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?
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.