Not quite found what I'm asking using forum search, so here I go: Campfire Banana. This seems to be the best crop I've yet to discover in terms of work input/pixel output. Now, farming isn't just about what crop is worth the most etc., right? It's time required related to crop value related to how well you lay them out, growth time, stacked ingredients vs one per slot, with a final major influence in the game environment being how often you visit the farm location. So, I'm working on the premise that I'll be visting the planet periodically as I play the rest of the game and not touching anything until everything is grown. This sort of eliminates growth time as a factor in the efficiency calculations. That being taken as true, when I'm there I want to spend the least amount of time doing work for the greatest pixel return. When I start picking/processing, my food section of my inventory will be completely empty, enabling 40 slots. No bots or mods. I see that Campfire Banana has a 40% value increase over its base ingredients, but only requires two ingredients, both of which do not require replanting, just picking, with a simple and fast sub-process (cocoa into chocolate) before final process. I have yet to be able to build Ultimate Juice, which if you go googling seems to be the holy grail of farming in Starbound due to its high value. But, it has five ingredients, only one of which doesn't need replanting, though there are no sub-processes. But on th eother hand you can fit more of the ingredients for this in the same amount of space as Campfire Banana setup. As I don't yet have all the seeds, I can't put it to the test. There's other ones, of course. I've looked at Choconut which has a 43% value increase over base ingredients, but has considerable longer build times, sub-processes (including cutting down and replanting coconut trees) and isn't as good (though it's a great food for hunger, zero to fully belly in one bite). Which is what all this comes down to - simple maths on a spreadsheet won't do it all, you need time and motion studies as processes and layouts vary. So - has anyone got any actually proven "best crops", with evidence that doesn't simply rely on the basic arithmetic?
Just done some timings. 55 seconds to pick and make 10x Campfire Banana, equals 16 pixels/second when sold at Terramart Launcher, for total of 880 pixels. 125 seconds to pick and make 10x Choconut, equals 8.55 pixels/second, for total of 1240 pixels. There are some inefficiencies in the layout (being more complex and not optimised by me), but not enough to skew the result by much at all. 30 seconds to pick and make 10x Chocolate on its own, equals 12 pixels/second, for total of 360 pixels. 25 seconds to pick and make 10x Boiled Rice, equals 9.2 pixels/second, for total of 230 pixels.
