Factorio Forums

TL;DR

It would be nice if there was a way to only disable planting/harvesting while still doing the other thing

What?

Currently, you can connect the agricultural tower to a circuit (or a logistic network), and you can enable/disable it on a condition. However, that disables both planting and harvesting.

I'd like to request two separate toggles for planting and harvesting.

Why?

I'd like to use circuits to disable towers when I have enough of the thing they're harvesting, but then they'll sit completely idle. Since growing takes time, ideally I'd want them to still plant, but leave the trees unharvested.

TL;DR

Add ability to turn harvesting and seeding independently and read expected resources on agricultural tower.

What?

1. Harvest control
Any of the following:

• Add ability to set filters on plants to harvest, and seeds to seed
• Add ability to turn harvesting and seeding independently (have two distinct control behavior enabled conditions)

Either of this would allow seeding new plants without harvesting, preventing unwanted spoilage of fruits.

2. Read resources
Like the mining drills, add option to read "Expected resources" via circuit network. This may be an alternative mode to "Read contents" (but does not have to, so both may be read at the same time).

Why?

Basically, the main reason to do both is to enable/disable train stops for your fruit plantations based on circuit conditions, and plant fruits if and only if the train is arriving. You can partially achieve the second part by disabling inserters pulling fruits out of the tower, but the tower will still collect two whole stacks of fruits, initiating the spoilage process for them. Estimating the number of fruits or plants ready to be harvested is straight impossible without adding extremely complicated timers.

See Also

Dosh asking for that feature: Also requested by Dosh (https://youtu.be/8CVeY-9zmUM?t=5474)

Other related topics:

• 118070: Agricultural Tower UI/UX Improvements
• 120348: Agricultural Tower Grid

List of Edits

2024-12-05
Restore missing attached image.

+1

Its hard to get a desired circuit control of Ag towers when the two very different jobs are on an all-or-nothing control scheme. Separate harvesting/planting controls would make it much simpler to do things like allowing the Ag tower to plant to maintain a full field of trees, and only harvest when there is demand for the product. Seed/plant filters are just a bonus that enable sushi fields. But independent harvest and planting control is huge.

EDIT: On discord, we tried getting the above behavior with 2 Ag towers (one planter, and one harvester, for a full field that is only harvested upon demand) to separately control harvest by circuit. But we found that each tower maintains "ownership" of everything it planted. So the two functions can't be separated with different buildings, either.

Yes agree with this. I currently have to have a delay circuit around my harvesting to delay disabling the tower until after seeds have been consumed from its inventory. I usually have towers disabled in order to not harvest until production is ready to use whatever was harvested instead of it just backing up and spoiling.

to piggyback on this, it would be neat if the towers also output number of plants in range as a signal, optionally detecting matured plants only.

Koub wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2024 6:55 pm [Koub] Merged a couple threads with the same suggestion.

Technically speaking, mine suggestion is more than the original topic. :D

Hares wrote: ↑Wed Dec 11, 2024 8:14 pm Technically speaking, mine suggestion is more than the original topic.

Absolutely, but when merging threads, it's the chronological order that matters, we moderators have no control over it. You should have been faster .