How do farm stations work?

[Primalflower]

I am aware of their function, but I recall intricacy as to how duplicants interface with them, and especially multiple of them. Do they try to keep a specific amount of stock in each greenhouse? Do they tend to prefer a specific farm station?

[SharraShimada]

I used to use them, and then stopped. Just expanding the Farm to compensate for longer growth time is enough for me. 

Why? 

1. its dupe labor time i want to spend somewhere else.

2. there is just no good mechanic to prevent them to hoard the Micronutrients, So they waste time and resources on making that stuff, until you build a timed open/close system allow/deny the dupes access. 

3. i DO in fact place the farm station, but only to make the room count as greenhouse, then disable it.

To answer your questions directly: Not there is just noch limit i am aware of. If they can make the stuff, they will do so, until the end of time. They will normally prefer the farm station next to the current location of the dupe when there is nothing more important scheduled. 

So its tedious to work with them, and in my opinion they are just not worth the hassle. 

[Primalflower]

36 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

I used to use them, and then stopped. Just expanding the Farm to compensate for longer growth time is enough for me. 

Why? 

1. its dupe labor time i want to spend somewhere else.

2. there is just no good mechanic to prevent them to hoard the Micronutrients, So they waste time and resources on making that stuff, until you build a timed open/close system allow/deny the dupes access. 

3. i DO in fact place the farm station, but only to make the room count as greenhouse, then disable it.

To answer your questions directly: Not there is just noch limit i am aware of. If they can make the stuff, they will do so, until the end of time. They will normally prefer the farm station next to the current location of the dupe when there is nothing more important scheduled. 

So its tedious to work with them, and in my opinion they are just not worth the hassle. 

where else do you need dupe labor? many duplicants end up idle if i run things right, short of jobs that i create for them like engie tune-ups, metal refining, ranching, farming, and fertilizing. The game is good about having ways to automate the grand majority of tasks around a colony, so i really don't see the problem with creating work for farming when it is as ridiculously resource efficient as it is with farm stations 99% of the time.

with regards to them hoarding micro-nutrient fertilizer... is there a problem with just... limiting their access to fertilizer...? only allow X amount of fertilizer to be produced every day with easily-accessible machine automation and they will only produce the equivalent amount of micro-nutrient. Not that it really even matters that much, because fertilizer is very cheap.

But regardless of that, My question was not with regards to whether or not they are worth having around. I was more interested in their mechanical working. I distinctly recall someone more technologically inclined than me describing intricacy as to how duplicants use farm stations to produce micro-nutrient, something to the effect of them prioritizing a particular farm station and attempting to keep it stocked with an invisibly kept-track of number of stock at any given time. I have no idea where I could find this information on my own, so I ask here.

[asurendra]

When crop in farm room need fertilizing, station creates task to create micronutrient and then fertilize that crop. Dupes will not create excess micronutrients or any other way interact with station. 

Prioritising... Is weird. Task may be completed in any station on map, meaning that dupes will run to closest accessible. That can result in dupes making micronutrient in one farming room and use it in another one. But actually nothing really bad in that except for additional running. If you want to ensure that your crops will get as fast fertilizing as possible you can play with door access. If a few seconds of delay is not a problem just ignore them

[Sasza22]

On 10/9/2023 at 9:55 AM, asurendra said:

Dupes will not create excess micronutrients or any other way interact with station

I`m not sure about excess. The farming station works similarly to the power control station and the latter will make dupes create an extra microchip for each generator in a powerplant on the map even if it`s already tuned up. The farm station could do the same but due to farms having much more crops it the fertilizer could pile up.

Anyway it takes a lot of dupe time so you should probably limit it to slow growing plants or mutant farms is SO. Iirc mealwood can`t be fertilized this way for some reason.

[blakemw]

Something else to note about Farm Station is that it benefits greatly from agriculture attributes, by making the buff last 10% longer per agriculture level. So if you have like a +15 agriculture dupe you get 2.5 cycles of buff instead of only 1 cycle. Fertilizer actually already greatly reduces resource consumption of farming for most plants, but using high agriculture dupes makes the fertilizer cost even more negligible. 

But to the primary topic of the thread: Dupes seem to use completely standard and unmodified errand logic when making and using micronutrient fertilizer. When they want to make it, they go to the nearest highest priority available Farm Station. When they want to use it, they grab the nearest to them and take it to the plant. I don't think the game cares at all about which rooms the farms and farm stations are in and just uses simple priority and distance from the dupe at the time the dupe makes decision. To the point, while a Greenhouse needs a "working" Farm Station to permit fertilization (it can't be "hanging" - though the room will still be labelled as a Greenhouse), it's okay if the dupes can't even access the Farm Station, they can just use one in a different Greenhouse, or even one which isn't in a Greenhouse, to make the micronutrient fertilizer.

I think dupes only make micronutrient fertilizer when a plant needs some, but as per above they literally don't care at all about making it in the greenhouse which has the plant which needs some.

This makes the description of the Farm Station "this building only has an effect on crops grown within the same room." misleading. A actual correct description is something like "This building only has an effect on crops grown within Greenhouses."