Potato Combine Harvesters/Farming Simulator 17
A Potato Combine Harvester is a type of Vehicle in Farming Simulator 17. This self-propelled machine can perform both parts of the Potato harvest simultaneously: Cutting the haulms and collecting the potatoes from the ground. It works very much like a normal Harvester, except it can only harvest Potatoes.
Farming Simulator 17 offers only one model of Potato Combine Harvester - the Grimme Tectron 415. It is an extremely expensive machine, but is by far the most efficient way to collect your Potato crops. You do not need to purchase any additional equipment in order to use the Tectron 415 - it is completely self-sufficient.
A Potato Combine Harvester is not the only way to harvest Potatoes: You can also do it using two separate Implements called a Potato Haulm Topper and Potato Harvester Trailer. While these tools are significantly cheaper than a Combine Harvester, they are much more difficult to use, and complete the job much slower.
List of Potato Combine Harvesters
Farming Simulator 17 offers only one model of Potato Combine Harvester. It can be found in the "Potato Harvesting" category at the store.
| Name | Price | Maint. Cost per Day |
Max. Speed (km/h) |
Max. Working Speed (km/h) |
Crop Capacity |
Working Width (m) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grimme Tectron 415 | 429,000 | 1,290 | 25 | 10 | 20,000 | 3.3 |
Harvesting Potatoes
- Main article: Potatoes (Farming Simulator 17)
A Potato Combine Harvester is designed to harvest Potatoes from the field. Unlike most other crops, the process of harvesting Potatoes is a two-step process, preparing the field and then collecting the potatoes. A Combine Harvester's advantage is that it performs both of these actions simultaneously. Overall, it works almost exactly like a normal Harvester.
A Potato Combine Harvester can only collect potatoes from a ripe field. It will not interact with plants that are still growing, nor with plants that have already withered. Ripe fields will appear as yellow or orange in the "growth" map.
While active, a Potato Combine Harvester's cutting head collects any ripe potatoes it touches, whether or not they have already been processed by a Potato Haulm Topper. If you have a Combine Harvester, there is no need to use a topper on your potato fields first - the Combine Harvester does not care.
The potatoes are collected into a holding tank inside the Combine Harvester itself. If the holding tank becomes full, the harvester will stop interacting with any more potatoes. The tank can be unloaded at any time by extending the vehicle's pipe (actually a conveyor belt); If the Combine Harvester detects a valid container underneath the pipe, it will automatically dump potatoes into that container. This can be done while the Combine Harvester is working, or once it has stopped. Alternatively, you can manually order the Combine Harvester to dump the potatoes anywhere you want, creating a Pile which you could pick up later.
As with most other harvesters, the most efficient way to unload a Combine Harvester is to have a secondary vehicle (typically a Truck or Tractor) pull such a container alongside it.
Comparison with Potato Toppers/Trailers
A Potato Combine Harvester is a single, self-propelled machine that can perform both parts of the Potato harvest simultaneously: Cutting the haulms off the potatoes, and then collecting them out of the ground. It performs the job in a single pass, like most other Harvesters in the game.
This puts it in direct competition with Potato Haulm Toppers and Potato Harvester Trailers. Each of these tools can only perform one part of the potato harvest, but they can be mounted together on the same Tractor to perform the job in a single pass.
Each of these two different setups has its own advantages and disadvantages:
- A Topper/Trailer setup is much cheaper. The combined price of the models available in the base game is $124,000, not including the price of a Tractor strong enough to use them both at the same time (assuming you don't already own one). Compare this to the $429,000 price of a Combine Harvester.
- A Topper/Trailer has much lower maintenance. Both tools together cost only $200 per day, compared to $1,290 for a Combine Harvester. This doesn't include the maintenance of the tractor, but then a tractor can be used for many other jobs while waiting for the next Potato harvest. A Combine Harvester can waste a whole lot of money if it just sits around waiting for you to need its use again.
- A Topper/Trailer is easier to transport. These tools must be attached to a Tractor, and most tractors have a good maximum speed. Compare this to the only available Combine Harvester model, whose maximum speed is only 25 km/h. If your Potato fields are located far away from one another, this factor can easily become very important.
- A Combine Harvester has a much wider collection head. The potato-collection head of the Grimme SE 260 trailer is very narrow, at only 1.6 meters. The head of a Combine Harvester is more than twice as wide - completing the same amount of work much faster.
- A Combine Harvester has greater capacity. It can collect twice as many potatoes as a Topper/Trailer before it needs to be emptied. This can make the harvest go quite a bit quicker.
- A Combine Harvester is much easier to control. It is a single solid machine, with a single header at the front that does both jobs simultaneously. This makes it a lot easier to put the header exactly where you need it. A Topper/Trailer, on the other hand, has one of its headers at the back, behind and to the right of the tractor - making it much harder to put that header in the right place.
Overall, the Maintenance Cost difference is probably the most important factor in the early game, when money is short and you do not yet have many Potato fields to process. This prevents you from needlessly spending massive amounts of money for a Combine Harvester to just sit and wait for the crops to ripen. In the late game, once you can afford the Combine Harvester, it will make the harvest go much faster.