for making a small farm overflow, destroying all crops. 1 gate opening per 5 dirt blocks should work. You could mass produce these rooms with cheap blocks for quite a bit of profit ( 20 dirt space, 10 tomato crops that take up two spaces, produce about 200 pixels per 30 mins when converted with the sell option )!
    Keep in mind, this is all for one room, and just the tomato plant. Other farm able items could also be grown in these rooms, which in turn can be crafted into items worth much mroe than the raw crop, giving you even more pixels.

    With this automated system, the possibilities are unlimited! 5 rooms yield 2000 pixels per hour when grown with the tomato crop, with each room adding 400 pixels an hour to the combined amount. With rice, 5 rooms in 45 mins can get you 1000 pixels, but are noticeably better because of it's ability to stack

    Why not just use sprinklers, you ask?
    The easy answer is
    a. The base looks a lot cooler than a simple sprinkler and soil
    and
    b. It really just looks a lot cooler. You'd get the same profit, expect the fact that sprinklers are expensive to make, which might take you a bit longer. You also wouldn't get the same feeling Monsanto feels when they push a button and all of their crops are watered, so you wouldn't want to miss out on that!

    However, there is just one catch -
    I'm not sure where to put the Terramart shipment. I fear that it won't work, and having to manually transfer all of the goods to the main Terramart (which is quite a bit of time).
    Not all hope is lost, though. When deep down on the sea level, chunks are not registered, thus the game won't know if you have a direct beam to open sky. A possible add on to the base that leads to the surface might work, but would take quite a bit of time to get it towards a level that recognizes that we have access to the surface, with elevators pulling me up to the farm and down again with a little pool at the bottom, getting rid of any fall damage.

    This will be my first big build, and I hope that it goes a successful as my plans seem to portray it. Worse of all, I plan to build this all in survival mode. No worries, I'll get a few of my friends to help mine for me and get the materials I so desperately need.

    Wish me luck!
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2017
    Blevruz and Lavender Aces like this.
  2. DraikNova

    DraikNova Spaceman Spiff

    There's no need for any of that if what you want is to make a lot of profit. Just by an equal number of elemental fluffalos of each type, and then craft perfect pants. 10k pixels per piece. And you can do this on a barren world without any problems, and just check in every 15 minutes (I think it takes about that long for them to become shearable again after being sheared). You just need to be able to handle the lag from 80 fluffalos pathing, but compared to your current megafarm plan, that's nothing. If you want 2000 pixels an hour, as with your current tomato farm plan, just use 1 of each kind of fluffalo. 15/60*2000/10000*20=1/4*1/5*20=1.

    Plus, the setup time is nothing compared to your farm plan. I generally buy elemental fluffalos as soon as I get access to the Terramart, and as a result I have a full perfect set (which requires 100 of each elemental crafting ingredient, which is to say 50ks worth if I would only craft perfect pants) and 10k left over by the time I get to the Hylotl mission.
     
  3. ManaUser

    ManaUser Cosmic Narwhal

    I've been intrigued by the possibility of watering crops with liquid water since I noticed it was possible, but it never quite seemed practical due to the careful control needed to avoid flooding. It sounds like a cool project though. Not so much as a way to get rich (like DraikNova said, there are other ways) but just for its own sake. I might well give it a try at some point.
     
  4. its_yEllow

    its_yEllow Lucky Number 13

    current situation - not all soils are being "wet", might need to reconstruct...
     
  5. ManaUser

    ManaUser Cosmic Narwhal

    The tricky thing is that the depth required to wet the soil is extremely close to the depth that destroys crops. I've been experimenting with it a little bit, and it's pretty hard to control the depth that finely.
     
  6. Gobi Slave

    Gobi Slave Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    On top of all that, tomato may not be your best bet for earning tons of money. Boneboo plants were listed on the wiki as the most profitable crop. I've got a few of those on my own farm, and they work well for me.

    Of course, planting boneboo requires having the seeds, and those can be very hard to find.
     
  7. DraikNova

    DraikNova Spaceman Spiff

    Really? I visited mutant planets nonstop and got on average about 2-3 boneboo seeds per planet.
     
  8. Jerln

    Jerln Oxygen Tank

    As far as I know, most people creating profit farms plant coralcreep and / or reefpod, because it can be submerged, removing the need for watering.
     
  9. Gobi Slave

    Gobi Slave Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Huh, guess I just had bad luck with them.

    That aside, I think that I figured out a possible solution to your watering problem.

    Your watering system needs two layers. One to let in the exact amount of water that you need, another that's sectioned out just like your crops are (so each segment of dirt with crops on it should have an equally long segment of layer two directly above it), but made out of hidden trapdoors. After the water is poured into layer two, wait a second for it to settle into being the right height, then activate the hidden trapdoors and the water will fall onto the crops in roughly the perfect amount every time.

    Once that's set up, the only remaining challenge should be timing the water to settle in layer two precisely, which shouldn't be too hard.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2017
  10. ManaUser

    ManaUser Cosmic Narwhal

    I find making a colony (and collecting rent) on the appropriate planet is an even easier way to get seeds (though that depends on your play style I guess). Never had one on a Mutant planet, but I sure got loads of chili seeds from my Scorched world colony.

    This was my line of thinking as well, though it didn't occur to me to use hidden doors, that's so they don't need support on the sides (which leaves gaps) right? But it's still finicky. One idea that might help is draining off any access water between cycles, once you get it turned just right, the last thing you want is water building up because, say you left a small area unplanted, and causing the next cycle to flood.
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2017
  11. DraikNova

    DraikNova Spaceman Spiff

    To be fair, I dug down and found them in the bone caves.
     
  12. its_yEllow

    its_yEllow Lucky Number 13

    UPDATE #1 - I've almsot completed making a wiring station, but I need plenty of RAM in order to make my wiring setup. I have the gate system worked out, just need to get the wiring station up and running so the drains can work.
     
  13. Gobi Slave

    Gobi Slave Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Awesome, let us know how it goes!
     

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