Seasonal Crop Stress

In the dairy year

Spring is a test of timing. The hollow is still snowmelt. The knoll is workable. Rain is three days out. You split the field.

Summer is water. The knoll dries first. You run the pivot there and leave the hollow. Leaf wetness invites foliar disease. Waterlogging invites root disease. Good organic matter holds water and quietly cuts the irrigation bill.

Autumn is when stress is paid in grain. The thin hollow is the drowned seed from April, not bad luck.

The feel

Vanilla fields stay lush while the crop dies of thirst. Here every field has moisture. Heat evaporates. Rain puts it back. Sand drains. Clay holds. When moisture fails in the window that matters (wheat at heading, maize at pollination) stress builds and harvest shrinks.

Irrigation is a decision with a cost. The tablet shows moisture by area, what is running, coverage, water use, and the price of the run. Rain coming? Hold.

How it works

Every field tracks its own moisture from 0 to 100%. Weather, heat, and season drive it. Soil type changes the speed: sandy drains about 40% faster, clay holds about 30% longer, loam is the baseline. The state saves with the farm.

Eight crops have a critical window. Below the moisture line in that window, stress accumulates every in-game hour. At harvest, yield drops with that stress, up to 60% at the default cap. A field with no stress harvests at full yield.

Crop	Critical window	Moisture line
Wheat	Heading (stage 3–4)	35%
Barley	Heading (stage 3–4)	30%
Corn	Pollination (stage 4–5)	40%
Canola	Flowering (stage 2–3)	45%
Sunflower	Head fill (stage 3–4)	30%
Soybeans	Pod fill (stage 3–4)	40%
Sugar beet	Bulking (stage 2–4)	50%
Potato	Tuber fill (stage 2–4)	55%

Irrigation

Three placeables live in Shop → Buildings → Tools:

Placeable	Job
Center Pivot	Large circular coverage, up to 200 m radius
Water Pump	Powers nearby systems. Place near water.
Drip Line	Precise linear coverage along a row

Set active days and hours per system, including overnight wrap-around. Irrigate Now runs a manual pass. Place a pump near water, then a pivot within 500 m.

Alerts

Three tiers fire as a field dries, with a 12-hour cooldown per field so they do not spam:

Tier	Moisture	Meaning
Info	40–50%	Getting dry. Watch it.
Warning	25–40%	Irrigation recommended.
Critical	under 25%	Irrigate now.

How you use it

Key	What it does
Shift+M	Field moisture HUD. Colour bars, growth stage, a stress !, and a 5-day forecast for the selected field.
Shift+C	Crop Consultant. Risk-ranked fields with plain-language advice.
Shift+I	Irrigation schedule.
E near a pivot	Schedule for that system.
Right-click the HUD	Edit mode. Drag to move it.

HUD colours: green at 40% or above, yellow at 25% or above, red below 25%.

Settings live under Esc → Settings → Game Settings → Seasonal Crop Stress. You can turn the mod off, pick Easy / Normal / Hard, change evaporation speed, cap max yield loss (30% / 45% / 60% / 75%), move the critical threshold, turn irrigation costs off, and silence alerts. On a dedicated server the host’s settings win.

On the Farm Tablet the Crop Stress app shows each field’s crop, moisture bar, and a red stress flag once accumulated drought stress is over 5%.

Esc → Help → Seasonal Crop Stress has the in-game guide for growth stages and the HUD.

The outs

Soil Fertilizer still owns compaction and nutrients. This mod owns moisture. They read each other. They do not write back. If Soil is present, pH and organic matter change how fast a field dries. Dairy feels the harvest that came off a stressed field. Fuel Costs feel the hours the pivot ran. Weather Guard, when present, is the shared sky this chapter should believe.

If RealisticWeather is loaded, moisture comes from that density map, irrigation writes back to it, and the harvest penalty is left to RealisticWeather so you are not punished twice. NPC Favor can add an agronomist with soil-sample and irrigation favours. CoursePlay and AutoDrive can refine coverage from vehicle positions.

What you need

This mod alone will dry a field and punish a missed window. Soil Fertilizer makes the knoll and hollow honest. Weather Guard stops six mods arguing about the rain. Farm Tablet is the deep irrigation desk. Skip any of them and this chapter still plays, just quieter.