Interplanetary Farmer Handbook

The premise

Thousands of years after the first interplanetary war, a century of shifting alliances has left about one in ten of the old populations alive, and food production was among the first things the militaries targeted. Demand now runs far ahead of supply, so growers are being recruited. You are one of them: you pick a planet, take over a plot of land, and run it remotely through a tracked robot called the Farmoton.

You make money (nibs) by growing crops and selling them to the traders who dock at your farm's market each day. Some crops are illegal and pay far more, but inspectors fine you for them and three strikes close the farm. You start with 2,500 nibs. Your first farm also comes with 5 seeds of the legal crop that suits it best (on most starting planets a perfect fit), in its seed shed, and the Farmoton tooling to plant them; you still need a trailer to harvest them and the right shed to store the harvest. The game ends only if you have no farm left and cannot afford a new one (the cheapest planet costs 300 nibs).

Days, time and the night

Each day starts at 6:00. On the farm screen one in-game hour takes 25 real seconds; the clock stops while any menu, report or visitor is on screen. The speed button beside the clock (or G) runs the farm at 1×, 2×, 3×: time, robots and animals all speed up together, so they get the same work done per in-game hour. Menus, visitors and puzzles always run at normal speed. Sunrise and sunset sit evenly around noon: sunrise = 12 − daylight ÷ 2.

When the clock passes midnight, or you end the day yourself, the night runs on every farm you own:

1. Plants grow (or wither), and ripe single-harvest crops start to rot.
2. Pests spread, weeds age, sprout and spread.
3. The soil dries out.
4. Inspectors may visit.
5. Loan interest is added once, for all farms.
6. The next day's weather and traders are rolled, and the game autosaves.

You choose how the Farmoton spends the night:

A farm report follows each night. It has a foldable section per farm: the farm you are on and the morning outlook start open, your other farms start folded, and a folded section shows ⚠ when it holds a warning. Long reports scroll. Tick Auto-continue beside the Continue button and reports close themselves after 5 seconds, so the game can run unattended; the setting is saved with your game. Visiting robots then answer themselves too when they only have news for you, but an offer or request that needs your decision still waits for you.

The Farmoton

The Farmoton is one tile in size. It always works on the tile directly in front of it, outlined in yellow. Tapping a direction turns it on the spot; holding the direction drives it forward one tile at a time (about 0.3 s per tile with stock motors). Buildings and weeds block it, and so do helper robots.

Tools

Facing a building and pressing Space uses the building instead: the water tank fills the onboard tank, the seed shed swaps the hopper's contents for the selected seed, a crop shed unloads matching goods from the trailer, and the garage parks for the night.

Energy, solar charging and wear

• Driving one tile costs 0.4 energy; each tool costs the amount in the table. Turning is free.
• The solar panels charge the battery during daylight: charge per hour = solar rating × the planet's sun power.
• Every move adds 0.025% wear and every action 0.125%. Wear makes everything cost more energy: energy × (1 + wear ÷ 100), so 30% wear means 30% more energy per job.
• A night outside adds exposure wear when the weather is outside 5–28°C or 25–75% humidity: 0.4% per degree outside the range + 0.15% per humidity point outside it (ignored below 0.5%). Helpers take the same exposure.
• Maintenance in the garage costs 1.5 nibs per 1% of wear and repairs as much as you can pay for.

Tracks and soil

Each planet has one soil type. Without tracks for it, every move onto a plot tile takes 3× as long and uses 3× the energy. Tracks, like all parts, belong to that farm's Farmoton.

Tooling

Planting and harvesting each crop category needs its tooling; the Pest Sprayer is needed to spray.

Parts

Upgrades → Farmoton. The trailer starts at 0: without one the Farmoton cannot harvest, and the first purchase buys it.

Each farm comes with its own stock Farmoton; parts, tracks and tooling belong to that farm's robot.

Planets

There are 57 planets, each named after a real star or body and a kind of land. A farm costs between 300 and 650 nibs. Every planet has fixed traits and a yearly cycle:

Sun colour

0 is a red sun, 0.5 white, 1 blue. It tints the farm's light, and crops prefer a particular colour.

