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Farms, feed the masses and make a fortune

Farms, feed the masses and make a fortune. So the lure of getting up with the dawn, milking the herds and ploughing the fields attracts you ?

Step this way and smell the countryside!.

Farms work just like factories, except they are cheaper to buy and run. You will need to decide what you want to farm, how many farm labourers you want to hire to run it for you as you zoom around the galaxy, and the prices you wish to sell your produce for.

There are several parts to the Farms

1) Farms can only be built on planets. Just imagine the complicated space suits that cows and sheep would need otherwise!.

2) Build a farm - cost 50K. This is about 1/10 the cost of a factory. The first link you'll need is off the main page, down the bottom right hand corner, underneath the warehouse and/or factory link (if you have it)

3) Transfer cargo to and from your own farm. This is via the cargo screen when you are docked at a planet where your farm is.

4) And for those who haven't noticed (or use screen readers) the cargo screen has changed as well. From here you can now transfer cargo between your ship, warehouse and farm. Which direction you transfer in is determined by the drop down box. You can also dump cargo from here, as before.

The "warehouse" and "farm" headings (if you have them, because you won't if you don't have a warehouse or farm at this planet) are direct links to the warehouse and farm screen.

5) Buying and selling at other players farms. At a planet with any farms other than your own, you will have a new link in the left nav bar which links to a page with all of the farms belonging to other players at that planet, along with details of what they are buying and selling (currently producing)

So make some money buying and selling other players goods and selling or buying at markets. It's simple!

6) Your farm production. There are 2 different pages for your own factories. First there is a link in the left nav to list "my farms" this lists all of your farms. If you are at a planet that has one of your own farms on it there will also be a link underneath the planet name to take you to that farm. The same link exists from the summary page once you have purchased your farm.

7) Setting up production. Each farm can only produce 1 item at a time. You set the item being produced and the price you want to sell it at in the top part of the screen. Setting the produced item will also list you the items that need to be purchased to produce that item, down the bottom of the screen.

Your farms automatically come with space for 50 tonnes of items. If you want to buy more simply fill in the box and click the increase button (at 500 credits per tonne), selling space is similar (refunded at 250 credits/tonne)

But to make your farm produce anything you need workers :)

And they don't come cheap, in fact they are paid by the hour, so make sure you don't employ too many at once!! Worker costs also depend on the item being produced. The more expensive the item, the higher the cost

The amount of workers you employ also determines how many tonnes per hour of your production item you build. Again the more expensive the item, the less per hour you'll build.

8) The safe. You need to deposit money into your safe to pay the players that sell you items. And any money made from selling your produced goods will also be deposited back into your safe. Workers wages are also paid from your safe. If you don't have enough money to pay them, nothing will be produced.

9) You will also need to set up maximum stock amounts of each item that players will be selling to you and a price that you will give them to the item, otherwise no one will be able to sell you things. Although you can still transfer cargo to your factory yourself from the cargo page.

10) Farms cannot create any item that is sellable at that planet.

12) Those lazy workers. If the farm owner is docked at the planet where the farm is, the workers work harder. Much harder in fact.

Each tick you remain at that planet, your farm will produce 150% more goods than normal (giving 250% total production), but for the same hourly wage.

13) Final note - Those big empty fields don't grow on trees, so only 1 farm per player per planet...