The AI workers can be very finicky in Farming Simulator 22. Sometimes, they’re able to navigate a field or a road any way you tell them to, and don’t get stuck on traffic, trees or other obstructions—other times, they’re hopeless and manage to get stuck at every turn on the smallest pebble. A lot of players have been clamoring for a better AI system for years to fix these issues, but GIANTS has been pretty poor about updating the AI in-game leaving modders to fill in the gap. Courseplay in Farming Simulator 22 is that mod, and it works wonders.
The mod itself just goes into your mods folder inside your FS22 Documents directory in Windows. Once it’s there, just enable it when loading a save or starting a new game. From there, you can create and manage courses for most of your field work right off the bat. There are even options to do a lot more than just basic field prep. You can do weeding, baling and even mowing. The mod can do just about anything. The only thing it really can’t do is forestry, and for the most part, it does really well at those tasks.
Courseplay in Farming Simulator 22 Explained
So what is Courseplay in Farming Simulator 22? Simple, it’s a modded script that allows the player to automatically generate routes for each field in their farm, and assign those routes to a given set of tools. This can be helpful for the automation of plowing, liming, fertilizing and other vital tasks on the farm. It can even record routes that you manually set and save those. In short, it’s a nice stopgap to a better AI worker system You could also technically use Courseplay to handle driving routes, although the path generation system isn’t great at detecting roads, so it’s better to focus on using another mod for that. Autodrive is that mod, but that’s beyond the scope of this guide.
The best thing about Courseplay in Farming Simulator 22 is that it can handle tasks and field layouts that the AI workers just cannot handle. If you have a basic square field with no obstructions or awkward turns, Courseplay can also help you get those little bits that the normal AI often misses. Anyway, let’s on with the guide.
Making a Route in Courseplay
When you first install the mod, you will need to start designing routes when you want to use it. Luckily, the modders have built a fairly complex route generation tool for field work that can handle most basic route creation automatically. It’s fairly easy to navigate the menus once you understand them, although it can take some getting used to. The gear icon in the options menu will allow you to adjust Courseplay settings but for route generation, you want the main map screen.
Let’s use a weeder-equipped tractor to illustrate the process of generating a course and putting it to use. When you first go into the tractor, you can hit the DELETE key to bring up the menu for the mod. You will see a few options show up when you first enter a tractor and bring up the Courseplay UI. You will see Work Width, which is vital to getting good route. You will see a red line across your unfolded tool and this is the boundary that the AI tries to avoid slamming into things. If you have a 9.0m work width tool, set it to a slightly higher value, say 9.2m. This forces the game to be extra careful when planning routes. This is best for when you have a complex field layout with obstructions that you want to avoid. Also, if you ever climb into the cab and the Work Width isn’t updated to the correct value, click Work Width and the game should resize the outline to the proper value. Offset values also listed on the UI are sort of the same thing. What this does is try to guess where the center of the tool is to account for turn radius. Changing this value will cause the tool to appear further to one side than it normally is. This can be useful for when you need to make very tight turns with a large tool.
Now, on to making a route. For the purposes of this guide, we’re going to use the route generation tool.
- Click the Field Position coordinates window, then click the start position on your field where you want your route to begin.
- Click the Target Position coordinates window, then click the start position on the field where you want your route to begin.
- Click the CP: OPEN/CLOSE COURSE GENERATOR button to open the course creation window.
- Choose the settings you want to define your field. If you’re doing basic courses, you can usually leave these on the default
- Click CP: GENERATE FIELDWORK COURSE. This will create a series of line waypoints on the field you’ve defined, and paste those into the course window for the currently running tool.
- You should see a start and stop point on the map screen. Take a moment to look at the map layout that the tool generated and make sure its what you want. If not, generate the course again with new settings.
- Once you’ve made your route, click Close the C/P by pressing ESC.
- You can run your route by clicking the play button on the UI, don’t forget to save your course for later use.
Tips for Course Creation
- Multiple Tools can be helpful if you have a large field that you plan to work in tandem on. Set this to more than 1, depending on how many AI you plan to run on a field. If you want a Cultivator and Weeder working a field at the same time, set it to 2.
- The number of Headlands will define how big the border is around your field before the tractors start cutting rows during work. This can help better cover the edges of the field. A small field is fine with 0-1 Headlands, while larger ones can have 2-4 depending on size.
- Choose Headland Corners relative to the field. A square field can easily use Sharp corners to fully cover the acreage. A more complex layout should use Rounded.
- Field Center defines where the course tool should try to aim for covering the field relative to its central point. If you’re running basic rows without skips, keep this on the default.
- When creating a route, you can change the waypoint setting. First Waypoint will force the tool back to the beginning of a course, while Nearest Waypoint will force the tool to continue using the nearest node. For most cases, just use First Waypoint.
- Keep in mind that tractors will drive through active fields to get to the beginning of a route. It’s strongly recommended to turn off Crop Destruction if you’re using Courseplay.
Saving a Course
Once you’ve generated a route, the UI will update to say Temporary Course, open the Courses menu in the options screen, then make a new folder. Name it whatever you like, then click SAVE COURSE. When saving a route, make sure to click the folder, then click ACTIVATE, this will bring up a text box for naming your route. For ease of access later, properly organize your routes now. I like to name each folder after a given tractor or other vehicles, then I name each route after the task it’s designed to do. For example, if I have a John Deere 7810 doing weeding on field 3, then the route will be saved to a “7810” folder with the name “7810 3 Weeder”. That way, I know exactly where each route is, and what it’s designed to do. This doesn’t work as well for player-designed fields that don’t have a marker on the map, but it’s better than a wily-nilly approach.
To load a course that’s been saved, click the No Course/Temporary Course button on the UI, opening up the courses screen. Then, click LOAD COURSE, choosing the one you want from your selection. Keep in mind, if you had a temporary course that hasn’t been saved, loading a saved one will overwrite it.
You can also plan your farm to make route generation easier. One way you can also improve the detection of boundaries—both for AI workers and Courseplay—is to paint a dirt track around the borders of each field using the in-game landscaping tool. Keep obstructions out of this dirt track and your workers will have a much easier time navigating things when you tell them to do something. This also helps if you have Only turning on the field disabled. That option is a bit tricky to use with larger tools, so a border around your field makes it easier for the worker to make their way around.
Another thing you should learn how to do is make custom fields. When on the map screen, there will be an option for DRAW CUSTOM FIELD. Use the Right Mouse Button to draw a box around the field you wish to define, clicking SAVE CUSTOM FIELD when you’re finished. This will put a marker on the map for that field, such as CP-1, and then you can use that field to make courses via the generation tool. it’s pretty handy if you’re on a modded map like I am here with a custom field. Clicking the marker on the map will allow you to rename or edit the custom field to your liking. The editing tool is super useful if you have a very unique field layout that you want Courseplay to handle.
That’s it for the basics of making courses via Courseplay in Farming Simulator 22, go out there and see what kind of trouble you can get up to.