Sun power

Multiplies how fast solar panels charge.

Temperature and daylight

Follow a sine wave over the planet's year: value = average + swing × sin(2π × day-of-year ÷ year length).

Seasons

Each year splits into four equal seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

Humidity

Constant all year.

Rain

Each morning it rains with the planet's rain chance. See Water.

Water price

Nibs per unit to refill the farm tank at the market.

Pests

The planet's pest and its nightly chance per plant. Some planets have none.

Inspections

A strictness multiplier on inspections, stings and fines. Lower strictness also brings more smugglers.

Crops and growth

There are 30 crops in eight categories. A category decides which shed stores the harvest and which tooling plants and picks it. A ninth category, Animal Goods, holds the materials animals make.

Suitability

Each crop prefers a sun colour, hours of daylight, temperature, humidity and soil. Every factor scores from 0 to 1, and suitability = light × daylight × temperature × humidity × soil.

Soil scores 1 on the crop's best soil, 0.6 on its second soil and 0.15 on anything else. The HUD shows the selected seed's score for today, factor by factor.

Growing each night

Plants go through five stages: planted seed → seedling → sprout → plant (ripe) → dead plant. Each night a living plant gains

growth = suitability × water factor × weed factor ÷ days per stage

• Water factor is 1 if the tile's moisture meets the crop's need (low 20, medium 40, high 60), otherwise 0.25.
• Weed factor is 0.5 if a weed grows on the tile, otherwise 1.
• Each full point of growth advances one stage, so in ideal conditions a crop ripens in 3 × its days per stage.
• Infested plants do not grow at all.
• If the night's rate (before dividing) is below 0.2, the plant is stressed. After 4 stressed nights in a row it dies.
• A ripe single-harvest crop rots and dies after 5 nights unpicked. Regrowing crops wait indefinitely.

Harvest and yield

Every night's growth rate is averaged into the plant's quality.

units harvested = round(yield × (0.4 + 0.6 × quality)), at least 1

Regrowing crops (trees, bushes, beans) go back to a sprout after picking and lose 0.5 of a stage. Single-harvest crops become dead plants that you cut down before replanting.

Water, rain and soil moisture

• Every plot tile has moisture from 0 to 100. Watering adds 45, using 4 units from the Farmoton's onboard tank, which you fill at the farm tank.
• The farm tank holds 200 / 400 / 700 units by level and is refilled at the market for the planet's water price per unit.
• Rain: on a rainy morning every tile gains 50 moisture and the tank gains 60. While it keeps raining, tiles gain 12 per hour and the tank 5 per hour.
• Evaporation overnight: clamp(14 + (temp − 15) × 0.8, 6, 40) × (1.2 − humidity ÷ 125). Hot, dry planets lose the most.
• Thirsty plants show a blue drop on their tile.

Weeds and pests

Weeds

• A new farm starts with 8 weeds. Each night each of the map's 496 cells has a 0.8% chance to start a new weed (in the grass only, about four a night).
• Weeds age each night. From age 2 a weed spreads to each free neighbour with 2.5% chance, plot tiles included.
• Weeds stop spreading once they cover 25% of the map (124 cells).
• Weeds block robots, halve the growth of a plant sharing their tile, and raise pest odds. Cut them down (tool 4).

Pests

Each night every healthy plant on a planet with pests may be infested. Its odds are

planet pest chance × (1 + 0.04 × weeds on the farm) + 0.03 for a weed on or beside it (each) + 0.2 per infested neighbour

Infested plants stop growing and die after 5 nights. Spraying clears them; pesticide costs 4 nibs a dose at the market and one dose clears one tile.

The farm and its buildings

A new farm has a 5 × 5 plot, a water tank, a seed shed and its own stock Farmoton. The map is 31 × 16 tiles and scrolls as you drive. Buildings stand along the top and are each two tiles wide.

