Farming

### Farming by hand

When you first start a new game, you won't have access to machines and automation to make farming easier. So you have to do it the old way. You can buy seeds from alien towns, you'll find these towns all over the world, they generally live near lakes and rivers. You can also buy compost too, but you can find it also, just lying around the the floor if you explore a bit.

First, place the compost down on the ground using the 'place' button in your inventory, then take few steps back and 'Drop' the seed you have, it takes a bit of skill to hit the tile of compost, consider it a mini-game 😁. You'll need to buy a wooden bucket too, 'Use' the bucket when looking at a lake/river to scoop up 'Dirty water', then go back to your farming patch and 'Drop' the water on there to bring up the moisture level. That's all, just wait for it to grow and pick up the harvest.

### Crop Farmer

Visit your local "Farm supply store", you can buy seeds, compost and a "Crop Farmer" device, you'll also need to buy a Basic drone from the same store, they are quite slow, but they automate placing compost, planting seeds, watering and harvesting. Later you can buy faster drones off the Space Internet. Place the device down anywhere outdoors, where you have a flat and open area, also, you can't use this device in certain biomes. Eg. Highlands (air is too thin), Glacial (too cold), pick a nice temperate biome such as a woodland (clear the trees first). Next place your drone on top of it, the green box will snap into position for you. This device does not require electricity, as it has it's own built-in solar panel, and of course the drone has it's own solar panels too. Finally look at the crop farmer and press F to bring up it's control panel.

Here, you can set the size of the farm, "solid supplies" is a Shed or 4D solid storage of where you keep your compost and seeds. You will also need a small liquid tank to store dirty water, so your drone can then water the plants and finally, which seed you'd like your drone to plant. Once everything is set, switch it on and the drone will buzz around working on the farm, if it does not, look at the crop farmer's control panel, which may tell you what is wrong.

The Crop farmer works with the logistics system too, so you can send the harvested items to a local source.

NOTE: The crop farmer only works in certain biomes and has to be outdoors (handy for when it rains)

### Greenhouse

The crop farmer is useful at first to feed yourself and a small colony, but as your colony expands, you need something a bit more industrial. Construct a greenhouse from your construct menu (symbol on the bottom-left of your screen). The greenhouse does not require any drones, instead it has multiple automated trays, each one can be configured to grow a specific crop, simply look at the tray and press F, choose a seed and that's it. You will of course need to have seeds and dirty water inside the greenhouse's inventory, go over to the panel next to the door and press E to look at the inventory.

You can also place modules in the greenhouse in the gaps between the trays, that way you can manufacture the food right in one place, for instance, if you grow wheat, place a "Press" module down and choose "WheatBrix" to press your wheat into a tasty snack.

Just like the other buildings, you can set A.R.S.E. (Atmospheric Reconfiguration System Equipment) to adjust the atmosphere. You can leave it disabled and everything will work fine, but if you choose the "Carbon-Dioxide" option and provide that gas, the plants will grow a little faster.