First, RIP meme legend Dave Brandt. Farming can be pretty tedious, and some of the things that make it easier are just plane ugly! I’m looking at you bio-domes!
If you want to farm circuit boards, which as far as I can tell are the most cost-effective, single site, single planet farm there’s no way around it, you need some planters. I should note I gave up on farming stasis devices because I didn’t care for looping between three gas-farm planets and endless refining to get condensed carbon.
For a long time I just set up bio-domes in a row (with a four-space planter in the center of each) for how ever many plants I needed for the math to come out right. Then I’d run through harvesting all with one button push until I got to the end. I tried making loops, or long runs with a short-distance teleporter to get me back to the start. It works, it’s just utilitarian and unappealing. And those domes really clash with wood, stone, or metal walls, they only match with the pre-fabs.
For something new I’ve tried setting up a big airy room with rows of planters. I feel like that really looks a great deal better. It’s also nice that I can pretty much keep the same style between the “grow room” and the rest of my base. Harvesting 80 something plants one at a time isn’t awesome, I can handle it once a day though.
Has anyone found themselves having to make a similar choice between an efficient harvest and an appealing layout? Did you find a way to make bio-domes look good with the rest of the base? Do you like the look? I’m curious to hear what other people have done. The only set ups I know other folks are using are the ones people have put into tutorials and they are all really cookie-cutter. What are all us random schmoes doing?
After farming plants housed at different bases individually for ages I caved in and went all out with a large, underwater base with numerous biodomes connected by long corridors. They are a big time saver for me, but was a challenge to come up with an arrangement that minimized the amount of running around that was needed. I wasn’t worried about making my grow base look good, but I think it looks kinda cool anyway when viewed from above.
Honest question: What do you farm for? Like, what do you do with all of the credits you get? Do you spend them on something or is it just to see the number get bigger?
Personally, I’ve never found much joy in setting up huge farms in NMS. But then, I run around planets scanning every single creature in each system I visit, so I guess we all find our own version of “fun” 😅
I buy a lot of stuff, like a new ship or multitoool, then I gotta upgrade it to max, which means spending a lot of credits to get a lot of nanites. Then I find a tool I like better and I need to rinse and repeat. Same situation with the fighters in my squadron, gotta max out a ship so I can swap it with theirs. Still, all of that only takes so much cash, so there’s an element of keeping a nice big round number in the bank as well. And I should say I’m not maintaining multiple farms, and never building on a scale that nets multimillions per hour. Part of that’s because I won’t make them big enough, and part of that is I only hit it once a day even if the turn around is every few hours. I got too much exploring (and not enough game time time) to zip back and cash in multiple times a day.
I use the units to increase the storage capacity of my ships, but once I’m done with that I’ll probably just stop. No point then. You can only have a little over 4.2 billion units at a time and if it weren’t for having to spend 300 million for each increase in ship storage (it’s less at the start and increases as you add capacity maxing out at 300 million units) I’d have run over that limit multiple times already.
Are you buying storage slots at such a price because it’s faster than questing or scrapping ships for storage expansions or ‘cause once you’re rich it doesn’t feel so expensive? I’ll always buy slots (whether it’s for ships or multitools) until around a hundred million or so, but after that if I don’t have the storage expansion item, it can wait ‘till I do.
For me at least once I was able to regularly produce multiple Fusion Ignitors and/or Stasis Devices in a day buying storage slots become faster and easier than questing and/or scrapping ships. Plus, there’s no point in trying to indefinitely acquire units because there’s a finite limit to how much one can save, so it might as well be spent on something useful.
Every now and then I try to dabble in farming, but it does not bring the same thrills that exploration and bounty hunting does for me. I applaud my fellow travelers that can prosper through honest work 👏🏿
Exploration is a big part of it though. From finding the planets where the plants I want to farm grow natively so I can collect the seed-stock, to trying to complete the local systems encyclopedia, there’s always something to do if you want to stay in game and play while things grow.