• Sheds: the seed shed has no limit. Every other crop category needs its own shed before its harvest can be stored; see the category table. Build them under Upgrades → Farm.
• Garage: park in it to sleep with charging and maintenance. Standing beside it charges the battery at 2× the solar panels' full-sun rate, for 1 nib per 1% of battery (the same price applies overnight).
• Moving buildings: the Move tool (7) picks one up for 3 energy and puts it down free. Sheds must be empty first. The plot cannot grow over a building, so move it out of the way first.
• Animal Barn and Produce Shed: the barn houses your animals; the Produce Shed (a crop-style shed) stores the materials they make.
• Selling the Farmoton (Upgrades → Farmoton): 1,000 nibs, whatever its upgrades. You then work that farm on foot as a colonist: no battery, wear or breakdowns, any soil and crop, but slower, carrying a few seeds, a little water and a small basket, picking pests off by hand and unable to move buildings, and a manager has nothing to drive. A new stock Farmoton costs 3,000 nibs, or you can rent a top-spec one (every part at level 3, all tracks and tooling) for 50 nibs until midnight, when it's collected and what it carried goes back to the farm.
• Remote Relay Station: see Other planets.
• Selling buildings: an empty shed, the garage, the barn (once its animals are sold) or the relay sells for 75% of what was spent on it, including upgrades. The seed shed cannot be sold.

Animals

Alien livestock live in the Animal Barn and wander the grass by day (they never block the robots). Buy them, and Animal Feed at 2 nibs a unit, in the market's Animals tab. An animal sells back for 50% of its price.

Each night

1. Eating: foragers find their own food first and only eat Animal Feed when there is none; the rest eat one unit of feed. An animal that doesn't eat makes nothing that night, and after 3 hungry nights in a row it wanders off for good.
2. Its job, if it ate (Fluffwings pollinate whenever they are on the farm).
3. Its material: each fed night adds its comfort (0–1) towards the next batch; a batch is made once the total reaches the nights in the table. Comfort scores temperature and humidity like a crop's suitability: full within the tolerance, falling to nothing at twice it. Batches go to the Produce Shed; with no shed, or no room, they spoil.

Materials

Animal goods sell like crops: traders may want the Animal Goods category (in testing, about half of all days had such a trader), and stations, the manager's sell mode, the Surplusoton, the Dealoton and the Planet Hopper all take them.

Markets, traders and money

The market (M)

• Buy seeds at each crop's seed price; they go to the seed shed. Illegal seeds are not sold here.
• Supplies: refill the farm water tank and buy pesticide.
• Planet: deliver the crops on the Liaisonoton's request once you have agreed to supply the planet (see Visiting robots). Every so often the planet also appeals here for a donation of 100–1,000 nibs; giving is up to you, but the people remember who helped. Its food drive takes everything in your sheds (contraband stays) as a gift to the planet's people: an easy way to clear out full sheds, and they think better of you for it. The tab is also where you hire up to 10 farm hands, local colonists and the planet's own people. Each lives in a one-tile house in a village of workers' homes that starts in the farm's upper right corner (150 nibs to build, kept if they leave) and is paid 50 nibs when hired and every 10 days; one you can't pay quits. Choose each one's task there (any task a helper robot can do). They are slower than helper robots, work a shift of 8–10 hours a day starting between 7:00 and 9:00, and pick pests off by hand without pesticide. They keep working while you are away. Give them their tasks in the Helpers menu (H). The planet's people like it when you hire them, and dislike it on any day you spray pesticide.
  Workers take 2 hours off for lunch in the middle of each shift and have lives of their own off shift. They go to bed at night for 7–8 hours, and with time to spare they visit the amenities you've built, stroll about, stop to chat with each other and pet the farm's animals. Some own a pet, a little jelly goat in one of several colours, which they walk, take to the park and walk at lunch, before eating at the restaurant if the farm has one (otherwise at home). What they're thinking pops up now and then in a bubble over their heads, and a sleepy one floats over the house of anyone asleep. The Helpers menu shows when each sleeps and their pet.
  Each hand and your farm manager has a mood. Some mornings one asks for the day off (give it and they stay home and like you more; refuse and they like you less), and every 90 days worked you're asked whether to pay them a 100-nib bonus. Moods drift each night towards a resting level that each amenity you build raises (the library, mini-mall, park, recreation center, restaurant, theater, under Upgrades → Farm). Someone left unhappy for too long quits ("Fed up" is the last warning), which upsets the planet, though less than letting them go.
  Keep a farm's whole staff happy for a long stretch and they pull together to thank you: first with the Admirable Humanoidatarian award for your awards case, then with furniture for your Personal Space Base. But a worker who stays unhappy may sneak in and steal that award back. Some hands are happier with a helper robot on the harvest, and none of them like working under a Manager Robot. A happy staff may also catch locals trying to steal your animals or set fire to your buildings.
• Loans, Robots and the Planet Hopper are also bought here.

