Farm Designs

[thestalkinghead]

this is my design for a compact but very productive Hydroponic farm, every piece of the farm is brightly lit, what designs are you guys using?

[nnescio]

I use cardinally adjacent standing lights instead of sun lamps. Overlapping lit areas become brightly lit, so two adjacent standing lights can cover more area than a single sun lamp, while costing less metal and consuming less power.

... Oh and here's my pot-- uh... potato farm.



I actually drew up a blueprint while designing my farm:



Light blue indicates lit areas, dark blue indicates brightly lit areas (which we want), red indicates the stockpile, and green indicates hydroponics tables. Black indicate standing lamps -- note that each section of the farm has two standing lights placed in cardinally adjacent tiles. Ignore the grey (yeah, I know it's kinda confusing), they just indicate tiles adjacent to the lights.

Purple indicates the two necessary supports to avoid the roof coming down in an indoor grow area. The bottom right support can be shifted two tiles diagonally downwards. I didn't bother to indicate the walls at the sides, as my farm is dug inside a mountain. ...

[thestalkinghead]

whoa, i didn't notice that when you put lights next to each other the "brightly lit" area is much bigger, it also works with gaps in between the lights of 7-8 squares, interesting

[SharpKris]

the 1st design is much more efficient in terms of space though

[nnescio]

whoa, i didn't notice that when you put lights next to each other the "brightly lit" area is much bigger, it also works with gaps in between the lights of 7-8 squares, interesting

The light covered by a sun lamp is kinda interesting, like so:



Dark blue indicates brightly lit areas, while light blue indicates lit areas.

Note the missing lit squares on the left side. Those missing squares remain on the left regardless of the orientation of the sun lamp.

Tynan has acknowledged it as a bug, but it has not been fixed yet as of v.254

As for normal standing lamps (some further explanation for other readers):

A normal standing lamp has a lighting radius of so:



Overlapping two cardinally adjacent standing lamps will give the following:



Since the above is symmetrical, you can rotate the whole thing:



There are multiple ways to put in the hydroponics tables. I favor a design like this:



..as it gives growers easy access to the potatoes while letting them path in-between tables. It's also symmetrical, so you can pretty much rotate it however you want and tessellated to fit multiple "grow areas".

It can be made more space efficient, of course. I only put 12 hydroponics tables in. Two more can be placed on the top and bottom without blocking the workers' path significantly. I think you can put 16 or maybe 17 tables in, 'though at that point it becomes hard to navigate.

Also, when multiple grow areas overlap, you can fit in more hydroponics tables between them, as you noticed.

the 1st design is much more efficient in terms of space though

Eh, I prefer optimizing for ease of access and power efficiency.

[thestalkinghead]

the lighting diagrams you provided make a lot of sense, i can see how/why it works now

[nnescio]

the lighting diagrams you provided make a lot of sense, i can see how/why it works now

Made a blueprint of your farm:



Hope you like it.

[Spike]

With about a dozen colonists, 12 tables is plenty enough.  I'd have a continual increase of food, eventually having 5k or more.  My preferred design is to double up the tables - you only need access to one side, not both:
aisle
table
table
aisle

[Semmy]

the lighting diagrams you provided make a lot of sense, i can see how/why it works now

Made a blueprint of your farm:



Hope you like it.

wow bloody awsome information....

This will help me out setting up my hyrdro's way better.

[Wopian]

These are my small farm designs:



And my large designs (I really need to get the cleaner in there):



Both are probably highly inefficient with energy usage, but it works.

[thestalkinghead]

the lighting diagrams you provided make a lot of sense, i can see how/why it works now

Made a blueprint of your farm:



Hope you like it.

awesome

[Dragula]

Cool stuff. It's fun to see how seemingly trivial things get discussed in-depth on the boards

[Tynan]

Indeed, very interesting. It's also useful for me when figuring out how to design and balance the next version of the game.

[Stickle]

Since the above is symmetrical, you can rotate the whole thing:

Are you sure that's right? I just built two adjacent standing laps against the short edge of a growing area, and the far tiles (6 tiles away) are not brightly lit and won't grow. But according to your graphic there, they should be...

[nnescio]

Since the above is symmetrical, you can rotate the whole thing:

Are you sure that's right? I just built two adjacent standing laps against the short edge of a growing area, and the far tiles (6 tiles away) are not brightly lit and won't grow. But according to your graphic there, they should be...

Hmm... strange. I could have sworn it used to work. Maybe the lighting has changed a little between versions. It looks like the outermost edge doesn't get promoted to "brightly lit" despite being in the overlapping areas of two standing lamps.

I'll doublecheck things and draw a new template when I figure things out. Thanks for the heads up.

Edit: So the "brightly lit" area template seem to change slightly depending on when, where or how (the order) of how I build the standing lamps, even when I built them in the same relative positions (one left and one right). Fiddling around with the wiring seem to change the lighting radius rarely. I can't find any rhyme or reason to what causes what changes. Maybe there's a background lighting value and not all "dark" tiles have the same lighting value, and far away light sources can affect this by a tiny amount.

Sometimes I get a symmetrical lit area. Sometimes I don't. I'm getting a bit cross-eyed here.

All the changes seem to be very slight, however. Maybe I can identify the "stable" brightly lit areas.