Farm Factory Mod (Work in Progress Release)

This is one of the mods I started on my holiday vacation. It all began with the lot pictured below. 

My 'Farm-Tech Proving Grounds'. An enormous farm with high taxes.

Simsco Farm Factory (tentative name)
Found under Large Appliances

I sometimes like to play Farm type lots, trying out various ways to make enough money to pay the taxes on the lot. It seems really hard, to be honest. The larger the lot, the more money per harvest, but the higher the taxes. And the money from selling produce isn't that great. Turning it into Preserves or Consumes using Cottage Living makes more money, but it takes way too long to support a farm that way, much less afford to buy your Llamas sweaters.

So I came up with the idea to recolor and re-use the amazing 'Cupcake Factory' object from the Base Game (I love the conveyor belt...) and have it make boxes of canned preserves and consumes, and more. A single farmer can process an entire day's harvest in a couple of hours and end up with plenty of money to buy another cow or two.

I also gave the Factory it's own refrigerated inventory that it uses for the canning, so that you can decide which produce gets used for canning, and which is used for fizzing and other purposes.

This is what the Farm Factory can make so far.

Recipes adapted from Cottage Living

• Box of 6 Jars of Apple Jam
  6 Apples, 6 Sugar
• Box of 6 Wheels of Cheese
  6 Milk
• Box of 6 Jars of Chocolate Syrup
  6 Chocoberries
• Box of 6 Jars of Mayonnaise
  6 Eggs
• Box of 6 Jars of Meat Substitute
  6 'meat substitute' ingredients (soy, aubergine, mushroom or faux meat cubes)
• Box of 6 Jars of Raspberry Jam
  6 Raspberries
• Box of 6 Jars of Strawberry Jam
  6 Strawberries
• Box of 6 Jars of Tomato Sauce
  6 Tomatoes

New Recipes/Foods

• Box of 6 Meals Ready-to-Eat (with Meat)
  6 Vegetables, 6 Fish
  Box of 6 Meals Ready-to-Eat (Vegetarian)
  6 Vegetables
  MREs are mostly a way for farmers to process produce that there's no other use for. They're also a great camping and outing food. It's a box of vacuum-packed food with a built-in self-heating element. You can open it up, and you get a plate of hot food in your inventory (same recipe lists as the Delicioso spell from RoM).
• Commercial Sized Sack of Sugar
  6 Fruit
  Sugar is needed for every Jam recipe, which are all 1 sugar + 1 fruit item, but you have to try to buy it at the grocery stand in Hensford-on-Bagley. I came up with a recipe for making Sugar from any Fruit (let's call it...fructose). The factory can convert 6 fruit into a large sack of sugar, which can be opened to get 6 small bags of sugar that can be used in recipes.
• Box of 6 Cans of Green Peas
  6 Green Peas
  Canned vegetables is an idea I had later than the MREs, and is another way to process vegetables into something more valuable. Six Green Pea pods can be converted into a box of 6 cans of Green Peas. You can use the canned ingredient directly in recipes (at least that's the goal...), or you can Open it Up and get actual Peas back to use.
• Box of 6 Cans of Fishcake
  6 Fish (any fish)
  I thought canned fish was a nice idea as well, since Fish spoil so quickly. Once I got canned tuna working, though, I realized that it was kind of hard to catch 6 fish of the same type before some of them spoiled. So I came up with 'fishcakes' which is kind of a mixed, processed fish cake in the shape of a fish. It can be used in any recipe that calls for 'any fish', such as Fish Tacos, or even Fish on a Stick or Fried Fish.

If you Open the boxes, you get 6 jars/wheels/cans of whatever is in the box. You can sell all the items (and the boxes) any of the ways that you can sell produce, including back to the Grocery stand in Hensford-on-Bagley.

It is all stackable to save space in your root cellar.

To Use

The Farm Factory pulls all of its ingredient requirements from its own inventory. This is meant to allow you to better decide what portion of that huge haul of apples goes toward fruit (for pies and things), which part toward jam and sugar, and which part gets fizzed into a 'fizzy' (which is also a decent parallel product line for a working sim farm/orchard).

You need to put the ingredients into the machine before you can make the recipes with the machine. You can Open the inventory and drag things into it, you can drag and drop items onto the machine, or you can use the Load ingredients option with a dialog, though I find that option a bit slower.

Then you select Bulk Food Processing, and choose one of the recipes for which you have ingredients. The machine will chug and flash and belch smoke in a remarkably Steampunk way, and your box of processed food will come rolling down the conveyor belt. Your sim will wait until it is done then pick up the box and look for a surface or a shelf to place it on.

You need to clean the machine about every 6 uses. This is the same as the Cupcake Factory for now.

Work Still To Be Done

I need to finish the rest of the Cottage Living recipes.

I'm liking the canned vegetables idea, as they keep forever, and they provide a higher profit margin than produce alone. Plus they might work with the Base Game (as well as the MRE's and the Fishcake). Plus it’s cool to have canned vegetables. So I'm going to add more of these. I found a ton of vintage can labels to use as textures.

It has occurred to me that I could probably get this thing to make just about anything that would fit on the conveyor belt. Certainly food things like quarts of Ice Cream, Animal Treats, and Pizzas, but also Robot Parts, Candles, six packs of Fizzed drinks, even SimRay guns. But not all of that makes sense to put in the same object. I like some themes and logic to my universes. I'm going to stick with food for this one.

Ideas and feedback are always welcome!

NOTE: The Work in Progress releases are currently contain all the separate parts of the mod as separate files. This is in case someone has trouble with a specific recipe, we can take it out to verify that it is the problem. 

Change Log

1.0.0, 1/14/2022, Initial Patreon Work In Progress Preview