Traders

Each morning 1–3 traders dock. Each buys 2–4 crop categories at 0.9×–1.8× base price, and has room for 20–60 units that day. Sales draw from the sheds first, then the Farmoton's trailer, then each helper's trailer.

Smugglers and illegal crops

• Each trader is a smuggler with chance clamp(0.3 ÷ strictness, 10%, 70%), so lax planets attract more.
• Smugglers also buy illegal crops at 1×–1.5× base price.
• 60% of smugglers sell 1–3 kinds of illegal seed, 5–20 of each, at 1×–1.6× the seed price.
• Stings: each sale of contraband has a 8% × strictness chance that the buyer is an undercover inspector.

Inspections, fines and strikes

Every farm you own may be inspected each night:

chance = 6% × strictness + min(35%, 1.5% × illegal items) × strictness

Illegal items are every living illegal plant plus every unit of illegal goods or seeds in the sheds, robots and the Planet Hopper. If anything illegal is found (or a sting catches you), it is all confiscated and you are fined

fine = 250 + 2 × value of the illegal items

and receive a strike. The farm is shut down at 3 strikes, or seized at once if you cannot pay the fine.

Loans

• Credit limit = 800 + 400 per plot expansion across all your farms, plus a good-standing bonus: +50 for every 14 nights in a row you owe nothing. A loan resets that count, which starts again once the loan is paid off; rises already earned stay.
• Interest of 2% is added every midnight.
• If the debt passes 2× the credit limit, the lender repossesses the farm you are on.
• Losing a farm moves you to another one you own. With none left, the lender takes what it is owed from your savings.

Helper robots and the Manager Robot

Helpers

A helper is an automated Farmoton that works one task at a time: Water, Weed, Pest control, Harvest or Plant. Weed and Pest control also clear dead plants. A farm can have 5, costing 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 40,000 nibs in turn.

• Helpers are slower than you (0.6 s a tile, 1.4 s a job) but use only 25% of the energy and wear.
• They fetch their own water, seeds and pesticide, carry their own trailer, and need their own tracks, tooling and parts (Upgrades → Helper Robots). They wait above the plot when there is nothing to do.
• A Brain Chip (1,500 nibs) gives a helper a backup task for whenever its main task has no work.
• Sell a helper you no longer need from the Robot Help tab of the Helpers menu (H), for 75% of the latest helper's price and of what you spent upgrading it. The next helper is then cheaper again.
• They are repaired and charged when you park in the garage, and take weather wear when you don't.

Everyone working the farm is set up in the Helpers menu (H), with a tab each for Robot Help, the Robot Manager, Farm Hands and the Farm Manager.

The Manager Robot

A small hovering robot for 20,000 nibs. It is the farm's autopilot, and can be sold back for 75% of its price from the Robot Manager tab of the Helpers menu. A farm has one manager: this robot, or a Farm Manager hired in the market's Planet tab, who does everything below but only during a shift of 8–10 hours a day, steering the Farmoton by remote control from beside their house. A Farm Manager is paid 300 nibs when hired and every 10 days, and lives in a house like the farm hands.

