Seed That Decides the Crop (New)
A separate seed type for every drilled crop, sold in the Seeds tab as a big bag, singly or 1–8 at a time
Load canola seed and the drill sows canola. The crop selector locks to what is in the tank, so you cannot sow something other than the seed you paid for
Works with drills, planters and seed carts
Crops the base game plants from their own pallet are untouched — potato, sugar beet, red beet, carrot, parsnip, sugar cane and rice, because in the field those are planted from the crop itself
Empty the tank or load plain seed and the drill behaves normally again
Tillage, Compaction and Seedbed
Compaction, surface residue and tilth are three separate numbers, and every implement moves them differently — no single machine can prepare a field on its own
Ground pressure comes from real machine weight and tyre size, so a loaded trailer driving across the field compacts it
A seedbed plan names the machines to use and the order to use them in, and accounts for the compaction its own advice will cause — if following the plan would breach the crop's tolerance, it adds a loosening pass first
Seedbed quality is locked in at drilling and charged at harvest, up to a 25% penalty
Subsoilers finally have a purpose
Soil Biology
Soil life rises with organic matter, surface residue and living roots falls with ploughing, fungicides and compaction
It never touches yield directly. It drives phosphorus reach, nutrient release, compaction recovery, and how well soil resists soil-borne disease
This is the counterweight to tillage — without it, more cultivation was always better
Balanced against a 20-year simulation: plough every year settles around 40–50% soil life, min-till around 60–72%
Crop Varieties and Herbicide Resistance
Five varieties with real trade-offs — yield against disease resistance, standing power, stress tolerance and seed cost
Farm-saved seed is cheaper and plants last year's disease with it
Weed resistance is now tracked per weed population, not per field, so black-grass can be immune while the charlock beside it is still controlled
Modelled as selection rather than damage, with the seed bank acting as a genetic reservoir. Weeds with short-lived seed go resistant in about five years; long-lived ones take fifteen
Rotation and mechanical weeding both meaningfully delay it. Steel selects for nothing, so the weeder pushes resistance back down
Frost and Harvest Timing
Frost damage by hardiness class, but flowering overrides hardiness completely — open flowers have no winter hardiness, which is the late spring frost on flowering canola
A hard winter also helps: freeze-thaw breaks up clods, cracks compaction and kills overwintering pests. It is a trade, not a punishment
Harvest timing now cuts both ways. Cut early and pay to dry it; leave it standing and canola and peas shed, cereals sprout in the ear. There is a window rather than a deadline
Cover Crops With Individual Properties
Radish taproots relieve compaction — the only thing in the mod that loosens soil without a machine
Legumes fix nitrogen, split between what is available now and what releases slowly
Rye suppresses the weed seed bank, mustard biofumigates
Living roots feed soil biology while the cover is growing
Lime and Soil pH (was on the to-do list)
Full pH tracking per field with liming, wired into nutrient availability
Still to Come
Treated and dressed seed variants that protect against specific problems
A visible darker track where you have sprayed, and a map layer per product type so you can see what you have treated
In-game settings menu and a full field information screen, including what is left living in the soil after harvest
Manure/slurry application rules (closed periods, frozen/waterlogged ground)
Grain drying facility
Multiplayer testing and release
Note: Everything above the "Still to Come" list is working in singleplayer and tested daily.
NEW — ORGANIC FARMING, FULLY WORKING
Organic is no longer a label, it's a parallel economy.
• 23 crops have a real organic counterpart — wheat, barley, oat, maize, canola,
soybean, potato, sugarbeet, carrot, cotton, grapes, olives and more
• Organic sells at a genuine premium (1.35x–1.80x depending on the crop) and the
price tracks the live market like any other
• You cannot mix them. Harvest organic into a hopper holding conventional grain and
the machine refuses — no more silently dumping your load
• Full chain works: harvest organic (with straw) → farm silo → load back out → sell
• Even cotton bales come out labelled Organic Cotton
• Spray a synthetic product and you lose certification for that field
NEW — SOIL NUTRITION (N-P-K)
The base game treats a bag of granules and a load of muck as the same thing. Not any more.
• Full nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium tracking per field
• 19 real fertiliser products: urea, ammonium nitrate, CAN, UAN, anhydrous ammonia,
DAP, MAP, TSP, potash, NPK compound — plus compost, chicken, horse, sheep and pig
manure, blood meal, bone meal, kelp meal and wood ash
• Volatilisation is modelled: spread urea or slurry on a warm dry breezy day and a
third of the nitrogen gases off into the air. Ammonium nitrate loses almost none.
This is why slurry goes out in cool damp weather in real life
• Liebig's Law of the Minimum — yield is capped by whichever nutrient is SHORTEST.
Pouring nitrogen on a potassium-starved field buys you nothing
• Organic nitrogen releases SLOWLY from the soil over days; mineral is instant but
leaches away in heavy rain
• Legumes fix their own nitrogen and leave some for the next crop — rotation finally
pays for itself
• Over-fertilise and you get punished the way real farms do: the crop goes soft and
LODGES in wind and rain, disease and pest pressure climbs by up to 60%, and the
grain comes off wetter
• Plan before you drill: pick a field and a crop and the mod tells you exactly what
it needs, and what to spread — in both conventional AND organic-legal form
• Mechanical weeding works too: a weeder or hoe clears weeds with no resistance and
no harvest interval, but steel doesn't select — it takes the flowering weeds your
beneficial insects live on as well
ALREADY WORKING
• Per-field disease and pest simulation on a spatial grid, driven by real weather
• 35 crop protection products with real active ingredients and resistance groups
• Resistance builds from repeated use of the same chemistry
• Spray window: temperature, rain and wind decide how much of your spray actually works
• Beneficial predators, insectary cover and sowable wildflower margins
• Full weed system with a seed bank, species and green-bridge carryover
• Pollinators raise yield on insect-pollinated crops; bee-toxic sprays cost you
• Grain moisture and drying penalties at harvest
• Mycotoxin downgrades from fusarium and ergot
• Economic-threshold scouting — SPRAY / MONITOR / HOLD, so you don't spray out of habit
• Seed treatment for early-season protection
STILL TO COME
• Multiplayer testing and release
• In-game settings menu
• Manure and slurry application rules — closed periods, frozen and waterlogged ground
• Lime and soil pH
• Grain drying facility
• Optional Precision Farming integration
Everything above is working in singleplayer right now and being tested daily.
The mod is standalone — you don't need any other mod for any of it.
Scripts