• Autopilot: it drives the Farmoton through every task no helper covers (as main or Brain Chip task), most urgent first: Pest control, Water, Harvest, Weed, Plant. Driving or using a tool switches the Farmoton to manual; P hands it back.
• Planting: it plants the seeds ticked in its list, choosing the one that suits today best. With Next available on, it also plants any legal seed you have in stock, best suited first (it still only buys the ticked ones). Helper robots and farm hands have a Next available choice for their seed too.
• Restocking (each can be switched off): water when the tank drops below 30%; pesticide up to 10 doses when under 3, if a robot there has the sprayer; each chosen legal seed the Farmoton has tooling for, up to 20 when fewer than 5 are left. It never spends below the reserve you set (0, 250, 1,000, 2,500, 5,000 nibs; default 1,000).
• Animal Feed (can be switched off): keeps 6 nights of feed for the farm's animals, topping up below half of that.
• Sell mode (off by default): sells shed goods to the day's traders, each unit to the best offer. It never sells contraband. If you have agreed to supply the planet, it first delivers what the Liaisonoton's request still needs (filling a request and then the next), and only sells what is left over. Money made on farms you are away from goes straight to your savings; the night report gives the total near the top.
• Garage nights: on autopilot with a garage, every 3 nights it parks the Farmoton for charging and repairs.
• Away from the farm: a farm with a manager keeps working while you are elsewhere. Its helpers and (on autopilot) its Farmoton work from morning to midnight. Farms without a manager only grow, charge from the sun and catch the rain.
• Its purchases, sales and garage nights appear in the nightly report.

Other planets and space stations

The Planet Hopper (8,000 nibs) flies between planets (T). Flying takes the night: the day ends with the Farmoton left outside, every farm has its night, and you land at dawn.

The travel menu's Map tab is a star chart of every planet and space station: the Sol system on the left, with moons grouped around their giant planets, and the worlds of other stars on the right, each beside its sun. Drag it or use the scroll wheel (Shift+wheel scrolls sideways). Your farms are ringed in green and where you are in gold. Click a planet or station to see its details on the right (soil, today's weather, pests, inspections, the crops that grow best there now, and your farm if you have one) and what you can do: fly there, or fly there and start a farm. Previous and Next step through every destination, and the Your farms buttons jump to each farm.

• Fly to one of your farms, or to a new planet to buy a farm there (each farm has its own robots, sheds and storage).
• The hold carries goods and seeds between farms. Load at a farm in the Travel menu's Cargo tab; unloading needs the matching shed and room in it. Illegal cargo in the hold counts in every farm's inspection.
• Money, the loan, the calendar and the Planet Hopper are shared by all farms.

Remote Relay Station

A building (20,000 nibs) that links its farm to the Command Center Chair in your Personal Space Base. The relay list is only in the base: the chair lists every farm you own with its crops, goods, water, thirsty and infested plants, weeds, helpers and strikes, and Connect takes control of any farm with a relay at once (no night passes and the clock is shared). While connected, press R (or the Base button) to return to your Personal Space Base. You stay at the farm with the Planet Hopper, so flying and loading cargo wait until you return; anything that starts a flight returns you first.

Space stations

Stations have no farm, only a market that buys from the hold in bulk. Each day their capacity refills and each category's price drifts by up to ±10%.

Breakdowns and repairs

Robots break down at random while they work. Every bit of wear a job or a move adds carries a chance:

chance = 0.003 × wear added × (1 + current wear ÷ 25)

A fresh Farmoton breaks down about once in 1,300 jobs; at 50% wear, about once in 500 (moves count for a fifth of a job). Helpers wear more slowly, so they break less often. Robots never break on farms you are away from, and idle robots never break.

A broken robot does nothing until it is fixed: the Farmoton will not drive or use tools, and helpers and the autopilot stop. Press B (or the red wrench) to fix it yourself with the puzzle for its fault, or pay the mechanic 800 nibs to fix it at once. A puzzle you leave stays the same until you come back to it.

Visiting robots

Special robots roll in from the right along the bottom of the farm screen, and now and then a person walks in. The clock pauses while they talk.

Visitors only come to the farm you are on, and not while you are at a station.

Milestones and your Personal Space Base

The Interplanetary Growers Alliance (IGA) rewards farmers who keep producing food. It can't pay cash, so each milestone gives something for your Personal Space Base (PSB). Milestones count every farm you own, are checked whenever anything changes, and once reached stay reached. The Tipoton announces each one. The trophy button on the bottom bar, right of the seed and status buttons (or L), lists them all with their rewards, ticking each one off with the day you reached it.

Awards

The IGA also gives awards: medals for farming well, with no base reward. The Tipoton delivers each one, and their medals sit in the awards case. The Awards tab of the milestones screen shows how close you are to each.

Pest Free Farmer counts nights: a night counts if crops are growing on any farm and none has pests; any pest starts the count again, and a night with nothing growing anywhere neither counts nor breaks it. Prolific Planter counts every farm you have started, including any lost since.

The base

The base is in orbit and comes with its own mini-shuttle from the planet; when you fly to another planet, the Planet Hopper tows it along. Once you have it, the Base button next to the milestones button (or K) takes you there from any farm; no time passes while you are there, and leaving brings you back. It is seen from above with everything outside it black: at first a 7×7 room joined by a single door tile to a 7×5 room, each with its own floor colour, and later a 7×9 room below the first. There is no one to walk around: click the aquarium, the awards case or the Command Center Chair (or use the buttons along the top) to use them. The rocket rug and the furniture kit's sofa, bed, table, shelves, lamps and plants are for show.

• Awards case: shows the medal for every award earned, with empty places for the rest.
• Command Center Chair: opens the relay list, so you can take control of any farm with a Remote Relay Station.

The aquarium

It comes with 2 fish and a few decorations. Feed them in the aquarium screen: once more than 14 days pass without food they all die (the night report warns you the morning before). Dead fish lie on the sand until you clear them out. Up to 12 fish and 10 decorations fit; fish bought into an empty tank arrive fed.

In the base you walk about with the arrow keys or W A S D. Face the aquarium, awards case or Command Center Chair and press Space to use it (or click it). 7, the Move key, picks up the furniture in front of you and puts it down again wherever it fits inside a room; Esc puts it back. Time runs on at half speed while you are in the base, with the day and time on its top bar, and your farms keep working; if midnight passes, the night report appears there.

The base's Store button sells furniture (an armchair, bean bag, desk, telescope and planet globe), a workbench for practising the repair puzzles whenever you like (each kind of fault needs its own practice kit, sold there too), and an arcade cabinets, each keeping your best score: Space Snake, Shapey Blocks (turn and drop falling shapes to fill whole rows) and Swap-n-Match (swap neighbouring gems to line up three or more of a colour, with a limited number of swaps a game). What you buy appears in a free spot in the base.

On screen

• Top bar: the planet; the day, time, sun (tinted the planet's sun colour; a moon at night) and hours of daylight, season, temperature, humidity and a rain cloud when raining; then your nibs, the Farmoton's battery (a bolt while charging at the garage) and onboard water, and a red warning with your debt and strikes.
• Bottom bar: the tools 1–7, the seed selector with ⓘ for the seed's details and a button to show or hide the status pane, then the menus as icons with their keys. Every icon names itself when you hover it.
• Bottom right: what the Farmoton is facing or carrying, and the status pane (hopper, trailer, tank, pesticide, animals, wear, autopilot, helpers).

Controls

Controller buttons can be rebound in Pause → Controller Setup. In menus, LB and RB switch tabs.

Music and credits

Quiet background music plays on the farm (Comfortable Mystery 2, Lasting Hope, Serene, Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet, Magic Forest, and Virtutes Vocis) and in your Personal Space Base (Floating Cities, Unpromised, and String Impromptu Number 1), in a shuffled order. The title, story, planet choice and stations are silent. Switch music on or off with the note button left of the seed selector on the bottom bar, or in the pause menu; the choice is remembered. Buttons, menus, tabs, errors, robot messages and milestones have short interface sounds, and the robots make sounds as they work (ploughing, planting, cutting, harvesting, unloading, moving buildings, breaking down and being repaired), heard from where they are on the farm, with a motor hum while they drive. Animals make a quiet call of their own kind every so often. Switch all sounds off with Sounds in the pause menu. Credits, on the title screen and in the pause menu, name the art (Game Art by Kenney.nl) and the music (Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com, under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0).

Saving

• The game autosaves after every night and every flight, and when you quit to the title or close the window. F5 saves at any time.
• Load Game on the title screen continues from the last save.